Savannah Monitor diet debate thread

[mo9e64]

if you look at it, it does make sense that following a natural diet would be preferred-but people are getting results going outside.And what we think they can eat is only our perception,maybe the diet is restricted to what is available and is broader.The success overall of Sav's is no better than any of the medium to larger monitors-but tends to get, more attention due to their numbers and they get into more of the hands of the least experienced(price)

[Little Wise Owl]

Originally Posted by Damion930

Honestly I don't think u can realy use the stomach content of wild savs for picking a "healthy" captive diet as opportunistic eaters they are bound to eat what they can instead of what they should in keeping an animal it is our job to research what has ben proven to work for keeping them fit and healthy in captivity though I do agree that keeping them as close to a natural diet as possible is probably the best place to start wich is all just my opinion and not backed by my personaly keeping though I would like to someday

That's... an odd logic. Without using their natural diet as a guideline how would we know what to feed? That'd be a lot of unnecessary trial and error in my opinion...

I think nature's a pretty good example of what's "proven to work".

[Damion930]

Well for example as infernalis stated his will eat anything it finds that does not mean that the bug or what not it ate was good for it in the wild they eat what they can to survive not to be exactly healthy and ther is no telling how long the animals would have lived and you are only seeing ther diet of a few days worth of catches not ther diet and health over ther life span so looking at the stomach contents and finding a rock dosent mean u can feed them rocks or that the frog in ther will make a staple diet I fully agree that after a long study it could and I belive has ben shown that they eat mainly insects but wich of theis could u keep or find that would make a healthy diet for them unfortunately to move an animal from the wild and find a good healthy available diet does more often than not take trial and error and I thank those that came before me for this knowledge

[bighog85]

Originally Posted by mo9e64

Ravi wrote The Savannah Monitor Book with Daniel Bennett,it had been brought uo earlier in the post-that's the book i was refering to.

Doreanus do not normally eat mice in the wild from stomach contents i've read,nor did i say that.You are right ,i only know of one person who has bred Doreanus-and i'm following their husbandry practices.

I believe that there are options to what you feed monitors whole prey items be it mice,rats,crickets,roaches,birds(quails),lizards and/or in combination.

Monitors in optimal conditions,are very hard to overfeed.You seem to believe that if you get different results like obesity blame diet-to me that's lazy(subjective)

I found your posts via 'GOOGLE'

I really don't understand what sort of logic you are using in both your care for your animals and your posts here. Why would you not feed your animals what they are designed to eat. Do you really think that all monitors eat the same foods? Certain animals still have specific dietary requirements. I remember who you are now and what discussions we were having. You are the one that feeds "all they can eat every day". I am assuming that you are relatively new at this because anyone with experience would see how ridiculous that is. I also remember the pictures you sent of your blue tails and I believe they are quite young animals. That shows why you are not seeing overweight animals yet because all of that food will go directly to growth. That is not necessarily a good thing because extremely rapid growth can harm their bodies just as much as stunted growth.

You can believe whatever you want but that does not make any of it true. Monitors certainly can benefit from variety in their diet but that variety does not need to encompass every possible food option you can find. For insectivorous species like savs, you can do roaches, worms, mealworms, crayfish, mussels, and some fish. That is a very good diet that will still make a very healthy animal when done in the proper amounts.

Ok, we have had the discussion concerning obese monitors and you proved that you knew nothing concerning the topic. You are right that monitors kept in idea conditions will not get overweight. Unfortunately, those ideal conditions can only be achieved in their native habitat. Therefore, in captivity we have to do things so that we compensate for the lack of activity that is unavoidable in captivity. I certainly do NOT blame every reptile ailment on diet but in reality it is the most common problem. You can have a perfect enclosure(which is really the easiest part of monitor husbandry)but if you are feeding the wrong diet, you will still have an unhealthy animal. That is true with humans as well. I work out every day of my life but if I don't eat the right foods, it would not do me much good. Ask any bodybuilder and they will tell you that what they do is 70% about their diet. What is it going to take to get you to understand that what you are doing is wrong? You are being given proof and yet you still are resistant. Is it just a pride issue now? I guarantee I put more work into my animals diets than you do. It is a lot easier to thaw out a bunch of mice than it is to raise thousands of roaches, cut fish, find places to buy crayfish, etc. and yet you call my way of doing things lazy? I don't understand what that last line is supposed to mean so I will ignore it.

