Savannah Monitor

[chairman]

Had a request in another thread so I'm posting up some pics of my varanus exanthematicus. I guess he's about 2 years old now, in the neighborhood of 3' nose to tail. To start, his enclosure, a 300 gallon stock tank with a 4' x 8' x 2' topper made of wood (just about the entire height of the tank is full of soil):

The interior:

The surface temperature on that basking stack is usually around 140*F. There's a burrow that starts right next to the tub of water, opening is under a half-log. I have a whole host of invertebrates living in there, roaches, centipedes, isopods, earthworms. Monitor eats some, the survivors clean up waste.
And just some pics of Jane himself:

 

[rwellbaum]

awesome!

 

[blonde.for.life]

Love the face shot with the tongue sticking out! Are you able to handle him?

 

[A. gigas]

Very nice, healthy looking Sav you've got there! Do you mind if I share these photos? I know some people who would love to see them.

 

[Artyom]

verry cool, he looks nice and buff))

 

[chairman]

Thanks all.

Sharing the pics is fine as long as they're not being used for profit... I think you know the deal. I don't mind showing him off, I'm pretty proud of where we're at.

As for handling, I guess the answer is yes. It took months and months of not touching him at all and allowing him to dictate the terms of our interactions but today he is completely unafraid of me. When I enter the reptile room he usually comes out of wherever he's been to look out the window at me. He's been target trained to associate food with his tongs so if he sees them he goes into attack mode. If he doesn't see the tongs then he follows the movements of my hands to see if I'm going to get the tongs. I really need to keep my eye on him when I'm fooling with his water, lights, or other cage furniture because on several occasions he has decided to go ahead and see if my finger, hand, arm, and on one occasion my toe, was edible. He has also eyeballed my ear and nose suspiciously. I typically wear gloves if I need to be in his cage for an extended period of time. However, the combination of his lack of fear and curiosity means that I can pick him up to move him out of my way, check him over for problems, show him off to folks, etc. He usually prefers handling to last less than a minute but is more forgiving if I'm walking around a lot, I assume because there's more for him to take in. When I put him down, even if I've majorly annoyed him with an extended hold period, he doesn't run off to cover to end the interaction, he just turns right back around to watch me. In my opinion, I think my monitor sees me as neither predator nor prey but as an inadequate heat source, an undesirable piece of furniture and a reliable provider of food. Were I to compare him to another animal I would say he's as handleable as a barn cat.

 

[vildotcom]

Beautiful animal! He sounds very interesting and I see you've got him figured out pretty well. I love the concept of Jane's enclosure, lots of opportunity for him to behave naturally.

 

[Vicious_Fish]

Excellent setup! It's nice to see a Sav that not suffering a slow, painful death in a small aquarium.


And nice work building up trust with your Monitor. I had to do the same thing with my Ackies when they were babies. I didn't hold them at all and let them get use to me to the point now I can pick them up without a struggle.

 

[Oddballfanatic]

I want to keep monitors some day.


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