- Hey, good morning everybody and welcome
to the vlog Reptile Army.
We're gonna do something a little bit different today.
I'm gonna give you a tour
of all my monitor lizards
but I'm gonna do it per
where they're from.
So we're gonna start with Africa
and we're gonna start
with this big monkey right here
which by the way is absolutely incredible.
He's just hangin' out right over here.
And I love one thing
when people come to the Reptarium.
I always do this.
I open this door and I say,
stick your head in here
and just smell the waffles, man.
Just smell the syrup.
So of course, this is my guy, Waffles over here.
So we're gonna try and get Waffles out real quick.
Come on big boy.
And when he's in here,
he's got such powerful claws.
He hangs on.
He's like, I'm not comin' out.
He's a handful.
It's like he's flyin' or something like that.
So obviously there are four species
of rock monitor in Africa.
This is the black-throat monitor.
And this is by far the largest
of the monitors in Africa
when it comes to the rock monitors.
These guys are actually from East Africa
which is in the Tanzania range
and they are unbelievable.
Now, couple of things about them,
again, they smell.
What are you doin', silly?
They do smell like syrup.
Hence the name Waffles.
Don't know why we've talked about that before.
The other thing is that these guys do pack
a pretty good amount of venom.
That's right.
Look at that tongue.
Just take a look at that guy.
I mean, he is unbelievable.
I mean, his tongue is
like twice the size of Elvis,
our Asian water monitor.
But again, when it comes to African monitors,
definitely one of my favorite African monitors.
Absolutely no doubt about it.
Just huge.
Look at it.
Look at the size of his head right there.
And those claws.
Look at this right here.
These claws are crazy cool
but he is such a good animal.
I love him to death and oftentimes he just wants
to go back in his cage.
So I'll just kind of put him
up here and let him crawl himself in his cage.
We'll come back to him.
So definitely want to start my African monitors
with my buddy, Waffles here
because he is absolutely amazing.
I've always wanted to have one of these guys
and I'm so blessed that we actually have one now.
So Waffles is the first stop
in our African series.
Now listen, the next stop isn't gonna
be quite as fun for me
because I don't know what's gonna happen.
And that's gonna of course
be the Albino Nile monitor, Chicken Strip.
So let's see what Chicken Strip is doin' here.
Now, these guys are more from West Africa.
I tell you what.
I know it's gonna be a battle.
Chicken Strip is not gonna be happy
because it's just not a friendly animal.
Now Nile monitors as a whole
are typically a little bit more cantankerous
to be honest with you.
And we've worked with Chicken Strip
since it was a baby,
and we just can't seem
to really break it.
But I'm gonna see if I can get him.
Come on, buddy.
Whoa.
Come on, buddy.
Come on.
Whoa, is he upset.
Whoa
He's upset guys.
And of course-
Please don't bite me.
Whoa, okay.
Okay, Chicken Strip.
It's okay, buddy.
It's okay.
Okay, okay.
We're okay.
He's got strong claws.
Whoa!
And he is definitely a biter
when he is first out.
Now, once he calms down,
he's actually pretty good.
But gettin' him to calm down already,
I'm bleedin' guys-
And whoa!
But again, he's the only Albino Nile monitor
that's around right now.
Of course there might be some running
around in the wild that we don't know about.
And there have been a couple others
that have come in to the country over the years.
But he's the only surviving one right now.
He's a boy.
And of course-
Oww!
Hopefully one day we'll be able to,
to breed him and actually get some babies.
But Nile monitors are a trip
and you can see he's already startin'
to calm down now.
He's finally said, all right,
I'm done trying to bite you.
I'm done trying to run away from you
and I can actually hang out.
And it's all about gaining those trusts.
We've been with this guy for a long time
and he's still a cantankerous little monkey.
There's no doubt about it
but still a beautiful animal.
And I'm so blessed to be able
to work with him.
