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welcome to a new episode of reptiltv normally i start the episode with my intro animal. today that is not possible, because i wanted to show you once more for the last time our white leucistic nile monitor. yesterday we sent it off to the canaries. there i and jim patter have a breeding community and now there are two white monitors. we want to breed from the two of them on the canaries with its perfect climate and therefore we sent ours there yesterday. i took a few photos yesterday to show it to you once more.

interestingly, we acquired it a year ago; at the time i showed it to you. then it was as thick as my thumb. really tiny, it breezed in from togo. now, a year later, a splendid animal looks at you, a really lovely snow-white. to start with, it was sort of pink and you could see through the skin, but now it is snow-white. anything darker is "rubbish", at least from the terrarium viewpoint, if it is not totally white. otherwise i think white animals with black eyes are absolutely divine and that's why i wanted to show it once more. today's topic is not far removed from nile monitors.

in this case we're looking at the savannah monitor. it is our topic today. it also comes from west africa, where it has an enormous east-west range. this overlaps with the royal python range, except that it has an even larger range right up to kenya. that is where the savannah monitors occur. until now there has been little research. you read about various sub-species, but until now it has really been specified only as varanus exanthematicus. no sub-species have been accurately catalogued,

so that you could look them up. as i said, it is our topic today. the exciting thing is that there are true colour variants in the savannah monitors. they are also bred on farms in west africa. there interesting colour variants hatch out; we'll show you a few. contrary to earlier opinions, these animals are always great, lovely and tame. this one is a 2-year old male; apart from the fact that it wants to be free, it is completely tame, without having to be handled a lot. this one really has had enough.

but they don't bite, they are tame, they are great. of course, they grow into really large animals, larger than a bearded dragon or suchlike. but if you can provide the space, with the savannah monitor you have an impressive, rewarding, terrarium animal that is easy to care for. that's why we're presenting them today. now we come to keeping savannah monitors. i have already said that they overlap the royal python's range and so they have the same climate. i think that mistakes are often made with savannah monitors, because many people think that a desert climate means hot during the day and switch off all heating at night. that is totally wrong; they need just as robust a climate as the royal python.

that means day-time air temperature 30-31 degrees. at night you have to heat as well, at 25-26 degrees, as for the royal python. in addition - and this explains the things in front of me - they need these high temperatures permanently. a heat panel is ideal for this. it heats the terrarium and we need really sunny spots. i went to africa and filmed what it is like there. between you and me, silly ass that i am, i've gone and lost the chip. i can't find it anywhere and i had filmed a wonderful sequence with the climate and everything.

and i lost the chip! if it turns up, we’ll follow it up and show you how they live in africa. but i can at least tell you how really hot it is. the animals really only come out when the sun is really blazing. so you have to use good lamps, hqi or mixed light lamps to imitate the sun in the terrarium. these are 70 or 80 watts. they would be for a 1 metre small or juvenile terrarium; these lamps would be fine for that. you really have to bung in sunlight, or warmth, as well as uv light.

a very important point: correct uv light is absolutely essential for savannah monitors. in the wild they spend all day in blazing sunlight, if the sun goes in, as we noticed when we were looking for animals, and were trying to photograph them, if the sun disappears or a few clouds come over, they disappear. it is just too cold for them. so the motto is: 30 degrees is too cold, we go home. provide correct heat and light, uv light, hot and bright. then the savannah monitors are happy. now we come to the animal management regulations for monitors. the federal agency tells us how large the terrarium must be.

for savannah monitors it is 5 x 2 x 2 head-torso length. head-torso does not include the tail; the torso goes right down to the hind feet. here i have chosen a 1-year old animal to measure. we hold it here. 26 cm head-torso length, from the tip of the snout to behind the back legs it is 26 cm, give or take a centimetre. as i said, this is a 1-year old animal. the one i was holding before was a 2-year old animal, which i measured as well. it was 30 cm.

