Asian Water Monitor, The Best Pet Lizard ? - Biawak

 they're also absolutely the puppy of the reptile world you will probably notice that this girl is just gonna explore and try to climb on me for this whole video and I have these gloves on not because she's gonna try to hurt me but because these claws of hers can do the job even when she's not trying so we might discover here in just a moment but I love Asian water monitors for starters they're really really pretty I think one of the prettiest of the monitors I mean of course, you've got some things like the blue and green tree monitors. 

 which are just ridiculous and there are some beautiful Australian monitors a there are a lot of pretty monitors but the Asian water monitor is right up there with any of them, they're also smart so smart monitor lizards probably more than any other lizard just radiates intelligence when you're around them there are a lot of other lizards that as you observe them for a long time you know you start to notice what intelligent behaviors they're showing but monitors in general and maybe especially the Asian water monitors the way that they interact with their world.

the way that they interact with you the way that they look at you and explore you can just tell there's a lot going on there I would say honestly when you just sort of look into their eyes and the way that they're looking at things it reminds me a lot of the corvids which are a big group of birds like crows and Magpies which are some of the smartest birds on the planet you know you can just see that in their eyes and monitors have that and Asian water monitors have it in spades but they are funny they are funny they're absolutely puppies as I already mentioned they're very very inquisitive it's one of the great features and kind of one of the pains in the neck about the Asian water monitor is they are almost always exploring and giving themselves into any mischief they can find and as a result, they are a bit of a handful I mean this is a big smart inquisitive goofball of a wizard and with nasty claws and that is a handful even at this size especially when they get to be fully grown quite frankly I mean there are so many reasons why an Asian water monitor is one of the neatest pets you could possibly have and why it might be in many ways just a perfect pet lizard but there are certainly a heck of a lot of reasons why it is not the right pet lizard for most people and so the big question that we want to tackle today is the Asian water monitor.

the right pet reptile for you help you sort that out we are going to score the Asian water monitor based on our five categories which are handle ability care hardiness availability and upfront costs when it comes to handle ability and my gloves will probably indicate this to some degree we give the Asian water monitor a score of two out of five for a lizard that gets as big as do Asian water monitors and for a lizard that can hurt you so badly without even wanting to hurt you a 2 out of 5 is a pretty spectacular score even if all you are such a goof oh and that does hurt honestly, if these guys were the size of a key monitor they would get a better score than do key monitors but they are not the size of a key monitor not at all, they're actually the size of a Velociraptor sometimes even larger than that so there's not sighs and a queue monitor by any means, they will at some point if you have them whip you with this tail and that hurts but it's not that big of a deal a nice thing about them when it comes to handling is that they can't drop this tail and I find that lovely.

it's one of the great things about monitors, in general, is they don't drop their tail so you can actually use it as a leash to control them if you need to sometimes that does come in very handy actually, as I mentioned though being whipped by the tail as much as that may sting is the least of your concerns when handling an Asian water monitor a much much much more frightening thing that they have is their bite because their teeth are nasty and their neck is long and flexible to use for example have big nasty teeth and a very very powerful set of jaws but their neck is very rigid and so if you're holding them right even though they might open their mouth and be cranky they're not gonna be able to just spin around and bite you that is not the case with an Asian water monitor kind of want like a snake you could be holding it back around its arms and it could just turn its head around and grab you and that's no good but these guys tend to be pretty sweet so if the monitor is used to handling that probably won't ever happen to you at At least not once it gets older the truth is that these guys have very similar size and a very similar host of weapons to a Nile monitor which if you've seen our video on the Nile monitor you know is a pretty intimidating lizard these guys have all of that the only major difference is that these guys have the personality of a puppy and I say puppy. 

 you know I I very much think that the tegu is the perfect dog for introverts because they are sort of lovely and very doglike ways and you can interact with they but they're kind of like a big lazy an older dog that if you really harassed it it might snap at you but for the most part it just hangs out and lets you pet it and it's just nice and laid-back in low key Asian water monitor though is not like an older low key it is like an exploring really really inquisitive happy to see you all the time wants to climb all over you puppy and that's wonderful if it weren't for the nasty nails that they've got they've got nails that are very very good for climbing and very very good for digging and also very very good at shredding your skin when they climb all over you, that's why I'm wearing the gloves. 

 it's nothing personal they're not trying to hurt you they just they will because they do want to climb all over you they love that okay like I've said though generally with a lot of positive interaction their personality is just absolutely delightful however if you have an Asian water monitor even though it can be the sweetest lizard in the world most of the time when you present yourself to the world it will look like you just fought off a bear no that's just the reality I'd also like to pause for just a moment to say thank you to our patrons at Patreon you've maybe noticed that we always show them right before the bloopers at the end of the video our stinking rad fans and to thank all of our patrons every week we put out an additional video called Patreon extras which is full of just a lot of really rad stuff that wasn't part of our main video you know the main video we talked about our five categories and review them as an animal but a lot of times we end up having discussions about a lot of other really cool facts about them and sometimes we have even additional outtakes that don't make it into the main video and so there's a lot of content left over when we're done and we let all of our patrons enjoy that as a way of saying thank you for all that they do for us and so if that's something that you'd like to see on a regular basis hop on over and check out our Patreon see if supporting this channel and helping us grow and do more amazing things like this are is something that you'd like to be a part of a while back I was talking about how I don't like feeding snakes sometimes because I don't like the startle nice I mentioned how I don't like opening Pillsbury products and Jason thought that meant that for our patrons at Patreon he should do a whole video of me opening Pillsbury products and he did that to me and that is now a Patreon extras video so that plus other cool content is something that you'd like to see then maybe consider supporting us on Patreon you know that's just one of many things we do is our way of saying thank you for all that you do for us and because Jason's a bad man when it comes to care we give the Asian water monitor a score of 1 out of 5 it's basically the same care that you need for a Nile monitor it's just that the monitor itself is much less likely to want you dead the lizard is huge like I said this is already a big lizard but they get way way bigger than this and that means that the enclosure you need for an Asian water monitor is absolutely enormous literally, at least a whole room in your the house may be more inside of that room the sized enclosure you're going to need a huge pond and this is a pond that is gonna need to be heated and it's gonna need to be filtered really well because they're gonna make a huge mess in there all the time they need a lot of hot basking lights and not all concentrated in one area or they tend to get burn. 