And one day, if we can produce some Albino Nile monitors,
Woo, doggie!
All right, buddy.
This was good.
And again, now I'm gonna let him go.
See how it's like all right, good.
We're good.
That's the way you want
to end every session
of handling with a positive note.
And yeah, already a little bleeding.
Listen with monitor lizards,
I have a feeling I'm gonna
be bleeding a lot this video.
Now he's the only one I think
that could actually bite me
because all our other monitors are pretty docile.
But I tell you what,
some of 'em have some pretty nasty daggers.
There's no doubt about it.
But continuing on with African animals,
we're gonna move on to another rock monitor.
And again, there's four species
of rock monitor in Africa.
These happen to be the white-throat monitors here.
Come on, buddy.
Come on, big boy.
They look very similar to the black-throat monitors
but these are the white-throat monitors.
And the other three species besides
the black-throat are all white-throat monitors.
But this particular one is from South Africa.
And it's the most common one in captivity.
Really the West white-throat monitors,
you don't see very often.
Ones from Angola, I've never even seen one in person,
to be honest with you.
But this is Grits
and Grits is a lot more mellow
than a lot of the monitors we have.
And it's just amazing.
I mean, he'll just sit on you like this.
Still has some pretty powerful claws
but thankfully it doesn't really thrash around.
It doesn't cut you up
and stuff like that.
And I tell ya, monitor lizards,
they're just so intelligent.
I mean, working with them, you know,
we have target trained all of 'em.
Chicken Strip is the only monitor that we have
that we haven't target trained.
because honestly it doesn't take food
off a tong so it's hard to motivate it
to actually follow a ball.
We have to just put food in.
It's really skiddish, right?
Like stuff like that.
But all our other monitor lizards,
we actually have target trained.
They're so smart.
And every time we work with them
with a new project we realize
they're even smarter than we thought.
I mean, they're incredible.
But again, we're sticking
with the African continent still.
And this particular one is a absolute beauty.
Now, interestingly enough, Grits,
the white-throat monitor does not smell
like syrup like the black-throat monitor.
And then last animal that we have here
from Africa that is really cool.
And I love these guys too.
Again, these are kind
of the big puppy dogs of the monitor world
to be totally honest with you.
Let's see if we can find 'em in here.
Where are you at, buddy?
Where are you at?
Oh, there you are.
This is of course is Santana, the Savannah monitor.
Look at this guy right here.
And again, it kind of looks like a rock monitor
but it's not in the four rock monitors.
It's actually a Savannah monitor.
And these guys can range all over West Africa.
They're a pretty wide ranging animal,
really into central and all over Africa.
Probably the most common of the lizards
when it comes to monitors in Africa,
to be honest with you.
Also the most common as far as pets go too
'cause these guys do come into the country
farm-raised, relatively cheap.
They do really well.
Now the biggest thing you have
to worry about with these guys,
they like bugs, right?
And most people get these
and they start feeding them rodents.
They feed them lots of meat
and stuff like that.
And then they get really big,
really fat, and they actually have something
that's called fatty liver disease.
And they typically perish.
So most Savannah monitors you see,
once they hit 2, 3, 4 years old,
they're really on their last legs
because you haven't fed them a high diet of bugs.
This guy eats mainly roaches,
super worms, bugs like that.
And we do give the occasional meat,
you know, but we don't do it very often.
I'd say maybe once every four or five meals,
we'll give him a little bit of meat
and then everything else is bugs.
So if you're ever gonna get a Savannah,
they are absolutely wonderful animals,
but you have to keep in mind
that they are definitely not meat eaters.
And if you feed 'em too much meat,
you're gonna end up killing 'em
so you don't want to do that, right?
But so that basically wraps up the continent
of Africa when it comes to things
that we're working with.
Probably missed a thing or two.
But the fact is is that those are the majority
of our African monitor lizards.
Now let's move on to Indonesia.
What do you think?
We'll start with my guy, Elvis, of course.
