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Reptile Forum, Reptile Classifieds - CaptiveBred
A site to share your Reptile experiances & ask questions
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shay_
Contributing Member
Joined: 26 Nov 2006
Posts: 86
Location: San Diego
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 Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 4:05 am Post subject: |
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| wow Sam, not only are you pretty good with monitor behavior, but you seem pretty good at human behavior as well. lol, nice little drama spread sheet. |
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Peter Parrot
Site Moderator
Joined: 15 Jan 2006
Posts: 5402
Location: Over the bridge
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| Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 4:24 am Post subject: |
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 ....and a merry Christmas to you too "danceswithsavs".
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dangermouse
Contributing Member
Joined: 04 Oct 2006
Posts: 59
Location: uk
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| Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 5:08 am Post subject: |
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got to be honest i didn't see any kissing. who was kissing who, did i miss something. in the second vid i saw a lizard go to bite a womens face. is that the kissing part? besides that i show a sav flicking its tongue out. i have no idea about training a lizard so please could someone explain it to me
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bearded dragon, carolina corn snake, creamsicle corn snake ,blizzard gecko,blazing blizzard gecko,2 albino patternless geckos, 4 snow mack geckos, chocolate albino gecko, melanistic gecko, super hypo tangerine gecko, crested gecko, 2 female rats |
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Michael C
I've settled in...
Joined: 17 Sep 2006
Posts: 27
Location: Thailand
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| Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 5:37 am Post subject: |
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Here is an example of what they were calling 'training':
| Quote: | "We decided to put him in the bathtub with deep water in order to exhaust him and then be the 'heroes' that 'rescue' him......"
"....After 5 minutes or so, he flipped on his back, head underwater, and remained still. This was a frightening image, as we had lost a monitor to drowning and found his corpse in the same pose...."
"We are, ourselves, upset over this inexplicable defensive behaviour, not only because it violated our expectations, but also because this is not behaviour that is compatible with living as a pet and he would have to be kept as a breeding specimen if he keeps it up." |
So, no, you did not miss anything except the abuse and torture of monitor lizards.
Michael |
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Rickeezee
Site Moderator
Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Posts: 9249
Location: Kent
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| Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 8:01 am Post subject: |
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I have read this thread with interest.
I am certainly not an expert and am unable to experientially comment on the training of lizards.
However I am familiar with conditioned responses, stimuli, triggers CR's CS's etc as used in behavioural therapy (humans) and aversion therapy (humans) and the various psychological factors that shape our personality and psychological development such as social conditioning, nature nurture theories and so forth.
My views are simplistic, beat an animal and it will learn to fear you, feed an animal and it will learn to a degree to rely upon you for food and may learn to perform certain tricks to gain the reward. Personally I would much prefer to feed the animal with out the tricks. If I want to see an animal perform I would go to the circus, happily I am pleased to say I dont want to see an animal perform and will not go to a circus that has animals in its show. Or any circus at all as I hate clowns.
My reward is trying my best to offer good husbandry. If an animal becomes tame then fair play but I would not try to force the issue.
I look after a chameleon that demonstrates trust towards me and I am sure if I broke down the chameleons behaviours there must be some trigger and some reward going on, example; I open the viv door, he happily walks onto my arm and allows me to stroke him. I have no illusions he does not do this because he loves me but probably because he knows he will then be out for quite some time free roaming. Basic yes, maybe even an inadvertent conditioned response, e.g. open viv door, place hand in, he knows if he climbs on me he gets the reward of free roaming.
Controlled stimuli opening the viv door, conditioned response cham climbs onto hand and comes out of viv, reinforcer is the reward of free roaming leading to a conditioned response which is climbing onto my hand when viv door is open.
Again a simplistic view perhaps, but I do not see the scientific value in half drowning an animal in the name of research? If indeed this is the case. Perhaps it's me, but I just dont get it for many reasons. One could argue that the animal has learnt to fear the person that put it in the water in the first place, not that it is grateful to be saved If the idea of saving the animal is to condition it to rely upon the owner for survival then what does this actually prove? More importantly why try to create this response in the first place? No I dont get it at all.
