Hah, indeed. Monitors do tend to start going through the motions a bit at a young age, but it won't turn serious until they're four or five feet.
My Little Monsters
- Thread starter Wiggles92
- Start date
The little guys are growing pretty good and have each grown another inch or two. They're each taking down a few crickets & a fuzzy daily and also get a roach, scallops, and/or egg every now & then. It appears that I have at least two males as the one that's in with the smallest one is now doing what the other "male" was doing, but I'm still going to hold out to be 100% sure of their genders. I'm willing to bet that the smallest one is a female and/or a runt as it eats just as much as the others yet it isn't growing quite as fast; I've been making sure that it gets its fair share of food, too.
Will do. I hope to have their new enclosure done before the end of the month; I'm going a little smaller than originally planned (just an 8'x4'x4') as it appears that I will be decreasing their numbers by at least one or two once I determine their genders later this year. Their final enclosure will be at least twice as large as this one unless I happen to get all males, then I'll probably just expand the one that I want to have done ASAP.
It looks like I have three males & a female; all of them but the smallest one are doing the mounting thing to each other.
Darn, that would've made things way easier. Those three are still growing faster, though, so I still think that the smallest one is either a female, a runt, or both.
The smaller one is quite possibly a female, but I wouldn't say it's a sure thing. I would say it will probably be the smallest when they're grown up. There usually isn't a huge difference in growth rates between males and females, just that females just slow down and reach their full adult size while males keep growing for a little while longer.
Hypothetically, let's say two of the bigger ones are males and the third big one and the small one are females. If I were you, I would pick the larger female. In all reality you want the two you keep to be at about an equal size and strength. If one is a lot smaller it is more likely to be bullied by the big one, and because of the stress that entails, chances of breeding would go down, while chance of disease and potentially death would go up. While it is highly unlikely that the larger would personally kill the smaller, the chances of a secondary effect of stress doing the damage should not be ignored.
Hypothetically, let's say two of the bigger ones are males and the third big one and the small one are females. If I were you, I would pick the larger female. In all reality you want the two you keep to be at about an equal size and strength. If one is a lot smaller it is more likely to be bullied by the big one, and because of the stress that entails, chances of breeding would go down, while chance of disease and potentially death would go up. While it is highly unlikely that the larger would personally kill the smaller, the chances of a secondary effect of stress doing the damage should not be ignored.
Good points.
I'm definitely keeping the biggest one for sure now as it hasn't made any attempts to bite or tail whip me during this "bonding" session I'm having with them while I measure them for cage reassignment; I sort them by size every few weeks in order to avoid too great of a size difference between them.
Well, it looks like at least one of these little guys is going away on Sunday at the reptile show as it decided that it would be fun to lock onto the hind foot of one of its cagemate's for 15 minutes & spray me with some unholy mix of musk & feces when I was attempting to separate them.
By the way, I think they're both females as no hemipenes were everted by either when they musked/defecated (the attacked one did so when it got bitten).
I guess we might also see how effective Nile monitor venom is on conspecifics. The attacked one didn't seem to be doing very well during & after the attack, but I hope that it recovers.
By the way, I think they're both females as no hemipenes were everted by either when they musked/defecated (the attacked one did so when it got bitten).
I guess we might also see how effective Nile monitor venom is on conspecifics. The attacked one didn't seem to be doing very well during & after the attack, but I hope that it recovers.