Originally Posted by Damion930

Honestly I don't think u can realy use the stomach content of wild savs for picking a "healthy" captive diet as opportunistic eaters they are bound to eat what they can instead of what they should in keeping an animal it is our job to research what has ben proven to work for keeping them fit and healthy in captivity though I do agree that keeping them as close to a natural diet as possible is probably the best place to start wich is all just my opinion and not backed by my personaly keeping though I would like to someday

First of all, lets all practice some proper punctuation in our posts if we can. Nobody likes to read posts that appear to be written by a five year old. Secondly, you completely contradicted yourself in one post by saying that we shouldn't use the stomach contents of wild savs and then saying that keeping them close to a natural diet is best. None of that really matters because you said yourself you have never kept monitors but you still need to think before you throw words up on a forum.

[Little Wise Owl]

Bighog, I agree with what you're saying almost completely but I'd make do without some of the harsh comments.

You can have a perfect enclosure(which is really the easiest part of monitor husbandry)but if you are feeding the wrong diet, you will still have an unhealthy animal.

I agree with this 110%. Nutrition and diet is the cornerstone of good health.

[infernalis]

Lets not forget exercise. A monitor locked in a box gets bored.

You have to spend some time and keep your animal active.

We take ours out and keep him occupied as often as we can, It's amazing how intelligent they are compared to snakes. He likes to explore the house and find trouble to get into.

[mo9e64]

you need to read peoples' replies more carefully.i thought i was wording things improperly,but you're just not getting it.Damion90's comment made sense to me,i'm not sure why the attack.

[mo9e64]

Adult Sav's diet in Senegal mostly comprised of millipedes.who feeds this to their Sav or more importantly who decides what to replace millipedes with fish and crayfish,which are not part or similar to anything in their natural diet. And the enclosure is not the easiest part of monitor husbandry-there are alot of variables which Bighog attributes to diet ,which are caused by improper caging.This is the death of female monitors due to reproductive issues(improper nesting sites)

[Little Wise Owl]

I was literally just reading a thread on Varanus.nl of a keeper feeding scorpions and millipedes to his V. exanthematicus.

It's surprising what dedicated varanid keepers do to keep their animals healthy.

[Little Wise Owl]

Also, it makes more sense to replace an invertebrate (millipede) with another invertebrate (crayfish) as opposed to vertebrate (mammals, birds, etc...)

[Damion930]

Lol sorry could your massive comprehensive skills not deduce my meaning without a.. sorry that's just petty and funny to me all I was saying is that u can't just look at what an animal ate and say that's the best food for ther health thers a little more to it than that and I belive that's somthing most can understand whether or not they keep the animal in question ofcourse it can be used to get an idea of starting point for a proper captive diet its just not a tell all because again they will eat what they can not what's good for them oh almost forgot.

Sorry if the comments I made seemed offensive. Was not at all my intentions bighog I greatly respect your knowledge and advice even though you come across kinda harsh somtimes lol it dosent bother me I can see you are only trying to educate for the benefit of the animals

[mo9e64]

all the current monitor husbandry techniques were brought about by people who tried new things,they failed but learned from their mistakes.Just becareful who you get your facts from because i tell if this was 10-20 years ago he would have fought against alot of the techniques we use today.but people would believe him-sounds like he's done this for along time tell us,what technics have you brought to monitor husbandry.Without trial and error we would not see the correlation of calcium absorption and high temps-monitors and other reptiles can grow properly without uvb completely indoors

[Aaron_S]

Damion, I think you're off by saying that we can't use the stomach contents to provide us with a real idea of a natural diet. You seem to suggest that it's only a single animal or two animals that were "inspected" when in reality it's been hundreds. When you take a sample size that large then yes you are entitled to believe that our captive animals should be eating what's closely related to the natural diet.