 right about here on their back so you're gonna need a bunch of heat bulbs that distribute heat over a fairly large area and so that's expensive and I should add on top of this that the lizard will do everything within its power to destroy those lights it will climb up there try to whack them and smack them and break them if it can so you've got two lizard proof the enclosure so that it can't get to those lights, they're getting these buckets of deep substrate deep enough that they can dig through it and it'll hold its shape a little bit they also are gonna eat a lot of large feeders a lot of vertebrate prey they'll also love larger insects like dubia roaches really just a wide variety of things that are either are alive or used to be alive whole prey preferably one of things are they love to eat and so it can be tempting to overfeed them  I've seen a lot of way way way obese water monitors and that's not a monitor that's gonna live very long or have a very good quality of life so you've got to be careful not to overfeed them because they do love to eat.

I recommend target training a water monitor because you don't want to be on the wrong side of a feeding response and let me know in the comments if a video on target, training is something that you'd like for me to do I've talked before about how gus-gus is the target trained and you know it is a really a useful thing so let me know what you think about that the biggest chore associated through with keeping an Asian water monitor will just be maintenance of that pond, you know and this is a chore you have with something like a The Nile monitor the main differences the The Asian water monitor is probably going to be fine with you going into the enclosure to deal with it where the Nile the monitor might not be one other thing that they're gonna do for you and that a giant fantastic expensive enclosure that you've provided for them is that they will try to destroy all of it all the time because they're constantly gonna be exploring and looking for mischief that's just what puppy lizards do they're busy curious and smart and so you've got to keep them occupied and you've got to keep them safe and that in itself is quite a chore when it comes to hardiness we give the Asian water monitor a score of three out of five a lot of them that come in in fact most of them that you see will be imports and imports suffer from import problems, we have a whole video about this.

 however, they are becoming more and more available captive-breed even a lot of really cool morphs of Asian water monitors are available in places like a nerd New England reptile distributors you know I've always dreamed of having a lizard from them and if I were gonna get an Asian water monitor I would really really really be looking into getting one from nerd this Asian water monitor comes to us from Great Basin serpentarium which is an excellent breeder of many animals though to my understanding Asian water monitors are not one of the animals that are wanting to add to their list at this time but they do have some cool ones and you should check out there the website we'll have a link to that done in our description, like I said especially if you get one that's captive-bred and you provide it the right enclosure they should do really really well for you just make sure you keep them warm enough that's one of the main keys when it comes to availability we give the Asian water monitor a score of three out of five these guys are honestly just about as available as Nile monitors which we listed as being one of the most commonly available monitors there is I would say this is probably the fourth most readily available monitor maybe the third probably the third most readily available monitor behind Savannah monitors which make bad pets because the we don't really know how to take care of them right Nile monitors because they are grumpy and huge and then these guys so really the top three are all pretty bad pets this is probably the best one and it still can be way too much for most people you will see these at every Expo you go to at least if they're legal where you are and I think they're illegal most places you're certainly going to be able to find them online and sometimes in pet shops, I have seen Asian water monitors for sale and pet shops I just really hope that the people who got they knew what they were getting because they look so cute when they're little even these ones little they get huge and destructive when it comes to upfront costs you probably can guess these guys get a one out of five and we can give zero out of five I mean something could be more expensive than this but the lizard itself is a little bit expensive they cost more than the Nile monitors definitely worth that extra bit of money, you know somewhere over $100 but pretty darn reasonable especially considering how unreasonable the rest of this is gonna get if the cost of an Asian water monitor is the reason that you don't want to get an Asian water monitor, I can tell you right now there is absolutely no way that an Asian water monitor is the right pet reptile for you these guys have an amazing personality but they are a completely unreasonable reptile to keep for the vast majority of reptile keepers as we already mentioned it's gonna need a room in your house at least more if you can provide it that room needs to have several feet of a substrate in it you're gonna need to probably get that from the hardware store it's going to need to have buckets of heat lights and then it's gonna need a giant heated and filtered pond it's also gonna need climbing branches all over the place big ones because this is a huge lizard and it will be destroying that place all the time hey you know and even though this isn't included in these upfront costs category don't forget that feeding it will be extremely expensive because they're eating a lot of large vertebrates prey and that is why we give the Asian water monitor an overall score of two out of five.

because of their unbelievably great personality, they were on our that hurts a lot told you, they won't try to hurt you but they'll do it anyway because of their unbelievably great personality the Asian water the monitor was on our list of the best pet monitors but we also told you that there's only one really good pet monitor on that whole list and this is definitely not a good pet monitor for most people get in a key right that is that's the winner, that is the best pet monitor that there is full stop the rest of them are all either a little bit worse or way way WAY worse than the ackee this one has a personality may be even better than the ackee and in all other ways is so much worse, however if what you want is an absolutely enormous semi-aquatic monitor that costs an absolute fortune to keep and this is absolutely the best one you can get as always like and subscribe and we hope to see you real soon Oh oh you are a good lizard height didn't hey you seemed surprised to see me, you snuck up on me yeah sorry about that I did not mean to startle you yeah any cuts on the head you need some Magan fits you so funny I just want to climb on people it's not so much to ask as always