Reptile & Amphibian Forums

First, this reminds me of when I first came on here. EVERYBODY and I mean everybody went, may I be honest? nuts(stupid). I came on with RESULTS, that far exceeded what they achieved and most likely past their dreams. In all areas but longevity. The results were in growth and reproduction.

These fine folks babbled in tougue, with a religious fervor. Every now and again, a word/sentence, I could understand came out, like, they're all going to die. The truth was, their world was shaken and broken. They did not know how to respond.

Much like you, I simply explained temp choices, food choices and even that rationing most do, but do not realize what they ARE doing. I broke the myths of UV and hibernation(don't use them, no need) and many other myths(theories) Most of these myths were based on monitors failing, not succeeding. You know, it failed so it must be that. So they said those thats were necessary.

I had species after species go from egg to egg in four to six months, of course they babbled that large monitors could not, babble babble babble. So I did large monitors, all went from egg to egg in under a year. Their poor world was gone. Many could not take the disappointment that an old snake guy could outvaranid them.

So yes, I heard what your hearing. I also tried to explain to them how I allowed my monitors to achieve what they "had" achieved. They constantly said I was cryptic and speaking in a language they did not understand. The thing was, I understood what I was saying, the monitors understood what I was saying and the "results" reflected what I was saying. I ask you to help us understand.

Thats been almost 17yrs now. And I have not failed, or gotten worse at this, in fact, my recent results I routinely exceed the results that rocked these varanid folks world.

Which brings me to you. To me, your speaking in tougue and are cryptic. I do not understand what you are saying, I do understand a sentence or two, here and there, that I agree with. Most is what I have been saying for almost two decades(the stuff I understand)

But I have a problem, you have no results. I had produced over a hundred eggs from three females before anyone knew I had monitors. Of course I did not want to say anything because I was new. But they wanted me to give talks all over the world. Soon, I had results upon results. Where are your results?

Now a days, I have taken, I can't remember, 15 species past 6 generations, 22 species past two generations. Do you understand what a generation is???? most don't. I have also exceed published longevity records with many species and I am still new to monitors. That lacie in the pic below is 22

For instance, I have had many species lay over six clutches a year, up to 15 clutches in a single year. One ackie, just laid her 17th clutch in a row. A female gouldi complex monitor, that I hatched and raised, is nine years of age and has produced 65 clutches and still is going. Only a couple examples of thousands, yes thousands.

Of cousre, they had to grow fast and unobstructed to do this. You know, to reach this area of their potential.

I just read your savs are growing 1/4 a day. that equals 7.75 inches a month. You have been doing this for how long?? six months(i read that somewhere), they should be about five feet by now. They are not, ok. How about three months, thats 23.25 inches of growth in three months, say they were ten inches long when you got them, They should be close to three feet. Are they??? You do realize that female savs start producing eggs at just over twenty inches in total lenght. Ok, you are new and may be a little slow, so how about two feet. Are yours two feet? have any produced eggs? Remember, they produce eggs with excess energy. If they are growing fast, they HAVE excess energy. You should have recieved eggs. Consider, with monitors, you do not have to hibernate them, photoperiod them or raincycle them to get eggs, you only have to feed them. Much like a mouse. If you continue to feed them, they will throw eggs like a pez despenser.

Also consider with monitors, the question is rarely about getting eggs, if you have a female you get eggs, its hatching eggs that is problematic. IF a female is not balanced and healthy the eggs do not hatch. Balanced is about their mental state. They cannot be mentally all screwed up and go thru the behavioral and nesting requirements varanids have. Thats one reason I ask these questions, if they are healthy producing monitors, then what your doing is not harming them. To me, that would be proof that all this training is of value or of no harm.

I have had all sort and varity of academics say all this and that about monitors, heck they tell me I am wrong. The problem is, they do not have a right to compare my wrong too. They only have words and theories. Which to me and captive monitors is totally meaningless.

You do understand that those academics included PHDs and professors. They would try to win a discussion with debate, which they practice and are educated in. The problem was, they continued to lose. For one reason, this forum is not about theory, or debate, its listed above, "the keeping and breeding of monitors. They could never show evidence or results in that area. They would argue, out of context. You never win doing that. They had absolutely no hard evidence that their theories were right, other then they agreed with eachother(a gang of fools)(its foolish to fight the wrong battle) This forum is about captive results, THAT CAN BE USED and positive results will be achieved.

So, please limit the cryptic words, I know I am not smart enough to understand them. Which renders them meaningless, and GET YOUR BAD SELF on with the results. If you can run a video, then you can show pics of your monitors progress, you know, how much they have grown, how healthy they are, etc, etc. Also of basic normal life events, growing, pairing, nesting, eggs, eggs hatching, etc, and that other stuff too if you want. But please, this basic stuff first.

