to my understanding crickets, or most invertebrates, aren't a good source of calcium, right? and calcium is a major factor in the diet of monitors, correct? well if savs for example have such a specialized diet where do they get their calcium? are wild inverts so much more nutritious than captive inverts? cause I know no one goes around sprinkling calcium on wild inverts, and yes I know they must eat the occasional rodent or bird they find dead or alive, but is that enough? To make eggs and grow as fast as they do? That's a hell of a lot of inverts if it really is their main food source. I would think maybe they eat a lot of snails, shell and all, for calcium but from what I've experienced and read they mainly crack the shell eat their snail and leave the shell or most of it. A monitor with no sufficient source of calcium would mean it is prone to mbd and other diseases which do not allow for reproduction wich would equal to a failing species. I think (purely academic and assumptional) they eat whatever they can find invert or w.e but maybe they eat more rodents and such than we can see. Rodents look into burrows and other areas for food themselves, maybe the monitos use this to their advantage and we can't really see that being that their burrows have more than one entrance etc. I don't know if they might have disected some monitors to see their diets and that's how they know they have a specialized diet? Then again some whales eat nothing but krill an look how big they are haha.

I'm not asking these questions to prove a point or because I believe one diet is better than the other because the fact is I am new at monitors and I pretty much know squat compared to most of you, but these are questions that really intrigued me, and I think it's beneficial for everyone. Sorry fr the long post by the way lol.

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