Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi, i've been trying to tame my mangrove since I got him in May last year, and it hasn't been working out so well. The two techniques i've heard of are holding him all day every day even if he resists or bites you kind of thing, or the very slow, gradual process of starting off hand-feeding him and working from there until he's tame. I went with the gradual one, but I have a few problems. My monitor hides most of the time, and so I obviously can't hand feed him if he is burrowed under half a foot of dirt. He's also very scared of me, and so whenever I open the cage to hand feed him, he'll run into a hiding spot and be in a kind of flight mode, so he won't eat. I used to give him weekly soaks, but he was panicking the entire time and pooping on me as I carried him to and from the tub so I decided to stop. Does anyone know what to do from here? Any tips would be very much appreciated, I love him very much and I would hate for him to grow up and be terrified of me.

Unfortunately, this statement:
"...or the very slow, gradual process of starting off hand-feeding him and working from there until he's tame. I went with the gradual one..."

...doesn't gel very well with this statement:
"I used to give him weekly soaks, but he was panicking the entire time and pooping on me as I carried him to and from the tub..."

Most young monitors are terrified of everything larger than themselves because in the wild they would be eaten by just about everything larger than themselves. Some species are worse than others and take longer to habituate to people. That forced handling you did to soak it simply rewarded its innate fear of predators. As far as it was concerned, that weekly soak was a weekly near-death experience that it managed to escape from. The big predator grabbed it but somehow it got away. Now it definitely knows that when it sees the big predator it had better hide.

At this stage, the best thing you can do to get your monitor to calm down is nothing. Step away from the enclosure for a while and leave it alone. Let it learn on its own that coming out of its hide spot does not mean you'll instantly run to the enclosure to try to grab it for a soak, hand feed it or even just stare at it. It doesn't know those things are benign - all it sees is a giant creature coming towards it that may want to eat it. If it sees you at the other end of the room and nothing happens when it sticks its head out of the hide, then down the track it may edge out a bit more and eventually it may remain out basking even when you are in the room. THEN you can try feeding it with forceps or tongs so that it associates you with something positive: food. From there you can start building its trust. Do not pull it out of its hide spot - it needs to know that it has a secure place to run to when it needs to or it'll never have the confidence to remain out basking when you are in the room.

The key is, don't set a timeline. Some animals habituate quickly, others take ages. The problem is, you have only one monitor so there's a lot of attention (and pressure) on it to change and that'll only make things worse. At any point in time I usually have several monitors of different ages around the place, but because I have a pair of adults that I can do absolutely anything with if I desperately feel the need to handle a monitor, the hatchlings and juveniles get ignored so they invariably habituate and become just like the 'tame' adults I have. I've raised several calm lacies, for people that do reptile shows, that way. When they are hatchlings and juveniles I am almost always in the room they're in, doing something that doesn't involve them, so when the time comes that I do start feeding them with forceps they have already learned that I am fairly benign. They'll still puff up for a while, or run to a hide as soon as I look the other way, but as they learn that I simply do not grab them, ever, I can eventually encourage them to crawl onto my hand and then the process slowly begins.

Thanks for the information, I've just been given lots of contradicting information. I only took him out for soaks because I was told it was very important. He does spend a lot of in the water in his cage so that's good too. I only took him for three soaks before I stopped.

zippybomb,

Listen to those words (Crocdoc's).

You chose one of the hardest species to tame down. You'll need a lot of patience.

I have a pair of Varanus prasinus that came as adults for just about 2 years now. Only now they are starting to feel slightly more relaxed about my presence. They do occasionally eat from forceps and they often do their own thing while Im around (mostly the male). I don't think they will ever be handeable, thou.

You may have a young animal, which is good, but you have a more shy species. You'll need patience, lots of it.

If I were you, I'd stick to this Varanus indicus on a 100% approach and maybe one day you'll have a more tolerant monitor. Maybe.

Meanwhile, I'd get another species, a more easy going one, like V. glauerti or V. acanthurus. Or even V. flavirufus (or a panoptes X flavirufus cross) if you like the big guys. These are much more tractable species and they will surely help you controlling the urge to interact with the V. indicus.

Thank you very much for the information, I really didn't know where to stand on the subject. I have seen some amazingly tamed down mangroves and complex, and some completely wild ones, but i'm going to try for the best. He is still young so hopefully that will help. Even if he doesn't tame down, from what I've read It's a very unique monitor, being one of the only two to be able to drink saltwater(not that I would ever give him any,)and the only one to be able to catch fish in deep water.

I think you'll find that mangroves get most of their fluids from their food and use their salt glands to get rid of the excess salt from water taken in accidentally while feeding. Not many terrestrial vertebrates actually drink salt water intentionally.

As for being the only monitor to catch fish in deep water, Merten's water monitors would have them beat hands down in that area.

Basinboa is correct in that the species you've chosen isn't an ideal one for calm temperament, although there are calm individuals out there. However, be careful judging temperament from seeing videos/images on the internet of animals owned by others, as often listlessness resulting from poor husbandry is mistaken for calm temperament.

My biggest problem is that although the gradual approach has a bit more logic to it, the results I've heard have been much less hopeful. From what I have read, the gradual approach seems to produce sort of tame/tolerant animals, while the handling approach seems to produce dog tame monitors. I'm really torn on this and it would be nice to hear from both sides of the argument. Thanks so much for all the help guys!

"My biggest problem is that although the gradual approach has a bit more logic to it, the results I've heard have been much less hopeful. From what I have read, the gradual approach seems to produce sort of tame/tolerant animals, while the handling approach seems to produce dog tame monitors."

