Description:
Scientific name: Varanus olivaceus
Life span: up to 15 years in captivity
Gray’s monitor lizard is the very first herbivorous monitor lizard. This lizard has a greenish-gray color that is covered in darker longitudinal stripes on the body, limbs, neck, and tail. A varied amount of dark brown-black transverse stripes are overlaid on top of the ventral color, which ranges from gray to grayish-green and yellow. These lizards have robust heads but not robust tails and limbs.
Native Region/Habitat
Gray’s monitor lizard is native to Polillo, Catanduanes islands, and southern Luzon Island.
Behavior:
The Gray’s monitors are arboreal in nature. They spend most of their time in canopies of fruit trees. They are also adapted to the terrestrial lifestyle and feed on a secondary food source which is snails or mollusks. The breeding season of this monitor is between July-October. Female lays 10- 11 eggs in clutches and incubates for 219 days in captivity. The breeding behavior is still ambiguous in wild. The most likely location for this species to lay eggs is believed to be in tree hollows, where they also spend a large portion of their waking hours resting, rather than in a nest that is dug.
Care As a pet/In captivity:
Gray’s monitors have not been kept in captivity much because they have not been breed successfully outside the Philippines.
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