Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Im upgrading my mangrove enclosure this month and would like to try and coax them to...(well you know). Does anyone here have first hand experience with these guys? What about some Merlot and Barry Mantalow?? Just kidding. But seriously. What do they need to be successful breeders?
Thanks,
Michelle

A friend of mine has been working with what was thought Varanus indicus, but is now named Varanus juxtindicus = HUGE species from Rennell Island, eastern Solomon island. He bred them. He and I are writing up an in-depth article about them...as they were described last year, this should be quite revealing to those interested in the mega-indicus fauna.

Becky Speer (see Reptiles, May 2000:30-31) has had luck breeding common V. indicus, but V. indicus in captivity tend to kill one another; unlike wild counterparts, they cannot flee and are killed outright. This is also common among the more aggressive members of Varanus, the non-threat-display species: V. bengalensis, V. indicus, V. salvator, V. doreanus, V. komodoensis - and in all of these species are known reports of captive conspecific, patricide and matricide murder.
cheers,
mbayless

I have raised up 4 mangroves now. Common indicus as they are called now. But anyways I housed 3 together and raised them up all 3 got along great within the group. Once they became mature they started producing egg's. I lost one female from being egg bound. My other two females are fine and produce egg's now on a regular basis. I have noticed if I do not remove the infertile egg's they tend to eat them. This may become a complication later once I have located a male and they have fertile egg's.
My fourth mangrove I am rasing in hopes it is a male but sadly also appears female now it is becoming mature. It also has found a niche within the group and they get along fine.

Maybe I am just lucky in that they do not kill or eat one another but I never have seemed to have that happen with any monitors. They have small fights for who is dominant, or the time my male argus bit the female during feeding time. But thats been my only problems with that.

If I ever locate a known male manrove then hopefully I will be able to help you out more with your questions.

Good luck,

That is wierd you got all females. My friend has a mangrove, it is a year old, and looks like a female to my (untrained)eye.

Why so many females? What sexes does Michelle have? Is this all a coincidence?
D.

Initially when I put them together about 5 mo. ago the F showed hostility and bit the M's face. Since, they have gotten along fine, but have only shown courtship behaviour on few occasions.
Im hoping that a larger enclosure with nesting boxes will entice them to behave the way I want them to.
Ive read of people adding an additional male, and also seperating pairs for periods of time to induce mating. Hopefully I dont have to do all that, but we'll see.

-Michelle

i have never bred bengals, but can i assume for a moment they are not much different then any other monitor in the reproduction department? thanks.

a) you can not make your monitors breed, they will when they want to. all you do is provide them the ability to make that choice.

b) make the whole cage a nesting box.

c) you don't need another male

d) there are no tricks to breeding, but a little common sense does help. if i am working on a difficult project i don't handle those monitors (don't cuddle with them, etc.). also, i feed the females more then the males (process of ovulation).

e) are you sure they are a pair? two males will have sex together, so will two females, tail wrapping and all. just because the guys told you it was a sexed juvenile pair, doesn't mean they were, they are difficult to tell when they are babies. but, they probably are, he is good at what he does (the outfit you got them from).

lastly, be patient michelle. it doesn't happen over night. i am starting a new project or two next month. you can tease me then about how long it takes. we just picked up a dum female, we are getting a male shortly. my girlfriend saw the dum in a pet store and said it was the nicest dum she had ever seen, begged me to buy it and i did, she was right, she is the nicest i have ever seen also. We are also going to be working with finschi next month, a long time in the wait on these guys, and we are excited about attempting to establish them.

cheers
-----
Varanus Creations

Hi D.,
There answer might surprise you, or sound crazy, which might not surprise you, coming from me: they may be parthenogenic = both sexed, and able to fertilize themselves. There is a paper coming out of this material by Brnd Eidenmuller who has much material on this topic; I know of 3 cases of authentic hermaphrodite in Varanus: 2 V. exanthematicus and 1 V. bengalensis. Maybe Bernd will be right, and maybe, as most vertebrate life is based, on female chromosomes: if you have a scenario, like a island, where access to males is restricted, a female morphology would be beneficial, and if your parthenogenic, then offspring is no problem. Just some thoughts, nothing in concrete....why all the offspring are female? I don't know.
cheers,
mbayless

I seem to see a lot of female mangroves around so I was always leaning to think the same. Bein gon a island it would be best to have more females then males. To many males and you would end up with a low number of species eventually possible extinction.

None of the egg's they have given me were ever fertile so it does not appear that my females can self fertilize there egg's. I have seen them both go down at the samte time and lay there egg's. I often wonder if they are sitting next to one another. I would assume so since the burrow is not that big. It is od to me they do this but yet if I do not remove the egg's they will eat them. Atleast the one time I did not get to the egg's they were seen swallowing them.

Any thoughts?

Why don't you let them eat them? All that energy invested in those eggs... let them recover some of that.

good luck on finding a male. D.

I try not to let them eat them basically so I can check the egg's just to be sure they are not good egg's. Reptiles are survivors I would hate to assume all are bad even though no male is present you never know they may fertile them on there own one of these times LOL Yeah right?? well you never know with animals they are more complex and better at adapting then us we change things around us to fit our needs rather then changing ourselves.

Plus I wouldn't want them getting used to eating there egg's for when I find a male to fertilze them. They are not skinny and weak after laying so why let them eat them?

Not sure why so many females or how I ended up raising up all females it just happened. There is no simple answer for that other then fate I guess LOL

Not sure what Michelle has for sexes or how she keeps them etc. I do not know her myself. You would need to ask her.

yes I am Im not new to these pets but as a breeding project it is very new you can email me at akela1988@juno.com I would love to discuss this subjuct with you or anyone. the more every one can learn from each other the better we can take care of our pets