Reptile & Amphibian Forums

...that people with moniters and tegus have the coolest cage set ups?! It seems you care sooooo much about, not only the well being of your animals, but also about what would make them really happy. I'm a boa girl myself, and it KILLS me to see the tiny drawers that some "experts" keep huge 8ft plus boas in (i hope no one who reads both these forums is mad at me!!). I always do my best to make sure my snakes have extra large tanks to make them not just 'unstressed, but happy. I love looking at you guys' (youz guyz, i'm a massachusettes girl too =) set ups. wow. sorry, had to give it up you, wicked pissa dudes!!
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Alone, alone, all, all alone. Alone on a wide, wide sea.
-Rime of the ancient Mariner

I have to agree, I hate rack systems, how can you let your animal that in 1foot long be happy with 18" of height (boaphile)
cages for a retic should be tall with things to climb. I just dont see the logic in them.

While our cages for monitors tend to be larger then snake cages, they really are not that much better, or better at all.

The first thing is to realize what we are actually doing.

We think of a cage as its habitat, but WE are SO wrong. Its a cage and no more. So what does a cage represent? is by far a better question.

Snakes, and particularly the species commonly kept in captivity are mostly subterranean. That is, they normally most and in some cases, all of their natural lifes underground or inside something(tree hollows, deep rock crevices, etc) In most cases, over 90% of their lifes are spend inside.

Snake cages actually represent something like a cave to the snakes. They do not think or treat it like their entire habitat. They treat cages more like a hole they live in. So in this case, its actually covering more of a snakes life, then a larger cage does for monitors.

Monitors are much like snakes, they live a large percentage of their lifes in something like the ground, tree hollows, etc, lets say, 70%.

There is one huge difference, monitors have well developed legs. Legs give monitors a distinct advantage when out in the open. They can move farther and faster then snakes. So they do spend more time in the open. They do so, because they can.

This basically means, monitors can safely spend greater amounts of time outside of burrows and crevices, etc. Therefore require much much larger cages.

The real truth is, monitors compared to snakes are kept in worse conditions(normally) then snakes. This is very much reflected in overall success. Snakes commonly live, grow, reproduce, and live long lifes in captivity. Monitors rarely do. Normally they live a couple of years or less then perish. This means something is difinately wrong with the average method of keeping monitors.

If you count the number of people who allow monitors to achieve normal life events in captivity, then compare that to their snake keeping counterparts, the snake keepers are many thousands of times more successful.

If you remove odatriad monitors and consider only the larger monitors, it becomes a runaway. Large snakes are commonly successful, even by beginers. Larger monitors by comparison are nearly never allowed to achieve lifes normal events. They are horrifyingly unsuccessful in captivity.

So while you may think this and that, monitor cages do not appear to fit monitors, nearly as well as snake cages fit snakes, as small as they are.

In my old sad opinion, most monitor keepers judge a cage by how it looks or how they think its suppose to look, you know, the right composition. A water bowl, a hide, a branch, a hot spot. Sadly, not how well the monitor actually uses and succeeds in the cage. Which is totally horrifying if you think about it. The reality is, cages are for the inmates, not for the people. Just something to think about. As a monitor keeper, I am sad to say, WE SUCK. Cheers and good luck

Very true, no matter how big or how hard you try to make an enclosure natural for a monitor, its still a cage