Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I've been reading again. What I read made me sort of sad. Monitors are kept in cells. No matter how we dress up their enclosure, they are still in a box. Once wild, they will always remember they are in a cell. What about captive bred. Will they ever know their in a cell?

They never knew freedom, real freedom, they know whats normal is what they are exposed to with many instincts.
If people understood what they are doing by spending a few bucks to buy these mass imported WC monitors, and instead went completely out of their way to spend the much higher price for CBB, they would be so much more satisfied.
The best part is that no matter how many excuses someone has, its still a consistant fact, when a person spends more money on the initial purchase they put more time, effort, money, and care into their purchased animal.
There are lots of people who will say that they could not afford the initial high cost, but, they can afford the high costs to build cages, and for food over time, thats a load of steamy crap.
The reptile industry "sticks it in" these people who buy these inexpensive imports and "breaks one off" in them.
Maybe imports should only be available to those who show and demonstrate the ability to properly breed them and produce CBB offspring for sale in the pet industry. I bet there wouldnt be any bosc, nile, and many other monitors out there in the market if that were the case. Of course the value on them would go way up, they would be CBB and then they would cosdt just as much as other CBB monitors afterwards.

In a perfect world it should be the inverse - cheap CBB Monitors, and really expensive imports. Your imports would go into the right hands, and the CBB animals would be a "sustainable resource". However, capitalism can do some funny things.......

Not 100% disagree, but somewhat disagree. I think who has money to spend has very little to do with the "right hands".

Many of the rarest monitors were and are bought up by very poor keepers with lots of money.

There are many many examples of this, I will only bring up a few. When I obtained my perenty, there where four or five on the market. A rich fella in the southwest bought them all but one, the one I got, he had males and females. I tried to purchase a male but he had no reason to sell. He also bought up all manner of albino monitors, like that albino dums. And whatever happened to that albino Bluetailed? Anyway, this fella appeared to only have an interest in owning, but not keeping as they all died off.

This goes for zoos as well, they are not always the "right hands" They may have deep pockets, and good contacts, but they do not have passion and energy, time and space. Or may not have a progressive understanding of varanids.

So there are a couple of instances of high dollar, not being the "right hands"

I Think they should put a very restrictive limit on imports. You know, something like 50 per species per year. Then force us to breed them. That would be a win win, except for the poor countries that are exporting them. That is, unless they set the prices. Oh well, just some thoughts. Cheers

" Not 100% disagree, but somewhat disagree. I think who has money to spend has very little to do with the "right hands". Many of the rarest monitors were and are bought up by very poor keepers with lots of money. " FR

That's pretty much how it works. For some reason there seems to be a notion that because something is expensive the animal will go to a quality home . This in contrast to cheap that naturally means disposable. Truth is ..................

I've come across a fair number of guys with a little doe to throw around and for whatever reason decide one day to "get into reptiles". My advice to these guys is always the same, You have the cash so get a couple animals , set them up right and see how it works out. They never listen. Instead they always take one of two routes they ether run out and buy every " investment " morph out there overnight or buy all the " rare stuff " that they think will impress everyone when they start talking about how they have this and that while at the same time mispronouncing the names. Some of the best reptiles and most difficult to obtain end up with clueless big spender amateurs. Sad but true.

These guys all want to be overnight big shots and almost with out exception waste no time trying to buy up everything taking the cash short cut to being an elite collector. It's funny how fast these spenders or as my one of my friends calls them "shooting stars" become tight with all the big names in the game. That is until they stop buying.

They usually stop buying when they figure out, A : There's no rubbermaid of gold at the end of the rainbow and B: nobody really cares what they have it's all about getting them to spend.

By this time most of their animals are ether dead or on the way out and they are left complaining about how they were taken advantage of. In many cases they were but like the old saying go's the worst you want something the worst you get it. Jump into the deep end of the animal business and you will drown. None the less they get over it and move on to be the new overnight king of whatever their next hobby is. Bennie babies' , remote control airplanes who know's, who cares ? I could wright a book on this topic, probably a trilogy .

