Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Just looking for opinions about training monitors. Should it be done? Can it be done? How much can they be trained to do? Is there anyone who has tried to train one? Is there any videos about training?

What is the best one could hope for in a relationship with a monitor? I know there is lots of controversy about this and many people may feel this is a taboo subject, but I feel we should keep an open mind if we ever hope to learn anything.

Some people have been able to train monitors to hang with them and watch tv and/or cuddle with them in bed. All you have to do is give them low temperatures, feed them hot dogs and expect to bury them within a year.

I think if you are a non-threatening presence that is also the food source, your monitor will most likely become used to you and not mind you being around. You could probably handle him without to many issues, but if you expect it to chill on your lap I think you will be disappointed. They are very inquisitive and need to explore everything. I was pretty happy with my monitor allowing me to handle it and felt no further need to train it. If I wanted to train an animal, I wouldn't get a monitor.

What exactly is it you would like to train a monitor to do? Monitors are pretty intelligent and are definately capable of learning things. I doubt you could teach one to fetch or roll over but I know for a fact you could teach one that you are not a threat. In fact it could even learn that you are a key element to it's survival. Then you could enjoy all kinds of positive interaction with it.

He comes to me everytime he hears the tongs click.
He will hiss on command.
Oh the command is easy, all I have to do is get to close without food.
I have also taught him to kill and destroy roaches.
He's gotten very good at that.

Scott
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Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

Hello Roger,
Great photo- this kind of interaction is the extent to which I "bug" my lizards also. Just them being them is all I need. Best to you my friend- Mike

Hey Mike! I was just thinking of you yesterday, since I haven't seen you posting on any of the fora lately.

The really fun part is how they bug me now, ha ha ha. They follow me around, climb on me and just get downright ornery sometimes. It makes cage maintenance interesting. I have begun to believe the big male thinks I am another monitor. When he's in one of his "moods" he comes over when I sit down twitching his head, hissing and tries to restrain my leg in a show of dominance. He rubbs his nose on my knee and slobbers all over it, ha ha ha.

Nice to hear from you Mike!

Roger

And most likely not for the reasons you think. And the word stupid is not about you, its about this subject.

Its stupid because of questions like yours, most 99.99% of people asking about training a monitor do not know or understand how to properly keep a monitor. This should be what they ask about, husbandry.

So as with all animal training, the animal in question MUST be kept with decent normal husbandry(decent husbandry). With monitors, the average husbandry allows the poor monitor to live about 6 months, trained or not. So yes, its stupid to ask about training, When you should be asking how to FIRST keep the monitor alive, then ask about allowing the monitor to achieve NORMAL LIFE EVENTS, then of course you could train the HEALTHY HAPPY(as can be in a cage) to entertain you by doing tricks.

My difinition of the word stupid and its use on here is.
A. To not think in a normal logical way that benefits both the keeper and the kept.
B. to not consider the health and welfare of the caged animal, yes the word stupid is to keep making the same mistake over and over.
C. to not consider the poor animal AT ALL. Its a monitor and ITS goal is to become one, NOT A LAPDOG. Or some other domesticate toy(something to play with).

So forgive me for using the word stupid, but in all reality, to see this subject time after time, and considering the untimely death of 99.99% of all these "trained" monitors is, well, STUPID. I am not smart enough to think of a better word then stupid.

Its not taboo, its just stupid(at least to me). Watching vids is one thing, investigating and finding out what happens to all those monitors is another. The stupid part is, those vid animals almost never live past five years of age, and considering medium sized monitors(average) can live over twenty years, in captivity. The word stupid keeps popping into my mind. First the entire subject, they at times the folks doing this stuff(training their animals to death)