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crocdoc
Key Member
Joined: 07 Dec 2005
Posts: 262
Location: Sydney Australia - best address on Earth :)
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| Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2006 3:12 am Post subject: |
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Wow, go away for a holiday and look what I miss!
| danceswithsavs wrote: |
Did you figure out yet that the website you said was mine and suggested i had deleted the content really belongs to a crocodile trainer who does not own a pair of savs named Buzzy and Lilly but just finds my project worthy of note? Do any facts at all matter to you? |
I get it now. If you practice something nasty (like throwing a monitor in deep water so that it fears it may be drowning) and post a link to a website explaining the 'technique' that you are using, it's okay as long as it is someone else's website. The website, of course, belongs to some mysterious 'crocodile trainer'. It doesn't matter that the entire webpage is a description of your monitors and your training 'techniques', you are blameless because it isn't your webpage.
Yes, makes perfect sense to me.
By the way, I have worked with crocodiles for many years (hence my name). Any serious professional who has worked with crocodiles would guffaw at your drowning/saving technique for taming monitors, simply because reptiles don't work that way. It's a case of your anthropomorphism getting in the way. If you throw a monitor into deep water and it panics, then pull it out, it will not recognise that you are 'saving' it and will not thank you for it. If it does not struggle, that's becaues it is too exhausted to do otherwise. All that 'technique' does is scream 'I do not understand reptiles' in 5 metre high capital letters.
Here's another tip. When you've kept monitors for a while (as in, beyond the two baby savannah monitors you currently own) you'll learn that they usually tame down on their own as they learn to trust their keeper. Trying to drown them would only slow down this process. As I said when you tried this post on another forum (and to which you failed to respond), I have a pair of extremely 'tame' lace monitors which I have never made any active attempt to train, yet they just turned out that way from my dealing with them in a sensible manner. The male even comes when I call him, knowing that this will lead to being returned to the enclosure for feeding. Whoopee, they can be trained. No big surprise. Whoopee, they can be tame. No big surprise. However, you will see that there are no fancy (or cruel) 'techniques' and I have not posted links to 'someone else's' website explaining my amazing techniques. That's because everyone that has kept monitors for a while would have seen their monitors 1. become calm around their keepers and 2. learn things, particularly routines. No big deal, I'm afraid.
Every few months someone just like you appears on a forum, full of the belief that they are doing something unique, unusual and amazing. You aren't. Quite the opposite, you are doing things that are quite cruel (but, as someone pointed out on the other forum, the animal protection agencies unfortunately aren't as active when it comes to reptiles as they are with mammals). As I said before, I don't really care if you like training your monitors or think you are doing something amazing. You are entitled to your beliefs. I do really object to cruel 'taming' techniques, such as letting a monitor think it is drowning so that you can 'save' it. That's just plain nasty and achieves nothing.
By the way, a friendly tip from one reptile keeper to another: Allowing your monitors 24/7/365 free roam around your home will shorten their lives, unless your home is heated and humidified like an African savannah. As much as you think that you are doing the right thing by giving them plenty of space, long term they are better off being enclosed with the right conditions. I let my monitors free roam for a few hours each day, but they spend most of their time in an enclosure where they have access to basking lights, adequate humidity etc.
One last thing. I didn't say anything about domesticating savannah monitors, that was your quote:
| danceswithsavs wrote: | | Perhaps, thousands of years from now, someone will use the example of domesticated savs to argue against domestication, eh? |
All I did was suggest you get a dog. They have been domesticated for that very purpose (human companion), started with better stock (social pack mammal vs solitary reptile) and no animal needs to be collected from the wild to be made your pet (as your savannah monitors have).
I still suggest you learn a bit about domestication to understand why we have domestic dogs, not domestic savannah monitors, keeping in mind that mankind has been around reptiles for as long as we have been around dogs/wolves and there's a reason we domesticated one and not the other. Here's a hint: the very first wolf cub raised by humans would still make a better companion and more easily trained pet than any savannah monitor. They're a social mammal, monitors are solitary reptiles.