About you having them do tricks. Dear, that is simple. But that is also not about this forum. Its not a varanid trick forum. So for us simple minded folks, offer the husbandry, then back it with results. All the other babble is just that, simple babble and heck anyone can do it, and sadly they do. Cheers

part1
Aye. I know you have results. That's the bottom line. I agree that reproductive success and longevity are valid criteria of success- certainly for the creature, otherwise is failure.

I read that in the wild a female can reach sexual maturity at 10.5 inches; that an average adult is about 25 inches STL; that it takes 2 years or so to reach that average length. (data from Bennett)
I think mine are probably less than a year old. They are growing much faster than wild ones, as should be expected. Here's the latest data in an inch/day plot:

How much age vs size determines sexual maturity i don't know.
It's not a 100% bet that i have 1.1 savs yet, either. If it is the case, then buzzy should start sniffing sometime, eggs should happen- but we know that breeding takes a mating pair. I'm 99.9% sure buzzy is male, and he's here to show you something many of the self.named experts like you mention have never ever seen:
I find it odd that none of the qwerty experts have data or photos or anything but blah to yadda. Odder still that i'm actually arguing with some kids who think that truth is a matter of their wishes. Man, the real world is gonna surprise them.
Here are some other data. Skin temps taken at random times- but always after the animal had been sitting in the same spot for at least 2 hours to be sure the temp had stabilised.
They can get 130F if they want it; they can get as low as 74. They can maintain their own temperature as much as 19 degrees F above ambient for some time, also. These are a few more numbers that are worth consideration to the keeper who wants to know his monitors. Mine are not undermetabolised or slowed by cooling as has been hopefully suggested.

continued next post...

Problem. For instance you are fighting with Shvar, Whats funny is, he actually put up the best proof on this board, EVER. And down below your saying he doesn't.

Like you, he irritated many of us(me) to death. he posted the growth of his Big female, 1/4 inch by 1/4 inche. He did not take about this theory or that theory, or at least I did not listen to that part. He simply showed the progress of his blackthroat DAY TO DAY. From the day he got it, and still. Throught the good and thru the bad.

May I say, that takes guts, the reason is, we all make mistakes and they can be very embarassing. But that did not stop him. He kept on keeping on. As I mentioned I could not stand it. But then I found myself wondering Whats happening to Sobek(I believe that may be the name)

He and I fought like cats and dogs, but somewhere along the line the fences came down and now we are on the same team.

His monitor grew like a weed, PERIOD. It would have produced eggs, it formed them. But because he had the wrong conditions for nesting. Big monitors take big nests. His monitor failed. But he DID indeed take her to a vet and had her fixed(both ways)

I think you would do a lot better starting with results, your monitors, then explaining what you THINK is happening. Because in reality, you have NO WAY TO KNOW, you only started.

About your graphs. You remind me of many of those academic field biologists. Yes, academic, which means they believe the graphs and words more then the monitors. Back to you. As a keeper, you take data, you plot data. You don't judge your data until much much later. In the old days after you died. Your trying to make lots of meaning with too little information.

I have raised hundreds and hundreds of monitors to successful sexual maturity and they indeed vary.

Because we are working with reptiles, we must understand reptiles. As you mentioned, on average, a female reptile(most kinds) becomes sexually mature at about 1/2 its adult length. In many cases much less. I do not keep savs, so this is not first hand information. I have heard of savs laying at 18 inches total lenght, which fits perfectly with the 1/2 adult lenght.

Consider this, at 1/2 the lenght, they are about 1/15th the mass. An interesting thought.

Again about taming, that is the first question a newbie asks, how do I tame this monster. The truth is, they are tame. You do not have to do nothing. So when you say to me, I found new ways to tame a monitor, I can only thing, what is a new way to tame a tame monitor. Or, there is no need for new ways, as the are tame.

If you have a monitor that has been traumatized. All you have to do is gain its trust. Monitors are simple creatures, give them something they like and they like you for it. They also have a natural tendency for group behavior(inspite of what academics say, what would they know?) So they team up with you to obtain similar goals.

I had conditioned(not trained) some monitors to do flips. Folks would come over and watch them do flips. Kinda like Shamu. What was interesting was not that they did flips, but how they knew how to use their tail as a spring. They would fling themselves into the air. I guess you need to use the tail if you have short legs.

Two monitors is that what your making data with? That one in the pic is a male and you don't have to look at the hemipenes to tell. I could tell by looking at the back of its head. It also appears to be very healthy. End of that story. All the tricks and theories are now rendered meaningless. Also that Sav is an adult, period.

Lets see the next one. Thanks

So now you are changing your story from a constant 85 degrees to 74 to 130 (although 130 is still cool for basking temps in my opinion)? How interesting...

