Reptile fun III - desert monitoring

During my latest long shift of desert duty, I got to take a picture of yet another significant reptile of the local desert. The Varanus griseus desert monitor is a fearsome predator - a more fearsome predator, in fact, than even the Vulpes ruepelli desert foxes that walk around the desert at night on the prowl for gerbils and food scraps. Gerbils? Food scraps? Yes, the desert monitor will eat them, but he'll also eat everything else, too. That meter-long lizard will hunt and eat the scorpions, hedgehogs, dhub lizards, and even the vipers and black cobras that live around here. The desert monitor is endangered, and I have seen fewer in the eight months that we have spent here so far, than in the two weeks that I spent here on my way to Iraq in the early spring of 2004. I don't know exactly why their population is so clearly diminished, but I am planning to ask the local border policemen tomorrow. The locals call this lizard Wurral.

This lizard is one that I caught and photographed a few months ago, but since I've been posting so many reptile photos I thought I'd add this one. It is a gecko known as Bunopus tuberculatus. This particular one looks ragged because it was halfway through its molt when I found it.





Most of the other lizards I found were too fast to be photographed, or I snapped a picture and couldn't come up with a name for them so I didn't put them up on my blog. But I hope this gives a good idea of just how many neat reptiles inhabit this desert.