>>My friends rescued a Savannah from someone and held her everyday and she was the sweetest thing. They became busy with life and stopped holding her and only interaction is when they fed her. She became agressive!
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Actually, when they stopped holding her, her stress levels dropped, her broken spirit healed, and she became confidant & secure again. A defensive and aggressive monitor is a happy monitor that is communicating to it's owner. Have you ever laid in bed with a fever and chills? All you want ot do is lay there and do nothing...that's pretty much what an over handled, stressed out monitor feels like. That's why they appear to be "tame", and then when the novelty ends and the keeps cuts back on all that handling, the settle in and become happy and secure and no longer want to tolerate all that molesting from their keeper.
My Sav gets defensive sometimes, but never aggressive. The reason it never gets aggressive is because I don't "attack" her by grabbing her and taking her out of her enclosure and getting her all stressed out.
I posted this a while ago, but I'll repost it here because it answers your questions.....
A molested monitor (a monitor who's owner reaches in, grabs him & pulls him out of his enclosure) will never truly learn to trust a human. They either turn aggressive, or develop a stressed broken spirit and submit to the molestation rather than oppose it with aggression.
A nice confident monitor will let you interact with him but will also communicate to you when to come closer or when to stay out of his space.
You can see a level of trust and respect. When the cage is opened, he doesn't flee & hide raise up on his rear legs in preparation to tail whip.
Out of curiosity, he watches everything I do.
Some gentle interaction. He'll sometimes lay his head on my hand and close his eyes.
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Mike Heinrich,
Mike@amazontreeboa.org
www.amazontreeboa.org
