How to tame an Asian Water Monitor?

marulia · #1 (**permalink**) 04-12-2008, 07:59 PM

Hi, I have just bought an Asian Water Monitor. Hes 17 inches long from head to tail and is eating well. Hes been kept at the moment in a 48 x 18 x 18 viv. Hes very skitish and wont let me go near him without running away. Hes not overly aggresive but has bitten me a couple of times. He tends to puff up when I first get hold of him but then soon calms down but keeps trying to crawl out of my hands an do a runner. I have heard that if you try to pick them up you will never get them tame and simply let them run around near you but also that you need to pick them up and handle them as much as possible? Can anyone give me any suggestions or help?

Martin

Ophiophilia · #2 (**permalink**) 04-12-2008, 08:07 PM

All this kerfuffle on taming Monitors. lol
I'm pretty sure someone on here can give you some good advice.
Welcome to RTB btw

vfoerster · #3 (**permalink**) 04-12-2008, 08:10 PM

Well ask raze about this one but truthfully its a monitor it might get a little more nice but don't think they have that whole nice quality pooring out of there skin.

luker3232 · #4 (**permalink**) 04-12-2008, 08:25 PM

Razeraze will be here in a but. but dont quote me but I remember raze saying the bathroom makes a good place to "bond with your monitor" sit by the door and have some food for it let it come to you. but Pming him would be better.

My advice is
A. Take it very slow
B. This worked for me, sit on the edge of the bathtub (NO WATER) with your feet in the tub. do not move but let him climb around and get used to your scent.
C. If your cage is easy enough to do this with put your hand in the cage in a nonaggresive manner and let him get used to you.
D. When he gets to the point of biting/whipping you leave the room so he knows your not a threat.

thats my 2cents

luker3232 · #5 (**permalink**) 04-12-2008, 08:26 PM

definetly not a nice monitor species though. may I ask what type of previous expeirence do you have with reptiles?

boaterr · #6 (**permalink**) 04-13-2008, 12:29 AM

I do not understand why keepers go into the game backwards. Research the animal first than get it (saves the animal and the keeper a lot of undo stress.

I would first stop trying to handle it and let him calm down into his new home.

crocdoc · #7 (**permalink**) 04-13-2008, 01:53 AM

The answer is in your question:

Quote:

Originally Posted by marulia

Hes very skitish and wont let me go near him without running away. Hes not overly aggresive but has bitten me a couple of times. He tends to puff up when I first get hold of him

The best advice to start with is this:

Quote:

Originally Posted by boaterr

I would first stop trying to handle it and let him calm down into his new home.

What you're doing wrong is trying to force the issue. That doesn't work with monitors. It's going to require an incredible amount of patience on your part. The best way I can answer you is to copy and paste exactly what I advised a couple of other people recently (and how I treated my monitors when they were younger).
The other people I gave this information to had the answer in their questions, too:

Quote:

He does not like being petted/held. He has bitten me twice...

Quote:

you go to pick him up and well he just runs away, and when held he sometimes will try and bite

You can see the common thread, here. The one thing all of these monitors are trying to tell their keepers is "stop trying to pick me up". Holding an animal that clearly does not want to be held is no way to get it to like you. All you're doing by grabbing him each day is reinforcing the already bad experience it's had with you so far. Eventually, it will be untouchable.

Try this: Picture yourself in a park with two wild squirrels, Squirrel A and Squirrel B, that you would like to befriend. You decide to perform a little experiment, to compare 'taming' methods.

Experiment A:

1. Your perspective: You grab Squirrel A and hold it until it stops struggling. The plan is to do this daily until it becomes tame. When you let it go, it runs away as fast as it can. The next time you see Squirrel A it is at a distance of 100 metres, from where it chatters angrily at you before running up a tree. With the help of some friends, you manage to corner it and grab it to continue the training process and it bites your hand. You never see Squirrel A again, either because it felt so threatened it decided to leave the park or because it hides every time it sees you.

2. Squirrel A's perspective: There it was minding its own business when this giant predator grabbed it. It thought it was going to die. It managed to escape, but it got grabbed again the next day. It managed a second escape what wasn't going to count on a third, so every time it saw this predator from then on, it remained hidden. That predator was clearly dangerous and persistant.

Experiment B:

1. Your perspective: You don't try to touch Squirrel B but sit there quietly and let Squirrel B become curious about you. This takes weeks and weeks, maybe even months, of visits to the park, but you're patient. You start to notice that Squirrel B sees you as less of a threat and so your offer it some food. At first you just offer it on the end of a pair of feeding tongs. It starts to really take interest in you. One day you leave your hand on the ground, palm up, to see what it does. After a long while Squirrel B comes over and sniffs it. A week or three later, it actually puts its hand on your palm. Weeks after that, it climbs up. Because Squirrel B never has a bad experience with you, one day you realise (maybe a year later) that Squirrel B is so comfortable with you that it happily sits on your shoulder and nothing much frightens it any more.

2. Squirrel B's perspective: There's this giant predatory looking primate in the park. I kept my distance for the longest time. Eventually I realised that it wasn't really a threat at all, for even when I got really close to it, nothing happened. One day I noticed that it had food. After a while I recognised this thing as a source of food. It is also warm, so when I sit on it, I feel comfortable. I trust it now.

Now, picture your baby water monitor is a wild animal. Wait, it IS a wild animal - no imagination required. At the moment you are doing the 'Squirrel A' experiment. The only difference is that your monitor does not have the option of running away. It knows that no matter where it hides, you'll be able to grab it again the next day. When a monitor doesn't like being held and puffs, squirms and/or bites you, it is telling you that it doesn't like being held. Listen to it. Leave it alone. Let it get used to your presence before even touching it. Clean its water dish, pick faeces out of its enclosure, but leave the poor thing alone. NEVER remove it from its hide spot. Eventually, it will stop seeing you as a threat - probably when it's a fair bit bigger, for small monitors are eaten by everything in the wild. That behaviour it is showing is an adaptation for survival honed after several million years, it's not going to disappear overnight by force handling it.
Patience, grasshopper. It may take a fair while, but monitors live a very long time so in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter.

owen.richards · #8 (**permalink**) 04-13-2008, 05:20 AM

croc doc just gave you the best advice you could ever ask for.

razeraze · #9 (**permalink**) 04-14-2008, 11:08 PM

As Crocdoc suggested you need to change how you view the reptile and figure out how to make it comfortable.
The absolute best luck I had with my water monitor was building a cage big enough to get into and petting her while she was in her pond. The pond was her safe zone and she was less aggressive in it. Only when she went into her pond, did I start petting her. I used to pull her out of the pond thinking she would realize running into the pond was counter productive, but after months of that not working I decided to use the pond to my advantage.
So my suggestion is use food to coax the reptile out of hides, and put in a large water bowl, with fake lily pads for cover and pet the monitor only when she is in the pond and feels secure. Do not pick her up out of the pond or take her out of the burrows.
Also if the reptile never calms down, deal with it and love it for being a reptile and not a lap dog.