Monitor lizard

"A Monitor lizard, the kind that Shivaji used in order to climb up the sides of a fort wall!

A Monitor lizard, the kind that Shivaji used in order to climb up the sides of a fort wall!

Various names for it are Bis-cobra in western India, Guishaap or Goshaap in West Bengal and Bangladesh, and ghorpad in Maharashtra.

Bengal monitor (Varanus bengalensis) or the Common Indian Monitor, is a monitor lizard found widely in South Asia. This large lizard is mainly terrestrial and grows to about 185 centimeters from the tip of the snout to the tail. Young monitors may be more arboreal (tree dwelling) but adults mainly hunt on the ground preying on arthropods but also taking small terrestrial vertebrates, birds and eggs. Although large monitors have few predators apart from humans who hunt them for meat, younger individuals are hunted by numerous predators.

This animal is found in Delhi and at the premises of Wilderness Films India Ltd. in New Delhi!

The Indian Monitor Lizard is one of four kinds of Monitor Lizards found in India. They include the Bengal Monitor Lizard. Monitor lizards belong to the family Varanidae and all monitors are tropical reptiles.

This footage is part of the professionally-shot stock footage archive of Wilderness Films India Ltd., the largest collection of imagery from South Asia. The Wilderness Films India collection comprises of thousands of hours of high quality broadcast imagery, mostly shot on HDCAM 1080i High Definition, HDV and Digital Betacam. Write to us for licensing this footage on a broadcast format, for use in your production! We pride ourselves in bringing the best of India and South Asia to the world... wfi@vsnl.com and admin@wildfilmsindia.com ."