The Savannah Monitor, Varanus exanthematicus

Feeding Intro

When examining the reasons behind the frighteningly low survival rates of the Savannah Monitor in captivity, improper diet is found to be the third arm in the trifecta of substandard monitor care, closely intertwined with inadequate housing and overhandling. Feeding a Savannah Monitor a diet meant for other monitors, other reptiles, dogs or cats, or even humans, will cause all sorts of health problems and ultimately a drastically shortened lifespan.

Food choice and frequency seems to be an area of high controversy. To avoid simply stating opinion, we will always go back to study the animal’s behavior in the wild. As previously stated, the monitor itself is the greatest teacher. In feeding, the monitor keeper does not need to reinvent the wheel and come up with wild concoctions and diets. In the wild, the monitor eats what is nutritionally best, and our job as responsible keepers is to try to reproduce this as best we can.

There have been enough studies done of the diet of the Savannah Monitor in the wild that we simply no longer have to guess or argue about the monitor’s list of prey items. For instance, Daniel Bennett writes in the Little Book of Monitor Lizards 1, “I have examined the stomach contents and fecal samples from over 200 of these animals in the wild. Only one specimen was recorded as having eaten a vertebrate, the rest had fed only on invertebrates.”

Bennett’s year 2000 study in Ghana found the Savannah Monitor eating crickets, centipedes, locusts, slugs, and other such invertebrates 2. Cisse, in 1972, examined the stomach contents of 28 individual monitors, and found the prey consisted of millipedes, crickets, grasshoppers, snails, and scorpions 3.

The Savannah Monitor, as such, is an invertebrate feeder, foraging almost solely on insects, as well as mollusks and crustaceans. In this manner, this monitor occupies a very small niche in the monitor world. Unlike almost all other monitors, it has never been found to be an “opportunistic feeder”, nor is it the “garbage disposal” that other monitors have a reputation for being. Given all prey options, it specifically hunts down invertebrates, and only invertebrates.4

From an evolutionary standpoint, you can further see below in the MRI of a Savannah Monitor skull 5 that as it ages the monitor adapts rear blunt teeth used in crushing as opposed to sharp, serrated teeth used in tearing 6.

So let’s discuss diet and explore a few options as to what to feed, and what not to feed your monitor.