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I had my little Water out last night before lights out (the one that will jump from his basking platform onto my arm to come out and "play" and as I was holding him he started vigorously tongue-flicking my left thumb where I have a decent-sized slice from where my Tegu tagged me the other day. The cut is healing up well and is not oozing or bloody but is still kinda pinkish-red. Well, after some intensive tongue flicking, he decided to take a taste. It was very deliberate and calculated, just like he was checking out some new food item and decided it was OK to eat. Anyway, I thought it was kinda cute and funny. Anyone else have their monitor try and "taste" them? I'm not talking about a defensive or offensive bite, or a SFE (stupid feeding error) but an actual feeding attempt on some part of your body. Billy

I've had decent sized lace monitors try to do that. Lucky for me, in all instances the monitors were slow and deliberate enough about it for me to be able to prevent a bite. The pinprick pupils are often a telltale sign. No longer do I let them investigate hands or bare feet for more than a fraction of a second and I will not tolerate any 'nuzzling' behaviours from them. I have also stopped letting any non herper anywhere near them, no matter how 'tame' some of them may seem.

It's all very cute when they are the size of your salvators, but when they get bigger you'll find it less humourous

...although I made this statement "Lucky for me, in all instances the monitors were slow and deliberate enough about it for me to be able to prevent a bite" this doesn't mean I've never been bitten. I have been bitten badly, but it was a feeding response triggered by a fast hand movement on my part (no feeding was going on at the time, I am far too careful during feeding to get bitten then), rather than a slow 'tasting' bite by the monitor.

Yeah, I guess it could've come off the wrong way - that I thought it was "cute" in a cuddly kind of way. I just thought it was kind of cute that this little scavenger/predator was prepared to try and eat a small body part off of his giant caretaker. Trust me, the little one didn't get any teeth into me (I had plenty of time to pull my thumb away from his curious little mouth), but I've never had a monitor check me out so deliberately. I'm sure it had everything to do with the semi-open wound on my thumb. When I've been tagged it was because of me hand-feeding (BIG mistake with a big monitor) or out of defense but never because the lizard thought my flesh smelled tasty!

>>...although I made this statement "Lucky for me, in all instances the monitors were slow and deliberate enough about it for me to be able to prevent a bite" this doesn't mean I've never been bitten. I have been bitten badly, but it was a feeding response triggered by a fast hand movement on my part (no feeding was going on at the time, I am far too careful during feeding to get bitten then), rather than a slow 'tasting' bite by the monitor.

A few weeks ago I was playing around with my little temp gun from pro exotics. I was leaning into my blackroughneck enclosure snapping temps here and there with the little probe when suddenly I hear the scratching/scrapping of my big rudi bolting out from a hide spot, coming straight for me and what he thought was food in my hand. When you don't have a pair of tongs in your hands with a mouse at the end (your last line of defense) you feel quite naked! I remember actually letting out a 'yelp' and jumping back and out of harms way, kinda like a little girl.

I have had it happen with snakes but not monitors. With my snakes it’s easy to tell when they are doing a test bite. They press their nose against you and slowly open their mouth and then do a slight bite. They usually bite and then let go. I pull away before they actually bite but they have caught me off guard sometimes. I only keep small snakes like corns and other colubrids so it won’t do much if they do bite. I have never seen it done with any of my monitors. I am to quick for my monitors. I have had them strike at me during feeding but I get out of the way very quickly. I have seen what they do to mice and chicks and that’s the last thing I want to happen to my hand. I wear gloves 99% of the time with my monitors anyway to minimize my chances haha. I have never been bitten by a monitor, and I don’t really plan on it happening either. I only keep dums as of now and they are all fairly calm except during feeding they get a little rowdy and aggressive. I have handled tri colored monitors before and damn they are worse than niles in my opinion. They are all wc but these things are just plain wicked well at least the trio my friend has are.

Mike S

When one of my black roughnecks was a juvi, he was roaming and scratching along the glass door. I stuck my finger in there to kind of like say hi, and he chomped right on it. Funny thing is he immediately let go, realizing it was me.