Reptile & Amphibian Forums

anyone have anything positive to say about owning a timor monitor???
are they so unhandleable?!?!?
no matter what i want to take the best care of him possible
just was looking for more positive things about timors.....
everything everyone said is discouraging.......
i know that they have different personalities and are fun to watch but i wanna hold him!!!!!!!
lol

I had a timor a while back and the only time I ever saw him was when I moved his hide. It hid every day and loved to bite each time I handled him. Needless to say, I left him alone because he made it quite obvious that he was happy to be alone in his dark place. If you ever want to handle or see your monitor, its probably in your best interest to choose a different one or wish for some serious luck.

Hello fellow Wisconsinite...

I did a lot of research before acquiring my first monitor many years ago, and was on this forum daily. I had also considered a timor originally, as they were small, attractive, not very expensive and available. After many months of being on this forum, talking to people and doing other reading, I decided on ackies. I have to say I love them and they are everything that people on here said they were.
After listening to the many long term monitor owners and breeders on this forum, the thing that always comes to mind when a newbie is getting their first monitor is what the experienced people have said, let the monitor decide IF it wants to have contact with you. Forcing contact by chasing it around the cage and "capturing" it will only create a negative impact on the animal. The more timid and reclusive monitors can be easily stressed by behavior they consider intimidating and potentially hazardous to their health. It is a shame you were not on here prior to committing to your purchase, as you may have come to a different conclusion. There are exceptions to everything, but for the most part everything that was told to you in accurate. I'm sure you will take good care of it, just take it slow, give it everything it needs to feel secure and not threatened. Best of luck to you and your new timor.

Pam
-----
1.1 varanus acanthurus brachyurus (Dorado & Dora)
1.1 u. macfadyeni (Amani & Abeba)
1.2 u. ornata (Husani, Zari, & Bintu)
0.0.1 geochelone carbonaria (Rojo)
0.0.1 cyclura hybrid lewisi x caymanensis x nubila (Sweetpea)
1.1 hyla chrysoscelis (Pudge & Squirt)
Herps Are Awesome!

Monitor and that means a lot.

The point is, if your starting out, you want a positive experience. Which by the very nature of varanid captive history is full of failure.

You "should" want to gain positive knowledge. Not start with something that most likely will not work out well. If your looking for a challange, all monitors are a challange, thats why very very few are captive bred. They are all a challange.

If it were me and at one time it was me, I started with ackies, and then build my success from what I learned from them. I moved thru the ranks of small to medium to large monitors, producing generations of all types. All from what I learned from ackies.

It very well could have been Storrs or V.Tristis, they all are a better choice.

For your answer, they are challanging and that is also fun. They are challanging because you base your decisions of guessing what they are doing. Other monitors tell you what they are doing. Consider, monitors are behavioral, that is, success is as more or more based on behavior and not a cage recipe. Cheers

You know, it seems to me that so many people have complained (or merely observed) that the timors remain hidden most of the time, but I would bet that a majority of those ones that stay hidden are the ones whose owners try to handle them. Mine have multiple hides throught my cage, yet most of the time they are out just laying around moving between their basking spot or the cooler side of the cage, just watching out the front, cocking their heads whenever a new noise invades their relative peace. If their micro habitat isn't disturbed on a regular basis, I believe they calm down enough to show as much interest in what you're doing as you have in what they're doing.

Im glad that you enjoy your timor monitors!

Did you notice that the guy wanted a timor he could handle and interact with? I didn't get the feeling that he would be one of those that just wanted to observe the lizards.

Thus, as you pointed out, they would probably be hidden all the time. You on the other hand have found a way to keep yourself and the monitors happy. Nice.

Thanks! Yeah, once they 'trained' me that handling was not in the cards, I modified my behavior to what they wanted...LOL. They are definately little characters. Cheers!

Not seeing the rest of your set up. That is not what I or my monitors call a hiding spot. That is a shelter. Follow the train of thought

Of course if they have nothing that allows them to act like they are suppose to, they will not. I can easily stop them from hiding by offering a habitat that is not suitable to them. But if I offer hollow limbs(a favorite for timors, both in nature and captivity. Or rock crevices or burrows they make. They don't care for burrows that are not theirs(I wonder why?) Then they will indeed hide often.

