Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have read that if you raise a trio of monitors together (not sure if this is specific to certain species) they will almost always grow up to be male and two females. Is this correct? If so, can anyone verify if this is the case with uromastyx?

Ryan, Please stop the madness. Its the old, make a simple statement to one person and tell them to tell one other person. After ten or maybe even one person, the statement does not resemble the original statement.

Which is OH SO COMMON HERE, statements are made or read in a book, then translated in the readers mind/s to fit what they want it to fit, then it becomes something else. Then they tell the next person, and so on and so forth.

Now in your case, your trying to take a deformed/misinterpided statement thats not proven in one species and fit it to another, not very wise.

Considering Pete K and I were the ones who brought this occurance public. I observed it, and Pete made it public. I have some say on the subject.

In 15 years of raising monitors, whenever I raise two or more, FROM HATCHING, to adults, I have always recieved both sexes. This has been done here hundreds of times and is practiced. PERIOD. ALso, over that time and thousands of excessed monitors that were hatched here. I never sold two or more and have the recievers complain of having only one sex. Now compare that to kingsnakes and pythons, which I have also excessed thousands of. They both commonly had one sex come out of groups or clutches, etc. But overall averages about 50/50. Understand there are certain qualifications, Like they must be together for the first few months. As this is where this magic occurs.

THe possibilities are, I am very lucky or there is evidence of something controlling the sexes. No more, no less.

ALso, there is no defined ratio, like 1.2., I commonly recieve, 2.1 and 1.2 in groups of three.

Currently I am raised some groups of odatriad monitors. Several types of ackies, and some crosses(caudolenis). They came out, one type of ackies, 6 total, 2.4., another type of ackie, out of 6, 3.3., one group of crosses, out of 5, 1.4., another group of 5, 2.3..

The above is common, but I have had such things as, out of 6, 5.1 and the exact opposite. But without question, the middle is most common.

Again comparing that too the above mentioned snakes, whole clutches were commonly, one sex or the other. I also raised clutches up together with them. It made no difference.

Also consider, the above snakes are clearly sexable at hatching. And monitors are not.

Recently we have hatched some turtles, and what we see with turtles is very very similar to what we see with monitors. I do not have enough experience with raising groups together yet, but how they grow up can be very very similar to what I see with monitors. For instance, with western ponds and spotted turtles, they seem to grow up appearing female, until a fairly large size, then ones that appeared female quickly express definate male characteristics. That is, one day, they are neutral or female appearing, then within a very few days, there is no doubt as to what sex they are. The newly formed males quickly change shell shape and eye color and hemipenes are seen poking out all over the place. Do turtles have two like snakes?, because all I see is one sticking strait down.

Again, compared to the mentioned snakes, which are sexable at hatching and never change or show any flucuation over their growth into adulthood.

Now consider this. The above happens without question. But also without question, its not been explained by science. Of course they rarely explain anything of interest that actually occurs.

Turtles are known to be Temp sexable during incubation. This has not been seen with varanids. Yet, both develop into adulthood very much the same. But Uros, thats for you to find out. Cheers

I get what you mean about someone telling someone something and having it end up completely different by the time it comes to another.

What I get from the gist of this is that for some reason unknown to the reptile community right now, when monitors are raised in groups you tend to end up with both sexes. I was mostly wondering if that tied in with the fact that most species of lizard are not easily identified until they reach maturity. If this had something to do with social structure, it might be applied to other lizard species, which is why I was wondering about uromastyx.

I guess the only way to know is through trial and error though. True, they are not closely related to varanids, but I was thinking about most lizard species on a whole, which is a large generalization, so I guess my thoughts were warped from the start.

Maybe I should just stick with tortoises for now

Go to the Uro forum and ask if they can sex babies right out of the eggs, if they cannot or argue back and forth. Then uros may be similar.

Which means some tests(raising hatchlings together) would be fun.

I wonder if Gilas are the same as montiors. As their hatchlings seem to be of question about sexing.

The Dr. fella that breeds gilas came to my house, he offered a DNA test to sex monitors. I asked if that worked on gilas and he said yes. I asked if they tested it, he said yes. I then asked if they DNA tested hatchlings and raised them up to be the sex the DNA test said they would be, he then said no. I have not heard much about that since.

You see, they would get adults, find a DNA sex marker thats different from males to females. Of course this worked once adult. The trouble is, like with monitors, once adult, they are easy to sex.

As usual, when I asked if it was tested, he confused a lab test, to a actual field test. I guess those two tests came up with different answers.

It would be interesting to see how common this stradgy is, Cheers

I've asked before and have gotten replies that you can't sex them reliably until they reach sexual maturity, but just for the sake of being thorough I suppose I'll ask again and see what is said. Like you said, this could be an interesting experiment.

1. Do you ever observe monitors of indeterminate sex (the "he/shes" you've described in the past) occurring in groups of hatchlings raised together?

2. When hatchlings from different clutches (different parents) are raised together, do they still mature into both sexes? Also, do you have any insight into how soon hatchlings (from the same clutch or otherwise) need to be put together and how long they need to stay together for this to occur?

I know you may not have tried every possibility but I think that this is an interesting phenomenon and only someone who breeds significant numbers of monitors can study it scientifically (true science).

Yes to the first question, The he/shes and she/hes, appear mainly when raised in groups. They appear to be individuals that are developmentally surpressed by more dominate individuals. To understand this, you need to understand that most develop secondary characteristics at a small size. The He/shes and S/H's grow very large before they attain secondary characteristics or fail to express secondary characteristics altogehter.

Secondary characteristics are such things has wider hips in females, thicker head and neck in males. The development of enlarged spurs. Internally, the enlargement of the gonads or ovaries.

Strangely, or oddly, we have seen wild caught He/shes. ??????????????????? These are also in literatue. Not labeled as such, but labels as males with atrophied gonads.

The timespan depends of species and clutches. Also, different clutches of the same species can be very different. The first few weeks seem critical, but not exactly restricted to that.

As you think, there needs to be lots of work with this. As you should understand, I know something is going on, but do not have the ability to identify exactly what. I would think a fully equiped lab would be useful. Cheers

And I forget the third question. I will go back in the mourning, Cheers

Uromastyx are in Agamidae, not Varanidae as is the case with monitors, and these two families are not very closely related. There is, therefore, little reason to believe that something that is the case with monitors (not to say that that is the case with monitors) is also the case with Uromastyx, unless it also appears in other groups that diverged more recently. This does not, however, mean that a group of Uromastyx raised together will not result in a somewhat balanced sex ratio. I personally do not know how sex is determined in Uromastyx, and since they are not closely related to monitors, you may be more able to find an answer to that question by asking in the Uromastyx forum.

No offense, but that kind of thinking is very limiting, as in, you simply walled yourself off from the possibility of learning. The sad part is, for no apparent reason.

Whomever taught you to think like that should be punished(spanked)

What you miss is, there is so very little actually known about reptiles, and muchless whats known about reproductive stradgy in reptiles, that to make arbitrary rules that limit, is of no real benefit.

When looking for commonallity(is that a word, I heard it on a Scifi show) Look for events that are common. In this case, the lack of ability to sex neonates is a commonality. The question now becomes, are there more? and are they from the same cause? Cheers