And Elvis is right out over here
and you know I love Elvis to death.
He is definitely probably our favorite ambassador
when it comes to just like kids around here.
Hey Elvis, what's up buddy?
Come on over here.
Come on out.
Come on, sweetie.
Come on.
Hi baby boy.
How are you doing this morning?
Come on baby.
Come see me.
And of course Elvis is amazing.
This is just an Asian water monitor.
Now these guys can come from Philippines as well,
but they are mainly from Indonesia.
The majority of the ones
that we see here are from Indonesia.
Again, there are some Filipino ones
and stuff like that, that Southeast Asia area.
And water monitors are some of the coolest animals.
If you get these guys captive born
and just kind of let them go,
they are unbelievable.
I mean, look at him, he's like my pet dinosaur.
He is cool, target trained.
He's four and a half years old.
Now these guys will live 30 to 40 years.
So as long as you don't overfeed 'em,
same exact thing, right?
The thing with monitor lizards is
they always want to eat, right?
You could feed 'em every single day
if you wanted to, but it's not good for 'em, right?
So always make sure that you want him
to be a little bit lean.
Like here, I'm gonna put Elvis down
and we're gonna want to see
that when he's walking, we don't want
that belly actually scraping on the floor.
We want him to be up on all fours
and stuff like that.
And once he's actually awake and going,
he'll puff up, right?
And when you see a monitor walking
and he's draggin' his big old belly,
that means it's too fat, right?
You don't want that.
So Elvis is cool, you know what I tell you
what I'm gonna just let Elvis cruise
around for a little minute.
We're gonna go look at another Asian water monitor.
And that of course is my guy, Toothless up here.
Now Toothless may or may not come down.
Let's see what happens.
He's up.
See him.
Hey, what's up, Dad?
What's goin' on?
You know what I might do.
What's goin' on, Toothless?
You wanna come over and say hi to me.
What are you doin'?
See, as soon as I open up the cage,
they're so smart.
He's lookin' up and he's like,
hey, what's goin' on?
You know, stuff like that.
So I might do is find some food real quick.
So hang on one second.
You watch Toothless.
I'll be back.
Now Toothless, of course, is ball trained as well.
But what we don't want him to do is
come down right there, right?
Because he's gonna flop down on the thing.
So I'm gonna open up the other side
of the cage like this
and I'm gonna show him the blue ball.
We're gonna have him run down over here.
Come on, Toothless.
Let's go.
See.
Look at him, look at him.
Come on, over here.
Over here, over here.
Over here.
Come on, buddy.
See, comes right over to the ball
and then we'll give him a little treat.
Here you go, bud.
Here you go.
There you go, buddy.
And of course Toothless is a Black Dragon
and they are absolutely amazing.
It is actually a color mutation.
It's a recessive mutation
but there's actually an island in Indonesia
where all of 'em are the majority,
not all of 'em but the majority
of are actually black
or melanistic like this.
And it's just kind of one of those things that,
you know, in the wild, having a mutation
like this is not a bad thing, right?
They're gonna absorb sun.
They can still blend in and camouflage
and stuff like that.
When you have an albino, obviously it sticks out.
There's no camouflage.
One last bite.
Come on, buddy.
Not that.
There you go.
Thank you, Toothless.
You're such an amazing animal.
Asian water monitors, I tell you what,
absolutely ridiculous animals.
Love these guys to death.
I'm gonna go ahead and hide this ball
so that Elvis doesn't see it because
if he sees it on ground,
he's gonna think he's gonna get fed.
And then we're gonna look
at another Asian water monitor.
And now we're actually gonna check
out another Asian monitor here.
These guys are actually Argus monitors
And by the way, guys,
I was running around just showing you guys animals,
gettin' super excited.
These guys are not from Indonesia
and they're not from Asia.
When I watched the footage, I was like,
what am I talkin' about?
These guys are actually
from Australia and New Guinea.