Yes, HEALTHY monitors are easy to train, actually they train themselves. Cheers

You can train them to do certain things but they are not dogs. I mean my savannah does not see me as a threat. He will not just sit somewhere unless he wants to. By train i mean he will climb up me and does not see me as a threat and if he is out they are very curious and just want to explore everything and everyone. So training on feeding and getting use to you then yes but to act like a dog no. And FR is right hundbandry is very important and of course most people say well my monitor does..... but alot are not properly cared for and dont have the fight in them and dont have the energy to attack or be curious.
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Tom
1.2.0 Leopard Gecko (dot, spot, leo)
0.0.1 California King Snake (booboo)
0.1.0 Sulcata Tortoise (tank)
0.0.2 Russian Tortoise (tito and lulu)
0.0.2 Red Ear Sliders (bernie and ernie)
0.0.3 Painted Turtles (larry, curly and moe)
1.0.0 Bearded Dragon (marshmellow)
0.0.1 Savannah Monitor (beef)
1.0.0 Peachfront Conure (kermit)
0.1.0 Australian Shepheard (layla)
2.1.0 Crazy Cats (babe, sabastian, tinkerbell)
0.1.0 Lion Head Rabbit (daisy)
0.1.0 Ferret (jordan)
0.2.0 Guinea Pigs (lilly and petunia)
0.0.1 White Tree Frog (dumpy jr.)
0.0.2 Fire Belly Newts (spork and blaze)
0.0.1 Fire Belly Toad (ferdinan)
0.0.1 Red Spotted Newt ( red)
0.0.2 Bull Frogs (goliath and tubby)
0.0.1 Rainbow Ameive (jack)
0.0.1 Spectacled caiman (wilbert)
0.0.3 Green Anoles
1.0.0 Bahama Anole
0.0.1 Long Tail Grass Lizard
Lots Of Fish

No offense Tom, but your monitor will always see you as a threat. Its like you being caged with a tame lion. The threat is always there. All the lion has to do is make a odd move and your heart will race in fear. Only we are a hundred times larger and more dangerous then a lion. And we humans are NOT to be trusted.

All you have to do to understand this is CHECK YOU SAVS HEARTRATE. I will wonder why its racing, when its calmly sleeping on your lap. A racing heartrate is not a product of trust. Of course, I could be wrong and your one relationship is one in a million, But thats a bet I will make.

I am sure your a really nice person, most doing this are. But being a nice person is not the problem. The problem is, your Sav will die within a couple of years from the stress of "being tame and trustfull" Sir, that is the commonly repeated history of tame Savs. So some odd reason, they just keep on dying. Cheers

He does not relax unless he wants to I didn't say he lays in my lap all calm I said basically he is curious and does what he wants he wants to climb on me he does. I said the only thing that is trainable is no fear of you and no matter what i def believe they learn not to see you as a threat he will be on the floor and just walk over and climb on my leg he is def not afraid of me he knows i mean food and curious what i am doing
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Tom
1.2.0 Leopard Gecko (dot, spot, leo)
0.0.1 California King Snake (booboo)
0.1.0 Sulcata Tortoise (tank)
0.0.2 Russian Tortoise (tito and lulu)
0.0.2 Red Ear Sliders (bernie and ernie)
0.0.3 Painted Turtles (larry, curly and moe)
1.0.0 Bearded Dragon (marshmellow)
0.0.1 Savannah Monitor (beef)
1.0.0 Peachfront Conure (kermit)
0.1.0 Australian Shepheard (layla)
2.1.0 Crazy Cats (babe, sabastian, tinkerbell)
0.1.0 Lion Head Rabbit (daisy)
0.1.0 Ferret (jordan)
0.2.0 Guinea Pigs (lilly and petunia)
0.0.1 White Tree Frog (dumpy jr.)
0.0.2 Fire Belly Newts (spork and blaze)
0.0.1 Fire Belly Toad (ferdinan)
0.0.1 Red Spotted Newt ( red)
0.0.2 Bull Frogs (goliath and tubby)
0.0.1 Rainbow Ameive (jack)
0.0.1 Spectacled caiman (wilbert)
0.0.3 Green Anoles
1.0.0 Bahama Anole
0.0.1 Long Tail Grass Lizard
Lots Of Fish

WTF, mate? That made no sense.

