Reptilia · Squamata
Varanus bitatawaWelton, Siler, Bennett, Diesmos, Duya, Dugay, Rico, Van Weerd, Brown, 2010
Sierra Madre forest monitor
Photograph by Brown R, Siler C, Oliveros C, Welton L, Rock A, Swab J, Van…, CC BY, via Wikimedia Commons
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A tree-dwelling, day-active, plant-eating monitor lizard from the Oriental region, reaching 766 mm snout to vent.
Reptilia › Squamata › Varanidae › Varanus
- Grows to
- 766mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Herbivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives
- Arboreal
Longer than 87% 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
28 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
- 2021
- Red List criteria
- B1ab(ii,iii)
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Fangs
- None
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 766mm2 ft 6 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 454.3mm18 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 454.3mm18 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 10,702g24 lb
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasured
- 1788g3.9 lb
max 766 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
How it lives
- Diet
- Herbivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Arboreal
- Habitat
- Forest
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests
- Region
- Oriental
- Mainland or island
- Found only on islands
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 10m
- Range size
- 5085km²
Omnivorous (snailes and fruit, probably mostly fruit, Welton et al. 2010), frugivorous (Abano-Sarigumba et al. 2018), Mostly herbivorous (Law et al. 2018: "The frugivorous diet was supplemented with snails and insects belonging to the orders Orthoptera, Phasmatodea and Coleoptera"), fruit, crabs and snails (Jenssen and Sy 2022)
e.g., Abano-Sarigumba et al. 2018, Jenssen and Sy 2022
(e.g., Abano-Sarigumba et al. 2018, Jenssen and Sy 2022), mostly arboreal (Law et al. 2018)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Anguimoprha
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Welton, Siler, Bennett, Diesmos, Duya, Dugay, Rico, Van Weerd, Brown
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 2010
- Type locality
- Philippines
Keeping one
10 ft 1 in × 6 ft 3 in × 10 ft 1 in(306 × 192 × 306 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better.
The standard sizes climbing species at 4 × 2.5 × 4 times snout-vent length.
Lives in vegetation, so height and climbing structure matter more than floor space.
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 6 in (766 mm), at 4 × 2.5 × 4 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
No preferred body temperature has been recorded for Sierra Madre forest monitor. Rather than repeat a number from a care sheet, this page leaves it out.
Feeding
Prey size does not apply. A herbivore's diet is judged on fibre, on the ratio of calcium to phosphorus, and on avoiding plants high in oxalates.
The animal does not take prey items. This is established practice, not a measurement.
749kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 10,702 g, the heaviest recorded for Sierra Madre forest 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 · snout to vent
- — Hatchling length · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body mass · a typical adult
- — Body mass at hatching
- — Longest recorded life
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How it hunts
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Average clutch
- — Smallest clutch recorded
- — Largest clutch recorded
- — Mean clutch · smallest reported
- — Mean clutch · largest reported
- — Clutches in a year
- — Clutches a year · fewest
- — Clutches a year · most
- — First breeds from · youngest recorded
- — First breeds by · oldest recorded
- — Hatchling length · smallest recorded
- — Hatchling length · largest recorded
- — Age at first breeding · female
- — Mature from · youngest recorded
- — Mature by · oldest recorded
- — Size at maturity · smallest recorded
- — Size at maturity · largest recorded
- — Venomous
- — Body temp in the wild · lowest mean recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · highest mean recorded
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — Pupil
- — Sex decided by
- — Population trend
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
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 bitatawa. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/varanus-bitatawa
@misc{varanus_bitatawa_2026,
title = {Varanus bitatawa},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/varanus-bitatawa}
}Sources
- Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
- Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.
- Oskyrko, O. et al. (2024). ReptTraits: a comprehensive dataset of ecological traits in reptiles. Scientific Data. Used under CC BY 4.0.