Errnie Eison

Westwoodreptiles.com

How many tens of thousands of bosc, nile, etc are imported for about a dollar each wholesale, then sold to new keepers who try the "10 gallon aquarium approach" and the animal dies in no time at all? Ill answer that one, easy, 99.999% of them. The other .001% live to see a year, or 3.
Most people forget that Ive seen this every year for many years, and its not gotten better, in fact its gotten worse. For every 100 new keepers that say they are taking the animal serious, and investing time and money, one tries about 1/3rd the needed effort. Im not pesimistic, Im telling the sad truth.
I noticed that most monitors that cost about $200 seem to be around at least a few years on these forums and some produce results, or until the keeper loses interest and sells/gives it away to get into some other trend in the reptile business.
For the $300 plus dollar monitors a few years and some more effort produces a bit more results among some keepers.

Regardless of what anyone says, I havent seen more than a few keepers in 20 plus years break the vicious circle and produce results with bosc or nile monitors. The fact remains that they are considered throwaway monitors at their market value. If they werent so cheap we would be swimming in CBB bosc and nile monitors in this country and Europe.
I notice that many inexperienced new keepers seem to get offended when this comment is posted, its the sad truth though.
If both species cost $200 each you would not see them, in but a few petstores countrywide. They would be captive bred on a semi-regular basis, and very few people would be posting "hey look at my new sav/nile that I rescued" (from the corner petstore).
That is another subject, a sore one at that. Most newer keepers think that they "rescued" a reptile when they bought it retail price from a petstore. That insults those who actually rescue these animals, its a slap in the face to those who actually care.

Of course they know they are monitors in a box. Why would they know? If you were rasied in a box, you would know its a box, wouldn't you.

And yes it is sad in many ways. But thats really only part of the story. The REALITY IS, many monitors are ALREADY in boxes, and we as caring people should do the best we can to make those have the best conditions possible. AND, we have a huge responsibility to get the most out of each and every individual.

We have FAR more responsibility to get everything we can from wild caught monitors, as we took them from nature. Which is more and more appearing to be a limited resource.

Understanding this backs up many of my rants and approaches. We need to allow all captive monitors the ability to attain lifes basic events, which I mention all the time. You know, to grow(prosper) to select mates(socialize), the mate, to nest, to hatch(recruit) and to repeat that to a meaningful lenght of time.

Lifes events start with a Home, all wild monitors seek and use a base home within its area/range. They may also have other homes that are needed for different reasons, usually seasonal needs. In captivity, several is great, but at least one home is NEEDED.

If your monitor gets out, the first thing it will do is seek a base shelter(safty) and stay there, then wander out and seek a BETTER shelter, etc etc. If it cannot find a better shelter, it will stay at the one it has. This is what monitors DO. captive or otherwise.

They then base their life events from these shelters/homes, whatever you want to call them. The real adjective is, its their base, the base of their lifes and the base of their lifes events. A HOME

Retes boards, deep substrate, tree hollows, etc, are the tools these monitors use to build their home base. They do not like hides from a petshop, oh unless you bury the dang thing and stomp on it a few times.

Daniel Bennett started the saying of "monitors in boxes" And I took that from him and used it. Its my opinion that he saw it that way because he saw wild monitors, he saw their look, their abilities, their EYES, their attitudes, etc, etc, and he did not see any of that in monitors in boxes. And I totally agreed with him, except for the monitors in my boxes. I allowed them homes and life events and to socialize, etc.

He came here and saw that and that confused him, as he saw them volunterily work in social groups and breed, and cycle and nest, and hatch and form eggs etc etc . You know all things wild monitors must do, but Daniel never saw wild monitors do such things or captive. He saw things he never saw anywhere.

So yes your right, in captivity they will always be confined in a box of one size or another, but you can still allow SOME OR MUCH of what they would do in nature. And we do not have to let them become prey for everything that eats them and we do not have to let them starve(nature does that alot)

But to keep them in boxes and not allow them to achieve ANYTHING but a heartbeat is a sin against nature and should be illegal. I guess most of this is not so cheerful, so no cheers on this subject. Chow

Hey Frank
What speices of monitors are you currently breeding? What do you have availible in baby size that it for sale?
Grimly