Reptile & Amphibian Forums

We have in the past had huge life threatening discussions on whether monitors are social or antisocial or quasi-semi-on alternate years social, mammal social, bird social, or monitor social. I believe inbreeding falls in this area, if they inbreed, they must form a unit, a unit is social. I get the feeling most of this conversation in the past is prejudiced.

So lets take a different approach. Lets list behaviors that may indicate where they fall. I say this because, I see far more social type behaviors(attracting) then anti-social(repulsing) in captivity and in nature.

So I will start by asking you and any others who wish to participate to provide a list of what you see. Remember, this is not to judge, just what you see. Thanks FR

I have a small collection and never beat the bushes for wild monitors so I guess that makes me a "other"
But I'll bite by discussing my savs.
I have 3 savs. 2 have been together for months and I aquired another one. After slow introductions, I put the new one in with the other 2. The new one has a very, very strong feeding responce and was eating almost all the food.
The smallest one has always shown dominace and did the same with the new one. After about a week I noticed him doing something I thought was neat. He would start mounting and head shaking on the new one while his original cage mate ate and was left alone.
If the new one came close to his cage mate during feeding he would run across the cage and bite and mount her.
Before anyone blows a gasket, I have since removed her and gave her a cage of her own.
I see this protectiveness as a sign of being social. If it was anything else I would expect the 2 females to be allowed to coexist in his territory

Scott
-----
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

Let me break it down a bit, you saw one individual exsist with one individual, and repell another. So to choose one and repell another is a sign of social acceptance. I will agree on this.

To be anti-social, would be to repell all individuals.

Althought, I think you saw the dominate monitor, telling the new one, don't eat my food. hahahahahahaha.

If the dominate one really was being anti-social, he/she would chase and bite the other all the time. It still leaves that monitor letting one feed without mounting and the other gets mounted. Thanks FR

I feel as though you can't really compare these, or any captive monitor's being social like this, to one living in nature. In captivity, the animal is FORCED to be with another individual, and yes, they might put up with it, or accept it at first. Some will not, and become violent, forcing you to remove one animal. The thing is though, have you ever seen a monitor first introduced to another be immediatly attracted to it (minus mating), and start "hanging out" with it? It is my understanding (and I do keep some varanids also) that this does not happen much. It is only with time that these animals may become used to, and possibly enjoy eachother. However, in nature, when first encountering another varanid, they will most likely go their separate ways (maybe after a scuffle). They are not forced into a situation that causes them to be with this other animal 24/7. Once separated, they may never see this other animal again. What I'm saying is yes, I believe this type of social activity is normal (not just Kap10's example, but also pair bonding and such), but mostly/only in captivity, where the animal has no choice but to get used to it (unless it is more aggressive, and fights), and is not a natural behavior.

We all understand, there are monitors in cages and monitors out of cages. We also understand, monitors in cages will have different stimulus to respond to then monitors out of cages. This is very understood.

We can consider, any monitor only "knows how to respond to any stimulus in a known way, an ingrained way, a genetic way, and inherited(present at birth)way". Remember, behavior is how a animal responds to a stimulus. Granted, these stimulus are different in captivity, but I do question the ability that monitors can invent new behaviors in such a very short time.

I consider captive monitors, and specially wild ones, to express normal behaviors, only totally out of sequence. My job is to try and align these, out of sequence behaviors in a basic proper way. You know, kind of like the Marines do to young men, they break them down and rebuild them to fit in a new enviornment.

Also, not considering the above, all of our monitors, and I do believe, all the people in the states monitors, "are without a doubt" in cages. So please keep in mind, we HAVE to describe the behaviors we see in captivity, because thats what we have and thats our task. In other words, our task is to allow our captive monitors to succeed in captivity. So, I will callum as I seeum, in captivity.

If you think you can have a captive monitor express behaviors exactly like nature, that would be something to see and not very practical. We could discuss this, but thats another thread for another time.

If some of these behaviors apply to wild monitors, GREAT, but seriously thats not necessary.

So, thanks for sharing and I hope you watch. FR

Theirs so many events that leads me to believe they have a structured community, That’s why I posted the story of pepper, quarto, and rickets, first they are WC therefore have no captive background, they act on instinct. Next rickets was crippled so it was easy to assume that she who’d be killed, but that’s not what happened. The male in this trio has always been the dominant, he took side with pepper against rickets and later reversed the roles and sided with rickets chasing and biting pepper, they did it to the point that I might have separated pepper if thing kept on like that. They settled as a trio and are now getting along pretty well, my understanding of varanids husbandry is that aim responsible for all life sustaining supplies, and if I keep on top of it they will do what nature has intended for them.

Now lets imagine this trio was kept in different set up, to cold, to dry, to humid not enough food or any combinations of poor husbandry, the entire story who’d be different! More like Quattro and pepper killed rickets then quarto stole all the food from pepper and prevented her from basking, pepper got stressed and went downhill, pleas help how can I save my skinny and dying female. Sad but true! This lack of understanding leads peoples to believe that varanids are solitary (not social)

Also in this trio iv seen such behaviours that seemed like cooperation, sound silly I know but nevertheless its something to think about when you see a monitor helping an other with his food or pushing the food towards a cage mate. Sure this behaviour will never be seen with starving monitors.

I agree, husbandry is not husbandry. Husbandry is what it allows to be expressed. So, you can have many many different results with the same exact individual monitors, depending on how they are kept.

What I like about this is, I believe its the same in nature. An example, an ackie in the kimberlys is in a totally different enviornment, then an ackie in the western deserts of W.A. I would bet, they have different stimulis(temp extremes, food, habitat, rainfall, foliage, etc) and react differently to these stimulis. I wonder, what would happen if you took one and placed it in the others enviornment? After all, they are both ackies. I believe they are even the same subspecies. Again, I wonder what the outcome would be?

I also wonder this, does any population of monitors, react the same way to different conditions, for example, Oz is noted for periods of wet and dry. Do they react the same to each, or do they have different behaviors for each? FR

Funny I just mentioned elsewhere that monitors behave the same way on 3 different continents, termites nesters can all nest on ground or trees if they need to. I guess they react to environment and stimuli’s instinctively, I wonder if this instinct came before the separation of continents? Before the evolution (separation) of sub- species?

Interesting topic. I would venture to say that they would have to adapt their behavior to changes, as in wet and dry. Those that do not adapt, or do not adapt fast enough, would die, or at least not reproduce as effectively, being probably eventually replaced in that section of their range by those that were able to adapt faster. Whether or not the 'adaptive' behavior is instinctual or develops based on the changes in the environment is somethign I can't venture a guess on.

Leslie

I would call this a positive social behavior. I say positive because there is not any combat taking place. They are both basking after a meal. The main form of dominace that the male exhibits is in feeding, he will always try to get any mice that the female goes after, even if it means ripping it from her mouth. They have been raised together since hatchlings which I am sure has fostered a positive level of socialism. Of course, I could be copmpletely wrong and I think that there is more I am missing.

I have very little experience from raising pairs together. Most of my monitors were paired up later. I have had little to no struggles getting them to live together. If at anytime I see anything off I simply seperated and tried again later with either the same or another individual.

Recently I paired up my crocs. I raised my female from a c.b baby she was born in 2001. I then later got another c.b. baby I was growing it up then realized it was a female. A friend had purchased a sibling to my new female at the same time. He was hoping it was going to be female. Fighting was observed and it was realized they were two males. After confirming he was indeed a male we switched them. He now has the female I raised and I have the male he raised.

I started out getting the new male used to the new surroundings. Once he got used to this I placed him with my female. He started out nervous and ran. I believe he thought my female was going to attack him much like the other male had done. She however calmly walked to him to check him out showing no agression. Shortly ater that they could be seen together often. They have room to get away fromone another, as well as seperate basking sites. They however are together often. They are also gentle with one another during feeding.

I have had a few mishaps and bad introductions, but more then that I have had it work out fine. I have done this with w.c. as well as c.b.. To me it shows some sort of socializing. Otherwise I would expect none of these introductions to work or last long. The very few times it has not worked I can lead it back to some sort of husbandry issue that I believe if adjusted could of solved the problems.

I have to say with the exception of young niles & only (speckeled phased waters). I have to say monitors are social. I've kept argus housed with adult niles. Dumerils housed with mangroves. Mangoves housed with argus. The only time I've had a problem was young niles seem to be intent on killing anything there size up until about 2ft. .I had a mlae kill 5 other monitors in 2 seperate occasions. The other incidents involved speckled water on 2 seperate occasion 4 seperate youngsters. The individual kiiled one over food(not sure if feeding response but it happened. I have to agree on the hunger thing also, as I had a timor monitor eat a young nile it was housed with but regurge it as soon crickets were thrown inthis was actually while I was moving some yrs. back & they were in my brothers care for a few months). I did a test of food preference with some albigs & savs. I used F/T iggies, snakes, mice,& baby savs.&/or niles(I used to work in a pet store so So came in dead or dieing). In all cases the lizard fare was disregarded but snakes & mice eaten. Olfactory has something to do with it also as once a friend of mine who at the time owned a 7ft. male water was over my house. Now all my monitors started freaking I was bit my female dumerils as she tried to flee the scent of the male water. I will have to say that overall there are varying factors but either way the monitors are social b/c they obviously understand these factors & act on them accordindly.

An update on my collection is I took some of my monitors to visit a friend monitors & they were all wild caught & never met each other. Yet they got along fine after a few minutes of sniffing each other(in a dog like fashion).

would show up.

One of the factors that makes me think, monitors are inheritly social, is sometimes they are not. Which means, the times they kill eachother or consistantly do not get along.

Its these anti-social individuals that expose the social abilities of most monitors.

Believe it or not, I had an ackie that would simply kill all other ackies I put in with him(anti-social)

That shows what could happen if they indeed where solitary. Under forced confinment, they should if anti-social, fight all the time. And monitors have shown the ability to kill individuals larger then themselves. Again, if they were anti-social, they should not be so easily trained to be social. It they were indeed solitary and/or anti-social, how come they are so easily convinced to hang out in groups/pairs? From instantly to very short introductions, Hmmmmmmmmm makes a person wonder.

Its also been my experience that monitors tend to get along with other species well, as long as they are fed. In fact, they seem to excuse them from normal species to species conflicts. Thanks FR