My Little Monsters

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They get fed non-live food out of a dish that I place in there with the tongs, so does the dish entering the cage count as a trigger?

The larger of the two is a little porker and ate an entire fuzzy on its own today in addition to a few crickets; it was a pretty big fuzzy, too, and was pretty close to being a small hopper. I never got to see it eat it as they don't like eating non-live foods when I'm watching, but I know that it ate it all on its own as the other one was still sleeping. I think that I'll try some chopped scallops tomorrow as well as some chopped squid in addition to the crickets that they get.
Yes, but not a very good one, as when they're bigger they'll start charging you the instant they see the dish. Target training them with a bell or ball on a stick would work much better.

Small ones will always be shy about eating in front of you, as they grow they will become much bolder. A 6' nile isn't going to be scared of you whatsoever.

As far as the sexing, it would be wise to note that the method has only been used on Australian and geographically close species, not on African species, and even in some of the species they did it to, the juveniles were not sexable. The only larger species tried was V. spenceri, nothing else. It could work, but I wouldn't use it as a definitive method.
If you want to breed and want to take a gamble that they are in fact both females, I'd grab another baby.. If you don't raise them up together, breeding them will be tricky unless you have a gigantic cage that adult niles can hide from each other in, as unsocialized adult niles will behave nastily towards each other.. Even ones raised together may simply kill each other if they don't have a big enough cage, introducing adults to each other would be almost a guarantee of murder.
 
Yes, but not a very good one, as when they're bigger they'll start charging you the instant they see the dish. Target training them with a bell or ball on a stick would work much better.

Small ones will always be shy about eating in front of you, as they grow they will become much bolder. A 6' nile isn't going to be scared of you whatsoever.

As far as the sexing, it would be wise to note that the method has only been used on Australian and geographically close species, not on African species, and even in some of the species they did it to, the juveniles were not sexable. The only larger species tried was V. spenceri, nothing else. It could work, but I wouldn't use it as a definitive method.
If you want to breed and want to take a gamble that they are in fact both females, I'd grab another baby.. If you don't raise them up together, breeding them will be tricky unless you have a gigantic cage that adult niles can hide from each other in, as unsocialized adult niles will behave nastily towards each other.. Even ones raised together may simply kill each other if they don't have a big enough cage, introducing adults to each other would be almost a guarantee of murder.

Okay, I'll figure something out for their feeding time signal.

I'm not too worried about them being shy about eating in front of me as long as they're both eating.

Okay, I wasn't sure if it would work or not; I got the suggestion on Kingsnake. They fit into the correct size categories, so I figured that it was worth a shot; monitors have the same basic structures for their hemipenes, too, which made it seem worth it. Also, this technique has worked on other genera as well.

I would like to breed and not have to hope for parthenogenesis (which has occurred in this species before), so I'll probably end up getting another two (I like having even numbers :D) at the next show if I don't see any hemipenes between now & then. I might even give the illumination a shot at the show if the vendor is willing as it would be nice to try it on a larger sample size just to see if it's a usable sexing technique for this species. This "little" project seems to be getting bigger & bigger every day. :grinno:
 
They're monitors, what did you expect? :grinyes:

No, that's not the one, I'm looking for it now.

Here is a good video of trustbuilding, I'm having trouble finding the target training one though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SJKlTXfOF0&feature=plcp

Aha, here we go. Notice how quickly it catches on with the bell, which it hasn't seen before.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ee8ry64vAU&feature=related

Okay, I'll have to give those a try. Maybe I'll teach them to count to six once they master that.

Uh oh, you just adopted a heap of trouble!

And I'm going to double the current "trouble" on Sunday. :headbang2
 
DO IT!!!
 

Teach them to count to six? I'll have to look up the video on that; apparently some researchers managed to teach some monitors to do it, so maybe it's worth a shot. Then again, it might go from "count to six with food" to "count to six with fingers..."
 
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