Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Took this pic this morning... not even two minutes afte me going into the monitor room, these two guys were there waiting as usually, rather patiently, i might add, for their fill..

What's really cool about the two animals pictured, V. prasinus and V. beccari, both males, is that these two guys are so accustomed to me, they'll actually climb out onto my arm to take food from my fingertips(usually tweezers) and then calmly return back to their enclosure to ingest it.. Great personalities too, which is atypical of what most people's perceptions of the complex is...

Thanks for looking, just thought i'd share a pic... take care everybody,

bob

*sorry if my website's been stagnant lately, I'm going to try to update some info and load up some better quality fresher pics, as well as some other cool, fun stuff..

The Odatriad

Very cool man, if I ever decide to get into arboreal v., I'll know exactly where to go for help.
BTW, where are you located? You seem to live close to me, are you going to the next Hamburg show in PA?
Take crare

Hey there bmx...

I'm located in Noo Yawk. I went to one hamburg show, and was turned off by the lack of responsibility and common sense of some of the vendors and attendees there. I am not impressed, nor supportive of 17 year olds purchasing gaboon vipers, or better yet, black mambas.. Same thing goes for stupid, impulse buyers to be purchasing nile crocodiles.. As it is probably like a 4 hour ride from my house, I opt not to attend. Although varanid selection usually sucks(not that I'm looking to buy any more), the white plains show has a more tasteful group of vendors, and I always get to meet some friendly new faces there..

So, no, I'll probably not be attendig the next hamburg show. I will be in Daytona, you can count on that.. five years straight.. what a time....

cheers,

bob

here's a pic of my robust emerald male... anyone have a girlfriend for him???

The Odatriad

Nope, no girlfriend for it but it sure is an awesome looker. I was curious to know if you ever thought about experimenting and crossing some of trees? Is that even possible? Could you imagine the out come! Wow , that would be a sight to see. Anyway, nice pics, always are.

Cheers
-----
James Grigsby - " When you try of all your forces to make your own way, you will help some of others and will be helped by others. As long as you do not make your own way, you cannot help anybody, and nobody can help you. " (Shunryu Suzuki)

no girlfriend, then why the hell are you responding to my post then...??? hahaha.. just kidding.

As far as crossing them goes.. That would be an easy thing for many people to do, as there is probably 20 times more prasinus males, macraei males, beccari males, than there are females.. So, instead of somebody taking the time, and spending the money to track down a female of the same species, they opt to go the lazy way, and cross it to a more common species female, such as beccari.

While I am not totally against this, as the animals will never be released back into the wild again, I do not understand why someone would opt to do this, when the prasinus complex in general, is not being produced consistently by any means. All captive hatchings, at least here in the states, have been sporadic, usually resulting in only a small percentage of the eggs laid hatching. If nobody is breeding the pure species, why opt to go and hybridize them?

While I must say, that some of the crosses would probably be spectacular in appearance(if they were compatible), I would very much rather work on trying to get F1 hatchlings of a pure species first, then worrying about the compatibility of "sister" species..

As with FR, he produced several generations of his gouldi complex, and then had the resources, time, and extra animals to "experiment" with.

Once somebody starts popping tree monitors out like pez dispensers, then, maybe they should/could experiment and see how truly close-related they are. Observations of the reproductive structures in the complex have noted that each species has somewhat differing structures(in shape). Kind of like puzzle pieces.. some pieces might not fit another puzzle...

Mike Stefani(look for his site's link at the top of the forum heading) crossed a prasinus x beccari and got several eggs, with one baby actually hatching. It was a very beautifully colred/patterned individual, basically half in between the appearance of each parent species. Unfortunately that animal did not survive into adulthood. I am curious as to what it would have looked like as an adult animal, for juveniles' colors and patterns are a bit different than the adults, especially in beccari.

So bacially, that's where I stand on the whole crossing of tree monitor species. While like I said, I am not entirely against hybridizing closely related animals, but as for their current status, I would advise against doing so. I always wondered though, with that V. prasinus amarillo(see pic below), if you crossed it to a macraei, you'd get a green prasinus-looking animal...

