Reptile & Amphibian Forums

HI guys kinda new to the site and new to a high yellow water monitor i need to know some quick handling tips because right now he only lets me touch his tail in his water bowl i've had him for a week and hisses and tail whips a lot. oh yeah and he's 2 feet and 14 months.

>>HI guys kinda new to the site and new to a high yellow
>>water monitor i need to know some quick handling tips
>>because right now he only lets me touch his tail in his
>>water bowl i've had him for a week and hisses and tail
>>whips a lot. oh yeah and he's 2 feet and 14 months.

Ok, the first thing I'd do is stop trying to handle it. Clearly, handling is causing the animal stress, and this makes it associate you with something bad and stressful so it learns to fear you.

Next, try to gain the animal's trust. This means being a source of good things. Like food. If you give it no reason to fear you, and you bring it food, it will learn you are a source of good things, and become excited (in a good way) to see you. WARNING - use proper precautions when feeding! Do not feed by hand, either use very long hemostats or just toss the food into the enclosure. Monitors can have strong feeding responses and are not particularly good at visual identification when excited by prey, leading to careless keepers often getting bitten (believe me, I know from painful experience). Fortunately, monitors are usually smart enough to know when food is not present, and do not bite out of hunger in those situations.

Finally, be patient. One week is not very long. You may be looking at months or years before the lizard calms down, if ever. Fortunately, waters have a tendency to become trusting and tractable, but this is by no means guaranteed.

Eventually, the monitor may come to you of its own accord, perhaps out of curiosity. Go slow, and only go as far as the lizard is comfortable with. Start with touching, or letting the monitor climb on you. From there you may graduate to scooping the monitor up without restraining it. Eventually, the monitor may allow you to pick it up without protest.

Oh, and if you do need to restrain or transport a large, powerful, non-cooperative monitor - long sleeves and leather gloves can protect against the claws and tail but will not do much against the teeth (at least, not past 5 feet in total length or so). You can throw a towel over the lizard's head and then wrap it up with the rest of the towel - if they can't see they tend to become more tractable, and wrapping helps to restrain the legs. I used to use very large canvass mail bags or duffel bags for transport. I would wrangle the lizard into the bag, then close the bag up.

Good luck,

Luke

thanks but its also captive born so he might calm down faster than a wild caught baby right.

>>thanks but its also captive born so he might calm down
>>faster than a wild caught baby right.

Maybe. Chances are much better than with a WC adult, I'm not sure about a WC hatchling vs CBB.

Certainly, monitors tend to stress for a week or two after being moved to a new home/enclosure, so give it some time to settle in before messing with it or stressing it any more than absolutely necessary (like handling, interaction, and so on).

Best of luck,

Luke

quick handling tips:

dont.

Cheers,
Mike.

Indeed, force handling is not good for the lizard. I am also concerned about the size and age of the monitor. At 14 months I would expect a water to be at the least double that size. It would be a good idea to check out Proexotics site and be sure all your husbandry is up to par too.

Good luck

Steve

i just got it from a place from bay area reptiles and they assured me that it was perfectly healthy it was Cbb and they have been taking care of it for about 8 months