2 days ago I attended the local reptile expo. I purchase a wide variety of things from this event however this time only a single animal was purchased from the expo.
I have a weak spot for monitors, especially the larger ones- which are almost always extremely defensive, sometimes aggressive. I found a V. ornatus offered at one of the local store's booths. When asked about temperament I was told basically that he does not tolerate handling etc, they offered to remove him from the box by grabbing him from behind and lifting him out this way- I of course declined.
After thinking about it, I purchased this monitor- which was good due to the fact that within the first half hour of the show- it seemed like every monitor there had sold.. Most of the keepers looked relatively new to monitors and of course decided to start with niles or water monitors- setting up for failure.. I stopped and offered one of the guys with a water monitor he had just bought some advice and wished him luck and headed on my way home.
I put the V. ornatus in a holding tank while I went to dinner and watched a movie, to calm him down a little bit. All day he was extremely defensive, whipping the cage with a vengeance. You would start to walk down the hall- out of sight of the animal and he would still whip and hiss and charge around like a lunatic crack addict.
I managed to get him out of the house and into my shed where I left him alone the night. I began work with the animal yesterday and spent roughly 3 hours in total with him. I spent another half hour with him this morning.
I took this picture maybe 15 minutes ago.
I've worked with monitors over an extensive period of time, and spent hours and hours sitting watching monitor body language. I've spent a ton of time even sitting watching youtube videos on aggressive monitors and defensive monitors, all of this nature, giving me a firm grasp on body language, posturing, and reactions to certain stimuli.
I decided to post this thread after I read another one about an ackie monitor. Both rob's that bit him- and gungirl who is looking at getting one. As much as I'm proud of rob for purchasing an ackie over another monitor- a bite could have easily been avoided.
For those of you looking at monitors- or who have one of your own, look at the picture and tell me what all you can see about the monitors attitude based on the pictures. I'm actually asking for replies here because I want to illustrate a point on just how complex these animals are. I will go over all of my techniques in the next post. So don't post after this one plz!
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