the summary of that is that he does not see me as a threat he sees me as a food source he always climbs on me when out curious if i have anything. So when it comes to training he has learned not to tear my hand off but that I feed him.
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Tom
1.2.0 Leopard Gecko (dot, spot, leo)
0.0.1 California King Snake (booboo)
0.1.0 Sulcata Tortoise (tank)
0.0.2 Russian Tortoise (tito and lulu)
0.0.2 Red Ear Sliders (bernie and ernie)
0.0.3 Painted Turtles (larry, curly and moe)
1.0.0 Bearded Dragon (marshmellow)
0.0.1 Savannah Monitor (beef)
1.0.0 Peachfront Conure (kermit)
0.1.0 Australian Shepheard (layla)
2.1.0 Crazy Cats (babe, sabastian, tinkerbell)
0.1.0 Lion Head Rabbit (daisy)
0.1.0 Ferret (jordan)
0.2.0 Guinea Pigs (lilly and petunia)
0.0.1 White Tree Frog (dumpy jr.)
0.0.2 Fire Belly Newts (spork and blaze)
0.0.1 Fire Belly Toad (ferdinan)
0.0.1 Red Spotted Newt ( red)
0.0.2 Bull Frogs (goliath and tubby)
0.0.1 Rainbow Ameive (jack)
0.0.1 Spectacled caiman (wilbert)
0.0.3 Green Anoles
1.0.0 Bahama Anole
0.0.1 Long Tail Grass Lizard
Lots Of Fish

Hi Tom, You are judging your monitor on the wrong criteria. Monitors do not want to bite the hand that feeds them. None that I have ever worked with, in fact, we seem to taste very very nasty to them.

What makes them bite the hand that feeds them is extreme hunger. Most keepers do not have a clue how to feed reptiles. They some how think reptiles feed on a schedule. You know, once a month, once a week, once everyother day, once a day, etc. When in fact and reality, monitors feed when they are hungry.

This subject has been gone over time and time again. Reptiles have a variable slide scale on the subject of hunger, Its based on available temps and available food.

If food is scarce, they lower their body temps, therefore lowering the need for food. That reduces hunger. If food is plentiful, they raise their body temps in order to process as much food as they can. Here their need for food has to be filled as their metabolism is at a very high rate.

Their life is normally spend picking temps and moving to temps that fit their needs. Every minute is all about this.

In captivity, many think they are smart by only giving hot temps, and feed on a cool temp schedule. This will cause extreme feeding behavior and cannibilism. Or keepers only provide marginal temps and wonder why their monitor is a picky feeder.

Of course, I practice and recomend supporting a wide range of temps and allowing the monitors to do what they are designed to do. After all, they have been doing it for the history of their species(a very long time in a humans concept of time)

Of course there is more about this, but WE have to start simply.

The problem with Savs is, STRESS. Stress kills them over time, and that time is generally under five years. If you hang around here, you will see that clearly.

Those that show the most attention to their monitors are the first to lose them, no matter how good the rest of their husbandry is. Prolonged stress causes the failure of the immune system and that kills off monitors of all species. THIS IS PROVEN HISTORY.

Confined animals of all manner will become behaviorally surpressed if kept in conditions of no hope or possibility of escape, including humans. They will become comatose and eat, sleep, and in many cases perform a patterned pace(cage crazies)

While this seems complicated, its not. But I do not expect you to understand it. I hope you will simply remember it. As a couple of years from now, you will open your wonderful healthy monitors cage and it will be dead. Then you can start to think of what is really important with monitors. Hopefully you will remember this post. I have made you aware.

If you somehow beat the odds and learn to what your monitor really is, I will gladly and happily be wrong. The problem is, I am right far to many times. Cheers