let's start from 26 cm. 5 x 2 x 2. 5 x 26 is 1.3 m; x 2 is the depth, 26 x 2 is 52, so 52 deep. and 52 cm high. that would be the size of container for this animal. as i said it is only one year old; the 2-year old is 30 cm 5 x 30, that gives us 1.5 m x 60 cm x 60 cm. that would be a terrarium where you could keep the animal for the first three years. there are terrariums 1.5m x 80 cm x 80 cm, that is also a good size, certainly sufficient for the first 3-5 years. i have to add that these are well-fed animals.

they are not sparingly fed to suit their size. you can see from the droppings; that is the second time it has relieved itself on the set. so, well-fed animals, which are well grown, can spend the first 5 years in 1.5 m x 80 cm. moving on to keeping them generally: what you need to know and what i discovered in africa. savannah monitors are real squatters or rental nomads, or whatever we’re supposed to call them. they do not dig burrows for themselves; they take over the burrows of other animals.

when the babies hatch, they take over cricket burrows. when they have grown a little, they take over scorpion burrows and when they are even bigger they take over rodent burrows, which they seize, so to speak. this is how they do it: they crawl in, eat the house owner, the cricket or scorpion or rodent, then take over the burrow and make themselves at home. they don't dig it any bigger; the trappers in africa showed me. the only thing they do is to make the entrance flat and even, so that nothing is lying around, so that it looks immaculate from the entrance.

otherwise they live in the burrow of, depending on size, a cricket, a scorpion or a rodent. this is important to know in terrarium keeping, for you often put in things, so that animals can dig and construct burrows. they don't construct burrows, but they want them. so i provide them with the sort of burrows you can buy for terrariums, which they accept really well. in terrariums we have flat burrows like these. they do not have to be buried in the soil. you can use round cork, if you want to bury them in the substrate, to allow the animals to go further underneath…

that would be the most natural; in the wild the burrows usually go downwards, but in my experience they are just as happy to accept these flat constructions. i think that in the wild they also use fallen trees and the like and look under them for a suitable home. so i think that these are just as good. now that we've mentioned substrate, you can use sand-soil mix. in the wild the ground is the same as for the royal python, a mixture of soil and sand. farmers use this soil for growing crops.

incidentally, agriculture is a good motto. savannah monitors spend a lot of time on farmland; in fact just like the royal python, they are synanthropes. so they frequent cassava, maize or manioc fields. that's where the animals are found, that's where they have the burrows i mentioned. as i said, this is actually soil, but it looks more like sand, so it is very fine soil, into which they burrow. here we use this reptiwood; it has proved its worth. it doesn't look like soil, but the animals seem to like it and it has worked well for us, at least in the last 1-2 years. we still haven't been using it for tens of years.

another important item in the terrarium is a large water basin, like this, so that they can really lie comfortably in it. our animals really enjoy bathing. i can't comment about them in the wild, since i've never seen a savannah monitor in water. i do know from experience with terrariums they do like lying in the water, even sometimes in the morning under the water. makes you wonder when they will finally come up for air. but they really like to bathe and so put in a large water bowl and then your terrarium is perfect. now we come to feeding savannah monitors; it is really unbelievable what they will eat. you must also ensure that they have feeding gaps, but not such intensive gaps as, for example, a bearded dragon. it is dormant in winter and for a long period eats nothing.