Cheers,
Ryan
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There are three kinds of people in this world: people who can count and people who can't.

All of my monitors have basking temps ranging from 146f-195f. Air temps ranging from 68f-90f and on occasion a bit higher. These are broad ranges, these are what active healthy monitors find useful, in fact even my beardie (used to breed them like wildfire).
What you consider results are the most basic simple thing that almost all monitor keepers do in no time at all, safely hand feeding, how difficult is that? Thats not a result. I can hand feed mine every day if I wanted to, but there are those occasions over many years when hand feeding caused accidents, but keep in mind, when you play with fire someday you will get burned.
Why is it that to achieve your results (little to nothing worth mentioning)you had to put a non-water dwelling species that does not like to swim, that inflates with air to float and freaks out until they get to dry land, or eventually drowns (as you found out, ie results, failure in methods), in water to calm it down (ie cool it down, exhaust it to break its spirit)?
You are a hipocrit, and a bad one at that, you talk about taming monitors (lie), you point the finger at others, and you are the one who is the problem with no results to back anything up.
Like I said, the "I tamed my monitors in this amazing way" newbies come and go every few months, the longest I have yet to see one last in the forums until they killed the monitors and disappeared was about 2 years (with the 3rd monitor), then they were asking for advice to stop from killing the last one, since then they are a ghost (it was just over a year).
I have hand fed crocodilians, once I had a 9ft male scrape the skin on my hand with a protruding tooth, I havent tried it since (lesson learned, without too much blood loss). Ive hand fed snakes, monitors, lizards of all types, even turtles and tortoise, this is nothing amazing.

When the topic of taming comes up i have something to say. When i started to speak about it, i was mobbed. The crudity of that was worth dragging out to make a history of it across the net that google could remember for eternity.
When i said they could learn to feed safely from the hand- well, you saw reruns of that stuff, but no, they will not be ripping off my lips or fingers. The vids showing how they refuse the most tempting fingers and pick the mousie from among them pretty much put and end to mongering that fear. So, i proved they are smart enough and can be safe with hands- even meat smeared fingers at feeding time.
Forced to accept the 'impossible', now it must be trivialised 'oh, any monitor can do that'. Yes, it can. That was my point. It was impossible only a month ago- the reasoning cited in any attempt to refute my claims or the vids that prove them true is always: 'you torture and kill lizards'. Well, no. I kill animals much smarter to feed to the lizards, but obviously mine are alive and doing fine.
The scarlet words are supposed to demonise me beyond credibility, but it will backfire on the mudslingers finally.

So now training is no longer deniable or denied- but now it's trivialised. Oh, you're not training real monitors- they're half monitors- cold, scared, whatever.
Here's the temps that debunk the gratuitous assumptions required to discredit what the vids show- active healthy animals. Words can be twisted, but it's hard to make the vids out to be anything but what they are. Well behaved, healthy savs are no less savs for not being in a burrow.

Zoos are starting to get the idea, too. The time is coming when an unsafe animal will be regarded as proof of neglect or bad training. That's what these creeps in the forums see coming and that's what makes them squirm.

Ok, do you or do you not agree that your Lizard Training log thing said, straight up:

"... We decided to put him in the bathtub with deep water in order to exhaust him and then be the 'heroes' that 'rescue' him.

We did this all while being very mindful to not show face, hands or let him smelll us. We did not sing or speak, either. Thugs in burka were we.

He didn't paddle actively- he was unusually calm in the water. Usually he paddles like mad till he can get a grip on something. We watched with one eye around the shower curtain, which was drawn.

After 5 minutes or so, he flipped on his back, head underwater, and remained still..."

.....?

Get help.

And training log to the ASPCA, see what they have to say about it.
I see an arrest if they truelly care about the reptile in question. After all, its admitting to torture.

Even though this person has gotten on my nerves, given some false and possibly harmful advice, and seems to have tortured and abused her animal, I don't think we should report her to the authorities. I am not sure what good it would do (except perhaps get the monitors revenge), and would probably just result in more bans and restrictions to our hobby. Of course, bans and restrictions can help deter or prevent newbies from getting dangerous or otherwise unsuitable animals. But they can also restrict good, experienced keepers who know what they are doing.

Anyways, you are probably very right in saying that the ASPCA wouldn't give a rat's hind end about a reptile.

Cheers,
Ryan
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There are three kinds of people in this world: people who can count and people who can't.

NO offense, but that is not new. I showed a series as it occurred, of training lacies to feed out of your hand. I also did that with Mangroves. Yes, they can be trained.

Because you do something will not cause these fine folks from denying it can be done. The varaphiles are expert at that.

I do not agree with negative responce(punishment) training. I have tried it. My better to use positive response(reward) training.

