Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Here the other day while cleaning out my babyrack with carpet pythons. I put 5 and 5 babies in a see trough tub, and the tub was placed in front of the glauerti cage.

So after cleaning a few rows, I could see the female glauerti was running back and forth over the glass front trying to get to the box with baby snakes.

I tought, Iv read somewhere that glauerti covers a significant portion of their diet with reptiles.

So I have this retared carpet bad feeder and so on, thats been a second from the freezer for some time.

I placed it in the glauerti cage and with a high speed jump and extreme precision the glauerti took a backhead/neck hold of the carpet,killed it and consumed it.
I have to say I was amazed by the precision of the attack, it could have taken on and eaten a taipain baby with such a precision of the bite, witch they probably do in nature.

has any one here ever tried to feed glauerti or other odatria snakes/reptiles? any experience?

For different view a buddy tried to feed his blue and green tree monitors with snakes and they freeked out and tried to scratch their way out of the cage.

Bård

but from what I have seen, (limited) I would have to imagine that smaller reptiles make up a very large part of a monitor's diet when available. If it is smaller, slower, dumber...its food. Other than culling off excess cb animals i wouldnt see any benefit to feeding them though.

I get the feeling its more of a human thing to seperate lizards and snakes, I am not sure animals care about whether their prey has legs or not. Consider, in OZ. there are many many types of legless lizards too. Oh by the way, taipans and kimberlys live in different parts of the country. My bet is, kimberlys know better then to go after an elapid.

Many of our odatria readily consumed snakes. At least some types of snakes. And yes, they have inherent behaviors to do so. They also have inherent behaviors of what snakes not to consume.

Like you, I put a cull woma in with a young adult female perenty and the perenty freaked out, and without question tried and kept trying to make a hole in the cage.

I also fed a cull woma to a whitethroat and she readily consumed it. I took pics and show other herpers, of course most get made at me feeding a woma to a albig. More human stuff.

I live in the arizona desert and we have lots of snakes and lizards on your property. You can tell what the monitors eat, but whats "not" in their cages. If they do not eat it, then wild stuff gets stuck in the cages with them. They don't eat black widows or tarantulas. They do eat scropions(they absolutely love them) They must eat snakes as we commonly find snakes all around the outsides of the cages, only once inside.

I have this large outdoor cage and parts are covered with diamondwire, 1/2". One day I was in our kitchen and watching the cage and a Coachwhip snake crawled thru the wire and into the cage. In the cage at that time was Ackies and tristis. Both these monitors actively followed the snake around the cage, but did not try to eat it. The snake eventually crawled back out.

I became curious and went into the cage and lifted a couple boards and I found a small Lyresnake coiled under one of the boards. Lyresnakes are rearfanged lizard specialists.(except they love bats) I did not care if the lyresnake ate a monitor, but I did not want a monitor to eat that snake, so i took it out and let it go outside of the cage.

We have literally hundreds of rattlesnakes on the property and have yet to see one IN a cage. Hmmmmmmmmm They must eat them too. Nice subject Bart, thanks

FR,

thank you for responding, and others for responding.

Interresting to hear that monitors know what to eat and not to in a ecosystem they are not from like Arizona.

Now Iv started a "what will my monitors eat" experiment, Iv feed them the carpet and will probably do so in the future too when I have exess males.

I tried to feed theme a honey bee and the female went nuts, she does not accept food from tongs. but she did take the bee from tongs.

So I was thinking of making some honey traps and catch some bumble bees, wasps and bees to supplement their diet in the summer months.

Do you see any problems with feeding theme stinging insects like these? Since they eat scorps, I dont think so, but Id like your comment on it. A buddy feeds his beardeds bumblebees in the summer and they relish theme.

A while back a friend and I was thinking of breeding normal leopard geckos as treats for the monitors. But we didnt, do you see any benificial reason to feed theme geckos?

A panther chameleon breeder I know feeds his chams any cheap CBB reptile he gets his hands on, corns, kings, leos etc. and the color of his chams are way better than most Iv seen.
He says it must be the reptiles I feeds theme.
Do you have any tougths on the subject?

regards
Bård

When I first started this wave of varanid keeping and breeding, I fed lots of "natural? prey items. I was hoping it would add something to their lifes. As the years went by, I found that was not very accurate. I was better off, actually the monitors were better off, when I improved their husbandry, not so much their diet.

In the last 10 years, we have fed the most base of diets and have seen the best results in growth/color and reproduction. I was better off paying attention to their natural social abilities and other behavioral needs, such as nesting and related behaviors.

In fact, in most cases, some of those food items that they "loved" they would soon become tired of. It appeared they were temporary needs. Once a found a base diet and conditions that fullfilled their needs, they no longer needed those prey items and often only played with them or igored them altogether.

An example would be cicadas, they will bloom here in the next couple of weeks. The eagerly take a couple then igore the rest, same with grasshoppers. In the fall, we have large blooms of many kinds of grasshoppers, so many that you could easily fill trashcans in a couple of hours. The monitors again will "relish" them the first day, then I have a cage full of grasshoppers. Cheers

Hi Frank,

Sorry for not responding before but Iv been working alot this past weekend.

I understand what you say about the base diet, in a wild scenario are monitors specialized feeders only going after a spesific range of feeders or do they take whatever they find and overwhelm?

I have some pictures of my glauerti cage, is it possible to send theme to you to get your view on it?
I made the fault to making it looking good, but not forfilling all the needs of the monitors.
I can allready see som alterations for the next one I make. and that the monitors have a behaviour that need the alterations.

Also would you say glauertis are diggers? I have about 8inches of soil and they have still to digg in it from what I have seen, and I have only twice seen theme on the ground of the cage.
They stay at the top of the cage trying to get into cracks, witch isnt there.
the cage is 4 x 2 x 4 with fake rockbackground.

Thanks,
Bård

my griseus will eat up some snakes! when they were babies i put a large black racer in there cage and they went crazy... not trying to eat it but just trying to kill it! i feed them snakes often and they love them!! and they are free
cheers
jake