Goanna Ranch

[treevaranus]

I agree with what you're saying Scott,

What I am trying to say is that Frank is stepping out of his league by making attacks on wild monitor biologists, and outlandish claims of wild monitor behaviors never seen before(by anyone except for FR).

I do not disagree that FR is good at what he is, a reptile breeder. However he is way out of his 'specialization' when discussing wild monitors. Which goes back to my reasoning in my initial post, when Spike was looking to ask FR about monitor biology and ecology... Something that is not Frank's 'cup of tea'.....

As FR got good at what he does(breed monitors), he developed quite a bit of an ego. With this ego, he became confident that because he breeds monitors, he knows what they do in the wild, challenging renown monitor biologists who have dedicated many years and decades to studying them in the wild. Challenging them in Australia, or Indonesia, or Africa, while sitting in his backyard in Arizona.....

There are clearly two separate aspects here.. captivity vs. wild.

Since monitors have all originated in the wild(they are wild animals), I see it better to base their needs and requirements of what they need in captivity off of what they use in nature. After all, that is where they come from/originated from!!!

Going by FR's stance, he has a bit of an opposite twist of beliefs. He believes that studying the behaviors, biology, and ecology of monitors in captivity(man made/artificial/not natural/not where monitors originated from) is a way of understanding wild monitors...

That just sounds backwards and assenine to me. Therefore, i feel that FR is way out of his league, to try to step in to the wild fora, and contest and denounce people who have experience are out in the field day and night, for weeks/months/years....

[jungleshadows]

Going by FR's stance, he has a bit of an opposite twist of beliefs. He believes that studying the behaviors, biology, and ecology of monitors in captivity(man made/artificial/not natural/not where monitors originated from) is a way of understanding wild monitors...

I actually think that can be done to an extent. No you won't be able to figure out everything. But you will be able to learn alot of things and use it to better understand them in the wild.

By putting them in a cage they do not change into something else they are still very much wild. Watching them grow you will learn how they grow, the potential they have, and a bit of their language.

I think things can be learned on both sides of this fence. Getting everyone on the same team is the hard part.

[treevaranus]

yes, but the things that FR claims that occurs which the biologists disagree with him on, are all behaviors which are the product of captivity...

Pair Bonding- We are the ones forcing the animals to live in the same enclosures together, share the same resources, have a limited distance to get away from one another, etc.. We are the ones forcing them to live together. As the scientists have said before, open up the cage door, and see how social they really are. This is not something that FR has tested to disprove his theory...

Multi Clutching- This is a product of food intake, and perhaps stable/consistent conditions. If food is optimal(being fed a lot- you have that ability in captivity), females will cycle more frequently. It is very unlikely that monitors eat anywhere near as much as what they are offered in captivity. We are allowing them the extra food(a product of us, not 'nature') Also, climatic conditions/weather/seasons play an important role with this as well. Animals in captivity are not exposed to the same natural occurrences that wild animals are... Even Frank himself has said that the animals he keeps outdoors do not breed as frequently as the ones kept inside... By eliminating/limiting seasonal variability/inclimate weather, etc... animals are able to continue on the same physiological cycle, free of most stresses which would otherwise cause a shutdown in reproductive cycling. There are many other limiting factors which would affect reproductive output that are also not experienced in captivity...

Even measuring growth in captivity may not even be a legitimate method to imply towards wild monitors, as the frequency and quantities of food intake may vary drastically due to many factors as well... ie. seasonal fluctuations, drought-shortage of food, inclimate weather, etc... In captivity, growth is caused by what we provide the lizards with- it is all about us and our input into the system.... Therefore we are the limiting factor in their growth, reproduction, social behaviors, etc...

There truly is no way of modeling what occurs with the three behaviors metnioned, in nature after what we see in captivity, as we are the ones that limit and control what occurs.

[jungleshadows]

Key words in my post maybe you missed them?

I think can be done extent potential

We are not making them something they are not. Well with the exception of crossing species.

We are only bringing out there potential it may be to the max but it is all there to begin with. To say we change them that much is very arrogant.

Of course they are different they are in a box in our care. But not to the extreme as you make it sound. After all tossing a rock in the pond makes it different, but doesn't change the fact it is a pond.

This is just how I view things you may see things different then I. Thats just how the cookie crumbles. No biggie

[crocdoc]

Originally posted by Jeff_Favelle
Are these the same biologists that claim that monitors don't have the ability to multi-clutch in the wild?

LOL!

Unfortunately, Jeff, as Bob said you are falling into the trap of believing what the 'anti-scientists' (let's call them AS's) say scientists think. It's easy to win arguments by making up stuff about what the other side thinks, then tearing it down.

For example, you'll see AS's saying that scientists thinks monitors can't multiclutch in the wild. SHvar has taken this one step further and said that the 'experts' claim they don't multiclutch at all (implying wild or captivity).

If you read all of the threads you'd see that what scientists are actually saying is that it has never been observed or documented in the wild and, in the case of many Australian monitors, is highly unlikely to occur because of something we Australians like to call seasons (something AS's wouldn't encounter on their brief trips to Australia - it's easy to imagine lace monitors breeding all year 'round when you've only been here in summer).

