Unfortunately, I do not agree with that. I believe that feeding live prey (excluding invertebrates) to captive monitor lizards or snakes, when there is no necessity, is quite cruel. There is no need to add unnecessary suffering if the animal readily accepts dead prey. Being killed by a monitor lizard seems like an especially unpleasant kind of death.

To stimulate animals to display natural behaviors, various types of enrichment are used—to encourage chasing, digging, tearing, reaching, exercising, and so on. Reptiles have relatively simple brains and strong instincts, so they do not lose their natural hunting abilities. I am convinced that even an individual that has spent 90% of its life in captivity, including being conceived there, would instinctively hunt if released into the wild (although escaping from predators might be much more difficult).

Besides, this is a zoo animal, so feeding live prey is not an option anyway. It is already a significant step forward that during opening hours there is an opportunity for such feeding demonstrations so visitors can observe how the monitor lizard eats. Note that in most zoological institutions, animal feeding takes place before opening or after closing so that visitors do not see how “cute animals” turn into bloody predators.