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Glauert's goanna is an elegant, rock-dwelling lizard with a very long tail and long limbs. Mertens described it from two specimens previously assigned to V.timorensis similis. This beautiful goanna is found only in the extreme north of Western Australia and the Northern Territory, and also occurs on a number of islands off the coast...
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V.caudolineatus is a small monitor lizard that occurs only in Western Australia. It does not appear to live around the coast, nor on any offshore islands (Storr 1980). Favoured habitats are grasslands, shrublands and woodlands and it appears to inhabit a wide range of Acacia and spinifex dominated habitats...
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The short-tailed goanna is the smallest living monitor lizard, and quite possibly the smallest species that has ever existed. They live in desert regions of Western Australia, Northern Territory and Queensland, most often in areas of spinifex.
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Reprints, bibilography, translations, reviews, reprints, links and more.
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 Dumeril's monitor is a very mysterious animal. It is found in southern parts of Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Borneo, Sumatra and many smaller neighbouring islands including Natu, Bangka and Bellitung.
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 The yellow monitor is a poorly known species and is considered to be one of the most endangered monitor lizards. It is found only in Bangladesh, Nepal, India and Pakistan (Minton 1966; Smith 1932; Swan & Leviton 1962; Auffenberg et al 1989; Sarker 1987).
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The
International Varanid Interest Group is a volunteer-based organization
established to advance varanid research, conservation, and husbandry,
and to promote scientific literacy among varanid enthusiasts worldwide.
Membership to the IVIG is free, and open to anyone with an interest in
monitor lizards. Click Here
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The first two articles in this occasional series on the monitor lizards of Asia discussed two rare and enigmatic animals found only in rainforests and mangrove swamps. Virtually nothing is known of their biology and they are only rarely seen in captivity, at least on this side of the Atlantic (Bennett 1993, 1995). |
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Note: Update to taxonomy 2001: Internation Comission for Zoological Nomeclature ruled that the revised names mentioned here should be abandoned.
 At present three subspecies are recognised; V.panoptes panoptes inhabits the extreme north of eastern Western Australia and the Northern Territory, the islands of the Torres Straits and probably many other islands...
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 Although captive breeding of monitor lizards has been revolutionised over the last ten years, the proportion of captive bred animals in the trade is still miniscule. This is because captive breeding has tended to concentrate on Australian species, with an emphasis on the dwarf (Odatria) species.
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White's Goanna (baritji is an aboriginal word for white and the lizard is named after its discoverer Dr Neville White) is a small spiny-tailed monitor known at present only from the extreme north of the Northern Territory.
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 The Sepik monitor is usually known by the name of V.karlschmidti (Mertens 1951). Bohme (1991) recognised that Mertens had redescribed an animal originally named by Ahl (1932). This is another species about which very little is known. They can be distinguished from V.indicus by the possession of smaller scales...
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 The lace goanna is the second largest lizard in Australia. It is widespread in eastern Queensland, eastern New South Wales and most of Victoria but is restricted to the extreme south-east of South Australia (Houston 1978). They also inhabit some islands off the eastern coast (e.g. Mackay 1959).
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The Yemen monitor was the most magnificent discovery of the 1980's. Specimens had been collected in the late 19th Century and had been in the British Museum since 1903 and 1906 but it had been presumed that the specimens had been mislabelled and must have been collected in Africa.
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 Mertens' goanna is perhaps the most amphibious member of the monitor lizard family. It is found in northern Australia, from Western Australia east to western Queensland. According to Schmida (1985) they are common on waterways throughout northern Australia.
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Storr's goanna is another spiny-tailed dwarf species found in inland areas of northern Australia. V.storri ocreatus occurs in Western Australia and Northern Territory, V.storri storri is known only from Queensland. The species can be distinguished from V.acanthurus by its smaller size, fewer rows of scales around the belly and their duller pattern.
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 Mitchell's monitor is a small arboreal goanna found along the waterways of northern Western Australia and Northern Territory. Its long compressed tail led Mertens (1958) to place the species in the subgenus Varanus along with other large Australian goannas, but more recent studies suggest that this is a dwarf monitor of the Odatria subgenus...
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 The twilight goanna is another long-tailed rock-dwelling species. It has a much larger distribution than Glauert's goanna. inhabiting the far north of Western Australia, Northern Territory and Queensland but is absent from the Cape York Peninsula. They also inhabit a number of islands off the northern coast.
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Differences between this goanna and V.scalaris have been outlined above. Bohme (1988) considered V.similis to be "probably a valid species" on the basis of its hemipenal morphology. Unfortunately he makes no reference to V.scalaris.
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 The rediscovery of the blue-tailed monitor is the latest in an exciting series of discoveries by Wolfgang Bohme and Georg Horn. Described and forgotten, the holotype had been destroyed by a wartime bomb, but the precise description given by Meyer allowed the recent workers to identify it as identical to their new-found species
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This busy little monitor is one of the most widespread of the pygmy goannas. It lives in desert and semi-desert areas of Western Australia, Northern Territory and South Australia but its occurrence in Queensland is uncertain...
The only obligate fruit-eaters among reptiles are three species of monitor lizard that live in the Philippines. Frugivorous vertebrates tend to be able to fly (almost all are bats and birds) and so these lizards have a unique ecological role as highly specialized and relatively immobile fruit eaters. Before this project started, the only studies of this unique giant and endangered lizard had involved killing the animals. We have developed a set of techniques that allow us to learn about these animals in a completely non-destructive way.