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Free food from the back yard!!

aps929 Jul 12, 2004 07:39 PM

Yum yum

Replies (5)

SHvar Jul 12, 2004 10:40 PM

Snake parasites can transfer to your monitor. Interesting, in Africa bosc monitors are eaten by African garter snakes. maybe thats because they are cobra relatives there, which eat bosc monitors regularly.

herplvr2004 Jul 13, 2004 12:22 AM

correct me if im wrong but i heard that the bosc monitors eat the cobras not the cobras eat the bosc monitors.....
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My herps:1.3leopard geckos,1.0 green iguana, 0.0.3 chinese water dragons, 2.2 fire belly toads, 0.0.1 green tree frog, 0.0.1 egyptian toad, many tropical fish, 1.1 purebred German shepherds

SHvar Jul 16, 2004 12:04 AM

The book or video you refer to calls a whitethroat a "savannah monitor" (or whitethroat), as does the book. Older monitor books using pre-90s info considered the whitethroat a member of V. Exanthematicus or bosc monitor species.
Albigs are large monitors that eat cobras, puff adders, gaboon vipers etc, but the bosc or V. Exanthematicus is a medium sized species (smallest species from Africa)that on average is 13 or so inches at a year old in the wild, cobras go into their burrows at night and suffocate them by swallowing them head first, hence some areas they bite down on their rear leg making them impossible to swallow. Their only defense from a cobra in their burrow is to be too big for the cobra to get into the chamber at the end of the tunnel. the biggest predator of bosc monitors besides humans are cobras and African garter snakes. Albigs are known to be immune to cobra bites as they show no fear what soever aproaching them before dispatching them and swallowing. Vipers on the other hand make albigs a bit nervous as well niles, even though both will eat vipers, probably has to do with the hemotoxin venom.

SamSweet Jul 13, 2004 12:09 AM

Food from the back yard is not as free as you might think, and a frog-eating snake such as that garter is pretty close to the last thing you should be feeding a monitor! Garter snakes and water snakes are usually crammed with parasites such as flukes, and some of these will probably be able to make a new life for themselves in your lizard. That can get expensive fast.

It is especially risky to expose captives to species of parasites different from those they might have naturally. The reasons for that are a bit complicated, but in general it has to do with the idea that a parasite that kills its host quickly does not get to spread to as many other individuals as does one that kills its host slowly, or doesn't kill it at all. This is termed virulence, and there is a very general principle that says that virulence declines as host-parasite systems, or diseases in general, evolve. A new parasite starts this cycle at the beginning, and it may be highly virulent at first, if the novel host has no resistance. For example, consider the effects of smallpox introduced by immune Europeans on the native people of the New World or Australia.

Besides being medically unwise, it is also a bit of an ecological insult to go pillaging your yard of native herps just to feed to a sav.

aps929 Jul 13, 2004 11:43 AM

I'm not so worried about reducing the gater snake population in my yard.
But I understand what you are saying about the parasites that it could carry. I do not want to needlessly endanger my animals, so I will probably refrain from wc food. Thanks for the advice Same and Jody.

tony

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