AS's have also said scientists think Sceloporus don't pair up, then showed a photo of them pairing to prove the scientists wrong. That's confusing monitors with other lizards. No scientist I know claims that no lizards pair up, just that certain ones don't. I know where particular groups of male and female water dragons hang out and can go back to those places time after time to see the same male and female(s) hanging out. Unfortunately, they aren't monitors, either.


I've even seen the AS's claim scientists compare monitor social heirarchies to wolves (who? where?) and that scientists look down upon John Cann because he isn't one of us when in fact he's a very well respected herper here. He himself wouldn't define the winter breeding gatherings of scrub pythons as being social, either, as there are reasons they gather in those exact areas. Also, despite being in the tropics, the seasons are different enough to affect the behaviours of reptiles (ie there are reasons for those scrubbies to gather in those exact places, but I'm not going to go into it). Unfotunately, you'd have to be in Australia all year round to learn that.

[kap10cavy]

Unfotunately, you'd have to be in Australia all year round to learn that.

Is that an invite? You gonna give me a job? I understand the easiest way to get a visa to OZ is to have a job waiting on you.
I could be wrong, it happened once before.
Now I gotta update my passport if I can find it.

Scott

[crocdoc]

Originally posted by jungleshadows
Key words in my post maybe you missed them?

I think can be done extent potential

We are not making them something they are not. Well with the exception of crossing species.

We are only bringing out there potential it may be to the max but it is all there to begin with. To say we change them that much is very arrogant.

Of course they are different they are in a box in our care. But not to the extreme as you make it sound. After all tossing a rock in the pond makes it different, but doesn't change the fact it is a pond.

This is just how I view things you may see things different then I. Thats just how the cookie crumbles. No biggie

Jody, while all this is true and I agree that we can learn about certain behaviours of wild monitors by studying captives, the important thing is to recognise which of those behaviours can be extrapolated. Unfortunately, most of the arguments have been about things that are affected by captivity, such as spatial choices (for example, whether to live near or far from potential mates), access to heat for basking and access to a steady supply of food.


The spatial thing is a no-brainer. Captive monitor pairs are always within a few metres of each other because there are enclosure walls restricting movements. I have hundreds of cosy shots of my pair hanging all over each other, but somehow you don't see that happening outside the short breeding season in the wild.

Access to heat and food is also a no-brainer. My monitors have access to heat and food throughout the warmer months, even when it is cold and raining outside (remember that I live in the middle of lace monitor range). I've watched my captives' growth rates far exceed wild lacies I see on a regular basis and it would be a fair assumption that my female's triple clutching would be unachievable by the wild ones around here. For starters, her first clutch has already been laid when most of the wild ones are freshly emerged from winter and are still trying to fatten up for breeding. Her second clutch has already been laid when wild females are just gravid. Her third clutch is laid around the time the wild ones have just laid theirs.

Even people who keep them in captivity here, but outdoors, can tell you that their animals pretty much follow the pattern of the wild ones.

[crocdoc]

haha scott!

[Jeff_Favelle]

I didn't take any sides, just asked a question. I'm not all that interested in monitors, captive or wild. They are really cool, and I hope they are being studied in the wild AND produced in captivity.

If captive (optimal, pulse feeding, etc etc) allows monitors to lay literally 5-7 clutches per annum, why wouldn't it stand to reason that they'd do the same in a "bountiful year" in the wild? Why would they have the mechanisms to be able to do it if they didn't utilize it once in a while. And if they do, how come it isn't observed? Lack of funds? Bad observations? Lying? Stupidity?

Interesting topic nonetheless. Hopefully it doesn't get as heated as on Varanus.net.

[crocdoc]

Originally posted by Jeff_Favelle
If captive (optimal, pulse feeding, etc etc) allows monitors to lay literally 5-7 clutches per annum, why wouldn't it stand to reason that they'd do the same in a "bountiful year" in the wild? Why would they have the mechanisms to be able to do it if they didn't utilize it once in a while. And if they do, how come it isn't observed? Lack of funds? Bad observations? Lying? Stupidity?

Interesting topic nonetheless. Hopefully it doesn't get as heated as on Varanus.net.

Very legitimate questions, Jeff. The big question is, for most species is there such a thing as a truly bountiful year, one bountiful enough to allow multiclutching?

For example, lets look at local lace monitors (since this is the species I keep and the species I see in the wild most frequently). A bountiful year would have to combine clear, sunny days throughout the warmer months with an unusually high supply of food. In the 24 years I've been here I've yet to go through an entire summer without a significant number of rainy days, cloudy and cool enough to prevent monitors from emerging from their hides on those days, thereby not feeding or doing anything that would contribute to multiclutching. On those same days my captives are warm and feeding, the female either gaining fat after laying or adding nutrients to an upcoming clutch.

