The Savannah Monitor, Varanus exanthematicus

Introduction

The Savannah Monitor is one of the most harmed animals in the reptile trade. Very few of these animals reach anything near their prospective 20-30 year life span. It has been estimated by some keepers that fewer than 1% of imported animals reach 5 years, and by some in the reptile trade that the average life span of a Savannah Monitor after touching ground on US soil is 1 year.

Though we cannot possibly know the true average life span, inferences can be made through published statistics. According to the UNEP-WCMC CITES trade database 1, almost 600,000 Savannah Monitors have been imported into the United States since 1975, with a peak of 48,073 in 1994. A large portion of those have been gravid females whose eggs are then farmed, making the total number of foreign monitors introduced into the US staggeringly higher. If this information is correct, where are all these monitors now?

The frighteningly limited life span is due firstly to a high level of misinformation regarding the conditions in which these animals should be kept. The Internet is full of outdated care sheets suggesting monitors be kept in fish aquariums with newspaper substrate and a 100 watt pet store heat bulb. There exists a deadly assumption that since other types of reptiles can be kept this way, the care of monitors should be no different. When studying the health and longevity of monitors in captivity, it is greatly apparent that these methods of husbandry are failing miserably.

Secondly, despite the very specific and demanding care needs of the Savannah Monitor, these animals seem to be acquired with the ease of a pack of baseball cards. Savannah Monitors are available at any reptile show for as little as $7.00 US, free to wind up an impulse purchase by those seeking a new and more exotic or “advanced” reptile to keep.

The vast majority of these animals are fed an all-rodent diet with insufficient basking and exercise areas to digest such meals, and are given wildly insufficient humidity levels. The monitors become dehydrated and/or obese, lethargic, and usually finally succumb to death due to illness, liver complications, or stress from overhandling.

What you will read here is the experience of monitor keepers stemming from changes in care style over the last 7-10 years. These newer husbandry methods have given great success to keepers of all monitor species, and have replicated the monitors’ natural habitat sufficiently to bring success in not only very prolonged life spans and quality of life and health, but also success in difficult captive breeding projects.