Warning: Not for the faint-hearted.
•
Cannibalism between an adult and a juvenile Malayan Water Monitor Lizards (Varanus salvator).
•
•
It was a quiet morning and as we decided to go back home, we heard a loud splash and banging at the edge of the creek and at first we thought that it was just an occasional fight between two monitor lizards. But when we looked closely, a bigger Malayan Water Monitor lizard caught a juvenile Malayan Water Monitor Lizard and it grab it on its belly. The struggle continues for around 5-7mins until the bigger lizard got a good grip of the small one by its neck and it took its prey to the other side of the river (and your guess of what happens next is as good as mine).
•
Read that it’s well known that monitor lizards (or varanids) sometimes practise cannibalism (that is, predation within their own species), and it should be no surprise to learn that big monitor species sometimes (or even often) prey on and eat smaller ones. The phenomenon whereby predators predate on other, typically smaller, predators is termed intraguild predation.
•
Intraguild predation is defined as a natural enemy feeding on another natural enemy when both natural enemies share another resource as food (usually plant-feeding prey or host species). As such, the interaction may involve either predation (or parasitism) and competition.
•
13 апр 2022
