Reptile & Amphibian Forums

First off I am opinionless on breeding monitors. Do what you want if you own them.

People are talking about chickens. I think a good comparison would be turkeys. Wild turkeys are some of the smartest animals in North America. If you live in a rural areas and/or ever hunted them, you know what I mean. Heck, they were almost our national bird instead of the Bald Eagle. On the other hand, domestic turkeys are some of the dumbest animals alive. There are tales of them drownding in rain because they look up and the drops fall in their noses. I have never witnessed this, but they are pretty dumb. Something caused them to lose their natural instincts and become what they are. Now, I know of domestic turkeys that have joined flocks of wild turkeys, and I imagine lived out their lives like wild birds.

The wild/domesticated comparison is valid and interesting. It makes me wonder:
1) how third generation plus monitors would do if they were released into the wild of their origin
2)how the wild niles, caimen, etc. in Florida compair to the wild animals in their native parts of the world.
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Ed

There are chameleons, pythons, and monitors in my jungle room.

First, by stating what you did, you do have an opinion. Or you have said nothing.

About turkeys and chickens and such. There is only one place to gauge their intelligence, and that is where their intelligence was meant for, in their nature habitat. Wild chickens(banty, jungle fowl) are smart as heck. So are beardies(from the dumb bearded thread below) in nature. One of beardeds natural behaviors is to go cryptic, that is, lay low and do nothing. In nature, it serves them well, in captivity is makes them look dumb. Maybe the only way to measure how smart reptiles are is to measure how well they succeed. In parts of Oz,(Mt. Isa area) beardeds, V.p.vitticeps, is very successful(very abundant) But in other areas, V.p.vitticeps, is rare(south of Alice) but its there. Is it not so smart there?

To me, the smartest lizards I saw were, Lashtail lizards, the reason I say this is, They burrowed, they climbed, they ran(like a bullet)they ran across the top of the water, They swam on top of water, and underwater. They climbed trees and jumped into water, or jumped onto the land and ran off, They ran on their hindlegs or on all fours. They have a ton of behaviors to not allow being caught, and they wave at you while they are doing it. And they filled their niches very well(numerous).

About releasing captive monitors into nature. I imagine, it would be about the same as normal. Less then five percentage(aprox) of each years offspring survive in nature. The Vast majority become food for others. I imagine the same would happen if you release thousands of hatchling captive monitors. Some will survive, that is, if you put them in places they could survive. Which is the key to what wild monitors do. They put their babies where they have the best chance to survive. Thu lots and lots of generations, each population of monitor, adapts to the local conditions. With this in mind, the local individuals, do have an advantage to any non local individuals, no matter if wild or captive. That is unless, the habitat changes. Then its a grab bag, all bets are off. For instance, the marine toad, is changine what survives and what does not(in oz) There, the monitors must be reducated in order to survive. Thanks and good luck FR

...in this hypothetical situation

What I was really asking was about F-3 or greater monitors if released into their native lands.

If for some reason you decided to let some of your CB adult monitors loose in OZ, Africa, or Indo, do you think they would have the ability to survive? Or do you think they have lost some of the instincts, know how, etc to be able to survive? Since your, mine,or anyone elses monitors have adapted to life (over generations) in their current homes, how do you think they would do if released?
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Ed

There are chameleons, pythons, and monitors in my jungle room.

I ask Frank this out of respect of his knowlege of monitors. I am also interested in anyones opinion on this subject.

I am NOT releasing any captive creatures!!!
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Ed

There are chameleons, pythons, and monitors in my jungle room.

A couple of thoughts for you, First, 3 generations is nothing and will not change anything. Second, They are not adapting to captivity, at this time, we are adapting to them. If we do not supply what they need, they die. They do not change and adapt.

Lets use an example. If only 5% of our hatchlings would eat pinkies and crickets, and the rest died. Then inbreeding and selecting the pinkie /cricket feeders over many many generations would indeed cause change. But thats not whats happening.

The first things to change is, losing their fear of us and not getting as stressed living in our marginal conditions.

Also, I believe, you cannot take adult individuals from one area in nature, and move them a long distance. They too will have a very high death rate.

There are many many, relocation and translocation studies being done or recently been done. As it turns out, most commonly relocated reptiles like tortosises, gilas, gophersnakes, rattlesnakes, etc. cannot be moved far and survive. I am sure monitors have a greater distance then snakes, with gilas and torts being somewhere in the middle. But indeed, they will have a set distance in which they can be moved.

Adult reptiles, depend on both genetic abilities and learned information that is within their genetic range, to survive. The basics such as, where to go with temperature extremes, where do go in different seasons, where and how to avoid predators within all the different areas.

So back to your original question, and my original answer, first you can only consider hatchlings, and most captive and wild hatchlings will die very quickly. Thats how it works. FR

I've been sort of following the reports of escaped or released monitors, tegus, etc. in south Florida. According to my friends that live down there, the reptiles appear to be adapting nicely. The small mammal population in those areas is declining somewhat, just as it does in areas with feral cats. And Fluffy, the miniature poodle is once more in jeopardy! The reptiles are seemingly able to avoid the few potential preditors, including man. The wildlife folks are sort of scared of them. The have been living in landfills, and in poorer residential areas, where they often hide under scrap lumber or metal roofing panels, and under bushes. The weather is aparently suited to their needs.

Leslie

The reason I say this is, you said, "they are adapting very well". The reality is, they are not adapting at all. They are the same monitor as they always were, they have found conditions that are included in their design.

You go on to say, they are found in disturbed habitat, trash piles, rubbish, etc, this is man made, disturbed habitat. Monitors thu out their natural range have shown the ability to successfully occupy man made disturbed habitat.

Back to adapt, that would mean they have "changed" to help fit the new habitat. While if they are left to stay in a new habitat I am sure they would adapt. But to adapt would mean they did something like, changed tooth structure to accomadate a new food source. Or, changed body structure to exsist in a new different habitat. Or even changed color and pattern(must be radical) like became striped or something. Do you see what I mean. If they have not changed, then they have not adapted. They are merely utilizing a new area with conditions they already know how to use.

This also goes for behavior, if they radically changed behavior, then that would be behavioral adaption. But did they do that? Did the niles become non-aquatic? did they become something other then their natural design? At this time, I don't think they adapted at all. They just fit in a general disturbed habitat. Thanks for thinking about it. FR

3rd generation CB animals are not domesticated. In an agricultural sense domesticated animals are, by definition, animals which have been converted from their natural form and function for the benefit of human use or consumption.

Buffalo, boar, elk, and salmon are all commercially farmed, as are reptiles, but no domestication (change in form) has occurred therefore when released have usually as good a chance of survival as a wild relative.

The closest example of domestication in reptiles is the colour selection that occurs. In that case if you released as red bearded dragon, albino boa or orange gecko into the wild they would be poorly suited and would probably die.
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My Site

Very true. Domestication takes thousands of years to occur. That's one of the things I love about reptiles (and why I hope they never are really domesticated). They still have their wild instincts in them, and when kept properly, they do things much like they would do them in the wild, which makes it entertaining to watch (if that makes any sense).