Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Emeril & Jade sharing food

So I've noticed a new behavior in my green tree monitors lately. They share their food, or rather Emeril shares his food with Jade. When I feed them insects in a bowl inside their cage both monitors go down to the bowl but only Emeril will get in and get an insect. Jade sits there and waits for Emeril to get one and then she takes half of it in her mouth and they both sit there and eat their halves. He lets her do this and never tries to get away from her to eat his insect by himself. It's so fascinating to watch because Jade could easily get her own insects but she chooses to wait for Emeril to get one for her every time. I took some videos of them doing this. It is in 3 parts because every time I would get close, Jade would try to come out.

The first one they are already eating together and I missed Emeril getting it.

The second one I missed him getting it again and they are already eating. Then he gets another superworm and she takes half of it from him but then sees me and tries to come out again.

The third one I back up and catch them sharing again a few times.

I wonder why they do this? There is really no aggression or fighting. I have never seen this in any reptiles before where they deliberately share food with each other. Oh, well in any case, it's extremely cute!

These monitors are very fascinating!

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