Bengal Monitor Lizard : Varanus bengalensis

Bengal Monitor Lizard : Varanus bengalensis
Plate 1

Bengal Monitor Lizard : Varanus bengalensis

If you ask me if these creeping gentlemen are Bengal Monitor Lizards, I'll probably answer in the affirmative given the shallowness of my knowledge about reptiles. Because that is the internet-straw I can cling to and float this post through. But if you ask me privately, you might find me shaking my head bemused. I'll tell you why.

Last year, in 2013, I did a roadie of remote desert areas of Rajasthan with Sharang, and on that trip, I also stopped by at Dhawa-Doli, a relatively lesser known wildlife sanctuary some distance away from Jodhpur along the road leading to the desert border town of Barmer. There, I saw these monitor lizards scurrying around - about a meter long and ankle high at a stretch. Now, coming back to Keoladeo Ghana National Park, it looks like some geek zapped these lizards with a zoom gun he'd secretly developed, and the chaps you see in the photographs appear enlarged 5 to 10 times in comparison with their lesser cousins at Dhawa-Doli!

The population at Keoladeo Ghana is either a different species or are rather well-fed. That explains the partially chewed bird carcasses I'd stumble upon on the walking trails as well as the interiors of the jungle. Jackals and Hyenas were unlikely candidates and I was suspecting involvement of poachers. Pythons swallow them whole and leave very little behind...just a few feathers, if at all. Those birds must have been undone by these creeping gentlemen.

Plate 1 above shows a chap sunning half-way up the trunk of the tree, already taller than the average Indian, if measured from tip of tail to tip of snout, and still has a bit of spare tail to pull up behind him.


Bengal Monitor Lizard : Varanus bengalensis
Plate 2

Plate 2 above is another gentleman, poised at a different location in the forest, contemplating a rush into the burrow over which he is hovering, either to escape or maybe to pounce on a morsel he has spied. I suspect he was disturbed in his sunbathing act and is giving himself an option if things got slimy.



 

Bengal Monitor Lizard : Varanus bengalensis
Plate 3

Plate 3 above is actually the first of the club of four gentlemen I met that day. I don't seem to have uploaded the photograph of the fourth gentleman since Plates 3, 4 and 5  pertain to the same fellow. It doesn't matter for he was just lazing by the wayside in a sunny spot among the tattered kikar shade, not very far from a juvenile python lucky enough not to have been gulped down by the lazy one.

These three plates are sufficient to illustrate other aspects of this monitor lizard. The chap was playing dead soaking up the sun but was able to detect me before I detected him and dived swiftly, like an Olympian competitor, into the marshy water-body to my right. Across my immediate path.

Bengal Monitor Lizard : Varanus bengalensis
Plate 4

 Not only was he quick, he was comfortable as a crocodile in water, swimming with powerful side-to-side tail thrusts. One can easily see the wake caused by his strongly propulsive tail.

Bengal Monitor Lizard : Varanus bengalensis
Plate 5

 This final plate is actually shot just before Plate 4. The powerful and long thick tail is clearly visible here as the chap dives into the marsh. Look at the length...almost as long as a five year old kid...and the thickness...would require both hands to wrap around the diameter of the tail at the stump. Powerful.

 

 

Photographed at Keoladeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary, Bharatpur, Rajasthan, India on 2nd March, 2014

 

Camera used: Nikon D5100 DSLR with AF-S DX NIKKOR 55-300mm VR Lens