I understand fully what you are saying and my monitor is not bothered often mainly on cleaning and feeding. My monitor already has problems but not my fault i rescued him and when i got him he had burns on his back, was not eating and was dehydrated. I understand what you are saying I dont think he is like a dog or anything that is what my dog is for lol.
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Tom
1.2.0 Leopard Gecko (dot, spot, leo)
0.0.1 California King Snake (booboo)
0.1.0 Sulcata Tortoise (tank)
0.0.2 Russian Tortoise (tito and lulu)
0.0.2 Red Ear Sliders (bernie and ernie)
0.0.3 Painted Turtles (larry, curly and moe)
1.0.0 Bearded Dragon (marshmellow)
0.0.1 Savannah Monitor (beef)
1.0.0 Peachfront Conure (kermit)
0.1.0 Australian Shepheard (layla)
2.1.0 Crazy Cats (babe, sabastian, tinkerbell)
0.1.0 Lion Head Rabbit (daisy)
0.1.0 Ferret (jordan)
0.2.0 Guinea Pigs (lilly and petunia)
0.0.1 White Tree Frog (dumpy jr.)
0.0.2 Fire Belly Newts (spork and blaze)
0.0.1 Fire Belly Toad (ferdinan)
0.0.1 Red Spotted Newt ( red)
0.0.2 Bull Frogs (goliath and tubby)
0.0.1 Rainbow Ameive (jack)
0.0.1 Spectacled caiman (wilbert)
0.0.3 Green Anoles
1.0.0 Bahama Anole
0.0.1 Long Tail Grass Lizard
Lots Of Fish

Ive been reading on here quite a bit and hae seen on line the vids you referred to. Before reading this when I saw the vids, my thought was, in one, the woman is wearing a thick robe and not sweating, how can it be warm enough for her savs?

I had actually thought about asking, but from reading this post I think my question has been answered in that her Savs were likely NOT warm enough and didnt live very long? Am I correct in assuming this?

I notice my Sav seems to respond and sometimes calm down (slightly) to my voice, if I use the same soft tone I use when Im rubbing his head. Ive also noticed, my husband is the one who feeds him and when he walks up to the cage, he's greeted by a jumping Sav looking for food
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1.0.0 YBS
1.2.0 RES
1.0.0 red belly cooter
1.0.0 Fire belly toad
0.0.1 Savannah Monitor
0.1.0 Leopard Gecko
cats, dog, ferret, rats and hamsters

The first one was exhausted, cold, and drowned, the second one died about a year later (from what I read, an update that proved the point).
Those monitors werent trained, they were cold, overweight, slow, exhausted, and the owner took advantage of knowing a few basic things about monitors, then convinced a load of people that they were trained.
Sure, I have a few trained monitors, two eat from a long pair of hemostats (not shorter tongs), one eats from whatever I offer the food from with the door cracked barely open (if not I have a 4ft flaviargus flying out of the cage, and running up my leg, jaws snapping, I guess he trained me), one enormous monitor eats from tongs, hemostats, a snake grabber, or my hands (dont try this unless you know a monitor very well).
As far as temps go, I can guage them and their effects because I know what a healthy monitor is. I have one monitor (an albig) that can easily go outdoors at temps from 40f on up for periods of time with no problems (but I know when enough is enough by simply looking at her, this doesnt happen but rarely now).
I think the videos are an example of how the people who saw them and thought they were trained very well, were trained by the video owner to think so.

There is still one more monitor in his/her clutches, I believe. The first one you spoke of (the one she drowned) was neither 'Buzzy' or 'Lilly,' but another one of her poor test subjects. One of the more recent ones died a few months ago, and the last one is very ill looking, if it has not died yet.

Thinking about the whole thing is about to make me barf. It sickens me that anybody could be so stubborn as to kill their own pets. Hopefully she has learned something from this and doesn't attempt it again.

Cheers, although this is not so cheery,
Ryan
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Please excuse my childish-sounding user name. Unless I created a new account, I can't change it.

I don't want to come across the wrong way but don't want you to be misnformed by your thinking. You may think that you sav likes having it's head rubbed because it just sits there and/or closes it's eyes, but that's not the case. Believe it or not, it's petrified, terrified. Odds are it doesn't move for some time after you stop rubbing it, unless it's headed into hiding.

That is part of their defense mechanism. Some savannah & nile monitors will actually play dead. They won't all snap, bite and/or tailwhip, some will do both. Some may do one or the other & some may tailwhip one minute and play dead the next.

