Reptile & Amphibian Forums

A few days ago, I tried to start a thread on this, but of course, the thread never addressed the questions asked.

This is a hobbyist forum, They do have field/scientific forums elsewhere.

The MS's and librarain, of course defended the who, why and how(not sure about this one) but not the question asked, how it effects us.

I asked about the albigs, and it was admitted, they were different, but the librarain did not know why, but they were still albigs. Yes, they are albigs, dang.

They do not seem to be very good reseachers or scientists, because they surely would understand, the questions on albigs, gouldi, ackies, tristis, etc, pop up day after day. So indeed its a problem. A good scientist or researcher, would address the problem and defend what causes the problem.

So lets not defend the world, of course Sam defends their protocal. Our problem still remains, how do we address the different types we have?

As Lizardmom said, shes having a hard time doing research when all the names do not agree or fit what we have.

Well, time to go herping, see ya later dudes and dudettes, FR

I also see the same with niloticus, for example these represent eastern and western morphs, obviously not the same monitor!

I have the same within my collection as well.

I would imagine, that a species that ranges from egypt to south africa, would tend to have a few differences. Thanks FR

I often visit the 'Pine Bull and Gopher' snake forum of this site. Hardly anthing is said about husbandry, its a non-stop stream of pictures! (I really like pituophis, any pituophis)

My point is, why isn't the monitor world like the pit world? With pit owners, all animals are known by their locale, and those locales are kept pure. I have read that unknown animals or crosses (between locales) are frowned upon and never purchased by the pit people.

Hmmm....
Guess we can't do that in the monitor world. We're such a small minority. Not enough monitor keepers, or those actually breeding them. Still, having the animals identified as to their native locales would help in matching up animals that recognized each other.
D.

Most pituophis are collected locally. They have the luxury or knowing where or when an animal was collected.

I'm guessing most monitors are collected by natives which bring them to a central collecting point and then to the shipper who splits them up to ship them to the states or Europe and I'll bet you can add a few intermediate steps along the way. At least that's my guess.

In that situation, unless you are dealing with a very restricted animal the chances of you knowing where it came from are pretty slim.
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Ed
Tortoise_Keepers-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Trying to keep the fun in Chelonian care

Hello goon,

pits are from around here, they are collected by us in the hobby so the names stay in the hobby. Monitors is all coming second or third hand info. by time we get told what it is.

about locality bulls what local is the red patternless, or the orange patternless? Also note those are all bul snakes but they note the differences between the northern and southern east and west. So why is the blackthroat not known to be different then the whitethroat?? It is if you talk to people within the hobby. It's when you go outside that you find things changing.

most of the serious herp keepers in Australia are like that, trying to keep their locales 'pure'. Many of the really widespread animals here, even if they aren't separated by subspecies, are known by locale, so when someone says 'I have a St George mulga snake and am looking for a mate' most other mulga keepers will have a fair idea what it looks like.

Most people I know that keep blackheaded pythons here keep their locales separate and can tell you the individual patterns of the different locales.

With monitors, some people I know are careful to match locales, others less so. Lace monitors vary a fair bit so you'll sometimes see the locale being mentioned and heath monitors (Varanus rosenbergi) come from isolated pockets so there is usually some effort put into keeping the locales pure.

Now that I have read Jody and EJ's posts, I'd say that they are correct in that most imported animals are of unknown locality. Because we don't import reptiles into Oz, our animals are all native and of known locales.

It appears the problem is a hobbyist problem with the desire to attach a 'new flavor' to every apparently different form that pops up... in the name of marketing.

With the introduction of DNA, it looks like the field of taxonomy needs to go through and evolution itself... which it looks like what it is doing right now.

It seems that some want to use DNA as a tool (which it should be) and then there are those that want to use it as THE tool (which it shouldn't).
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Ed
Tortoise_Keepers-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Trying to keep the fun in Chelonian care

First, let me say this is proving to be one of the hardest topics to follow. What started as a observation about how scientific names can further confuse an already confusing topic for hobbyists quickly deteriorated into a pissing contest.

Truthfully, I can't even see a question in the original thread. But in reading that and the reply posts, the issue does seem to concern the manner in which science classifies animals vs. the direct observations of people with intimate contact with these animals, and which perspective nets more accurate results and "grouping."

Unfortunatly, I don't think there is a simple answer to this. The two schools of thought here ought to be helping each other more than they seem willing too. Researchers use methods and strategies, many times used for generations, because that is a fundamental of science. Without structure, all the field work, testing, research and data collection in the world would be chaotic mess with no manner of organization that can benefit anyone. How this applies to toxonomy is the continued need for a system and basic rules,regardless of its flaws, or for someone smarter to come up with a new system, better than the old, to replace it. Now, I agree with Frank on one point in that a scientist probably possesses a more generalized study of Varanids in most cases. This will absolutely cause problems when organizing the animals because they lack the exposure to the unique traits varanids can posses, many of which are only observed over long time frames. But this does not dispell the benefit of having a researcher who is willing and able to assimilate volumes of data and use an enormous perspective in the thought process behind their decisions. Imagine a librarian who has spent the better part of a year reading every manner of article, case study, survey, test, or oppinion PARTNERING with a reptutable breeder who's off his rocker about reptiles, and which houses manny of the species in question (this excludes newly discovered animals obviously, in which case best the current system is used) that can provide first hand experience with varanid "psychology" and behavior, or even better, share the experience with the researcher. You want the most accurate manner of classifying animals? Take the two experts, and lock them in a room with all the cold-blooded friends. When one considers the difficulty in drawing the lines between species and sub-species, species traits versus regional variances, and when to rename and when to maintain tradition, you would have to have BOTH an extensive reaserch based backgroung AND first hand study of the animals in question to even hope for an accurate classification. Anything other than these experts, each qualified and talented in their own fields, working together will result in a lackluster, marginally accurate result at best.

But hey, the only the only thing I'm an expert in is being a wise-ass. Its easy for me to say all this.

You did hit a few good key points.

The topic is argumentative... and will always be because as long as you have grey areas there is room for argument. In this particular topic the grey areas can sometimes be huge and you are trying to pidgeon hole these animals into specific catagories.

Keep in mind that this is the 'me' age. Cooperation seems to be a trait that is burried somewhere. There are groups trying to overcome this but they are small groups that really don't want to fight by nature... that helps the cause we are talking about but hurts the cause of getting to the point of cooperation for the grand scheme.

There is definately not a simple solution... actually there is and you did mention it and that is bringing all the different ideas together and forming one set of specific rules. (that last part is the hard part).

As far as the hobbyist helping... it doesn't really work because when you take an animal out of the wild you are altering it's behavior no matter how well you have it set up and I don't think this is very helpful when classifying an animal. Now, things outside of behavior might be useful but should be taken with a grain of salt because of the first point.

There's 2 points that I could never get a straight answer to... There does not seem to be a standard as to how long it takes to make a species (I've heard in viruses it can take one or so generations) and what is the standare for how much variance is required (if any at all) to determine a species.

(Yup, its all a matter of opinion)
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Ed
Tortoise_Keepers-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Trying to keep the fun in Chelonian care

Some of you(you) seem to thing of this as a, word problem. Like, lets take your this, and his that, and the others that too and that would be all good. Well, you could be right.

The problem is, that would work if all the approaches had results. There is the problem, they argue without results.
Without results, how do you consider a method or approach? In fact, what are their methods and approach with captive monitors? Have they listed them? Have they shown them(pics) of them? They argue UV bulbs, as far as I know, that is only one little tool of husbandry, not a method. They have not even shown results of that. I have for regular bulbs. To be of use, we should really show results.

If you really do not care about results, thats fine too. Only I will ring up Jeff Barringer and have him rename this forum, Theoretical husbandry of captive monitors.

IF they showed tangible results and they were comparable to mine or superior, I would not debate them, I would steal them and use them as my own. As thats my method, use what works. Not use what I think should work. Thanks FR

As waters changes flora and fauna keeps evolving, no living organism can avoid this change, biology and morphology data of today’s varanids will eventually describe extinct monitors in a not so distant future, in truth these species will have evolved but not the data. Therefore what makes a specie and how can we set any standards? Perhaps today’s science dose not have the tools yet to support classification of species?

This thread has been moved from the Monitors forum.
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PHWyvern