the savannah monitor really eats continually, they eat a lot and they grow really quickly. therefore it is also important to feed them good quality food. for the juveniles feed various insects. house crickets, crickets, grasshoppers and cockroaches are perfect. super mealworms and mealworms i would introduce later; it is not healthy, they have a lot of fat and phosphorous. so very little and later on. the really important thing when feeding with insects is that they take in plenty of minerals. a multi-mineral preparation. this is available from various manufacturers. dust the food animals well with it every time you feed. we have an episode on that called "feeding lizards correctly"

in that we explained about dusting with minerals. it is really very important, do not forget the minerals; give them every time you feed. when the animals have grown larger, as we have just seen, then i can throw in large amounts. then you can feed small, medium-sized to large mice. when they have grown even bigger, i can even feed them on rats. and i should not feed every day; we feed the juveniles 4-5 times a week. for the adult animals twice a week is sufficient and if i want to breed, i have to feed the female properly. so only then, when you want to use the animal for breeding, feed 2-3 times a week. from the breeding viewpoint what fascinates me about these savannah monitors is that there are already several savannah monitor colour morphs.

the animals are ranched on the farms, just like the royal pythons. the africans catch the pregnant females, let them lay their eggs and then all sorts of animals hatch out. of course, 99% of them are the classic light brown colouring, which we have just seen, but colour morphs are also hatched. i' d like to show you a few. this is an axanthic animal. axanthic means black/white, without any yellow and with dark eyes. interesting, of course, you use axanthic to breed for snow. if i mate an axanthic with an albino, i have double heteros for snow. you can breed snow with it and that is exciting for the future.

i believe that in the next 5-10 years lots of exciting morphs will be bred from these savannah monitors. as i said, the axanthic is an ingredient for the snow. then this one is a caramel; as the name says this caramel is a reddish brown. as far as the names are concerned, everything is as yet been genetically untested. well, perhaps not everything, but a great deal. albino has been proved to be recessive. but the caramel, axanthic or ghost - most of those i am showing you are as yet genetically unproven. the names have been borrowed from other reptiles, from the royal python and from other things. as a rule the names come from africa. the africans look at what there is in other reptiles and then give them those names. in this case caramel is certainly suitable. the question is, is it a t+ albino, which is what a caramel actually would be.

or is there some other genetic ingredient in there? it's a really lovely animal, though. great colours, great markings. i would say that it is relatively seldom even in africa to find in the farm breeding that an animal with this colour hatches. then i have this pretty ghost. here i have to say that i am not sure how different ghost and caramel are from each other. these are the names given them in africa. the ghost is more yellow, has less red in it, depending on the temperature. the temperature as we film is somewhat cooler. if it really sits in the sun, it becomes even lighter, almost a yellowish white. here at room temperature it becomes rather darker.

a really good indicator is the animals' nails; the toenails are transparent. normal savannah monitors have black nails; these ghosts have almost transparent toenails when they grow larger - take a look at this 1-year old animal from last year. it has also gone to the canaries, so we filmed it yesterday - so here is a 1-year old ghost. some of the colours are really visible; all the shades of pink are really in there; sometimes they develop these pink tones on the head and down over the back, where they develop these orange spots. orange, greens, blues, they really have all the colours in there. absolutely fascinating colours, in my opinion.

the tails usually stay yellow. i think they are amazing colours. as i said, the larger they grow, the more they develop the individual colours. i am really looking forward to seeing the results of breeding with these animals. if i mate ghost with ghost, what will hatch out, how are characteristics inherited? i would place my money on recessive, but we'll have to wait and see. but really magnificent, whether large or small, the ghost is one of the highlights, in my opinion. of course the pastel cannot be left out of the colour range. this one has been given the name of pastel, which suits it very well; it has really great yellow and orange shades in it. and also different colours, on the back it becomes darker.

i really can't wait to see how the colours will have developed, when it is six months older and has grown larger. i think this will be one of the loveliest. it was even the most expensive savannah monitor i bought this year in africa. then there are not only the colours, but the markings as well. normally the savannah monitor has round occelli like these, or round occelli markings, but this one has obvious rectangles. that is the first step in marking variations. it must also be said, of course, that they have a huge range. the animals i am showing you here come from ghana, toga and benin.

