#water monitor

[artsyaxolotl]

Motivation Monday: Nobody can take away your worth! 💙🤍

[harkthorn]

More reptile studies, because I actually kind of had fun doing the last page, and seem to be getting a bit better at managing the head and scale shapes

-2716

[rivvilrothe]

Phlaht!

Next week: Standing

[nitemvres]

Made a new friend the other day. Now i want a water monitor

[localcatbehaviourguy]

My experience with Jay's Prehistoric Pets

My family used to go there all the time when I was little to see all the animals because it was free to enter. We stopped when I was around seven for reasons you will soon find out. Here's what I remember.

A lot of the animals were thin and he live-fed every single one. I get that some snakes apparently won't eat frozen/thawed prey, but it was every single one. Live feeding is an ethical issue due to the distress it can cause the prey. When live feeding, you also need to closely supervise to a) make sure the snake eats the prey quickly to avoid distress for the prey, and b) because scared prey may fight back and if that happens, they can seriously hurt the snake so you need to be able to intervene. But they gave every snake, even species that are usually, if not always, okay with eating f/t, a live mouse and then, before the snake ate the mouse, they would walk away and wouldn't supervise. If the snake got attacked or didn't feel like eating, that would be a massive issue. I'm not a snake handler, but I know I wouldn't leave my cat alone in a room with a rodent due to how the rodent could damage my cat (and my sympathy towards the rodent.) I feel like you don't leave a pet in a risky situation like that. That feels unnecessary and really, just lazy.

There were red-eared slider turtles you could feel. Another customer saw me and my brother, both very little, and warned our parents that we couldn't touch the turtles because they would bite. There was no notice posted and no employee was warning people about biting reptiles in a room full of children. Also, if a reptile has a habit of biting when touched, which is entirely reasonable, they shouldn't be in a free-roam situation where someone can provoke them to bite. They bite out of self-defense or to protect their boundaries, and they probably bite because the situation distresses them- they had no hides, they were in a fountain like at Chinese restaurants with the koi, so it was hard for them to escape the situation- so don't put them in that situation. Not good for the reptiles and not good for the kids.

And the monitors

Oh gods, the monitors.

They had at least one, usually two, massive (bigger than me) monitor lizards free-roaming the floor at all times. A monitor is a very large lizard and can easily cause a lot of damage when distressed, untrained people should never been freely interacting with them. But they were free to roam. It was probably frightening for them. They're surrounded by loud children and massive adults and they have no hide, they probably also got kicked or stepped on way more than necessary. Which leads me into why we stopped going.

One of those monitors, easily three or four feet long, crawled under my baby brother's stroller while we were there. Now that I think about it, he was probably just looking for a hide. But obviously we couldn't have that massive, powerful reptile underneath a baby's stroller, so they had to get it out from under the stroller. My dad and another guest had to pick up the stroller (it was one of those big ones meant to last multiple kids) and carry it away to get the monitor out from under it. Dad could not get close enough to unbuckle my brother due to the dinosaur who he understood would protect itself if it felt like he was threatening it, so they lifted the stroller with him inside of it. Where were the staff? Watching without a care in the world. If anyone should have intervened there it should have been the keepers who have experience with the animal and should know how to handle situations like this if the animal is going to free-roam, but it was on my parents and a small group of concerned parents to figure this out while the employees just watched. Of course, seeing how they treat animals in videos, they probably would've dragged the poor thing by its tail, harming it and putting my brother in danger.

Yeah, we stopped going after that.

It's not surprising to me that I googled that place years later to find all of the controversy about them mistreating animals. Hopefully, since I don't see much about them endangering guests, the monitors no longer free-roam and are instead in an enclosure to be admired from afar. But yeah, that place was probably one of the worst zoos I've ever been to.

[littlenim]

This Must Be The Place (Naïve Melody).mp3

(Mertens Water Monitors, Bronx Zoo, 11/10/23)

[demoniccow]

I've made this joke to myself so much, I put it on a t-shirt.

[animalkingdomdoc]

Water Monitor Lizard.

[mothmiso]

Thailand 2023 (2) (3) by mirrors are more fun

Via Flickr:

(1) Water monitor in Lumpini park, Bangkok.     

[chanthaburi]

Water monitor lizard in our wild garden jungle area; approx 1.2m length but half of that is tail.

[critter-creature-or-beast]

[thai-diversions]

Water monitors (tua ngern tua thong) in Bangkok

[smartflow]

Why water monitoring is vital for commercial properties?

[thebibliosphere]

I feel like I've complained about Tim's email situation in Gotham Knights before (edit: I have), but the truth of it is just so funny.

He's signed up for so many podcasts, video game streamers, and random news alerts; it's just a constant barrage of data going straight into his constantly whirring brain. Hell, he even floats the idea of the Batfamily having their own podcast as a way to correct misinformation about them (which Jason shoots down instantly), and it's made me realize something.

Timothy Drake would be a YouTuber.

In this universe specifically, Timothy Jackson Drake, the heir to Drake Industries and the foster son of the late Bruce Wayne would be a YouTuber.

Think about it. It'd be the perfect cover. Who would ever suspect that some 16-year-old nepo baby with a YouTube channel could ever be Red Robin? You'd have to be mad. I mean, look at him.

Red Robin just dropped out of literal thin air and garotted someone four times his size, and you expect anyone to believe that's the same kid who does 24-hour Minecraft charity streams and occasionally drops 6-hour video essays (his last one was on Lex Luthor's illegal bit mining operation on the moon)?

That kid?

You think that kid is Red Robin?

Ch'yah, okay, sure. And the Joker is funny 🤡.

[demoniccow]

It's time to start getting your beach gear ready.