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Monitor Lizards can
- swim
- climb trees
- lay eggs on sandy beaches
- they hiss it sounds like air being let out of a balloon.
- wary of people (at present)
- diurnal (walk about during the day)
- monitors reproduce from May
through
September, and the babies hatch around February. They hatch out at about 12
to 14 inches long."
- Dangerous: They are grabbers and shakers. 1) Why do monitor lizard bites take such a long time to heal? They carry a nasty variety of pathogens in their saliva. The most notorious is the Komodo Dragon - if you make it past the attack, you risk death from secondary infection if you don't get medical help. So, if you plan on going after a monitor, and get bit, I suggest medical attention. As an aside, when I was doing my Ph.D. dissertation on sea turtles, I got a nasty Vibrio infection, and almost lost my arm (threatened amputation) - and a colleage of mine lost her hand from an infection from a sea turtle.
Dr. John A. Keinath
Professor of Biology and Environmental Science
Columbia College
Hunter Army Airfield
Savannah, GA
- can grow 7ft long
- native of the Nile River in Africa
- The Cape's population of monitors needs to be eradicated or kept in check by
trappers because the reptiles eat the eggs and hatchlings of burrowing owls,
a
species of special concern, and the eggs of threatened gopher tortoises.
They
also like to eat alligator eggs and other small reptiles.
"The little owls are like popcorn snacks to them," Klowden said. "They're
just sitting ducks."
He said there already are so many threats to Florida's endangered species,
including development and cars running over the owls, that exotics have the
potential to do a lot of damage to what's left of native species.
"The lizards really are experts at what they do and the potential for them
to
cause damage is there. They could be the straw that breaks the camel's back
if they continue to breed."
The monitor population may already have spread to Pine Island, Klowden said.
And they could move onto the other islands.
Klowden said he doesn't know if it's possible to kill all of the lizards in
the Cape, but the team may be able to cull the population so they do less
damage.
After the monitors are captured, they are euthanized. Then Campbell does
necropsies to determine what they eat and how the reptiles' reproductive
systems
work. They've done about 20 studies so far. The ones that don't get studied
are incinerated.
A reptile fan, Klowden said it's hard for him to kill them when it's human
error that put them there in the first place.
"There's nothing I hate to do more. I have respect for them. They are
fascinating. In their native Africa, they go after the eggs of the Nile
crocodile,
which make our (Everglades) crocodiles look like poodles."
biologist Gregg Klowden, a Ph.D. student
University of Florida.
Klowden and field biologist Zach Reffner are trapping the non-native monitor
lizards in southwest Cape Coral along with biologist and professor Todd
Campbell of the University of Tampa. Campbell wrote the grants and garnered
the
support for the project.
The team, thanks to financial support from the Charlotte Harbor National
Estuary Program and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, are working
on
a
$51,664 Nile monitor eradication project in Cape Coral. The city also is
participating in the project, which has caught about 60 of the reptiles so
far.
Not much is known about the lizards, Klowden said. He said there has been
only one comprehensive study of Nile monitors done in their native Africa.
"It
was written by a German biologist," he said.
Campbell said the project is like studying a new species. Because the
monitors are from Africa, they develop different behaviors in a different
environment.
"Unlike a lot of studies, we find nuances people haven't already learned,"
Campbell said. "What we've learned is that
http://www.news-press.com/news/local_state/040526lizards.html
Allen Salzberg
Publisher/Editor
HerpDigest www.herpdigest.org
Non-Profit, Weekly, Electronic Newsletter reporting on the Latest
Conservation and Science News on Reptiles and Amphibians
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7/1/04
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