Reptile & Amphibian Forums

From the thread below. The scientist think monitors are not social. The keepers think they are. Why would science care?

The point is, what works or doesn't work. And so far, keepers allowing monitors to be social works. If fact, it works so well its scary. The people who think monitors are anti-social, tend to be amoung the least successful keepers. The keepers who think they are, are amoung the most successful keepers.

For Sam and DK, You must understand, I am not a giant fan of Andrews, but I do believe he will have far more success then both you put together, times ten. Wanta bet?

What is so darn funny to me, is, that people think I am anti science. That is far from the truth, I am pro science. But unfortunately, people can call themselves anything they like. If I may borrow an analogy from DK, Art is not any work from a person who paints/draws/sculps, Art is something exceptional(for whatever reason) from people who paint/draw/sculpt. That applies to science. There is good science and not so good science. Not everything science does is right(art) But remember science is ever changing, there is no end. Is science right at this time. Or will the next set of scientists be the ones who are right?

Science is suppose to explain things, only in this case, it does not. For it seems we have hard evidence of monitors being social(choose to be close to eachother, for many different reasons) and in this case, science, particularly Sam does not. I have shown pics from nature of monitors being together and many have offered pics from captivity, But Sam has not seen that, he did see the pics. It boils down to pics of many monitors being together, without fighting, both in nature and in captivity. and in both cases, these monitors are recruiting(reproducing) which is central for something to exsist. But, instead of investigating this, in this case our science chooses to built walls and stand fast in saying monitors are not social.

In the end, who cares what Sam calls them. His beliefs will not predict what I/we do in captivity or what monitors do in nature. In both cases they will do what they do, in spite of us. I am sure Andrew and I have done many many times more then both DK and Sam put together. As for nature, no matter what I call it or what Sam and DK call it, it will go on as well.

In this case, forums for captive monitors, science is suppose to help us understand monitors, for the progress of monitors in captivity. If that information hinders our progress with monitors in captivity, then it must be considered poor information. Again in this case, monitors being social has improved the progress of captive monitors. As you can now see, captive reproduction is commonplace and is centered on keepers who can and do keep monitors together. That makes being social a progressive imput.

In that vein, these folks have done little in captivity. If their beliefs are so good, why is that?

In the next end, it boils down to two schools of thought, one that is based in literature. That is comparing what they see to what they have read. The other is based on results. In this case, monitors being social is based on results and it gives results. The people here that disagree, do so on what they have not seen, not what they have seen, My question is, how is that science? F

Trust you to bring it to a personal level, Frank.

Imagine this: Diane Fossey is still alive and giving a talk on the behaviour of mountain gorillas in the wild. At the end of the talk, FR jumps up and screams "oh yeah? HOW MANY GORILLAS HAVE YOU BRED?!!!"

Sorry for the analogy, Frank, I know how much you hate them, but my point is that we are talking about behaviours in wild monitors. This has nothing to do with success in captivity. My nephew bred dozens of golden hamsters in his basement without ever going to Syria to see one in the wild (in fact, I don't think anyone had seen any in the wild at that stage since the first few were captured years before). He wouldn't even know that they came from Syria, I bet.

What we have been discussing is the danger of extrapolating what one sees in captivity to what happens in the wild. Why is it that you feel free to discuss wild monitors but whenever someone brings up this discussion you state that these forums are all about captives, not wild monitors? I followed the discussion on your forum and noted that Sam never once talked about his success or lack of with captive breeding. That was your ploy. His studies have been on wild monitors and he has come up with some very interesting stuff, whether you can apply the results to your captives or not. His study wasn't aimed at improving your, Andrew's or his own success with captives, it was about wild monitors. It's a very elegant study with fascinating findings, you should read it.

Oh, wait, I forgot the obligatory photo, although what this has to do with anything is anyone's guess. I mean, even my car has a clutch.

I beg to differ, these forums are about captive monitors. The pictures being discussed are captive monitors. There is no need for analogies here, as that is very plain and simple.

About reproduction, both in nature and in captivity its level is controlled by the level of conditions. A suitable habitat will allow monitors to produce, how good that is, is measured by recruitment. In unsuitable habitats there is no recruitment. If they do not reproduce(recruit) then in a short time they will disappear. Again that goes for captivity. If conditions are not suitable, then the species will not recruit. Its again very simple. If conditions are suitable, they will succeed.