This past summer has been a particularly dry year, so there have been lots of sunny days. In fact, far more than usual. Are the monitors multiclutching? No, they're dying. A trip to a national park early in the season provided a fraction of the monitor sightings I would normally expect. When speaking to one of the rangers, he said the drought was hitting the monitor population hard. Not enough water, not enough food (drought affects the food supply).

As far as observing multiclutching in the wild, the studies on lace monitor reproduction haven't just hoped to catch a female in the process of laying. Many termite mounds were examined and watched, animals tagged, wild females examined with laproscopy, museum specimens (which have been collected over a very long time) dissected etc. A strong pattern soon emerges. Even amongst the museum specimens, covering many years, both good and bad, females only show developing ova within a very narrow time band, coinciding with the known breeding season. If multiclutching were occuring, one would expect to find females with developing ova before and after this narrow band.

Does this mean it is impossible for wild females to multiclutch? Certainly not. However, it is certainly not the norm (if it occurs at all) and we can't really say that this is 'what they do'. Even if we found one example of a wild female multiclutching, it wouldn't be significant enough to rewrite a species description for a reptile book and say 'lace monitors multiclutch'. That would be like describing humans as being over 8 feet tall because of a couple of freaks that have attained that height.

[jungleshadows]

DK I read what you wrote and looks to me like we agree on the subject itself atleast. Maybe not on which behaviors to choose but atleast we agree on something.

Guess that makes me on the fence rather then either side.

[Jeff_Favelle]

But Lacies are a relatively LARGE monitor, so yeah, its understandable that maybe they don't have the resources available to them to multiclutch. But what about Storr's, Caudos, Glauerti, etc etc. They can lay a 2 clutches 3 weeks apart. Seems pretty hard to believe that in nature, they wouldn't get a 3-4 week pulse feeding bunge to support that.

Yes, only certain humans get 8 feet, but that's due to DNA and HEREDITARY factors. Monitors multiclutching is due to conditions. HUGE DIFFERENCE. If the conditions allow it, a 5 foot human isn't going to grow to 8 feet just because it gets more hamburgers. But a monitor that hasn't multiclutched for 4 or 5 seasons that all of a sudden gets a constant food burst for 2 months straight is probably going to turn that into eggs.

Maybe not. Just my opinion. Can't see why they'd have the mechanism if they didn't use it. Vestigial reproduction? Doesn't make evolutionary sense.

[K1LOS]

Jeff, i think you might be missing the point. You are still arguing as if everyone is saying that it is impossible for them to multi-clutch. Nobody is saying that.

In fact, Jeff and Crocdoc are arguing the same point. You are both saying in optimal conditions that multi-clutching is probable. The only difference is Crocdoc is saying that the conditions are unlikely to be THAT optimal in the wild.

I agree that there is a great deal of information that can be learned from captive animals. If this were not the case, then why would scientists bother collecting? Likely, there is a lot less to be learned from cb specimens, and i'm guessing it would become progressively less through the generations. I would also agree that captive conditions would greatly effect behavioural factors. So i guess, that would put me on the fence as well.

CrocDoc, my question to you is are your lacies cb or wc? If they are cb perhaps the ability to multi-clutch is something that eventually comes through generations of the best conditions. If your specimens are wc, then maybe that says that multi-clutching only requires great conditions temporarily. Just speculation though.

Geoff

[crocdoc]

Originally posted by Jeff_Favelle
But Lacies are a relatively LARGE monitor, so yeah, its understandable that maybe they don't have the resources available to them to multiclutch. But what about Storr's, Caudos, Glauerti, etc etc. They can lay a 2 clutches 3 weeks apart. Seems pretty hard to believe that in nature, they wouldn't get a 3-4 week pulse feeding bunge to support that.

... Can't see why they'd have the mechanism if they didn't use it. Vestigial reproduction? Doesn't make evolutionary sense.

The problem here is that lacies can also multiclutch quickly in captivity (my female has laid clutches just over four weeks apart). Is it vestigial in them but not in other monitors?

I think their real ability is to time reproductive events to when food and warmth are available, rather than relying on seasonal changes in day length or some external factor. This means that if winter goes on for too long, they can cycle and mate later, when they do warm up and get food. In captivity, because they get constant access to heat and plenty of food, they keep reacting to this trigger.

As far as food pulses go, almost every monitor one sees in the wild is half the weight of its captive counterparts. All of the photos I see of monitors on these forums look obese compared to wild ones, except for the odd one that everyone screams is malnourished. Sure, they occasionally do get big feedups and can put on fat (V spenceri is particularly known to do this, living in a boom or bust environment), but for the most part this is not the case.

So again we get back to defining the difference between 'can' and 'does'. They may have the ability, but so far no solid evidence of them multiclutching. That applies to the small monitors, too. Eventually someone may prove that it happens on very rare occasion, under unusual circumstances, but it will still be 'on rare occasion, under unusual circumstances' rather than the norm ('what they do').

[crocdoc]

Kilos, my animals are CB but only one generation away from WC. There is no way that any monitor has been bred enough for there to have been selective breeding for something as complex multiclutching. It all comes down to conditions.