I know you say your monitors are trained, but I will get your savs to take your fingers off, without ever touching them. All I have to do is raise their temps. THe problem is, most folks have no idea what the temps these animals use. Thats the reason experienced keepers do not agree with monitors loose in the house. Houses hot enough will kill the humans.

I agree with many here, you appear to be training, not half monitors, but lovely monitors running at half speed. Which means that their reactions are faster then their thinking. Its normal for monitors running at perferred temps to bite at movement, then check as to what they bit. If it happens to be you, they simply spit you out and act like you taste nasty. I think english fails us here, I believe we are saying your going to get bit accidentally. Not from being mean and nasty. Again relating behaviors they use. You have to see them use it to eachother. An accidental bite to them is nothing. An accidental bite to you, could be serious. But worse then that, accidental bites to people copying you, can and will cause problems. That is the real concern.

Also, if you understand varanid behavoir, you would understand prey conditions are DIRECTLY related to behavior. You feed them prey that cannot escape, they already(instintually)know they do not need to chase or kill it. They also have different behaviors for prey that can cause them harm and prey that cannot. They also know injured(non-mobile) to healthy prey(mobile) They react differently to all these. So back to the above statement, I can change the prey type and cause a change in feeding behavior.

An example is, I can feed a group of argus(very active monitors) and bowl of chopped meat rodents. They will walk up and consume it like civil gentlemen. Then compare to throwing in a same unchopped dead mice. They will react much more aggressively. Then throw in live healthy mice. Another story all together. Then test this with monitors raised together(educated) and compare to a group that was not raised together(uneducated) you again recieve different results.

The above is why I disagree with your statements, you have no varity in your tests, You tried one approach and say, this and that. please try other approaches and learn that monitors are not so simple. But YES your correct, they have a huge ability to learn.

Yes, they learn. The problem is, other keepers are not you. While you can say all you want to me or others, these words do nothing for your monitors. What they do, is related to you and what you provide. Period. The trouble with your methods is, others will not succeed doing them, because those others are not you.

This is true with my husbandry methods as well. I have spewed them for years and most do not copy them. Which to me is very very funny. Instead of copying them and become successful, they let THEIR ego get in the way and abort the methods. That is, they add their prejudices and most often fail. Of course they blame me, like they blame you, but I did not fail, they did. I also did not let my ego get in the way, they did. I do understand this about you.

So you see, it does not matter what others think. It doesn't even matter what you think or I think, in the context of this forum, its about what we do, the results. End of that story.

Does an animal need to be trained to survive in the wild? No.

So why does an animal need to be 'trained' in order to survive life in captivity? Any reasons other than to suit the keeper's needs?

Animals do fine in nature making decisions completely on their own....and they can do the same in captivity if provided the proper environment.

Daniel, your so wrong. There is one basic difference, this ain't there. In case you have not noticed, our cages have nothing to do with nature. Even the best cages only cover a very small part of nature.

The animal is the same, the enviornment is totally different.

As Dances with words says, captive animals have to be trained.

There is one important reason for that. And that is, you the average keeper steadfastly refuses to take anything about monitors into consideration. You put them in stupid boxes that have nothing they recognize and you think their natural instints will work with this????

You can't have it both ways, If you want them to be natural, then give them whats natural to them. A glass tank and a litebulb is not natural nor is some plastic thing that you call rock or wood. Or that manifactured stuff you buy, you all dirt. You may not know the difference, but they do?

They know, smells, feel, sights, shapes, dirt, rocks, trees, burrows, not a tiny six inch burrow, but many many feet. Whole hollow trees, not a twig. Acres of trees and rocks and dirt is what they know, not a 50 show tank.

So you think they don't need to be trained(retrained) to fit into this new enviornment???

I may not agree with the training methods of this person, but they do need to be trained. I also do not agree with what she has the monitors doing. But I do agree its better to do something, then nothing. The norm is, to die without ever doing anything. I think this happens to people, they think talking is doing, its not. You can talk all you want, but talk never equals doing.

You do not have to like her methods, heck not at all. You do not have to like her, but you do have to train captive monitors or they will surely die. This(captivity), is not normal to them. Cheers

To some extent. By that, I mean simple things like learning that you are not a threat, about their artificial environment, daily schedules in the house, etc. I don't think it is necessary, however, to train them to do something as silly as to kiss for food. That, I would see as something only to amuse and benefit the keeper, and give them a sense of power. I see nothing in it that would benefit keeping the lizard in the captive environment.

Oh, and I would think that at least some of the behaviors in captivity can be attributed as natural behaviors. For example, feeding behaviors, breeding behaviors, burrowing behaviors (to some extent), etc. Of course we can't say that they are exactly like natural behaviors in the wild, but I would think that they are at least somewhat similar.

Cheers,
Ryan
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There are three kinds of people in this world: people who can count and people who can't.