Its not about you personally. Its about the caged monitors. The only personal reflection is what you allow to happen with them. If you are actively controlling their progress and not allowing them to be successful, of course that reflects on you.

As you know, I have no problem seeing monitors in groups, not here at home or in nature. For me, its a common site. By the way, my wife has only been to Oz twice and has seen some very large groups of monitors of various species, as has my son. But then we did not think of it as unusual. And that included many species from all across your fine country. As I mentioned on varanus.net, there are many many mentions of groups of monitors in nature in many of the fine books from your country. You should read a few.

Again, these forums are mostly populated by people who keep monitors. Of course its very interesting what wild monitors do, but if we copy that and fail, what good is it? Well, thats what was done for years. People trying to copy nature and failing. Then I come along and simply allowed monitors to succeed. We have done that with many species. If you think about it, its only common sense, that I believe the monitors over what you say, or what Sam or science says. In fact, I believe, monitors are monitors, they cannot be changed in a short time. If we interpid their behaviors correctly, they succeed, if we don't they fail. For us, they are social. That is so plain and simple.

Where I feel you are being very petty is, you want it to be about us. Its not about us. Its about monitorts and its about results, that we have volumes of results and you have little is a matter for comparision, not a matter of manhood. As far as I know, science is also a matter of results. Not theory. not maybes, not should of's, simply results. If you talk without results, then all you say is theory. In that, I feel people should know you are talking about theory and not results. They also need to know, I am using results, not theory.

What I also feel is important is, that information from nature should benefit captivity. In this case it only causes problems that have already been overcome. One of the reasons we are successful is overcoming the "monitors are anti-social" approach. What has shown to be very successful is, that groups or pairs of captive monitors get along and go thru normal life events. Again, normal life events are, hatching, growing up, reproducing, longevity, and finally death.

Some of the events that have proved to be very important with monitors are such things as pairing and nesting. When done properly, there are no problems with fighting, eating eggs, interrupting nesting, etc. When done properly, we see such things are group nestings, successful hatchings and much to our surprise, many cases of mutlible successful nestings in a single season. Then seeing it happens for many years.

What you get by keeping them solitary is, the males fighting, digging up eggs, killing cagemates, and little successful reproduction. So I ask, How the heck good is that????????????????? F

So, how many mountain gorillas did Dianne Fossey breed at home? I forget these things.

Ah, Frank, what I like about you is your ability to go from accusing me of making this personal to making it personal yourself, in a single paragraph:

“Where I feel you are being very petty is, you want it to be about us. Its not about us. Its about monitorts and its about results, that we have volumes of results and you have little is a matter for comparision, not a matter of manhood. “

Since no one other than you seems to be boasting about how many monitors they’ve bred, who is it that equates that with manhood, exactly? Certainly not me. I keep monitors out of interest, not for competition.

You are correct, though, this isn’t personal, this thread is about monitors in the wild and monitors in captivity. What this thread started off being about is the tendency to extrapolate what one sees in captivity to wild monitors. I’m not sure there is any other way of wording this that would make it clearer. You keep wanting it to be about who has bred more monitors. You would win that one, hands down. Does that change what they do in the wild? No.

If you feel that these forums should be all about captive monitors with no mention of wild monitors, so be it, but you’ll have to refrain from talking about wild monitors as well. You can’t talk about wild monitors then scream “it’s all about captives” whenever someone disagrees with you about wild monitors. I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way.

Oh, and science isn’t bad science just because it doesn’t help you with your captives. Every biologist I know that has embarked on a study of wild reptiles has started with the question “what do these animals do in the wild?” I’ve yet to meet one that has started with “what can I do to help Frank Retes with his captives?" Hard to get funding.

By the way, I never said I kept my captive monitors solitary. What I do with my captives and what I see in the wild are two different things. How can it be otherwise, they are kept in a box. Will the number of eggs or hatchlings I get change what I see when I go out bush? No.

