Reptilia · Squamata
Varanus bengalensisDaudin, 1802
Bengal Monitor
Photograph by Ian Dugdale, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A ground-dwelling, day-active, meat-eating monitor lizard from the Oriental region, reaching 900 mm snout to vent.
Also called Indian Monitor.
Once published as Varanus cepedianus, Varanus irrawadicus, Varanus monitor — those names reach this page.
Reptilia › Squamata › Varanidae › Varanus
- Grows to
- 900mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 22years
Longer than 94% of all monitor lizards anyone has measured.
The bar is the rank itself: its length is the share of the family this animal exceeds. The chart below is the family’s real spread, on a logarithmic scale because body length here runs from 116.4 to 1,570 mm. The solid rule is this animal. Every bar is a count of real species, and nothing on this figure is estimated.
What is known
48 sourced facts, each taken from a named scientific dataset. How to read these.
Cited from a dataset unless a row is marked otherwise.
Standing in the world
- Still living
- Extant
- Conservation status
- Near Threatened
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2018
- Population trend
- Decreasing
- Red List criteria
- A2d
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 22years
- Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- 34°C93 °F
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 31–37°C88–99 °F
22 in captivity (Schleich and Kastle 2002, Kastle et al. 2013, Mendyk 2015), Carey and Judge 2000 say 10; Slavens and Slavens 1999: 11 and 2 months, Rogner 1997: 16-17, Erickson 2003: 10.5 (captivity)
mean body temperature of active individuals in nature
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 900mm2 ft 11 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 387.5mm15.5 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 387.5mm15.5 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 96.5mm3.75 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 87mm3.5 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 18,029g40 lb
- Body mass · a typical adult
- 3750g8.3 lb
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasured
- 2100g4.6 lb
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 18.2g0.64 oz
max 900 mm SVL (Feldman et al. 2016)
snout-vent length; the source column mixes this with straight carapace length
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
AnAge rates this record "acceptable"
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- How it hunts
- Active foraging
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Desert, Forest, Shrubland, Wetlands
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests
- Active season · months of the year
- 5–12months
- Region
- Oriental
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Elevation · above sea level
- 90–3000m
- Range size
- 4,839,159km²
- Density
- 0.01–0.5per hectare
- Home range · largest recorded
- 104,000m2
vertebrates and invertebrates (lizards, frogs and arthropods, Losos and Greene 1988, see also Das and Das 2017), arthropods (Pauwels et al. 2000), snails, scorpions, insects and their larvae, fish, frogs, lizards, snales including cobras and mammals including bats (Kastle et al. 2013), "20 mammals, 21 birds, 20 reptiles, 14 amphibians, and 7 freshwater fishes" species - as well as invertebrates (Karunarathna et al. 2017), mostly arthropods (Auliya and Koch 2020)
Active foraging
e.g., Chaudhuri and Chowdhury 2018, Sengupta and Nigam 2018, Auliya and Koch 2020, Kamali 2020, Singh et al. 2021, Jenssen and Sy 2022
Terrestrial and arboreal (Pauwels et al. 2003), mainly terrestrial (Auliya and Koch 2020), terrestrial (Jenssen and Sy 2022)
max 2150 (Srinivasulu et al. 2014), max 2040 (Kastle et al. 2013), max 400 (de Silva and Ukuwela 2017), max 3000 (record, Singh et al. 2020)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Gestation or incubation
- 183days
- Average clutch
- 20.2eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 5–42eggs
- Mean clutch
- 19.3–21.1eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 1.5per year
- Clutches a year
- 1–2per year
- First breeds at
- 30–36months
- Age at first breeding · female
- 1004days
mean 21 (Du et al. 2014, Auliya and Koch 2020), 6-30 (Kastle et al. 2013), 12 (Das and Das 2017), 10-32, mean 21.1 (Ahsan and Abu Saeed 2004), 8-32 (Thakur 2020, Auliya and Koch 2020)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Anguimoprha
- Subspecies
- Varanus bengalensis bengalensis (DAUDIN 1802) Varanus bengalensis irrawadicus YANG & LI 1987
- Described by
- Daudin
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1802
- Type locality
- Surinam" (in error).
Keeping one
11 ft 10 in × 11 ft 10 in × 7 ft 5 in(360 × 360 × 225 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better.
The standard sizes ground-dwelling species at 4 × 4 × 2.5 times snout-vent length.
Mindestanforderungen an die Haltung von Reptilien (Sachverständigengutachten), German Federal Ministry for Nutrition, Agriculture and Forestry, Animal Welfare Division, 10 January 1997. The standard states these floor areas are recommendations rather than binding limits.
From this animal’s own snout-vent length of 2 ft 11 in (900 mm), at 4 × 4 × 2.5 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
Active animals measured in the wild averaged 93 °F (34 °C).
Mean body temperature of active individuals measured in nature. A measurement of the animal, not a setting for a thermostat.
Feeding
A prey item should be no wider than the space between the animal's eyes.
Widely used across reptile husbandry references. The stated reason is that the gap approximates the width of the throat, so wider prey is associated with impaction. This is established practice, not a measurement.
1191kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 18,029 g, the heaviest recorded for Bengal Monitor — so it is the top of the range, not a figure for a particular animal. Weigh yours and the number will be lower.
An upper estimate, not a feeding target, and not veterinary advice. The equation covers only what an animal burns staying alive, so a growing, gravid or recovering animal needs more — and it was measured on wild animals, which move far more than one in an enclosure. Body condition and a vet who knows the species are what a feeding decision should rest on. Where this comes from.
What nobody knows
These are not gaps in our research. No scientific dataset records them for this species — and saying so is information you cannot get from a reference that simply leaves a field out.
- — Length snout to vent · adult male mean
- — Length snout to vent · adult mean
- — Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- — Female length · mean, nose to tail
- — Length nose to tail · adult male mean
- — Length nose to tail · adult mean
- — Largest male · snout to vent
- — Largest female · shell length
- — Largest male · shell length
- — Hatchling length · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How the young develop
- — Hatchling length · smallest recorded
- — Hatchling length · largest recorded
- — Mature from · youngest recorded
- — Mature by · oldest recorded
- — Size at maturity · smallest recorded
- — Size at maturity · largest recorded
- — Venomous
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — Pupil
- — Sex decided by
- — Active in
Others in Varanidae
Take this data
Everything on this page is available as data under CC BY 4.0 — use it freely, credit it, no permission needed.
This species as JSON · the whole dataset
Cite this page
The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia (2026). Varanus bengalensis. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/varanus-bengalensis
@misc{varanus_bengalensis_2026,
title = {Varanus bengalensis},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/varanus-bengalensis}
}Sources
- Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
- AnAge, Human Ageing Genomic Resources (de Magalhães et al.), used under CC BY 3.0.
- Oskyrko, O. et al. (2024). ReptTraits: a comprehensive dataset of ecological traits in reptiles. Scientific Data. Used under CC BY 4.0.
- Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.