possibly there are also differences to be seen across the range, but i'm not sure. i repeat, it will take a few years before we have an answer. but this one is really interesting, because it has these rectangular occelli on its back, not round but completely rectangular. i really like it. of course you can mix this in, all the markings as ghost or suchlike are bound to be exciting. that was a quick look at a few colours, which i have at the moment. as i said, there is also the albino. here we show you a photo of the albino. this emerged in africa about 5 years ago.

but there have been no more in the last 4 years. i would really love to have an albino, but there have been no more to date, unfortunately. when you see the colours one after another like that i imagine most of you will think: "they all look much the same, what's he talking about?" so here are the four most common colours: pastel, ghost, caramel and axanthic. shown this time for comparison. when you see them side by side like this, you can see very clear differences. you know that i have rather a weakness for colours and breeding for colour,

so of course we have to go into that. we never broadcast an animal-based episode without discussing breeding. we don't want to take the animals from the wild; we want to reproduce them further. this also applies to the savannah monitor. here is another good example of how quickly the animals grow. this one is just 4-6 weeks older than the other animals we’ve been looking at. it is also one of this year's animals. it simply hatched earlier and now weighs about three times its original weight; it grows just as fast as in the wild. when you talk to the trappers, they tell you that the animals are sexually mature during the first year

and can lay their first eggs after their first winter. the first time they lay small clutches of 5-8 eggs. in the second year possibly 15 eggs and after that they can lay up to 50 eggs. a large female, just 1 metre in length, can lay up to 50 eggs. like the royal python, they are stimulated to breed by cold nights. in late autumn with us with the royal python we say october, november, december. if you let the temperature drop slightly here in germany,

then you have to increase it again in january and february, so you provide 4-8 weeks of cold nights. this stimulates the animals and they start to mate. then, if we transfer it to our climate, they will lay eggs in april, may and june. incubation takes a relatively long time. i would incubate them at 32-33 degrees, like royal python eggs. when i look in the literature i find 28 or 29 degrees, but i can say that is definitely too cold.

if we were on a farm in africa or in the wild in africa it would be significantly hotter. at night it is possibly 28 degrees, but not in the buildings. so you have to raise the temperature to about 32 degrees, as for the royal python. with african species they hatch after 90 days, or about 3 months. then the little babies hatch out. breeding also includes determining the sex. unfortunately this is not very far advanced in terrarium-keeping. even if i try to see with this one what it is, you can have a look at the root of the tail.

sometimes you're lucky and it is aroused and the penises protrude and then you can be sure that it is a male. a thick root to the tail or the beginning of a penis - with this one i would guess that it is male. i can't give you any good tips on how to be sure of the sex of small animals. it becomes easier with bigger ones; as i said the males then extend their penises. one more point on this: socialisation. they are really tolerant when kept in groups. if they do bite each other, it's about food, but usually it's not serious.

on biting in general: the jaw looks powerful, but either they do not bite hard or they can't bite hard, i don't know. even among themselves they tend not to bite to an extent that they injure each other. this means that they can be kept quite well in social groups. even the animals that you saw being measured are two males, which we keep together. they tolerate each other; it's certainly not ideal, but the next few years will tell. but there are relatively few problems in keeping them together. that was a quick review of savannah monitor breeding. we will certainly know more in the next few years.

as always, we end with a reference to good literature. in fact i can show you two good books, on one hand the eidenmã¼ller here: warane [monitor lizards]. and then jiri rotter's warane [monitor lizards]. the fly in the ointment is that they are not specifically about savannah monitors, but about monitor lizards in general. at the moment the eidenmã¼ller is the leading book. the jiri rotter book is about 40 years old and used to be the monitor lizard literature. it still is entitled to be seen as such, but is over 40 years old and says little about the savannah monitor. this means more or less that there is unfortunately no good literature on the savannah monitor. perhaps someone will feel moved to write one; i would also like to write a book on them.

perhaps i'll find time in the next couple of years. otherwise, stay loyal, check out savannah monitors and check my balls.

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