I will start by saying, we need to define what social means. Or at least establish some lose meaning. You see, academics normally attempt to assign hoofed stock behavior to reptiles, which clearly does not work, or warm blooded behavior to reptiles, again it won't work. I have asked them for a version of social that does apply to reptiles. I ask because monitors are not hoofed stock or ants, or fist or meerkats, or prariedogs, they are lizards.
Of course monitors most need a male to copulate with. I say mostly, because its not always needed.
But are there anyother reasons for them to attract other monitors into close proxsimity.
Of course they often share large prey items. This is known in captivity and in nature. We see they "know" how to feed with other monitors. So they can attain groups that offer an advantage of consuming large prey items.
I want to start with the most common social behavior we see, and its something I have never seen published anywhere(it may be, I just have not seen it or heard of it) This is the arm wrap. In ALL the species I have worked with, all have commonly do this arm wrap. Many others have seen this behavior, particularly on our forum.
Here is a pair doing this behavior. Again, we have seen all the species we have worked with do this. In fact, gender is not a restriction, as males will do this to males and females to females. Also, members of different species will also do this. ITs more about touch, they seem to "need" to touch others.
Here is a gouldi cross with mertens. They are in a large cage and they could be totally away from eachother, but they do not choose to be away from eachother, they choose to be in contact.
When trying to determine if something is "social" or not, you must try to understand that both attracting and repelling is part of being social. Anti-social is to repell all. Social is to attract others for a shared need. Social seems to be attributed to an emotional non physical need. The reality, all behaviors physically benefit a group or individual. How it occurs is what can be called physical or emotional. These animals do this arm warp on a daily basis, not only during copulation or even in the breeding season. They do it all the time.
Of course, there are many other reasons I see them as social. But Including others for reasons other then copulation is key to this understanding. For instance, we have cages that are indoor outdoor, and also have doors that connect to eachother. This means, a monitor can pick any one of four compartments. The problem is, they normally follow eachother from compartment to compartment. As this picture shows,
heres a trio of lacies that can be in anyone of four compartments, yet they normally stay together.
For fun, why aren't these monitors all scared up and fighting with eachother? In fact, in the last pic, the male lacie is alert to me, it will protect his girls.
Heres my favorite pic. Its a male lacie attending HIS FEMALE. He will follow her everywhere, year a round. His job is to be in proxsimity of her at all times.
This attending of the female YEAR A ROUND, is very interesting to me. Considering, the female only cycles for a few days a year. Why would it do that if it did not want to.
If you pay attention, you will notice there is a head positioning thats common place. Kinda like meerkats, their heads have a tendency to be parallel.
Cheers
