Monitor Lizards
In Redwall
- Alignment: Evil
- Appearance: Bipedal monitors
- Habitat: Monitors are typically from warm, tropic climates,
such as Sampetra. They absolutely loathe the cold and wet.
- Typical Personality: Monitors, as stated above, hate cold and
wet. They are slow and sluggish in the cold, but dangerous fighters
when warm. Most tend to use tridents.
- Habits: The lizards speak with a hissing accent, their tongues
often flicking in and out as they speak.
Outside Redwall
- Classification: Order: Squamata; Family: Lacertilia; Species: Varanus exanthematicus
- Other Names: Bosc's monitor; savannah monitor
- Appearance: Monitor lizards can be as long as 1.5 feet and
weigh between one and seventy kilograms. They have wide, short heads
and tails. They have gray-brown scales, with rows of dark yellow spots
across their backs.
- Diet: Monitors mostly eat snails, carrion, millipedes, small
mammals, birds, snakes, toads, lizards, and eggs.
- Habitat: While monitors prefer the savannah, they will also
live in rocky dessert type areas, open forests and woodlands.
- Typical Personality: Monitors are aggressively
territorial. When cornered, they will hiss and lash their tail,
getting ready to strike. Sometimes, if necessary, they will play dead.
- Habits: Lizards can flick their tongues 160 times every two
minutes, but usually only do so 40 - 60 times per every other minute except
after biting prey. They are also diurnal.
- Life Cycle: The female digs a nest and lays 20 - 50
eggs. The eggs hatch out after five to six months, in March.
- Sites for Further Research:
