Aaaw, I might use longer-than-average-monitor-keeper sentances, but, only because I like to encourage consideration about the same base factors you tend to state as irrelevant since results have been acheived, even though those results are from applying those very factors I discuss. Whups, another long sentence already. There I go taking the fun out of things, haha. It seems almost as though you feel people shouldn't think about what works. Don't think about WHY whole prey works, just know, it DOES work. That being the case, I wouldn't say I'm taking away any fun, since these are all just words. All of the real fun is in watching successful animals (captive or no) and we can't do that while looking at a computer screen. I know, I know, we read your results on the screen and are coached on how to get those successful animals to watch, grin.

Achieving an understanding for thermoregulation (and other such crucial non-theoretical principles) is more easily achieved by reading about how it applies across the board to all heliothermic (basking-prone) animals (bear in mind, as always, I'm not referring to any group- or species-specific papers) rather than starting with no self-understood base and trying to acquire one from watching cluelessly-maintained monitors. No one successful with monitors started from such a true ground-zero point. The better a base knowledge foundation of physiology/behavior people have for why monitors can prove the "simple" captives they do, the fewer misguided detail questions will be asked as new problems expose themselves. As you know, new little wrikles come all the time.

The significant difference between my approach for discussing captive animals and your approach, as it seems to me, you don't (initially) elaborate on much. Do understand, my posts are not about me trying to say something contrary, or using a roundabout regime of guesswork to try to re-invent the wheel of successful captive monitor husbandry, or making rules, or trying to prove myself infallible all the time. It seems more of a communicative difference than a true difference in applicable approaches.

You center on that which shows itself to work; I focus on that which repeatedly proves to need correction in many monitor keepers and discuss where that correction originates. Many people seem to rest comfortably in letting you do all of the problem solving for them. The more people who can answer (reason) their own basic husbandry questions, the fewer emails you have to send containing a price plus an explanation about temperatures, or humidities, or, you pick it. Then again, it's your time, not mine. While you're doing that, I can be busy gleefully "theorizing." Better yet, if people would just try to comprehend and apply the principles that I run so many words over, you would have far fewer questions to answer and consequently more spare time to post pictures that are worth a thousand, no, a million, of my words.

[ Show Entire Thread ]