Work, Rest and Film...

More clips taken at ZSL London Zoo.

Its been a busy few months here at Grant Tower's, with working super hard, checking things at home (staff can be soo difficult) and living La Vida Loca (dancing like your dad) that this account of my antics has been quiet.
Fear not, here is a clip from the ZSL website showing my colleague and I, Luke Harding with our
second male Komodo dragon, Rinca.
Our first male Raja has been at the zoo for around 10 years and is amazing, beautiful, calm and could kill you.
Rinca is stunning, alert and probably would kill you....
Here we go into the exhibit with Rinca to show how careful training and professional skills (Luke's obviously) can help the staff management of the animal while spicing up Rinca's life.

Not too much of me, probably a good thing as I look quite chubby.

These are of the caiman lizard, Dracaena guianensis a specialised snail eater from South America.

Here's the official zoo video of the caiman lizard, rather better put together than mine, the only down side?
Mr Grant in view...

Easily one of my favorite animals at the zoo (although i do seem to say that a lot..) 

Watching this animal feed, the way it takes the snails and delicately rolls them around in its mouth always makes me stop and remember how amazing the world is,

unless your that snail.

Here you can see him hunt underwater, using his tongue to search out the prey which is then taken on to land to eat.

(Please excuse the music, it was either dodgy YouTube tunes or loud kids screaming in that mix of delight and disgust they do soo well.)

Its thought in the wild this species eats crayfish as well as various mollusk species, and very possibly a wide range of other things too. However, from what we know snails appear to be the primary food and this should be mimicked in captivity where possible, and if not possible, they probably shouldn't be kept until we know more about their nutritional needs and how to substitute them
As snails are difficult or expensive to obtain, many keepers offer a range of other foodstuffs, from other invertebrates, turkey meat, eggs and even cat food!
If this is harmful or not is difficult to assess, but the specimen I saw that was fed on cat food was obese and was a dull grey color, not the vibrant red and green of our specimen.
Snails brought for a supplier who caters the the human food trade normally starve the snails before selling so they are ready to eat. This means that before use you should offer them a range of good quality vegetables before feeding to the lizard.
Frozen snails are available but again will have been starved before freezing so less useful nutritionally, while snails collected from the wild may harbor parasites so it may be worth keeping for a while to help shed any possible problems.

Here is the same animal finding crayfish underwater.