Furthermore, to domesticate a species (at the risk of appearing repetitive, but for some reason necessary here) you must breed them and selectively breed the offspring which show the traits you want. You aren't domesticating anything at the moment. If you want to argue against getting a dog, use another argument. |
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signchris
Contributing Member
Joined: 11 Dec 2006
Posts: 76
Location: Athens Greece
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| Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2006 2:20 pm Post subject: |
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Wow!
That was a great post Dave!Never thought that will reply to posts like this again...
Christos |
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sam
CaptiveBred Addict!
Joined: 10 Nov 2006
Posts: 711
Location: Glasgow, uk
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| Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 3:32 am Post subject: |
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wow...i really need to get out of just the amphibian section and browse the whole forum more regularly-to avoid missing gems like these!
It seems this is a dead topic now danceswithsavs has left, but for what its worth I will chisel a little reply, just some musings on the subject of this debate and how it went.
First of all, after looking at those videos, my initial impression was of a woman simply trying to train her pet (a cute little lizard/substitute child which will get to be a very BIG cute little lizard/substitute child!) to associate her face with food. Now, while i suppose it is an advantage to "teach" your animal to associate you with being fed-this being the basis of many taming/training techniques-i am quite sure its not a good plan to teach a large predatory animal that food comes from your face or indeed any part of your body! This sounds like an accident waiting to happen. Is it not true that when feeding snakes one uses tongs to prevent the animal assosiating your hand with food? In some ways this reminds me of a training technique used for saker falcons:
The falcons were fed strips of meat attached to the eye sockets of an antelope skull, "training" the birds to associate the eyes with food. This would cause a hungry bird to have a good peck at antelopes eyes simply because they believe that this is where food comes from. The "trained" falcons were then flown at the same time as salukis were ran-and the hungry birds would peck the eyes out of antelopes, blinding them for the salukis to bring down. Peculiar training technique for an even more bizarre form of hunting.
So, while these monitors appear to have been "trained" to kiss mummy when they are hungry, i am not sure that this fits with the aim of conditioning these animals to live in a house with humans and, in all honesty, be a substitute for a child.
I have a belief that our exotic pets seem to be quite lucky in that we really do try our damnedest to meet their requirements as far as environment is concerned-more of an unspoilt example of the species than a pet. Its this "keeping things natural" approach that leads me to have a leaning away from selective breeding for unusual morphs, and a leaning away from training exotics. As has been said earlier-dogs are far better companion animals than savs!
Therefore-in my humble opinion-the very experiment going on here was not really the best use of the owners time and effort. The techniques used seemed to undermine the initial aim of house training monitors, which to be brutally honest seemed folly to begin with. Unsuitable techniques for an unsuitable end. Then of course there is the business of saving drowning monitors to win their companionship... this needs little comment as the cruelty and ignorance involved is self evident.
What we must appreciate is that all animals are different-they fill different niches in the wild, and we create different niches for them in captivity. Needless to say, its not the best plan to be moving animals into unsuitable niches! If danceswithsavs was to look primarily at the needs of her scaly little children (such as proper accomadation as opposed to being a house pet) and remove the focus from themself and what THEY want to get out of their animal, i am sure the lizards would benefit hugely. If you want an unusual companion-why not a small furry, or big furry? Rabbits, ferrets, dogs, cats, horses and the like have been kept for far far longer than savs, and are far more suited to what danceswithsavs seems tio be looking for in a pet.
Anyway, it is late, and while my ramblings have not covered all i wnat to say on the issue i find myself getting rather repetitive and preachy, so with that i shall get off to bed!
well done to peter parrot for keeping it all civil here, and well done to the people who read this account and reacted as you did-it speaks volumes of your fibre as animal keepers.
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crocdoc
Key Member
Joined: 07 Dec 2005
Posts: 262
Location: Sydney Australia - best address on Earth :)
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| Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 4:19 am Post subject: |
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| sam wrote: | | The "trained" falcons were then flown at the same time as salukis were ran-and the hungry birds would peck the eyes out of antelopes, blinding them for the salukis to bring down. |
Then the falcons pecked the eyes out of the salukis and it all went pear shaped  |
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johne.ev
Key Member
Joined: 05 Apr 2006
Posts: 312
Location: SUFFOLK
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| Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 8:29 pm Post subject: |
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| hahaha.... nice one Crocdoc. |
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