As far as seeing large groups in the wild, I am glad you mentioned your wife this time rather than the name of a herpetologist living in Australia. I don’t know your wife, so I can’t ring her to refute the observation this time. Funny thing, the Australian herp community. Small.

I am sorry DK, you don't know, because you don't know, so in the end, you don't know. Cool, How do you know what you will learn, until you learn it. If you actually had events such as successful nesting, you may find out that it may be something inherent to the monitors. You see, monitors do have particular needs and understanding them is universal. To bad, you cannot understand your monitors are indeed monitors. For instance, that we had lacies nest inside a hollow log and scrape off shavings from the inside of the log to bury the eggs is surely not something they learned in captivity. Is it???????

About not being able to ring up my wife or son, why not? all you have to do is call, they will gladly help out.

How about ringing up Don Hamper, hes a good friend that I showed all that stuff. Hes also a good friend of John Caan. I am sure he has his number. F

when someone disagrees with you, you just tell them they don't know, or that they don't undestand. That's your tendency to go for personal crap.

The subject at hand is extrapolating what you see in captivity, particularly pair bonding out of breeding season and other apparently social behaviours seen in captives, onto wild monitors. As I said, this has nothing to do with who has bred more in captivity, but what is happening or not happening in the wild. Of course, a behaviour such as the nesting behaviour you described (scratching the inside of a log) was undoubtedly a wild behaviour adapted to a captive situation. Backfilling nest holes is undoubtedly a natural behaviour, even if the only nest available in captivity is a hollow log. What this has to do with social behaviour in wild monitors escapes me.

What makes you think I haven't experienced successful nesting? You wouldn't have a clue what is happening or not happening with my monitors and I am not going to play your game by filling you in, for this isn't about breeding monitors in captivity. I currently have three monitors at home, you have three hundred. If you weren't getting at least 100 times the number of clutches I am getting, I'd be wondering what was wrong. As I said, if this WERE a contest about who breeds more monitors in captivity, you'd win, hands down. It isn't.

No one said its about clutches, or about pair bonding, its was about social behavior. But yes, those behaviors may be included in social behavior.

Now please, I do not know what you expect from me. But I have to wonder what to expect from you. You are the PHD, you are the one who lives where monitors live. You are the one who goes to the park and watches them. Also, you are the one who is a firm believer of books. Yet, the books say, and you have seen that Lacies are tree dwellers, they have a specific design for that. Yet, you make a wonderful cage(box) for your captives. The funny part is, its a rock outcropping. I do have to wonder, what are you thinking. Did u really expect to see natural behaviors in an unnatural setup?

I hope you understand in order to express inherent behaviors and abilities, you should give the monitors something they understand(are adapted too) in order to see such things.

You say one thing(how smart and educated you are) and do another. Why is that? Also sir, you are the one who makes it personal. You commonly come on here and express your views as if you are right. Yet, you have no more reason to think(results) you are right then any of the people you give advice to. Most here have had monitors just like you. For as long as you, yet, you know more and are the advice giver. Is there some particular reason for that? You then critizie other newbies for doing what you do. Hmmmmmmmmmm, how funny.

I have to wonder, where your advice comes from, I am under the misguided impression that advice comes from experience. I guess that is where I fail. I give examples of experience and you turn it into bragging and personal. Let me explain, examples of experience are support and evidence for conversation. The fact, you turn it into something else, is again your problem, not mine.

I have shown pics of lacies hatching, breeding, nests, eggs, etc, from captivity, I even showed pics of natural lacies and wild gravid lacies. That is solid material. As in history, something done. past tense. Yet, you live there and have not seen such things. Then you want to blame me? how funny. Again that is where we differ, If I was you, I would not worry about what FR does, but instead, get off my butt and figure it out for myself.

It goes back to the begining, you talk about what captivity is, but you give a tree dweller a rock pile. Now really, what do you expect? Of course you will not learn anything about what they do in nature. But on the other hand, if you finally allow them to do things they understand, they just may show some natural behaviors. Who knows, some of those behaviors may be things we are talking about.

Again, its not my problem what you do not see in nature, or what you do not see in captivity. But please, that does not make me the bad guy, because I have seen events you have not.

