Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello
What is the school of thought on sexing 34 inch crosses with probes? I know monitors are very hard to sex period. I also know the probes are better suited for snakes, but I just wanted to know your thoughts from your years of experiance. Thanks...

For me with my experience, probes are useless. I have several sets of probes, but do not need to use them on monitors.

First, monitors are very easy to sex as adults. In your case, a 34inch cross is an adult. In most cases, a causal glance will tell you what sex it is.

Please remember what probes do. They measure the lenght of a non-everted hemipene. The problem with monitors that are hard to sex is, their hemipene are the same lenght. So you get a measurement thats the same. So now what sex are they???????

Once a male exhibits male secondary characteristics, then its back to the second paragraph, they can be sexed from meters away. Heck even in pics. One secondary characteristic is the enlarging of the hemipene. Which then forms a bulge(visible package)

If you raised this 34 inch cross and it has not laid eggs already, then I would take a educated guess its a male. If it already developed eggs already, you would not be asking this question. So its most likely a male.

Its fairly rare for a cross female to reach that size without laying eggs, but its possible, specially if you do not have a male.

So the answer is, I see no need for using probes, but others may use them. Why they do, I do not know. Cheers FR

Thanks for the response. I did not raise it and don't know it's history.
Could you post some pics of males/females for visual comparison? I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks