Turquois Monitor
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V. carulivirens courtesy of H. DeLisle |
The ground color is greyish-brown to black with a light to turquoise patter. The coloration of the underside is light yellowish to turquoise with a blackish pattern. A dark temporal stripe, consisting of grey-turquoise scales, framed on both sides by yellowish to light turquoise scales. The back has generally up to 20 transverse rows of ocelli between the limbs, which become more and more inconspicuous posteriorly. The tail usually has broad greyish-turquoise and blackish crossbands on the last two thirds.
Throat and lower part of the neck is mostly yellowish, with more or less dark spots or with few dark transverse rows.
Varanus
caerulivirens is only known from one locality on the eastcoast of Halmahera,
Moluccan Islands, Indonesia, where it might occur sympatrically with its
relatives V. indicus and V. yuwonoi. Latest research has shown, that V. caerulivirens is often seen along waterways in western Halamhera. Also V. caerulivirens might occur on the island of Morotai (DELISLE pers. comm.).
Reinvestigation of long-time preserved material from museum collections
revealed further specimens of V. caerulivirens previously assigned
to V. indicus. Among them is the only specimen with precise locality
data for Halmahera: a juvenile collected in the year 1895 at Patani on the
eastern coast of Halmahera (ZIEGLER, BÖHME & PHILIPP 1999).
Till now no field data on the habitat and life history of this species are
available. LEMM (1998) reported a very rare second
blue-tailed mangrove-type monitor besides V. yuwonoi from Halmahera,
which he said was "extremely flighty and aggressive". In captivity, V. caerulivirens are excellent climbers and are also very well
adapted to semi-aquatic habitats (PHILIPP, ZIEGLER & BÖHME 1999).
The diet of this species mainly consists of scorpions, crustaceans, grasshoppers
and anurans, which were analysed on preserved specimen.
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