Help With An Ackie Monitor

[lizardlady1998]

Hello! I'm hoping someone can provide me with some help with my 3-month-old ackie monitor. I got him (or her, not sure yet) when he was only a few weeks old. After letting him settle into his enclosure for a while, I started trying to tame him. Unfortunately, it feels like everything I'm doing is only making him more afraid of me, and I'm not sure what to do at this point. I've tried tong feeding, sitting silently with my hand in the enclosure without moving, carefully moving things around his enclosure to hopefully get him used to my presence, leaving an old shirt of mine in his enclosure to get him used to my scent, and even just sitting next to his enclosure talking to him, but it seems it only makes him worse around me. I really am not sure what to do at this point because I really don't want to make everything worse. I've been trying my best, and I know that it takes a long time to gain trust, but do things get more rocky before they start to get better with ackies? I've owned other lizards before, but this is my first monitor, and I know that they are very different from other monitors, so anything that anyone could suggest would be very helpful. Thanks ahead of time!

* Meant to say very different from other lizards.

 

[Sdaji]

A lot of handling or interaction with reptiles can go one of two ways. Either the animal is comfortable and gets more comfortable over time, or it's not comfortable, in which case increased interaction makes the animal think you are a big, bad monster which it needs to escape or protect itself from.

Often people go down the downward spiral of scaring the animal and being convinced that more handling/interaction will make the animal more used to it and more comfortable. What often happens is that the animal interprets this as you being a predator which is making more and more effort to catch and eat it. You probably don't just feel like everything you're doing is making your lizard more scared of you, it's probably the actual reality.

Wild animals don't generally show particular attention to other animals of different species, particularly snakes and lizards, unless they want to eat them.

Your lizard is scared. Cut interaction to the minimum possible. Nothing other than incidental interaction (you can look at your lizard etc, but don't do anything other than necessary maintenance and anything the lizard won't interpret as you trying to interact with it). First let the lizard become comfortable with that, then you can start interacting more, but don't push it. Feeding from your fingers, letting the lizard approach you (and not forcing any interaction if the lizard chooses not to interact out of curiosity that day).

Ackies are not the best handling lizards. Some become quite tame, some never will. If you want an animal to cuddle and physically interact with, cats and dogs are great, but personally I prefer a woman (you may prefer a man). If a reptile is into it, that's great. If not, that's fine, it's a reptile, not a naturally social animal (yes, there are some social reptiles, but not many and Ackies aren't really one of them). With something like a small monitor, accept what you get and don't expect any more. I absolutely love keeping small monitors (large monitors are great too but I've never really had the option), they're completely fantastic animals, but personally I've never really wanted to handle them any more than I'd want to handle fish or plants, both of which are also fantastic to keep.

 

[lizardlady1998]

Hello Sdaji,

Thank you for the response. Honestly, I felt like what I was doing really wasn't helping but every time I tried reaching out to others (the breeder I got him from included) for help, all I kept getting was basically to keep spending time around him and to make sure I was doing something in his enclosure every day so he can see me and get used to me. So I really do appreciate someone saying that going about it that way may not be the best thing to do. I do understand that my lizard is never going to be cuddly or like a cat or a dog, I just would like for him to feel comfortable around me because I don't want him to be constantly living in fear. Basically, I just want the little fellow to have a good quality of life, as I do with all my animals, but I can see where my trying too hard can do the opposite.