I once had the most beautiful peachthroat in the world, she was a sweet little thing and would delicately take food from my fingers. With each passing week, she gained more confidence and grew more bold, till one morning upon seeing food, she leaped into the air and nailed my fingers.



The moral of the story.



Hand feeding is asking to get bit, no big deal on a smaller monitor, but when it happens it is not the monitor's fault. More importantly, the other moral, repressed feeding response is a sign of stress and fear. Fear is not a switch, it is all sorts of grays, while your monitor is clearly not scared enough to not eat it at all, it is apprehensive about your presence. I don't know anything about water monitors, but all of the species I keep are fairly aggressive with food (jobiensis, gouldi, argus, ackies), the "gentle" nature and it's tendency to crap on you (which is another fear response) seem to indicate it is apprehensive at your presence.



Keep in mind I'm not saying your monitor or any monitor can't be a very peaceful animal that you can interact with, without fear. But that a truly tame monitor, is (at least in my experience) alot more likely to accidentally bite you, because they don't fear you. I have one very tame monitor, but he will grab mice out of fingers like they were tongs, which again in my experience is not something I like to have happen.



Tong feed it and give it time, and it'll more than likely come around to be the awesome lizard it really is.



--Robert



PS - I really don't like the forced handling for taming approach, but I know many here really think it's great, so I'll keep my many opinions of that to myself.

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