Hi Wayne, A simple test for your snakes, clean their cages and see what they do. A great majority of the time, they immediately deficate in the middle of their new Clean cage. Why would they do that?
In a very simple way, the more advanced(adapted to a particular nitch) a reptile is, the less behavioral(to us) they seem. The more generalized they are, the more behavioral they seem. Monitors are very generalized. That is, they have normal leg development, tail, body, head, etc, for a reptile and it does not vary to much, from species to species.
Their greatest development is size. They occur from the very small to the very large, without changing basic structure. You know, strong parts mentioned above.
And yes, monitors appear to be very very very very behavioral. My success is totally based on addressing their behavioral needs. Their physical needs are very simple and basic for a reptile. Offer them a range and they love to pick their OWN conditions. Which is simple enough, I do not have to know anything.
Lets see how that works. People TELL their captive snakes what temps they need. In most cases, they do not support them with choices, just a narrow basic temp range. And yes, this has shown to work to a certain degree. You can have good success, but rarely approaching their genetic potentials.
With monitors, offering this narrow or even a wide range of conditions, does not work in attaining a full range of life events. In my experience, no matter how well you set up a cage, they eventually stall out and fail. It appears, behavioral needs are actually REQUIRED and not something extra.
And to a degree there are snakes like this, you know, the snakes that no one likes to keep because they do not fit the shoebox mode of keeping. Like, dekay snakes or coachwhips or racers or any snake that relys more on behavior and less on adaption. Or any simple variation from the norm.
Even snakes have layers upon layers of behaviors, not just "they" do this. Well varanids, are more like birds then like snakes. They are highly dependant on not just having behaviors, but on completeing behaviors. Not being able to complete behaviors often results in a compromised immune system(stress induced)
A very simple indication of this is nesting. Birds and monitors build particular types of nests, if they cannot build or find them, they fail reproductively. A snake will try to find a suitable nesting area, but if it cannot it will lay its eggs in the waterbowl. In most cases, a monitor will simply DIE. Maybe not during or after the first failed event, but history has shown, they WILL die within a very few failed attempts. Birds may be a bit more advanced, if they cannot nest, they simply do not produce eggs, again there are exceptions, but when is it wise to have exceptions guide you. Particularly when you do not "know" what your doing.
Unfortunately, there is far more to their behavior then nesting, but nesting is the big killer of females. So I have to mention it first.
"Social needs" is by far the most important aspect of varanid biology. The problem here is, most "old" thinking, by biologists and varanid experts is, "they"(varanids) are anti-social. Yet, I found them to be extremely social. To an unbelievable degree. And have been highly successful in observing that, TO AN UNBELIEVABLE DEGREE. Keeping them socially has resulted in a million, no, billion times more successful and repeated results, then keeping them as anti-social animals. Not to beat this to death but, we have seen more successful events with varanids in 17 years of this approach, then 99% of all the experts in any area of varanids, did before me. All of them put together. Not anyone of them.
Most breeders of social animals, birds, rodents, etc, understand, their is an age with these animals form and bond into social pairs or groups. Normally that is at a very young age. As in, in the nest, burrow, etc. Or soon after.
Raising these social animals in solitary conditions normally causes them to commonly become very anti-social and poor canidates for successful programs that include them getting along with eachother, such as reproduction. Of course, behavior is not concrete, so there is always a range of individual tolerances and the resulting range of results.
So yes, I agree, behavior is very important with varanids. More specifically, socially evolved behaviors. But still other non social behaviors are very important, like becoming stale in a cage. Even if the cage is a great cage.
Thanks for the oppertunitiy to run on and on, with this subject. Cheers