That's news to me (and everyone else I know that keeps monitors). My guess is that you're reading selectively. I'd normally suggest you share the sources of the alternative position so we could evaluate them, but in the end it comes down to this:

"I'm really torn on this and it would be nice to hear from both sides of the argument. "
= I'm going to keep asking the same question until someone gives me the answer I want to hear.

If everything you've read says one method produces 'tame' monitors and the other does not, why waste time talking to us - you should be handling the bejesus out of your monitor and then tell us how it works out for you if you still have it in a couple of years.

I haven't been around the monitor world for long, but I never really saw a tame monitor of the indicus complex. They can be very cheap but the truth is they almost always make poor captives because of their temperments, unless you're an experienced keeper that don't care about not seeing the animal very often.

There are a couple keepers here who have taken their chances with Varanus doreanus. They really try hard but had no results in making the monitors less shy. As Frank Retes calls it, these species will cause the "empty cage syndrome", as they are very shhy and always hidden.

As CrocDoc stated, most of the tame monitors you see around are being kept in suboptimal conditions. Not warm enough or in snake-like cages, with no hiding options and a thin layer of wood shavings.
These are either lethargic or in a constant state of stress that keeps them from behaving normally.

I have seen a lot of these here and they usually live no more than 2 to 5 years.

That's why I told you to get another easy going species while you take your chances with the monitor. Otherwise you'll break your heart or you'll prejudice your pet.

I'm sorry if I came off as stubborn, I have just been reading a lot of different articles from both sides, but I'm going to go with what you guys suggested. I'm new at monitors and I just don't want to waste time when he's a baby.I can't thank you enough for the help.

Stubborness is is strong in me too.

But on taming a Mangrove... It's really a hard task.

There are some rules you can go around. With others you're probably doomed to failure if you don't follow.

Just think about this:

If you're going to listen to anyone, listen to someone you know that has been sucessful. If the guy has a lot of mangroves, breeds them and tells you to grab yours 4 hours a day to tame it down, then do it.
But if you hear this advice from someone who has one or two monitors for a year or two... Well... This person doesn't know what he/she's talking about.

Cheers

"...But if you hear this advice from someone who has one or two monitors for a year or two... Well... This person doesn't know what he/she's talking about."

Basinboa has just summed up what I was about to say. It's not a matter of being stubborn, it just comes down to how you gauge your sources and talking to people who have a lone, tame monitor that's only a couple of years old only gives you a partial answer.

It's not hard to find youtube videos and posts in monitor forums by people with a lone, 'tame', monitor, usually a savannah monitor. If you ask them how they got it so 'tame', they may tell you that they handled it like mad when it was young. The problem with this sort of 'research' is that it is flawed for a couple of reasons (there are more, but these are the first two that spring to mind):

1. The sample size is small (each of these people has only one animal)

2. You're working backwards, starting at the results ('tame' monitors) and then retracing to the start/cause. This is flawed because it completely ignores all of the other, negative results: i.e. No one posts youtube videos about how they failed to tame their monitors. For all we know, for every one tame monitor that was handled like mad as a baby and ended up on youtube there may have been dozens that have died of stress, or which have eventually had enough of being manhandled and resorted to biting in self defence to the point they were rehomed. Rather than post youtube videos, those owners have long since switched hobbies and are now playing the Guitar Hero console game instead.

Looking at it logically, if you wanted to tame a wild squirrel, would you encourage it slowly to trust you, maybe by trying to get it to crawl onto your lap with small offerings of food, or would you grab it and hold it until it stopped struggling?

I've been breeding and selling baby lace monitors for a number of years. No, they're not mangroves, but they are a species that starts off life with a pretty nervous temperament. Each baby I sell comes with a care sheet, part of which has basic information on raising the baby into a tame adult (nothing fancy, pretty much the advice I gave earlier - the key lines being to leave it alone and never disturb its hide spot). Most of the people follow my advice, some don't. No one can blame them, as it's certainly easier not to follow to follow my advice because to follow it takes a lot of patience and the results may not show for a very long time. I've had to act like an AA sponsor many times by fielding phone calls from people, frustrated because their monitor still hasn't calmed down enough to be handled after many months, trying to convince them to still leave it alone. They all calm down in the end and I know this because many of the people that have bought monitors from me keep in touch and send me updates. Consequently I have a sample size that goes way beyond a couple of animals and I've also held back a number of babies over the years, as well as raised a number of unrelated individuals as potential new breeding animals.

Coincidentally, I was just reading another monitor forum and someone mentioned a tame lace monitor on [ban]TV, so I went to youtube to have a look. It was a baby monitor I had sold to someone in Queensland around 8 years ago. The owner of that monitor is one of the people that followed my advice on whether or not to handle his hatchling ('Wally') as a baby. I know this because he's one of the people that sends me updates, even now.

Ok, thanks guys. By the way, what do you do if they're babies and you want to say, add more dirt, or update his terrarium, because I wouldn't want to grab him and pull him out because I feel that would destroy all the trust that had been built up. Got any tips?

In my situation it's not very often I need to make changes which require the animal to be moved. Spot cleaning, adding substrate or enclosure furniture etc can usually be done with the monitor(s) there. They usually just go into their hide spot and come out to investigate later, when they think I'm gone. I find that after a few months they get a handle on what's 'normal' (vs a one-off) anyway, so if I do have to handle them for some reason it may cause them to lay low for a couple of days but they quickly go back to routine.

Crocdoc gave some sound advice. It's the route we've taken with our Savannah and Ackies...though we had a bit of a set back with the Savannah when he bit me. We are slowly gaining his trust back though. The Ackies, on the other hand, are pretty chill but they are also a bit older.

Taking the hands off route except when necessary is pretty much the best route I've seen for Monitors. I don't have much experience, but seeing the results has convinced me of it.