i was at my friends house and he has a few herps himselve including a pretty nasty savannah monitor..its a adult(giant) male and mean as could be. well he was lettin it out of his cage so he could clean it(its pretty hard to spot clean a cage when you have a savannah trying to take you your hand off) but anyways on the floor in the living room was a cage of 3 chinchillas it was 1 of those cheap cages were the bottom half is a plastic tub and the top half is wire and to open the cage you gotta take the whole top half off. well any ways of course the first thing the monitor is gunna do is go toward the smell of rodent. and he starts lookin in the cage and 1 of the chinchilla flips out and starts jumpin off the ways and this does nothing but trigger the savannah to go for it and the sav. knocks over the cage and of course being the cheap cage it was the top came off and there go the chinchillas and right behind them the Sav. chasing them down after me seeing this and my friend hearing we try and gather the chinchillas up but by that time he had already killed 1 of them and the chinchillas are jumpin every were and the sav grabs the 2nd 1 out of mid air and kills it and and we try to catch the last chinchilla but we just made it worse by scaring it and it ran behind the tv stand and cornered its self and lets just say its not a very happy ending. the Sav didnt eat any of them just killed them and it sounds like we didnt try to help but believe me with this savannah monitor if you grab it then its gunna grab you! so anyways his girlfriend and daughter come home to 3 missing chinchillas and lets just say my friend is sleeping on the couch for a while. But this might sounds mean and cruel but seeing that savannah grab the chinchilla out of mid air was amazing. and blew my mind.
That sucks. Are Sav. Monitors always that aggressive? I mean, I understand it wanting to eat the chinchillas, but trying to take his hand off? Eep!
they are usually not aggressive, and are considered a pretty docile monitor. he must not have been handled often or he is a WC
yup...and i think even a tame 1 would of done the same thing with the chinchcilla's tho.. because when they run and jump around it just triggers the sav. to chase them.
o yeah this 1 here will grab your hand and clamp down on it...hes bit my friend a few times and drew blood. I dont know why he still has that thing he should sell it to some 1 who will use it for breeding or something.
he's probably WC like klik said, One time i had an adult WC blackthroat, thing was the meanest damn bag of scales i had ever met, it ate an iguana was fostering for the "rescue" one time, however, after about 2 months of constant attenbtion he got to the point where he wouldnt try to kill me, he still didnt like me, but he wouldnt attack on sight. the next winter he broke through a really thin window in my reptile room and froze to death before i could find him. R.I.P. Dozer
defiitely a WC and from the sounds of it he wasnt a baby when he was yoinked out of the wild, he still has the taste of freedom burning in him. but check this 1 out i have a few big monster lizards but my fav is 6 ft sav ZILLA. i used to work in a pet shop and had him in there 1 day showing him off. we used to handfeed birds i.e. parrots, amazons, grays, macaws and we had a a nest of about 4 quacker parrots ($400 a pop) that was in a 10 gallon tank being handfed when this girl i was seeing (who is now my wife) asked if i can help her put up dogfood stock 50 lb bags mainly and i asked a buddy of mine working there to watch zilla for a few minutes while i helped her out. well he got sidetracked and lost track of a 6 ft sav who found his way to the parrots and b4 anyone even noticed he decimated the nest and ate 3 of 4 quacker parrots that was an expensive meal but i got him out of there b4 the boss got back and realized they were missing. he never found out what hapened to the parrots which we dubbed off as died and thrown away corpses. zilla would never hurt anyone but sure wouldnt pass up any oppurnity to eat. hes eaten quite a few things they wouldnt normaly eat bcuz of his size. if it can fit in his mouth it will and noone tells him differently. would u take a bird out of a 6 ft monitors mouth? i sure didnt. when he threw his head up to swallow i grabbed the cage and the lone survivor and put it up on a shelf a little higher than it was and got the he** out of dodge
Well, I once had to help my girlfriend get her african grey parrot out of her 6 foot ball python's mouth. That was no mean feat, let me tell you. You wake up in the middle of the night to a parrot screaming for his very life and your butt is dashing across the house like Hidalgo on speed. My experience with savs is limited, but I cared for a pair for several months and I remember them as a truly wonderful lizard. I could drape them over my shoulder and they'd just chill, taste things, and enjoy the back rubs. Of course, this was after I'd bathed them and stuffed them full of raw eggs, jumbo feeder goldfish, and live mice or small rats. (They were 2-3 feet.) And yes, if they were hungry and I didn't watch my hands, I'd get bitten. For a carnivorous/omnivourous reptile, movement equals the possibility of food. That's just something you have to accept and be aware of at all times. Having springy hopping rodents in the same room was probably not the brightest choice your friend every made. They are magnificent creatures though. I miss them.
to everyone: do all your monitors go after your hand when there's quick movement, even if they are the tamest they can possibly be? do you think that would be limited if they weren't fed live food?
nope never had mine go after my hand except when he was hungry and knew feeding time was approaching. i fed mine live mice, as well as steak, chicken, and turkey
Monitor lizards seem kind of mean. They will bite you no matter what if they are hungry? Can you go without feeding them live mice? I herd they ate bugs. Would just cutting up chicken and turkey be enough for their diet or do that need live food? I dont have a problem with it. All my snakes eat mice. I just wanna...lower the chances of getting bit by something huge like that.
they will bite you if they are hungry sometimes, no monitor will refuse a dead mouse, and only hatchlings and juvies eat insects. raw ground turkey (not sliced) with vitamin and calcium supplements is fine, but mice are better because no other supplements are needed
feeding turkey sucks, there isnt alot in it to make it good, the only reason its ok is because its not loaded down with fat like red meats are. I only feed it to sick and stubborn animals, then promptly switcht them over to a whole prey diet. On the ohter hand i have a four plus foot blackthroat monitor that is so gentle eating that he takes superworms from my finger tips without even drooling on me....so not all monitors will take your hand off, its all about trust, and my animals trust me, they arent tame, they arent even handleable because of squirming and claws but they are all manageable, i can pet, and touch them and lift them up for quick inspections, and they all eat straight from my hands or tongs. they tend to grow out of that super eager feeding mode as they mature, as juvies i would never attempt this but as they are all getting older its not a proeblem, however no two monitors are the same
that is why you add calcium and vitamins to it. many breeders i have talked with actually use it only for their ackies, savs, and niles.
its more of a variety thing once a week many breeders will give their monitors turkey with vitamins as a "treat"