Here's some pics of a 2ft fresh wild-caught that I had purchased the day before these pics. I walk into the room the next morning and see it laying on it's side, looking as though it fell off a branch I had in the temporary tank and it looked dead. I stared at it for a few minutes and then saw it breathing so I grabbed my camera.

This is the first pic I took. Notice that it's eye is closed.

Here's the 2nd pic I took. Notice that it's eye is now open but it still hasn't moved.

I told my wife that it was scared to death & that it wouldn't move. She didn't believe me so I removed the branch without disturbing him anymore than I had to. Take a look for yourself.

I surely didn't train him to lay like that. Incidentally, the cage was clean the night before, and of course, after the photoshoot.

Have a good one!
HH
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Due to political correctness run amuck,
this ol' hillbilly is now referred to as an:
Appalachian American

www.natures-signature.com

That's some strange stuff Mike. You sure he didn't find your stash of everclear ? I'm kiddin', that's very reminicent of a hog nosed playin' possum though.

Quig

"You sure he didn't find your stash of everclear ?"

Ha! Ha! I woke up too many times in practically the same position as the sav in the pic so I had to quit drinkin' that stuff. Whew! After over 16yrs dry & clean I'll bet that one "tall boy" will do the same thing to me now. Hahaha!

But your right about the playin' possum thing. Daniel has a photo in his book "The Savannah Monitor Lizard" of a sav on it's back & curled up to one side. It's an amazing photo.

When I first got into monitors I tried force-handling my young nile. After a few minutes of open-mouth display & trying to bite me while I was "petting" it, it calmed down & I thought I was getting somewhere. When I went to put it back in it's cage it played possum and wouldn't move an inch while still in my hand. I had to dump it out of my hand & it still just laid there motionless in the cage for several minutes.

I seriously doubt that monitors will ever be domesticated. They ain't wired for it.

Catch ya later!
Mike
-----
Due to political correctness run amuck,
this ol' hillbilly is now referred to as an:
Appalachian American

www.natures-signature.com

Well then should I not rub his head? I want to be able to handle him for necessity purposes as he gets larger.
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1.0.0 YBS
1.2.0 RES
1.0.0 red belly cooter
1.0.0 Fire belly toad
0.0.1 Savannah Monitor
0.1.0 Leopard Gecko
cats, dog, ferret, rats and hamsters

"I want to be able to handle him for necessity purposes as he gets larger."

I know exactly what you mean, nearly everyone here has had the same thought, including me. We're all human, and most of the time that is the problem, we think like humans, not monitors.

You want your monitor to be somewhat used to being handled so it won't be so frightened if/when it does need to be handled. You also want to look out for your own safety and not have to handle a 4 - 5ft wild monitor with powerful jaws & sharp teeth. Your reasoning isn't selfish, it's actually good reasoning, it just doesn't work with monitors.

Monitors stress very easily and I can't help but feel that stress might actually be the number one killer in captivity. That's what Frank (FR) was saying about checking the heart rate. Stress, much like in humans, isn't easily detectable but it wreaks havoc mentally & physically.

If a monitor allows you to get close enough to touch it you'll be able to pick it up if/when the need comes. Wait for that time, the time that you need to handle it. If taken care of properly that time, need, will very rarely come. Wait till you get to that bridge to cross it, and let the monitor build the bridge, which it will do over time. It's a lot more exciting when they come to us or climb on us than it is when we pick them up.

Your sav may go thru a personality change a week or so after you stop touching it & trying to get close to it. It may very well seem to turn meaner than a wolverine and appear aggressive, but it'll actually be acting defensively, not aggressively. Give it it's space, it will settle down over time by you just being in it's presence fairly often, not in it's face.

If/when the time should ever come that it needs to be handled just approach it slowly like you've been doing and touch it between it's front shoulders, then you can gently maneuver your fingers under it's belly with a bit of a loose grip and pick it up safely. But please, wait till it needs to be handled, if it ever does. Your monitor will be around a lot longer by doing so.

Take care!
HH
-----
Due to political correctness run amuck,
this ol' hillbilly is now referred to as an:
Appalachian American

www.natures-signature.com