Hi Sam, you saidTo the contrary, accelerated growth rates and maturation have been shown to shorten the longevity of many types of reptiles, most notably Boids. If your experience shows differently, please publish your results! It would be a first in reptile husbandry."



Please entertain these thoughts, as in consider them. I did what I am doing with monitors to colubrids, Oh so many years ago, that is, have a history of fast growth, heavy reproduction, etc. Then I moved on to pythons, I did the same. Of course there were many who agreed and many who did not. Sorta like here.



What I found was, it was not the fast growth or the size that was the problem. It was us the keepers forgetting what we did.



I use the term support, that term is the hunbandry required to achieve all or individual tasks the animal in question does. Where we fail is normally in our support. Where we fail on a larger scale, is in support of a larger individual. A larger individual takes more support then a smaller individual of the same species. Are you following?



Take a keeper with good husbandry that is applied evenly, what energy support does it take a 16 inch,80 gram female ackie(or any species) to achieve normal reproduction? Lets for the sake of discussion say it takes a 100. The 100 represents a level of support. Now, what does it take to allow the same of success with a female thats 32 inches longs and 350 grams. As a math question, this is fairly simple, the larger one is twice as long so it needs twice as much, right? Ok, thats not really accurate because the larger monitor is 4 and 3/5's times heavier. So, then, 460 or so, is needed to attain the same level of success, yes?? could be, i guess. The reality is, it does take far more, but we have no handle on how much. It could be far more.



So understanding that larger individuals need far more support is the cure, right? nope, not at all, the cure is applying what we understand. The problem is them old paradigms, we keepers fall into habits, we tend to feed on a certain schedule and with certain amounts.



In reality, larger individuals get shortchanged because of our tendencies, not because they are larger. Understand, its rare for someone to support the needs of monitors on a longterm basis, sir that is history, just look at the current level of achievements of most. Muchless increase that support for larger monitors.



In my experience, larger individuals do not have problems, as long as we support them as such, larger individuals and increase everything they need exponently, housing, food, temps, security, etc. Thanks for considering this, FR

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