My new monitor =]

gitrdone0420

gitrdone0420

Gotta catch 'em all!
Messages
2,664
Location
Jacksonville, Fl
This is my new savannah! Not sure if its male or female. Here are a few pics!

tn-1.jpg


001.jpg


I know they arent the best pics, but Im working with an iphone here so cut me some slack! =]
I know I need to upload pics of all of my other new guys from Daytona, but I havent had the time!

Enjoy!
 
gitrdone0420

gitrdone0420

Gotta catch 'em all!
Messages
2,664
Location
Jacksonville, Fl
hmm. I have seen a few sav breeders at shows around here. I have also known numerous people to have adult sav thriving just fine. The guy that this one came from said that he got it to exhibit it in his reptile shows to schools, but when I offered him a leo in exchange, he said he would much rather deal with a gecko than a monitor... But, he also didnt tell me where it came from.
 
Tony C

Tony C

Wayward Frogger
Messages
3,899
Location
Columbia, SC
gitrdone0420 said:
hmm. I have seen a few sav breeders at shows around here.
Click to expand...

I would LOVE to see their pictures of the adults copulating, females laying eggs, eggs being incubated, and babies hatching. I have a feeling that they could not provide them. Most are probably lying outright, or maybe got lucky with a gravid import.
 
BrilliantEraser

BrilliantEraser

Bookworm!
Messages
388
Location
Connecticut
Considering the stress of wild caught/imported species, I would *LOVE* to one day have an established breeding pair of monitors. My boss already told me I can build an enclosure in the basement of our shop. I am very tempted to do so. :)
 
M_surinamensis

M_surinamensis

Shillelagh Law
Messages
1,165
BrilliantEraser said:
Considering the stress of wild caught/imported species, I would *LOVE* to one day have an established breeding pair of monitors. My boss already told me I can build an enclosure in the basement of our shop. I am very tempted to do so. :)
Click to expand...

One of the reasons savs are so frequently imported is because they tend to do extremely well with just a little bit of TLC as WC animals.

Edit: although that is something that happens in the hands of the importers. Wholesalers and dealers have some numbers, but not everyone participates by sharing and once they end up with retail places or end consumers data is often completely lost. As Tony mentions, an awful lot of them seem to never make it to adulthood due to improper care in the hands of sketchy owners. CB savs may or may not experience similar mortality rates during the entire process.

Edit 2: personally I mostly blame bad diets.

Because they are so sturdy and adapt so well to captivity, relative to other species, it is not really economically viable to breed them commercially. The financial investment in keeping an adult pair, cycling them to copulate, incubating the eggs and caring for the hatchlings until they are sold would necessitate a price of around a hundred dollars, give or take, just to break even on the cost of the resources that have been invested to get them to that point, labor and expertise not factored in. Higher if the idea is to show any kind of profit.

So when you're selling your CBB savs for $150 and the guy two tables over or the next ad down has some that are wormed and eating and look exactly like yours for $20... well, it is hard to convince most buyers that it's worth the price hike. People who don't understand your investment to produce them simply won't care and people who do understand the effort probably realize that for their purposes as a consumer, it doesn't matter that much.

Same reasons a lot of other species get similar treatment. It is why you're not going to find CB red headed agamas or plated lizards.

Captive bred only become financially viable if; the animals are tricky to deal with when wild caught but make easy captives when CB, if the investment in production is low enough to justify the markup over WC to the consumer, if the species is so prolific in captivity that it is actually cheaper to breed them than it is to import them, if the species is rare enough that you can basically set your own price wherever you want to anyway because you have no competition, if WC animals can no longer be obtained or obtained in sufficient numbers to satisfy the market (australian species, prehensile tailed skinks).

Or whenever someone doesn't really care about the financial return and just really, really likes a species, so they want to do it to do it and don't mind taking a loss when they sell whatever they hatch because it's their hobby, not their business.

As to determining the gender of this little one... turn it over on its back. Keep your eyes open and your mouth closed. If it everts hemepenes to spray you with urates and feces, it's a male. If it doesn't, then it could go either way. Not exactly the most definitive test because false negatives are highly probable but an easy one to perform quickly without any special equipment.

If that doesn't work then it's off to have a sonogram done.

Or using the somewhat subjective method of looking for gender dimorphic and gender specific behavioral traits... Mark Bayless swore they existed and wrote them up for anyone to try using. He had a very high rate of success in his personal use of them in determining gender but I personally was never quite as sure as he was when I was trying them myself. My success rate was around sixty percent, so slightly better than flipping a coin and guessing. His was somewhere in the mid nineties, it was astounding how good his eye was at picking up and analyzing those differences which he said existed. They're worth a shot anyway- maybe someone else will turn out to be the varanus prodigy that he was.
 
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slayer

slayer

Member
Messages
207
Location
New York
http://savannahmonitor.org/

At that size there is no way to reliably sex it. Grow it up for a few months then post some clear pics of its head from above and from the side, its tail base(while its relaxed) from above and the side, and a full body shot from above as well (while its not totally in shed is best).
 
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robin

robin

New Member
Messages
12,261
Location
Texas
M_surinamensis said:
... someone had created a savannah monitor website about which I have no complaints.

This is unprecedented. I have no clue how I am supposed to respond. I suddenly feel like my life has no purpose, if people are going to go around being accurate and credible I have nothing left to do with my free time.
Click to expand...

seamus that is the shortest post i think i have ever seen you make...
 
robin

robin

New Member
Messages
12,261
Location
Texas
and that ladies ans gents is how you shut seamus up. don't give him anything to complain about or to prove him wrong
 
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