Hey all of you artists out there.., you can experiment with the chromatic scale with the tree monitors... all we need are some reds, and whites(leucistics-ew, gross), and purples... What an even more awesome hobby that would make...chromatic diversity within the prasinus complex... yeesh.. you've got me daydreaming...haha..

there are actually, now that I think about it, two more different looking species/subspecies of prasinus-type monitors in indo- awaiting to be described/taxonomied.. I think the germans are claiming these ones as well...ooh the suspense..

take care,
I would also like to hear everybody else's opinions on this subject. Do you feel that it is a good idea for people to start crossing tree monitor species before the individual species are bred in numbers? Let me know, I'm curious as to what input you've got...

bob

The Odatriad

Hi Bob, and others,

When you look at hemipene structures of the V. gouldii complex, all except for V. rosenbergi do not vary a great deal in morphology = fairly same 'delivery system.' V. gouldii/panoptes/rosenbergi is not sepaprated by geographic barriers really, but only habitat ones - and they are a highly varied/diverse complex of animals - are there only 3 subspecies, or perhaps five or more of them 'actually' living in Australia? Who knows for sure - not even the experts at certain museums will idenitify a V. gouldii-complex w/out knowing its locality.
But hemipenal structures are not terribly different from one another, except perhaps V. rosenbergi's organs.

Now for the V. prasinus complex, that is another story: V. prasinus and V. beccari hemipene structures are virtually identical except for size (to anthropomorphize: a beagle vrs a labrador ratio); a V. macrae and a V. beccari is not only different in morphology, but vastly differ in size too (= a dacshund vrs a Great Dane, or a chinese girl w/a 'big' black guy in adult films) = it is more difficult, if possible at all??

So due to isolation on these west coastal islands of West Irian, it could be perhaps too long in time/evolution for V. macrae and V. prasinus/beccari to assimilate together today, but not V. prasinus and V. beccari as Mike Stafani has shown in detail? But it is worth a try I suppose?

Cross breeding does not really show how closely a species may be different from one another, but perhaps more-so how much 'time' has been passed since they intermingled with one another on a more than casual basis - and both the V. gouldii complex and V. prasinus complex show these passages of time and morphological differences via adaptation to their habitats at different rates = Darwin's laws of evolution in the ongoing process that it ensues...for the fitest to survive.

cheers,
markb

haha.. thanks for the info mark. I thought prasinus and beccari sex organs were similar, but had a feeling that macrae would be different, if not in morphology, at least in size. I would guess boehmei would be very similar to beccari, as there does not appear to be a great deal in variation between the species, other than coloration, although I haven't had the opportuntiy, nor do I want to stress my animals out by holding them down to do scale counts...

Thanks again, by the way mark, how's that prasinus complex paper you're working on coming along? It be interested in obtaining it from you once completed... Take care,

bob

Hahaha - thats a good one, but I do know of a fellow you has as many prasinus types as you do, and if you're not devout bible thumper, he won't let you in his home! Needless to say I am excommunicated from his home - his loss, not mine.

The prasinus paper is going slowly - not finished yet - and working on some other stuff that has side-tracked me awhile = history of dragon-lore and varanids = more fun to research.

I am bouncing it around now and then about where V. bohmei 'might' go in terms of island hopping and such - and there are still 1-2 'other' forms of V. prasinus I know about and ponder over too...

cheers Bob,
markb

Hey Bob,

new here and wnated to say that is a great website you have. always good to see fellow tree monitor folks. I will be hatching hopefully some beccari soon.

What type of incubation tech. have worked for you and or what have you heard that produces better results? Thanks and happy herpin

Rob

I'm from JC, NJ.
yeah, I get what you're saying about the irresponsibility of venodors. In the January show I saw a couple of 14 year olds walking away with a copperhead and I believe some type of rattler. And yeah, I also saw young people there buying hots with more potent venom such as gabbies and other types of vipers. But other than that and a lot of the irresponsible vendors, their are good highlights to the show. Their are some vendors there who are very responsible and carry high quality snakes and varanids. The thing I like about the show is the great diversity of animals. Ofcourse I'm not going to buy those rare monitors, but it is nice to see them in person, not just in books and forums. Despite the irresponsible people, it still is my favorite show, but then again I haven't went to any other shows outside the state of NY or PA.
If you ever do plan to go to the Hamburg show, I would be happy to meet up with you.
Take care.

sure thing. I'll let you know if I should ever make the drive.. take care,

bob