Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Is it normal for a baby BT to hiss and whip its tail at you when you first open the cage? I have heard that they are usually aggressive when you feed them mice to younge, and earthworms are a fatty food that I sometimes offer him. but 9/10 times im feeding him its dusted crickets.

Is this a usuall occurance? will he stop doing it once he gets older? I hold him usually once a day for 10 - 20 minutes. Is this too much? too little?

Thanks,
Matt

Feeding mice has nothing to do with how agressive your monitor is. You may just have a crack head on your hands. Actually, it is pretty common for yougsters to be skitzo. They are prey items in the wild! EVERYTHING eats them! No doubt he'll mellow out as he gets bigger. My b-throat was the same way, and hes a puppy dog now. By the way, his diet is pretty much rodent exclusive.

Ah, I read from proexotics.com that when you feed a baby rodents it acts like steroids and they can get aggressive, not sure if its true or not however they seem to know a lot about monitors.. Thanks for the help, now im not worried about having a evil monitor on my hands (have met a few ill-tempered niles, which is pretty much all of them)

Thanks,
Matt

i have had that comment haunt me since the day i wrote it : )

but i am sticking to it. folks just take it COMPLETELY out of context, as in this instance...

defensive behavior is common to all baby monitors. "tame" is a relative term. typically, Ionides are much more bark than bite, and tend to lose the bark pretty quickly as well.
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robyn@proexotics.com

Pro Exotics Reptiles