Article - Huge Monitor Lizard Species New to Science

Posted by Alex H.

What a find!

Ethnobiologists in the Philippines recently discovered a whopper of a lizard. Now introducing the Northern Sierra Madre Forest Monitor Lizard (Varanus bitatawa)! This large (~10 kg) lizard is apparently one of only three known fruit-eating species in the world.

To learn more, check out this article from ScienceDaily.

According to this article, the fruit-eating lizard lives in the trees on the northern Philippines island of Luzon. The species was probably so difficult to find because the lizard has actually been hunted by humans (their main predator) for so long that the behavior of the species has become highly secretive and skittish.

Nowadays, discovering large vertebrate animal species is a fairly rare event (when one omits genetic testing, I suppose). That the lizard is fruit eating and quite brightly colored makes the find even more remarkable.

That's what you get for being observant :)


EDIT: Fixed broken link. Sorry for the confusion.