Savannah Monitor Handling Help

I just bought a baby savannah monitor the other day and i was wondering how do i go about interacting with him so in the future he becomes "tame". I understand that you can never really TAME a monitor but i want him to be used to being handled without biting or tail whipping. I have been reading online from various different sites on handling them and i am getting mixed answers. Some sites (and pet store owners) say the only way to get them used to being handled is by obviously handling them often, but other sites say that forced handling will result in stressing your monitor and could cause illness or death. When i try to handle my little baby he runs into his hide like i expect him to do but in order for me to handle him i have to go into his hide and force handle him. I just need some advice from experienced savannah monitor keepers on the proper way to get my sav used to being handled.

I'd like to start of by saying I'm a scientist - not a hobbyist. I don't anthropomorphize my pets/specimens.

The short answer is? They're both right. Can you tame a savannah by simply luring it to you over time, using the wild animal approach? Yes, absolutely but it takes a lot of time, and even very small mistakes can prolong the process, or ruin it entirely.

Can you tame a savannah monitor simply by forcehandling it? Again, absolutely. I have two savannah monitors, and both have become hand time via forcehandling. (One is 17" STL, the other is just shy of 4' total length, both are (believed to be) females)

The problems that sources like savannahmonitor.org claim to have with the forcehandling approach, i.e. that it makes them stop eating, seems to be some insane 1/1000 anomaly. I have dozens of friends and colleagues that have owned a variety of varanids and crocodylians, and I have never once had any of them give me a first or even second-hand account of forcehandling stressing a monitor to death. One of my friends has a 3 and a half foot long male with a bullet hole that passed through the rib cage, entering next to the spine just posterior to the left scapula, and exiting under the armpit on the right side. It eats fine, although it has a very slow gait for a varanid. My point is, these creatures are extremely durable, and have an intensely strong will to live. If one does go off of food, it is likely because of extraordinarily poor husbandry, disease, or parasites. I have only had my monitors turn down food once, and that was when I experimented with freeze dried insects.

Now. I personally have only dealt with animals that weren't excessively defensive when I acquired them. Talking to my friends, colleagues, and professors, I have identified 5 basic types of Varanid personalities.

1. The Sycophant: These are the rarest types, these are the ones that genuinely seem to crave human attention, and threat displays are extraordinarily rare. The taming is basically done for you, and they're basically very large bearded dragons.

2. The Cool Kid: When presented with forcehandling, they will basically sit there and let it happen. If they are closing their eyes, it is because they are scared, and actually The Coward which I will describe later. An animal lying still in your hands or on your lap, with its eyes open and looking around is of this type.

3. The Coward: These view escape as their only viable option. They will play dead, or run away, but will rarely if ever hiss, and probably never bite outside of a feeding time mishap. My eldest monitor is/was of this variety. This sounds like what you have, and I assure you that forcehandling is fine.

4. The Bully: Similar to the coward, they will rarely if ever bite, but they will do everything in their power to make you think they will. They will hiss, and tail lash, and puff up, and do everything else to generate a threat display. They are however, bluffing and won't likely follow through. My second monitor was of this variety, and she is doing fine. She did finally bite me once and got a mouthful of vinegar: She has not done it since, and has finally started behaving properly. She takes food, is active, and no longer generates a threat display.

5. The asshole: These are the nightmares of the varanid community. Usually adult or juvenile males that were wild caught and mistreated, they will bite and scratch and tail whip and hiss and shit all over you at every opportunity. Forcehandling IS THE ONLY OPTION in this case, but you need to take special precautions. I helped take care of a friend's monitor that had this disposition, and I can give you a few tips. The obvious ones are to wear gloves. They want you to leave them alone, and they think that biting and stuff will make you do so. If it works, you're training them to be assholes and you need to stop it. I designed a special way of making biting particularly unpleasant: I wear too sets of gloves. The outer glove is a standard gardening glove, and underneath that I wear a knit one-size-fits-all glove absolutely soaked in vinegar. The vinegar won't soak through on its own, but once the savannah monitor clamps down it forces small amounts of the liquid through and into its mouth, and the taste causes them to release. These monitors are a challenge, but it is a challenge that can be overcome with persistence and a small degree of bravery.

Brilliant!

I applaud you for that post thank you, my little sav is of the asshole type haha but hes only like 8 inches and ive only handled him (force handled) and he was biting, hissing, tail whipping, puffing up and shit on my hand but after like 3 minutes of her temper tantrum she kinda just sat in my hand puffing and breathing hard...so im just gonna try and handle her often and hopefully she turns out to be a sweetheart

Yeah I called my sav a him and a her in that post...made myself look stupid lol

I personally think the "lost the will to live" thing is stupid

Well. Some herps can and will stress to death after capture with lots of forcehandling, or just flat out be injured by handling, such as some chameleons, some skinks, and whiptail lizards.

Never heard of it happening to a monitor. Hm. Well, it gets stated fairly often but I don't think it can be understated that they calm down a lot with age too. I'd consider it routine for him/her to be at least a little bit defensive until 12-15 inches. My first sav wasn't entirely comfortable with me until about that size.

If you're feeding him/her live prey, use tongs if possible. If they won't take crickets that way, they should take earthworms and mealworms. At 8 inches he/she could probably take fuzzies as well.

You'll get a lot of people telling you not to feed mice as they make savs fat, or fur causes impactions. Again this is a simple case of "based on what"? There was a study done a few years back analyzing the droppings of young savannah monitors in Senegal and Ghana showing that they dined mostly on invertebrates. The issue here is that young savannah monitors are ultimately too small to eat much else... and again, hobbyists hear one study and their entire paradigm shifts. Ignore them, Savannahs have been relatively common pets for years now, mice were the staple for most of that, and they have always done just fine. I heard a (Hilariously unfounded) claim recently that fur can cause impactions. I my first sav managed to swallow a (rather large) wood chip along with some earthworms I was feeding. She was fine, it didn't even delay her usual defecation schedule.

The key is simply temperature, cage layout, and a balanced diet. Feel free to make anything the staple, but make sure to mix it up. Over the course of the week, my younger sav will get a mix of mice, worms, crickets, roaches, fish, and usually 1-2 shrimp. If you have access to snails more power to you.

Feed about the same time every day, and at that age, I MEAN every day, and enter the room with tongs so she knows that's feeding time. Leave him/her alone around this time the last thing you need is to kick his/her defensiveness, only to develop food aggression.

Could you please post the peer reviewed articles in which the varanid personality types are defined? And if the original articles (or series) didn't describe it, could you provide the citations for the articles in which the approximate frequency of each personality type was established? Do the types apply to other groups of reptiles, or just varanids? I'm surprised to hear that the field has had so much progress since my last brain/behavior seminars. Of course, my professors did primarily focus on mammals.

The "personality type" descriptors were purely my own observations, and those of others I've known who have had experience with varanids. They weren't intended to be considered hard science anymore than (in my opinion) personality types should be considered in humans.

Force handling any monitor lizard is absoulutly the worst thing you can do to your animal. Its going backwards in the taming process.
Your not building any trust or partnership that way, you are simply dominating the animal into submission, after all what other choice does the poor lizard have, but to submit.
This is common sense.