Seems that May is a good month for monitor beeders. We had some lizard happenings this week that I thought were worth sharing.
Monday I was walking by the trough with the adult caudolineatus breeding group and glanced in. I saw a hatchling inside, against the trough wall. At first it didn’t really register with me as I kept walking. Then I looked again and my mind flipped for a moment. It was indeed a hatchling caudo.
All week long I have been finding hatchlings caudolineatus in the trough that houses the adult breeding group. I thought it was only 4, but number 5 was seen Friday morning. Others have reported similar happenings with captive varanids, but it was still surprising to me.
Some of you might recall, a female caudolineatus laid a clutch of eggs Dec 12 and another on Jan 17. Those clutches were incubated normally and hatched out healthy and strong this spring. I’ve been busy with work, hiking/herping, etc this spring and have not been observing them very closely, so I‘ve been wondering what was going on with them. I’m guessing these hatchlings are probably from a clutch laid in late Feb or thereabouts. So now I’m wondering how many other clutches I’ve missed? Guess we’ll see what happens.
One funny thing was watching a hatchling work hard at wearing down an adult cricket and then dad ran up and stole the cricket. I thought about leaving them in with the adults in the hopes I could see them go from egg to egg in that setup. That would be kinda cool. Chickened out though. I was too worried that something bad might happen to them. They were in the adult setup for at least a few days and the fifth one is still in there (haven’t caught it yet). A number of things have been observed, however I don’t think I’ll go into all of it here. Talking about anything that may relate to varanids being social seems to cause trouble. But I will say that I almost thought I saw mom beaming with pride. LOL Maybe she was happy to have finally defeated that egg stealing ape. I do remember that after laying her second clutch it seemed as though she had went to a lot of effort to make fake nest tunnels.
I found it interesting to observe hatchlings making the choice of using the 150F surface temps in the adult setup. Normally my storri and caudolineatus hatchlings start out in small setups that have basking sites with surface temps around 120F.
first one that I spotted in the adult’s trough.
These are the four hatched out around March 1st and one of the hatchlings that just recently hatched out in the adult setup. I reckon those four will be breedable before long.
One of the recent hatchlings hanging with the adults- pic was through the lexan lid so its not the best.
Cheers, Lance
