Monitor Lizard

gunn · Post by **gunn** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 3:16 am

monitor lizard shot in the park a few days ago. 20D, 100/f2.8, 1/250, f6.7.

Just a quick post and to say hi to all the good people here at photomacrography.net after a long absence.

S. Alden · Post by **S. Alden** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 4:43 am

Beautiful lizard gunn, simply beautiful. Glad to see you back

biawak · Post by **biawak** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 6:16 am

Nice catch Gunn but it's not a monitor lizard ('goanna'). It's a Calotes emma (a tree lizard sometimes called 'bloodsucker'). It's a member of the dragon family (Agamidae).

gunn · Post by **gunn** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 9:44 am

hi biawak. nice to be talking to you again. wow, didn't know it was more of a dragon than it was a lizard. hope it's saliva doesn't contain the same deadly bacteria as does that of the kodomo.

regards
gunn

MikeBinOKlahoma · Post by **MikeBinOKlahoma** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 10:09 am

gunn wrote:hope it's saliva doesn't contain the same deadly bacteria as does that of the kodomo.

Hi Gunn, glad to see you returning here, and hope to see you more often! But PLEASE don't French-kiss the lizards, regardless of what's in their saliva!

biawak · Post by **biawak** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 8:08 pm

Gunn, no worries about the saliva! I've been bitten many times by this species and did not even get any infection.
BTW we did an analysis of about 12 different monitor lizards in my collection about 10 years ago and none of them had any deadly bacteria in their saliva like the komodo monitor. Each species does have very specific microbial population though.