Again, a cage with a half hollow log and a carpet or some other non useable substrate and low temps to not allow full activity will indeed generate a friendly monitor, or what appears friendly timor. But wait, maybe its not friendly, but simply underactive.

I am not saying your doing that, but you may be.

My statements are based on the animals having a full range of temps and conditions that they can hide all they want. Its here that this species fails when compared to other species. For instance, with ackies(one example of many) I would get in the cage with them to dig up eggs, guess what happens? The dang things crawl all over me, they crawl up my pants, in my shirt, they investigate what the heck I am doing.

Timors hide, go cryptic or panic and bolt. At least the ones that have the ability to do so, will. Cheers

i noticed that too Frank : )

funny thing, i was posting on a bearded dragon forum, chatting up experienced bearded keepers. they would suggest to new folks that they pull out ANY hide spots for babies and juvies to "force them to be more friendly and outgoing". many of them don't use hides for adults as well. lots of those horrible half logs and airy bridges though.

holy misunderstanding of lizard needs : )
-----
robyn@proexotics.com

Pro Exotics Reptiles

Your point is taken...since you haven't seen the rest of the cage, I'll just tell you that they have in addition to half logs, pvc piping (in lieu of hollowed out limbs), and they also have their own burrows that they have made in the soil/mulch mixture in the bottom of the 6 foot high cage. Low temps in the cage are upper 70's on the bottom, ambient high upper 80's near the top, and the basking site is 120. I never professed to having the most naturalistic set up, I've just done the best that I can with the materials that are available to me, and fortunately my timors seem to do well in it. I'd like to think that if they are breeding on a regular basis and their health is excellent (due in no small part to the advice you gave me about 4 years ago Frank), I must be doing something right?

No one said you were not doing something right, of course you are. What we are discussing is something different altogether. And of course this/these forums are all about discussing.

That people take discussion about right and wrong is NAIVE and worse, insecure on their part, to say the least. For instance, if you told me I was doing something wrong, I would go look at the monitors in question. If they were fine and achieving life events thru many generations, I would simply ignore you and keep doing whatever I am doing(the senario with acadamics) But if you pointed out something important, then I would try it and see the effect, then judge it right or wrong or more importantly better or worse, or effective or less effective. That most take captive information as a challange to their manhood/womenhood, is very telling.

In this case, you are calling squash and apple and not apples to apples. Lets use your PVC pipe as an example. I live in the desert and there is lots of reptiles here. One species of lizard amoung the many on my property is Desert Scalys or Magisters Spiny. They get a little larger then storrs and a little smaller then a large ackie. I go out a collect hollow limbs for my monitors. I stack them next to my building, The minute, the hour, the day, I place them in the desert, one or more, spinys move into the hollow logs. Its is really all that simple. Across from my monitor building, I have a shop, I often have stacks of PVC pipe. And yes, its often stored outside on or near the ground. No lizards and no reptiles ever move in to the PVC pipe.(does this tell you something?)

The only odd thing animal wise is, my larger pipes, 4" seem to move around the desert on their own accord. It took awhile but I figured it out. Rabbits would hide in them and coyotes would drag the pipe all over the place trying to get them out.

The point is, you call pvc pipe, in liew of hollow logs, a replacement for a hollow log, a reasonable facimile, but sadly they call pvc pipe, "PVC pipe". They do not treat it like a hollow logs, its a pvc pipe. They treat PVC pipe like pvc pipe, not like a hollow log.

Sadly and commonly they do the same for types of dirt, if its not what they inherently know as dirt, it may as well be space pudding. If its not their dirt, therefore its not dirt. It doesn't matter what you call it.

I can make a silly analogy, so I will. If you were captured by a alien and kept in a cage with near normal temps, kinda cold, and givin a house made of some space material, it felt good, but it was weird feeling, not like anything you had ever seen(or your ancestors) And it was the size of a big gym and had a door, only the door was so big you could park a small plane in there. WOULD YOU CALL THIS YOUR HOME? So why would you think monitors call a half round piece of wood(serves no purpose) or PVC pipe a hiding area, it does not allow hiding. Or a pvc pipe a hollow log/home, it does nothing a hollow log provides. Let me get personal. Do you think these lizards are stupid? Or worse, do you think your smarter then they are and can easily fool them.

