If all of the above is a bit too personal for you, ianinoz, how about if we just examine some of your contributions to this thread rationally and with the full seriousness with which you feel they deserve:
Hell even a little lizard like Lizzy can do some damage if it's grabbed and gets a chance to latch onto soft fingers and the soft fresh between the thumb and fingers.
Here's a photo of a water skink bite. Oh, no, wait - I've got that wrong. It's a photo of a
lace monitor bite. My mistake. I presume you have some photos of water skink bites for comparison, ianinoz?
I think those who are making negative comments on this guys encounter are taking themselves why too seriously and making a bigger issue out of this than it warants.
That photo was of the wrist of a grown man, bitten by a captive lace monitor. After this photo was taken the mate whose wrist that is said he was happy the monitor didn't manage to get a good, solid bite on his wrist (according to him it was just a glancing bite), because if it had his tendons would have been severed and his hand functions would never have been the same again. Maybe you don't see the potential of a child being bitten on the hand by a wild lace monitor (add bacterial soup from a carrion-eating, dirty bite to the physical damage caused by the teeth) as being serious, ianinoz, but many of us see it differently. The ones that do take it seriously have spent time around lace monitors, both captive and wild, and know what they are like. I've seen how wild lace monitors react when they've learned that people are a source of food and I've also seen a few too many close calls between both children and adults around wild lace monitors, while hearing from rangers about other instances that went beyond close calls and about the forced removal of lace monitors from picnic areas as a consequence. No one wins. People suffer physical damage, animals get removed from their own environment, all so someone can get a kick out of seeing something eat. This isn't an attack on you fredsnugget, for I'm sure you got the message three pages ago in this thread!
ianinoz, did you get my reference to the dingoes on Fraser Island, after you tried comparing feeding lace monitors to the domestication of wild dogs? Dingoes are normally quite shy animals, but years of people feeding them on Fraser Island have made them bolder and there have consequently been a number of attacks on humans, most notably the death of a nine year old boy a number of years ago. Rangers then went in and killed several of the dingoes, the ones that have been scavenging for food from people. That cull was something the Fraser Island dingo population could ill afford. Because of its isolation from the mainland, the dingoes there are probably the purest population in Australia, with no feral dog genes, and they should be conserved rather than destroyed. It is illegal to feed the dingoes and doing so attracts a heavy fine, as well as instant removal of the perpetrator from the island, all for good reason. Clearly monitors are not going to kill anyone as the dingoes have, but the basic message is the same. We all love the outdoors, love seeing animals in the wild and I'm sure no one here likes to hear stories about animals being forcibly removed from the environment, whether it's relocated or culled (I suspect that Geckphotographer is correct in that most are destroyed rather than relocated) - is it really that important for you to get a kick out of feeding wildlife that the risk of human injury/animal removal is worth it?
Look, take photos, resist the temptation to feed - it's not rocket science.
So, are we going to let this thread die, now, or would you like to keep going?