The baffling part, is how you make judgements on things you have not seen. I mean really, a DK anology is coming, You cannot high jump two meters, so that means I can't either?? Your right, I can't, but others can. You see, you fellas keep saying "monitors" are not social. Monitors as a whole, all the time. All species, yet, you give lacies rocks to live on. Hmmmmmmmmmm what am i to expect? FR

Frank, that entire post was about your captives and my captives and what they do and don't do.

As much as you want to turn this into a competition about who keeps their captives better or who gets more eggs or who sees what in captivity, it isn't. It's about extrapolating what you see in captivity to what is going on in the wild. I see plenty of behaviours in my captives that could be interpreted by many as 'social' behaviours, all of the things you, Andrew and everyone else describes, but the fact remains that they are in captivity and are limited by how far the male and female can wander apart. It wouldn't matter how large the enclosure is, whether I used rocks or trees or retes stacks (speaking of natural habitats for monitors) it wouldn't compare to the natural home ranges of this species.

still way too much personal crap in your posts. I've never made claims on these forums about my intelligence, education or anything else. That's your personal crap. You keep telling me that I am trying to make this a personal thing about you and I, yet you're the one that keeps posting this personal crap. Discuss the subject at hand, or just drop it.

I'm going to drop it. Richard's right, we are beating a dead horse. We can argue this forever, you'll keep saying the same things, I'll keep saying the same things. We'll have to agree to disagree.

Its about your strong opinions(facts in your mind) and not having experience to back it up.

Its very simple, if you have done what I have done, and seen what I have seen in nature, then we could discuss eachothers interpitation of what we saw. As least we would both have something to talk about.

Where you fall short is, you have little experience or history with captives. Yet, you deem that they are different then in nature. How is that possible? and you have decided that all monitors are different, how is that possible?

I may know why, its because your exsistance with monitors may be based on theory and in theory they should not be the same. The trouble with that is, they are the same. F

"Its about your strong opinions(facts in your mind) and not having experience to back it up."

personal crap. I have no 'experience', I don't 'understand', I don't 'know'... that's all of your personal crap. Let's keep the personal attacks out of this, stick to the subject at hand.

We aren't talking about experience with captives, we are talking about what wild monitors do. I've seen hundreds in the wild, my herping friends (who have lived here all of their lives, whereas I have only been here for 23 years) have seen hundreds more, their friends hundreds more. People who have done thorough, professional studies on monitors have seen the same things we have.

Suppose I went out bush in three months and saw a pair of lacies together, outside the breeding season. Would that change my mind? Would that suddenly negate the hundreds of solitary animals I have seen, my friends have seen, their friends have seen, the studies have seen? Would pair bonding and social behaviours suddenly become the norm? Would that suddenly become 'what lacies do'? Would I suddenly start to believe that what I saw was the mystery breeding colony for lacies, the 'successful' pair that has been responsible for producing the hundreds, even thousands of solitary 'goons' everyone has been seeing all of these years?

All theoretical, of course, for according to you I have never seen monitors in the wild, my friends haven't, their friends haven't, the studies haven't. Everyone is making this up, theoretically. Happy?

Want to discuss further? Stop with the personal crap.

"Where you fall short is, you have little experience or history with captives. Yet, you deem that they are different then in nature. How is that possible?"

Personal crap aside (where I fall short, my lack of experience blah blah), how is it possible captives are different than in nature? Nature doesn't have four walls restricting monitor movements. Whether those walls are 2 metres apart or 20 metres apart, they are still walls. More important than restricting movements, they restrict choices. Choices of mates, choices of home range, choices of hide spots, choices of basking spots, choices of foraging areas.

Care to explain why so many people see solitary monitors, such as lacies? Care to explain why male lacies get so much larger than females and have ritualised combat? There is no selective pressure for males in pair bonding species to be larger, since they don't have to fight other males to get access to more females. Care to explain why the solitary, non-reproductive 'goons' in my favourite park have scars from combatting other males?

I just reread this post and feel that my initial response to it was an over-reaction to one personal statement (about equating success with captives with manhood).

You have made several valid points, namely that trying to replicate in captivity what we see in the wild (solitary monitors, for example) would produce failures in captivity. I agree with that wholeheartedly. It was never my intent in this discussion to disagree with that.