Thaindian News

April 7, 2010 (Pen Men at Work): The biologists on Wednesday revealed the impressive discovery of a new species of giant lizards. These reptiles are as lengthy as the tallness of a grown-up man and are gifted with a double penis.

This reserved but vividly colored animal, a monitor lizard, is a close cousin of the Komodo Dragon of Indonesia.

However, unlike the terrifying Dragon, it is not a predator, nor does it devour decomposing meat. Instead, it is completely serene and sticks into fruit.

Labeled Varanus bitatawa, the lizard is two meters in length, in keeping with the story printed by Britain’s Royal Society.

It was discovered in a river valley on the northern Luzon Island in the Philippines. It has endured the vanishing of its habitation and preying by the indigenous people who eat it.

The species is most likely to be in danger of extinction and might well have evaporated completely without ever being registered had a huge male specimen not been liberated alive from a huntsman last June.

The only discoveries of analogous significance in recent decades are the Kipunji monkey, which resides on a small range of forests in Tanzania, and the Saola, a forest-dwelling bovine found only in Vietnam and Laos.

V. bitatawa has matchless markings and a bizarre sexual structure.

Its flaking body and legs are blue-black mottled with pale yellow-green dots, while its tail is smeared by discontinuous segments of black and green.

Males have a double penis referred to as the hemipenes. The two penises are often utilized in alternation, and sometimes consist of spines or hooks that facilitate to fasten the male within the female during sexual interaction.

The investigators have conjectured that the new lizard had so far not been detected probably because it never departs from the forests of its indigenous Sierra Madre Mountains to pass through open territories.

The authors, in the journal ‘Biology Letters’, have stated that this discovery strengthens the identification of the Philippines as a worldwide preservation hotspot and a regional superpower of biodiversity.