Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Just a reminder if you are interested the documentary on the Gray's monitor featuring Daniel Bennett is airing tonight on animal planet at 7pm and 11pm est. If you haven't seen it before it is pretty interesting. Not to mention it is one of only 3 documentaries that I can think of that is dedicated to a monitor specie that isn't about the Komodo dragon.

I like Komodo dragon! LOL But, yeah, I have seen that documentry. I recorded it on my Direct TV and watch it over and over again until I got burned out. A really good documentary to watch. It also feature a guy in the Phillipines who sucessfully bred gray's monitors for the first time. I wonder why they are so difficult to keep alive in captivity, let alone breeding them sucessful...maybe diet is hard to simulate in captivity. Maybe Frank can help breed them in captivity since they are becoming rare, but then again I don't know if he can breed them or not since they are not your typical monitors. Who knows!

Thanks for the update. DVR set and ready to record! When is sombody gonna get Frank on one of these shows?

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To tell you the truth, monitor lizards in general gives me the creep. Maybe it's the way they stare at you and that fork tongue, and maybe it's the way they hiss at you. I like iguana more for this reason, but I do like Komodo dragons and Butans--they don't look like your typical monitors. The Komodo dragon really got a beautiful face, though...those big black eyes and round blunt snout. I hear the Komodo dragon gets tamer than your typical monitor, too and really have more personality than any monitors, but too bad they are illegal to own.

Monitors give you the creeps but Komodo Dragons and Gray's Monitors don't? Do you think about stuff you say?

One of the reasons I love monitors is because of their stare...you can tell they are observing and calculating everything around them. Their intelligence and behavior is fascinating! Unlike iguanas who sit there and shake their head back and forth like they've got nothing inside.

Its a good thing KD's are illegal! Otherwise they'd be killed in ridiculous numbers by households of people that think it would be "cool" to own one but have no idea what it REALLY takes to own one.

Believe me...iguanas are smarter than most people give them credit for...particularly Cycluras, which are very intelligent. My green iguana reconize me. He doesn't go nuts when he sees me, but if some stranger walks near the cage he'll get deffensive and ready to dart off the shelf. Once he saw my dog and flipped out and ran around the cage like crazy. He's never done it with me. My iguana reacts differently when I wear different clothing. So, far that I can tell he doesn't approve when I wear flannel shirt and would start headbobing if he sees me in it.

I wonder why they are so hard to keep alive in captivity. They probably need a really tall cage like the way they live in tall trees to feel secure and safe; otherwise they get really stressed out--and I mean stressed out in record level. The way I see it the Butan is the most weary of all monitors. Before they come down, they check the surrounding for predators and even stop eating if they think they are being watched. That easily get stressed out and spooked. I guess if you want to keep them you can't even look at them because they become so stress out and have to keep them in a very large tall cage since that's where they feel the safest. I've seen one that was captured by Daniel Benett on that show, and that thing just literally froze in fear--if I didn't know any better I thought it was dead. That's how much of a stress they can get and would easily probably died of stress related illnesses in captivity.

I didn't catch that lizard. We stopped trying to catch them in 2001 after it became obvious that catching them permanently changed their behaviour. Since then everything we have done with them has been devised to disturb them as little as possible. The animal in that show had been rescued from a trap by one of my team, if it says that I caught it, it's wrong!
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Mampam Conservation

Why they are so hard to keep alive in captivity? If you did reasearch on how many sav's died in captivity, you might also wonder why they are so hard to keep?! Perhaps its because they are getting into the wrong hands.

I'm not sure if they stress more or less than other monitors, its just they have adapated to their particular environment and are using their surroundings to their advantage. They hide, so they survive....probably the only reason they are still around.