Hi Brad, heres a post about sexing reptiles from the KS monitor forum. I thought you might be interested in reading it. Tell me what you think.
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(goanna ranch) 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. This is very similar to raising up monitors.
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 and has over huge numbers. 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
My post was in responce to Ryan. Cheers