So these go into the other category
but they are still absolutely amazing.
Back to the vlog.
And where's he at in here?
We actually have two of these little monkeys.
And of course these are Noah's little pets.
We got these from my buddy, Josh
and they're captive born.
Absolutely amazing.
Now we have Argumus Prime,
an adult as well,
but I wanted to show you this little monkey right here.
This is actually Chong
and it is unbelievable.
Look at the color on these guys.
Now, these guys can actually range
up into the New Guinea area as well
but they are also Indonesian.
So they're just really amazing,
kind of a mid-size monitor.
So they're gonna get decent sized
but not that big, maybe like the size
of a Savannah monitor.
Certainly not the size of a water monitor.
So if you want kind of a smaller monitor lizard,
that is really good and you can train these guys
just as good as water monitors.
They're really good.
And they're really voracious feeders.
I mean, look at this little monkey right here.
Absolutely wonderful.
Put him back real quick.
And then we have one last Asian monitor to show you.
Probably-
Hey Elvis, what are you doin', buddy?
He didn't get enough camera time.
He's like, Daddy, show me off.
I'm the star of the show.
And trust me he is the star of the show.
There's no doubt about it.
I love you, little buddy.
You're absolutely amazing.
So let's go look at this last Asian monitor
that we have that is
probably the pinnacle
of Asian monitors except
for Komodo dragons, of course.
But of course I don't have Komodo dragons.
So I only have this one.
We're gonna put the lights on
over here real quick early in the morning.
And that of course is my guy,
baby Kush over here.
Look at baby Kush.
Go ahead open up.
Baby Kush is a croc monitor,
about two and a half years old right now.
And look at how smart that animal is right there.
Unbelievable predators, right?
These are called tree dragons over in Asia.
And I tell you what and you can understand why.
These guys often are up in the trees,
very rarely is he on the ground,
to be honest with you,
he's got that prehensile tail
that he can hang on if he wants to.
The second largest lizard
with the tail on the planet,
only second to the Komodo dragon,
but the truth is body-wise he's not gonna
get that much larger.
So certainly Elvis and even Waffles is
a larger bodied animal.
But these guys with that tail can be
up to six foot in length.
So overall, you're looking at a nine foot lizard.
Now he might be about five and a half or six foot now.
So he still has a ways to go
but that tail is gonna grow a tremendous amount.
So that is an awesome animal.
And I've wanted to work
with croc monitors my whole life.
And he's starting to get good.
Like you can take him out
but it's a little bit tricky
because again the problem is
that if he does bite you,
it's gonna be really, really bad.
But thankfully he's pretty chill
and it's pretty awesome.
So that wraps up Indonesia.
Let's move on to Australia.
Let's go.
So again, we're gonna go over
and check out Australia now.
Now Australia has some
of the most amazing monitor lizards.
Of course, what they call goannas.
So let's go look at a goanna really quick here.
And of course my favorite of the goannas
that we have is of course, Beetlejuice.
Look at Beetlejuice.
Now he's much like Chicken Strip.
He's not gonna bite, but boy, he's got talons.
I have a feeling I'm gonna lose a little bit
of blood on this one too.
But hey, it's worth it
'cause he's absolutely amazing.
Now he is getting better about handling
and he is getting a lot.
Good.
See when I actually open up the enclosure,
oftentimes he'd go flying away.
Like I'm afraid of you.
Now he's right there.
But I will tell you this.
When I go to grab him,
he's probably gonna try to fly away.
So I'm gonna just be really gentle
and just kind of go in here like this.
Come on, bud.
Come on.
Here you go.
And now we got him.
Whoa, those talons are hard!
Whoa, whoa!
Oh my gosh, are they sharp.
They are sharp.
So this is a Bell's Phase lace monitor.
Oh man!
Is he rippin' me up?
It's okay,
Look at, I'm already all over the place.
I hope you guys are enjoying this video.