Let me offer an answer, they are not stupid, nor can they be so easily fooled, as reflected by the near total lack of success the hundreds and thousands(over the many years I have been here) of keepers on this board have shown. Please consider, if over 50% of the keepers on this or any board, allowed major life events, that is, taken monitors thru generations. Then I would call it a huge success. The monitors are specifically designed to achieve life events and to exsist. They exsist thru reproduction. Even including me, this board is somewhere around 1% successful. And if you take in continued success, it drops even further.

Let me get even more insulting(to keepers) monitors know pvc is not a log, they know a litebulb is not the sun, they know a cage is a cage and not outside, no matter how you decorate it. They know they are captive. They know a turkey burger is not their normal prey, kinda like their normal prey hit by a bus many times. That the keepers don't know these things makes the keepers the ones of questionable intelligence.

About their intelligence, its both learned and inherent. Heres a funny example. I built this large test cage(to test different species of monitors) Its 20' by 20' by 10' feet high. ITs totally enclosed with wire and glass. It has an 18" stemwall all around the perimeter(80 lin. ft.) Well, crickets and feed items would get out, so I installed a 6" wide clear plexi(lexan) barrier to keep the feed animals in. It worked. But, soon the monitors(ackies, etc) learned to climb over it. They used it to walk the perimeter of the cage, to bask on, etc. The real funny(odd and laughing) part is, they walked very normal on top of this clear barrier. Remember, they learned to climb around the clear barrier. When they wanted to get down, instead of going to the edge of the barrier and jumping down, they simply lifted their legs up and hoped to fall down, hahahahahahahahahaha, then they wiggled around like fish out of water. They appeared to be swimming, like this barrier was water. They did so until they wiggled off the edge and fell down.

The point is, while they learn to use materials they have no natural understanding of, to some extent. They never understand that these odd things are to replace what they do understand. In otherwords, they are still waiting for what they understand. If you did give them a hollow log that had openings and tight areas, they can barely fit it, and this log had areas that they could heat up and cool down. They would move in, and you would never see them again. In fact, you would have to take a chain saw to get them out. That type of hollow is what they would have picked in nature. Its what they understand. Its what they are designed for.

Consider, you are judging them on things they do not understand and calling that normal. How about giving them something they do understand then judging that???? Would you be called normal living in that space bubble thing? compared to a home of your choosing????????????

So these things like that half log(strait up dumbest thing on earth) and pvc pipe is "not" what they know, its merely a last resort. The problem is, keepers give them toooooooooo many last resorts and not nearly enough of what they know/are designed or. And the results reflect this. Just read this forum on a daily basis and you will see, tens of thousands of monitors being slowly(sometimes not so slowly) killed off, by nice well meaning intelligent folks(who are so blind they cannot see the forest for the trees) So I ask, whos the smart ones, the monitors or the keepers. Hmmmmmmmmm monitors win. But sadly that means they are loosing with their lifes. I would say cheers but it did not end so cheery

Agreed, I don't consider what I use to be 'natural', only a substitue for lack of something better available to me at the time. Trust me, I don't use those half logs as hides (boy they sure a serious bone of contention, huh?), only as somethng to get them closer to their heat source in the colder weather. I have spent a number of years reading this forum to learn alot about monitors (and how NOT to take care of them hahaha).

To quote you; "That people take discussion about right and wrong is NAIVE and worse, insecure on their part, to say the least. For instance, if you told me I was doing something wrong, I would go look at the monitors in question. If they were fine and achieving life events thru many generations, I would simply ignore you and keep doing whatever I am doing(the senario with acadamics) But if you pointed out something important, then I would try it and see the effect, then judge it right or wrong or more importantly better or worse, or effective or less effective." It's because I value the opinion of people like you and Robyn with your years of experience that I don't just 'ignore' comments made. I take the welfare of all my animals VERY seriously, after all, I made the decision to get them in the first place, they are completely dependant on me for everything. Perhaps I took the replies a little too personally and for that I apologize for getting defensive. You're right, it's all about the discussion. Thanks Frank.