31/12/2017
Reptile Rescue Phangan กู้ภัยสัตว์เลื้อยคลานพงัน
Most residents may have discovered our giant prehistoric looking lizards on the island several times. But for newbies the Asian Water Monitor (Varanus salvator) is still a spectacular sight. With above 2 meter length on most islands, and up to 3 meter on the mainland they're the 2. biggest on land living lizard.
The main diet of these wonderful creatures is fish, crabs, shrimps mussels, and sometimes also birds, eggs rodents and carrion. Monitor lizards are highly intelligent predators, but can be lazy bastards, if it comes to finding food. They rather wait to eat from our unhealthy kitchen waste, before they waste energy and hunt for proper food. Once in a while I go to visit my scaled friends in a brackish river mouth. The last few times when I was there, I saw one female with extremely deformed skeleton. It's a disease called rachitis, which is caused by calcium insufficiency. The same old female (on the images) now barely can't walk anymore, and it's getting weaker by the day. I found even a second one in the same bad shape today. In this stage all help comes too late. It's gonna die soon. Possibly by starvation, if not by any organ failure. Even if I could help her, I wouldn't even know, where to keep such a huge lizard in the moment. I asked the people there to not feed the other monitors with rubbish like sandwich bread or french fries. First they said "No problem! They like it." Yes, they obviously do. But it will cause them to die a painful death!
So, if you notice people feeding monitor lizards, please ask them friendly to stop it. Apart from mentioned health risks by a one-sided diet, feeding wildlife is in general not a good thing. Why? Because for most wild animals the from nature given distance towards humans and other competitors can safe their lives. If they loose fear towards us, they're easier to catch for enemies. Especially smaller semi adults would be easy prey. Some locals and Burmese like to eat the youngsters. Once they reach an adult size above 2 meter and up, their natural shyness can be also safer for humans. They have actually enough power to defeat or at least badly injure a human. Especially if they would attack in a pack. Usually it doesn't happen. But at places, where they get frequently fed by humans, they come to eat in big groups. Eventually not all of them will patiently wait to get the next bite. They just take the hand that was feeding them. Trust me... with one bite they can cause enough damage, to cause immense blood loss. And in combination with the blood-coagulating venom, they let you literally bleed out. Which is pretty smart, because we all know, with less blood the meat gets more tender.
But we don't want that happen! Right? Therefore pleeease... help to avoid such unpleasant encounters. Stop feeding wildlife. We have not much left to observe on the island. That way you can help to protect our fascinating Phangan Dragons.
Thank you!
