A giant 5-foot-long lizard, believed to be an Asian water monitor lizard, was recently spotted scurrying along a busy road in west Florida.
“He’s so big,” Renee Aland said in a video of the lizard she posted to social media. “He’s just stomping down the road. He’s going to the other side of the road.”
When her daughter, Zoe Malzoney, asked if she should approach the lizard, her mother quickly replied, “No, stay in the car.”
Orlando said on Facebook that he “did a double take” when he saw the lizard while driving on Hillsboro Road in Northport on May 20.
She called the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, but the commission wouldn’t report it “without photographic evidence,” so she waited until she got video of it.
Aland told WBBH-TV that at first he thought the lizard was an alligator.
“We got closer and looked and we could see his tongue. [a] The lizard’s tongue came out and I was like, ‘Oh my god, that’s not a crocodile!'”
Ms. Malzoney said it reminded her of Mrs. Kipling, the 7-foot-long pet lizard from the Disney Channel show “Jessie.”
“It looked like a big lizard. I’ve seen something similar before – you know the show on Disney Channel called ‘Jessie’? It looked like that big lizard from ‘Jessie’,” Marzoney said. “It was just walking around. It was huge, at least four or five feet. It was pretty crazy. I wanted to get out and get closer. What was it? I wanted to see, but she was like, ‘No, stay in the car.'”
Orlando added: “It’s pretty incredible, I’ve never seen anything like it before, but the concern is the impact it’s having on native wildlife. They’re obviously quite voracious eaters so that doesn’t seem like it’s good for the ecosystem.”
Asian water monitor lizards are native to South and Southeast Asia but do not live in the U.S. They are commonly kept as pets and it is not illegal to keep them as pets, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
According to the reptarium, the lizards typically grow to between 4 and 6 feet and eat everything from snakes and insects to birds, frogs, rodents and small birds.
It is considered one of the largest lizards in the world.
A week earlier, another invasive species was spotted moving north along the Florida coast.
Peter’s rock agama has moved north into parts of Central Florida, with residents in West Melbourne keeping an eye on the red-headed reptiles.
Ken Gioelli, a natural resources extension agent with the University of Florida, told FOX 35 that he calls the lizards’ movement north along the coast an “invasion front.”
“They’re having some kind of impact on the environment, but we don’t yet fully understand what it is,” he said.
The Peter’s rock agama was first recorded in Florida in 1976 and has since been found in 20 counties from Monroe to Volusia, according to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC).
This species is native to tropical sub-Saharan Africa.
