Next up on the list is Savannah monitor lizards (Varanus exanthematicus). Savs, as I will refer to them occasionally, are one of the top five most commonly exported small animals in Africa. They are primarily exported for skin, meat, and the pet trade. Nearly all of the savs you see available in the pet trade are imported from Africa, and while CITES reports that roughly one third of these animals come from ranches and farms the rest are wild caught. In fact, many of those from the ranches and farms come from wild-caught adults who are captured and kept long enough to lay their eggs and then released. By the time pet stores in the U.S. and countries receive these animals there is no way to distinguish between those that are farmed and those that are wild caught. For the pet trade most of the wild caught savs are captured as babies or eggs collected from nests, but some adults do make into the pet trade as well.
“Almost quarter of a million live savannah monitors were traded internationally between 2008 and 2015 (Figure 1). The vast majority are suspected to be recently hatched animals, although this cannot be determined from CITES records. Five countries within the range of savannah monitors reported total exports of 239,237 live animals in that period (Table 1). Almost all animals came from Ghana (66.8%) Benin (15.1%) and Togo (14.6%), with the remaining 3.5% from Mali and Niger.” ~ Mampam, March 6, 2018. To my knowledge there are only a handful of breeders in the U.S. who have had somewhat regular success in the breeding of savs, but no one has produced large enough numbers to even begin competing with the importers. This is in no small part due to the fact that breeding medium to large monitors is difficult, costly, and takes a lot of space. Being costly to raise and maintain means that in order to clear any kind of profit and make breeding a worthwhile venture the babies have to be priced significantly higher than their imported counterparts. Joe public generally doesn’t understand why a captive bred animal should cost $250 while the next table over at the same reptile show is selling that animal for $35-$60. That being said, make sure you’re not paying $250 for an imported animal who’s been falsely marked up. This makes it extremely difficult for local captive breeding programs to even get off the ground.
Image provided by Wild Things Las Vegas - if you're going to purchase a savannah monitor, make sure to purchase from a reputable store that specializes in reptiles who will help you should any problems arise.
The monitor below was surrendered to a friend when it was found in a parking lot. It is obese and now it is up to someone else to try and help it lose weight which is no easy task.
Photo credit: Shadowa Knight ~ Las Vegas
But why aren’t they good for first time reptile keepers? Savannah monitors are medium to large lizards commonly achieving lengths of 36-45 inches that are very active, highly intelligent, and challenging to keep. Despite all that thousands of babies are purchased every year because they are very active, highly intelligent, challenging, and so gosh darn cute! I am fully aware of how difficult it is to walk away from that little lizard who fits in the palm of your hand and looks directly at you as if you were made for one another. They roam their cages with all the confidence and regalness of their larger cousins the Komodo dragon, and being housed in a group at the shop only compounds the cuteness. The other reason so many are purchased is that they are fairly cheap to acquire. As previously stated, you can often bring home a baby sav for $60 or less from your local reptile shop or expo. However, stating that the cost of maintenance often catches people off guard would be an understatement to say the least. This low cost of acquisition inadvertently leads people to believe that either their care is simpler, or they are dispensable much the same way as a goldfish won at a carnival game is treated. Most folks start off with something like a 40-gallon tank thinking they’ll have at least a year or two before they need a bigger cage, and most people are sadly mistaken. That 5-inch long hatchling in the palm of your hand, if fed and maintained properly, will outgrow that 40-gallon tank at an astounding rate and need a significantly larger enclosure within about 3-4 months at most. At this point your cute little baby is wolfing down bugs and probably any other prey you give them, has grown to at least 16 inches long and is more 30x its original weight, sometimes a lot more. It’s time for an adult sized cage that they can grow into which means a minimum of 6ft long x 3ft deep x 2ft tall and the bigger the better. This little guy is going to use every square inch of that cage and if your temperatures are kept correctly he will do so most of the day which means he’s going to find a way out of that cage if it exist; a way out better not exist for your sake and his. Monitor lizards in general are very intelligent which makes them good problem solvers and if that’s one of things you admire about them you’ll want to find ways to keep them on their toes and not let them do the reverse to you. And when I say minimum cage please understand what I mean by that is a cage that allows open and free movement in 360 degrees or as close to it as possible. Within another year or so you’ll probably want to start thinking about an even bigger cage. Many people recommend and 8’x4’x4’ enclosure as a minimum for a mature adult, but the most important aspects of an enclosure are that the animal can move freely, and that it maintains a proper temperature gradient and humidity.
