Reptile & Amphibian Forums

hey everyone i went over my friends house to pick up some rats the other day and i was fascinated by his monocled cobras. he has a young pair of het albinos and the male is incredibly aggressive, while the female never came out of her hide. the male was watching me from all the way across the room and whenever i would come within 5-10 feet of his cage he would start striking and hissing at me.

so, back to my origional question, can anyone post pics of their monocles and give me some opinions and experiences with this species? thanks
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1.1 BCI, 1.0 Bearded Dragon

Here are a couple pictures of some I had a while back. These are of an amel male and a w.c. normal male.

I no longer keep monocleds, but would certainly again consider it. In my experience, they tended to be a bit easier to deal with than many other Najas out there. However, I have a pair of black Paks now that really don't conform to the typical stereotypical black Pak attitude and a very easy to work with. The monocleds do run the gauntlet of temperaments, and some can be real handfuls. I've seen some adults before they were just amazingly huge, at least 6' and thick. They often become rather placid once they reach those sizes, especially if raised in captivity, but the young and juveniles can be very spunky. They're easy to husband though, and don't typically present any out-of-the-ordinary issues.

If you'll notice, I use the words often, typically, and usually a lot, because every snake is an individual, and every snake can have bad days. The one time you go to laxadazically hook, or worse, free hand, that placid cobra into a storage bin is going to be the one time it's going to decide you're better off dead than messing with it. Make no mistake about it, these snakes, despite their common occurence in the hot herp hobby, are very toxic. If you don't die from a bite, you may wish you had after your doctors get finished reforming your hand, arm, leg, face, whatever. Anyway, enough of the pleasantries Any more questions?
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Chance Duncan
www.rivervalleyexotics.com

I've kept quite a few monacles since the mid-seventies and I would have to agree with Chance in all he said 100%.
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Tim Cole
www.Designeratrox.com/
www.AustinReptileService.net
www.AustinReptileExpo.com/
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Conservation through Education

Tim, that's an impressive history with this species. I wanted to take this opportunity to ask, just out of curiosity, when did the amels first come onto the market and what were there prices like when they did? I'm imagining that they were probably fairly costly when they first showed up, as most oddities like that are, but nowadays they're practically as cheap as the normals. I always like seeing signs on travelling or home-town-type herp shows saying something like "rare albino cobras!!" etc. Heck, if you don't want to get w.c., you'd be hard pressed today to find a normal that isn't at least het. Anyway, this is just something I've wondered about from time to time, but haven't bothered to do any research into until now. Thanks for any info you or anyone else can supply.
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Chance Duncan
www.rivervalleyexotics.com

Chance,
I can give you the history of the albino mon's.
Wayne Hill bred the first ever in the U.S. in 1983.
The female came from Tracy Barker, then Miller, and another was owned by Jerry Marzec. Wayne bought a young male in Thailand, Wayne raised them and bred them. He hatched out 15. Ed Chapman down in Miami bought the entire clutch and sold them for $1000.00 each in 1984. That was alot of $ for snakes back then! LOL!
I remember seeing pics of these snakes and drooling!

Randal

Thanks Randal for the information. Always neat to hear the origins of stuff like that. I had no idea they appeared so long ago (I know, not all that long ago to some folks!), but it figures considering their commonplace occurence now.
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Chance Duncan
www.rivervalleyexotics.com

Wayne Hill gave me some slides of the first hatching of the Amel Monacles. If you are interested I could get them scanned and post them?

Randall, Good account of that history. I once knew that but my memory is not as good as yours evidently.
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Tim Cole
www.Designeratrox.com/
www.AustinReptileService.net
www.AustinReptileExpo.com/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<
Conservation through Education

I would definitely enjoy seeing them, and I bet I'm not the only one.
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Chance Duncan
www.rivervalleyexotics.com

In terms of the history, where does Brad, out of Butler, PA fit into the breeding equation? I hear he's a prime player, but I don't know.

thanks for the pics and information guys! i enjoyed reading it.

Hammer: i know Brad, and although i know he has a lot of monocles (and other cobras for that matter), i had no idea he played some special role with them. id be very interested to know if anyone knows anything about this.
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1.1 BCI, 1.0 Bearded Dragon

I agree as well that all snakes are individuals and behave differently. However, having a doctor reform your hand after a bite from a Monocled shouldn't be an issue, as they possess a primarily neurotoxic venom-just worry about your inability to breathe!
Drew

You should see the deformed hands of the people bitten on the hand by Naja kaouthia and even worse, Ophiophagus hannah (another neurotoxic snake) in their native range. Seeing is believing!