[mo9e64]

exactly,i did not read the varanus.nl about feeding millipedes and scorpions. but there is also a multitude of other types of food in their diet different species of crickets,reptile eggs,locust,snails etc.And if if you go with this line of reasoning ,you need to consider what the prey is feeding on as well.Can we just pick and choose or can we try to find animals to feed them which are more complete packages.i have no problem with feeding millipedes and scorpion to a Sav but that's just part of their natural diet.

[infernalis]

I think that the general consensus among monitor researchers is that the majority of prey consumed is Arthropod based. (look it up if you have to)

However I'm certain that if a Savannah Monitor happened upon a mammal carcass on the ground, it would most likely feed from it. Now I can only base that assumption on the fact that from what I have personally seen, Chomper has never turned down a plate of meat, regardless of what species that meat was "harvested" from.

So when we give him raw meat, I chose to feed strips of venison cut from the leanest parts of the deer. To me that seems a lot more natural, since the Savannah region has several species of grass grazing animals closely related to deer and the big cats will leave enough behind for opportunity feeders and scavengers to pick from.(maybe I'm wrong, only time will tell)

Further I'd wager that if a wild monitor wandered into a nest of baby birds, the lizard would probably feed from it.

However logic also says that since the savannah climate alternates between "feast and famin" that only the stupidest of bird would dare nest on the ground there, far too many predators around, so just exactly how many nests would a wild Savannah Monitor actually find that would be easy to feed from??

In my quest to back up what I say, I found this....

The Savannah Monitor, Varanus exanthematicus – Feeding Intro

Since the article is quoting Daniel Bennett, I tend to trust what it says.

When examining the reasons behind the frighteningly low survival rates of the Savannah Monitor in captivity, improper diet is found to be the third arm in the trifecta of substandard monitor care, closely intertwined with inadequate housing and overhandling. Feeding a Savannah Monitor a diet meant for other monitors, other reptiles, dogs or cats, or even humans, will cause all sorts of health problems and ultimately a drastically shortened lifespan.

Food choice and frequency seems to be an area of high controversy. To avoid simply stating opinion, we will always go back to study the animal’s behavior in the wild. As previously stated, the monitor itself is the greatest teacher. In feeding, the monitor keeper does not need to reinvent the wheel and come up with wild concoctions and diets. In the wild, the monitor eats what is nutritionally best, and our job as responsible keepers is to try to reproduce this as best we can.

There have been enough studies done of the diet of the Savannah Monitor in the wild that we simply no longer have to guess or argue about the monitor’s list of prey items. For instance, Daniel Bennett writes in the Little Book of Monitor Lizards 1, “I have examined the stomach contents and fecal samples from over 200 of these animals in the wild. Only one specimen was recorded as having eaten a vertebrate, the rest had fed only on invertebrates.”

Bennett’s year 2000 study in Ghana found the Savannah Monitor eating crickets, centipedes, locusts, slugs, and other such invertebrates 2. Cisse, in 1972, examined the stomach contents of 28 individual monitors, and found the prey consisted of millipedes, crickets, grasshoppers, snails, and scorpions 3.

The Savannah Monitor, as such, is an invertebrate feeder, foraging almost solely on insects, as well as mollusks and crustaceans. In this manner, this monitor occupies a very small niche in the monitor world. Unlike almost all other monitors, it has never been found to be an “opportunistic feeder”, nor is it the “garbage disposal” that other monitors have a reputation for being. Given all prey options, it specifically hunts down invertebrates, and only invertebrates.4

From an evolutionary standpoint, you can further see below in the MRI of a Savannah Monitor skull 5 that as it ages the monitor adapts rear blunt teeth used in crushing as opposed to sharp, serrated teeth used in tearing