If you do smash that like button
because I am losing some blood here.
But again, he isn't like Chicken Strip
where I have to worry about him,
biting at all 'cause he is super docile
when it comes to that.
It's just, he likes to run
and he likes to climb.
But you can see he's already slowing down
and that's what happens.
And if you notice through all
of these lizards I've been holding,
I've never grabbed them one time, right?
I've never liked restrained 'em.
I've always let them kind of do their thing.
And that's how you build
that threads of trust with them.
Once you grab an animal like this,
behind the neck or where you restrain him,
he's gonna hate you forever, right?
So you never want to do that.
And now he's starting to mellow out.
What an absolute ripper this animal is!
And again, monitors in Australia are absolutely incredible.
Again, goannas.
And there's a bunch of 'em,
but the Bell's Phase to me have always been one
of the pinnacles.
To be honest with you,
Perenties are probably one I really want to get
but right now they're unobtainable.
There's very few of 'em available
outside of the zoo community
to be totally honest.
One day I'd like to get Komodos
and I'd like to get Perentie monitors.
But for now the Bell's Phase lace monitor is
definitely an absolutely incredible animal.
An animal I never thought I would own
and Beetlejuice is unbelievably good.
But again, look at all those marks on my hand
just from holding Beetlejuice.
All right, buddy,
You did so good.
Again, letting him go positive threads.
This was a good experience for him.
It wasn't as good of an experience
for me, but hey,
I tell you what it was worth it.
Last Australian monitor I want
to show you is a little bit easier to handle.
And like I mentioned,
these guys are cool.
You've seen all these monitors
and you're like, wow, I really would love
to get a monitor lizard.
But Matt, Brian, I mean, they get big.
They need big enclosures.
I don't think I can handle something like this.
I got the solution for you right now.
And that's this animal here.
And like I said,
they're a bunch of little tiny goannas
in Australia that are perfect.
This one happens to be
what they call an Ackie monitor
Right here.
Now there's a bunch of little dwarf monitors
that come from Australia.
King, horn, all kinds of different, pygmy rocks.
I mean all kinds of stuff like that.
But this guy is an Ackie monitor.
It's probably the most common
of the dwarf monitors.
And this is a full grown adult right here.
I mean, they might get a little bit bigger
but this is about it.
It's called a red Ack.
You can also get yellow Ackies
and stuff like that.
And you can see all these ridges on his tail.
And they're really cool.
Again, it's like I mentioned,
to be able to have a monitor
that's just as smart
as Elvis or any of the other monitors,
but in a little pint size like this,
it's absolutely amazing.
And I love this one was ball trained,
the same thing we do with the other monitors
we do with this one here.
And again, one day I'd like to get a lot more
of the Australian monitor lizards,
not only the Perentie which is the largest
of the monitor lizards from Australia
but also a bunch of other pygmies, right?
Because they're kind of easier
to keep they're so small.
They're absolutely incredible.
I mean, there's just so many great monitor lizards
that we have here, but that are out there
that we'd like to get.
I want to go visit Mike's monitors, a friend of mine.
I want to go pick up a couple of things
from him like Mertens's monitors.
And I mean, the list goes on and on.
As we expand, I want to do a lot more monitor lizards
because they are absolutely incredible.
And I hope that you guys enjoyed this kind
of tour of my monitor lizards.
Let me know in the comments,
which one was your favorite?
And let me know in the comments,
which one do you think I should get in the future?
Or if you actually have a monitor
that you're like, Brian,
you got to get one of these
'cause they're unbelievable.
I mean, I have become an absolute monitor maniac.
I love 'em to death.
So if you enjoyed this video, do me a favor.
Right over here is playlist,
you can watch a couple more videos.
You can do me another favor on this side.
Can you go ahead and subscribe to this channel?
Have an absolutely wonderful day, Reptile Army.
Remember be kind to somebody
and I promise we will see you in the next one.