Choosing a Monitor
What should be apparent after you read this site through is that for a Savannah Monitor (or any monitor) to thrive and live a long life, certain resources will be required. When weighing the decision to take on caring for a potentially four foot lizard with a potentially fifteen to twenty year life span, your personal situation should be evaluated with a degree of honesty.
Is a Savannah Monitor right for you?
Although seen as such, Savannah Monitors are not beginner lizards, and when making the decision as to whether to make such a purchase, several factors need to be weighed:
Space: As you will see from the section on minimum cage size, these monitors require a formidable amount of space in order to maintain health. Do you have the room to house an adult monitor that will ultimately require an 8 foot long x 4 foot wide enclosure?
Cost: Equally as serious is the monetary cost in adequately feeding and housing this type of animal over the course of its lifetime. Building new cages as the monitor grows can be expensive. The food bill for the duration of the animal’s life is staggering. The electricity required to heat an enclosure that large begins to add up.
Life Situation: The stability present in your life should also be evaluated. Are you in your teens, and potentially going away to college at some point? Who will care for the monitor in your absence? Do you rent an apartment that has a no exotic pets policy? How are you going to hide an 8 foot enclosure from your landlord? Do you have a stable job and home, with stable income? Do you have the support of your family members, who may or may not be thrilled at the idea of feeder cockroach colonies living alongside them?
Motives: In addition, motives for purchase should be evaluated. Are you buying the monitor because it makes you look like a more advanced keeper, because bearded dragons are for kiddies and monitors are more exotic and complicated? Or are you buying the monitor for the enjoyment of watching the development and growth of such a graceful wild animal?
Temperament: As all monitors are wild animals, what if the monitor never quite “calms down”? Are you prepared to house and care for an overly defensive, skittish lizard for its lifetime if that’s what the situation turns out to be?
All these criteria are worth paying attention to. And while this site addresses the vast number of deaths we encounter through years of lurking on forums, what we don’t mention enough is the additional problem of the many animals that wind up on Craigslist because the requirements for housing and feeding were more than the keeper bargained for.
Wild caught animals
Make no mistake, if you are purchasing a Savannah Monitor, there is a 99.5% chance (some say higher) you are buying a wild caught animal, and supporting the wild caught pet trade. Fewer than 20 people in the United States are breeding V. exanthematicus. Imported at between $5 US and $7 US, there is simply no monetary justification for starting Savannah Monitor captive breeding projects to offset the trafficking of these animals.
When purchasing most animals you will see an acronym along the lines of “WC”, “CB”, or “CBB”. “WC”, as you can guess, stands for “Wild Caught”. Once upon a time, “CB” stood for “Captive Bred”, so if you saw a CB you could be assured you were supporting something worthwhile. Now, “CB” stands for “Captive Born”, a loophole importers and wholesalers use to fake people into thinking they are supporting a breeding project. It essentially means a gravid, wild caught female is imported, to have her eggs farmed and hatched. As a result, “CBB” was coined, which means “Captive Born and Bred”. This is the only acronym reflecting a true reliable breeding project.
Finally, choosing a monitor
With most lizards, it can be rewarding to acquire a hatchling and watch it grow and flourish. Sadly, due to the flourishing import market, most Savannah Monitor hatchlings die. Whether due to illness, parasites, or the stress of poor importation conditions, hatchlings generally have a short life span. It’s better to acquire a juvenile or established monitor, with a better chance of survival.
If ordering from the Internet, there is little chance you will be able to verify anything about the animal, save for most likely seeing a few photos. There is generally no way to find out whether it’s been fed the typical human food cast-offs (gizzards, ground meat, etc), or whether it’s overly lethargic. If you have a chance to actually see the animal, there are a few things to look for.
One is demeanor. While it may sound strange, if you are acquiring a juvenile, a monitor that is overly defensive is not a bad thing. This usually means it’s well enough in its health to act like a juvenile monitor, and is likely not succumbing to illness or bad husbandry. If you pick the monitor up and it lays there half-limp, it may just be that it’s not warm enough. But it also may be suffering from illness.
Look for signs of health. Eyes should be bright, there should not be disastrously stuck sheds, especially around the toes. The base of the tail and the back of the legs should be full and not scrawny (a sign of dehydration or malnourishment). The monitor should also not look overly obese.
Unfortunately, truth be told the odds of finding an animal that meets these requirements are somewhat slim. More often than not, a newly acquired monitor can be in bad shape, especially if kept too cold and fed a poor diet, as so many are.