The Nile Monitor (Varanus niloticus), also called Water Leguaan, or River Leguaan, is a large member of the monitor lizard family (Varanidae).
Nile Monitors can grow to about 9 ft (2.7 m) in length. They have muscular bodies, strong legs and powerful jaws. The teeth are sharp and pointed in juvenile animals and become blunt and peg-like in adults. They also possess sharp claws used for climbing, digging, defense, or tearing at their prey. Like all monitors they have a forked tongue, with highly developed olfactory properties.
Their nostrils are placed high on the snout, indicating that these animals are highly aquatic, but are also excellent climbers and quick runners on land. Nile Monitors feed on fish, snails, frogs, crocodile eggs and young, snakes, birds, small mammals, large insects, and carrion.
In South Africa they are commonly referred to as leguaan, from the Dutch for iguana.
Famous quotes containing the words nile and/or monitor:
“Hard by the lilied Nile I saw
A duskish river dragon stretched along.
The brown habergeon of his limbs enamelled
With sanguine alamandines and rainy pearl:
And on his back there lay a young one sleeping,
No bigger than a mouse;”
—Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803–1849)
“It is indeed typical that you Earth people refuse to believe in the superiority of any world but your own. Children looking into a magnifying glass, imagining the image you see is the image of your true size.”
—Franklin Coen. Joseph Newman. The Monitor (Douglas Spencer)