Hello
I am a doctoral biophysicist. My girlfriend is finishing her masters in physiology with a specialization in reptile and amphibian physiology.

You are operating and drawing conclusions based on some false knowledge. Saying their physiology is like apples and oranges is overwhelmingly moronic and demonstrates a large lack of understanding on your part of physiology as a whole. The difference between reptiles and mammals thats almost apples and oranges. The difference between species of varanids is more like the difference between green apples, red delicious apples and pink lady apples for exam. But this is all crap, comparing the two is meaningless.

What you need to be asking is not what does it look like he is hunting here but rather why does he not hunt rodents when they have been PROVEN to be successful with rodents as well. Not that a good invert diet cannot be supplied which allows the animal success but to call an invert diet YOU can come up with in the states a "natural" diet is unbelievably stupid. The closest things we have to what they eat is extremely different from what they eat, you know those apples and oranges you were talking about. Of course I am assuming you do not have illegal african crickets that get up to 4 inches long and you dont have giant african millipedes. Also I assume you dont have an african biodome with all the natural resources your african crikets and giant millipedes can eat so they are exactly as nutritious as ones in nature.

So why do they frequently not eat or even show interest in rodents? Well a good explanation would be rodents are not good prey. They are small, fast and intelligent. They live in borrows and holes that a large bodied varanid like savs would have to turn into large borrows in order to get at a single rodent which may have just disappeared about the back door. Thats a lot of energy used potentially even at an energy loss if they even catch the rodent at all.

Continuing on next post.

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