Odatria

Varanus baritji KING & HORNER 1987
White’s Ridged Tailed Monitor
 
baritji
V. baritji
Daly River, NT
baritji
V. baritji
Katherine, NT
baritji
V. baritji
Adelaide River, NT
aritji
V. baritji
Fenton, NT
Varanus baritji is a medium-sized ground dwelling monitor of the subgenera Odatria. The color of the back is reddish brown with numerous dark brown or black markings, which sometimes form dark lines. A dark stripe which is framed by two pale stripes stretches from the ear opening alongside the eyes to the nostril. Occasionally a second dark stripe stretches from the corner of the mouth alongside the side of the neck to the ear opening. The color on top of limbs and tail is brown, broken off by dark brown and dirty white spots, forming alternating dark and dirty white bands across the tail. The color of the underside is whitish to light brown with irregular distributed dark brown scales, the throat is bright yellow. The head scales are small and smooth. The nostril sits at the side of the snout, it is situated slightly closer to the tip of the snout than to the eye. 80-112 lightly (belly) to strongly keeled scale rows (flanks) are situated around midbody. The tail is more or less round to triangular in diameter, without any keel, but with a double row of larger, keeled scales on top. At the sides and the top, the scales are strongly spinouse. The tail is about 1,7 times as long as SVL. The total length is about 70 cm.
Distribution, habitat and behavior

baritji

baritjiThe distribution of Varanus baritji extends from Katherine to almost Darwin and east into Arnhemland and probably as far west as the Daly River region in the Northern Territory. It is confined to rocky hills and escarpment where it can be found living in crevices and in self made burrows beneath rocks. The range comes very close to that of V. acanthurus but as yet they have yet to be found sympatric (KING & HORNER 1987, COGGER 1992, EHMANN 1992, HUSBAND pers. com.).

 

 

 
Keeping and breeding

BEDFORD & HUSBAND (2003) reported the successful captive husbandry of this species. 4 clutches with a total of 22 eggs produced 15 hatchlings. The babies had a SVL between 52 and 62 mm, the tail length was between 78 and 94.5 mm. The body mass was between 3.1 and 4.2 g.
If you may have the possibility to get a hand on animals of this species some time, you can orientate yourself at the guidelines for the keeping of V. acanthurus. The only difference might be, that V. baritji will tolerate a higher humidity than V. acanthurus will.
   
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