Photo Credit: Elliott Eiden
Okay so now that I’ve talked about size a little bit let’s talk about some of the other challenges associated with these amazing animals. If you want to interact with your sav, which I assume you do, there will be a certain level of socialization that needs to occur. A 3 to 4-foot-long lizard with a strong food drive, an equally strong bite, large recurved teeth, sharp claws, and a powerful tail deserves a healthy respect and caution. If not properly socialized they can and will inflict serious damage if cornered and scared, or if they become confused or over-zealous during feeding time. Monitors being highly intelligent will require a lot more work to socialize and “tame” than say a bearded dragon which typically tends to have a naturally much more docile personality. With monitor lizards it’s important to build trust slowly and foster only positive interactions as much as possible. In my experience they absolutely learn to associate one thing with another meaning if you as a keeper become a source of stress for them they will resist everything you do making your pet monitor a source of stress for you, and stress tends to eventually cause death in savs as it does in most reptiles and other living things.
Let’s address the dietary and obesity challenges now. In captivity savs are prone to obesity due to a number of reasons. At the end of this post there will be a link to a website which describes in greater detail the problems that captive savannah monitors face with diet, fasting, exercise, etc. What it boils down to is that in captivity they are often fed the wrong prey items, too often, and don’t have to work hard enough for it. These things combined with a lack of proper temperature gradients, space, and fasting periods leads to obesity, premature death, and poor quality of life. In the wild savs feed mostly on arthropods like grasshoppers, termites, beetles, crickets, millipedes, centipedes, spiders, etc. Of course they are opportunistic carnivores so they also feed on smaller reptiles, birds, and rodents, but those things generally make up a fairly small portion of their diet. When hunting they expend an incredible amount of energy so they naturally eat a lot to make up for the energy lost as well as the energy their body needs for growth and other functions. However, in captivity, more often than not, they expend next to zero energy to obtain their prey. They rarely have to dig to find and catch a rodent or a single cricket, mice and rats are handed to them at the end of tongs, the bugs they are given are either in a small dish or trapped in a box with them, and they are usually fed way too many rodents and other fatty foods. As hatchlings they start off with plenty of space in what seems like a large cage to us actually having to chase their food and expend at least some energy, but the more they grow the less they can move about in that cage which means their food is easier to catch, or we start to hand feed them so they’ll “like” us and they basically end up being handfed couch potatoes. Ideally, a keeper should have a large space for the monitor to chase, capture, and forage for its meals. The other big issue is that savannah monitors are built for feast and famine which means they are built to spend long periods of time feeding and long periods of time fasting. Realistically, in the wild they only get short periods of time each year where food is plentiful while the rest of the year it is a struggle to find food, and for several months of the year they have almost zero food. This is a hard concept for us humans to wrap our minds around, and it’s even more difficult when it’s an animal we care about personally. We don’t want to see our lizard starving or seemingly so for 5-6 months out of the year. To be honest, this has been a fault of my own as well. It’s difficult to remind yourself that it’s natural part of their life cycle. During this time in the wild they often absorb the fat stored in their tails and they would do so in captivity as well, but what they can’t do is absorb the fat stored in their vital organs; their bodies simply doesn’t work that way, and that’s the fat that eventually kills them prematurely.
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I’m not saying that there aren’t keepers out there who aren’t ready for the challenges to a Savannah monitor, but I am saying that new keepers should absolutely avoid them. If you’ve never had a reptile before they are not for you. If you’ve had a few green anoles and a leopard gecko they are not for you. Monitor lizards in general should not be attempted by beginners, but if you insist on it stick with a dwarf monitor like an ackie aka dwarf ridge-tailed monitor. Your upfront cost of acquisition will be higher, but your long-term maintenance cost will be much much lower and most dwarf monitors you find available will be captive-bred. While their upfront cost of acquisition would seem to indicate the opposite, savannah monitor lizards should really be reserved for advanced keepers only. For more in depth information regarding savannah monitor lizards click on the link below. http://savmon.org/index.php/category/savannah-monitor-in-captivity/ Please don't hesitate to comment below and let me know your thoughts and experiences with savannah monitors.
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