Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Anyone care to make an educated guess. I am fairly positive that this individual is female. This monitor has given me the most problems out of all that I have. What many call a "he/she" and could go either way. Tough to tell. This individual is roughly 2.3 years old and close to 32 inches.

my guess would be a male. healthy females will usually cycle at about 1 year of age. that argus appears to be healthy, so unless she's been under fed to where her growth rate is slow and isn't sexually mature yet, i would venture to say it's a male.
cheers
shay

i will admit that it looks like a female. at 32 inches it should have cycled by now. in my experience a healthy female that reaches 26-28 inches total length will begin to cycle. however if the conditions are unsuitable for nesting the female may reabsorb her eggs before she lays them. but again in my experience i had a female on terrible nesting material, but she laid them any way... scattered all over the cage.
here's a pic of a female argus days away from laying eggs. you can easily see how lumpy she looks. cheers

Yeah, I do see your point. She looks very similar to the picture you posted. I have been thinking that she might be ready to lay or have eggs inside because of how large his/her abodomen is. I have had argus before and by this time the males would be reaching or just under 4 feet. I do not think there is an issue with underfeeding because right now he/she eats a rat every day to every other day and has had a large diet since I got him/her. Anyway, thanks for your thoughts, it might just be improper nesting areas, so I will check into that. It's possible to be a small male as well. This monitors fetures tell me otherwise. The head is very narrow and the tail base is small, all of this leads me to believe its a female. Anyway, thanks.