The reptilian people are said to be among us, as a conspiracy story circulating in right-wing circles whispers. But why laboriously interpret Angela Merkel and Hillary Clinton into the reptilian, when there are real giant reptiles right in the middle of the center, visible to everyone the Thai megacity of Bangkok trudge?
The banded monitor lizards in Lumpini Park in the city center, surrounded by modern skyscrapers and shopping centers, have now become another attraction in the most visited metropolis in the world with around 23 million guests every year. Built on the Chao Phraya River, Bangkok is criss-crossed by a dense network of canals, ponds and green spaces. With its tropical, warm, humid climate, the city obviously offers an extremely suitable environment for the second largest lizard species in the world after the Komodo dragon.
Estimates suggest that there is a population of several thousand monitor lizards in the city center. Although that is still less than the over 8 million people, the population density of monitor lizards in Bangkok is significantly higher than in their natural habitats. What attracts the giant lizards?which can be up to 3 meters long and weigh 15 kilograms, although they are usually only around 2 meters long, in the big city?
A richly laid table
The same thing that increasingly gives us wild boars and foxes in our cities: a table richly laid by humans and a well-structured habitat, at least in comparison to the surrounding agricultural deserts. In the case of monitor lizards, which like to swim and dive extensively and are therefore also called “water monitors” in English, there are still plenty of water areas, of which Lumpini Park offers enough.
Banded monitor lizards are generalists and opportunists, which in zoological vocabulary is more of a compliment. They can adapt well to a wide range of conditions, do not depend on any special features in their habitat other than the presence of water, and although they are carnivores, they are not picky. Everything that is available is devoured: they hunt mice, rats, squirrels, large insects, crustaceans, amphibians and other reptiles, but also like to eat carrion. And with it also human waste.
In Lumpini Park you can observe how they wait patiently behind snack stands until something drops off for them, and garbage bags that carelessly come within their reach are immediately located and rummaged through by the pleasant-smelling lizards. Their intelligence, which is unusually high for reptiles and can be compared with that of smarter mammals, helps them in this. Because many people create a lot of rubbish, which the lizards either eat themselves or which attracts other delicacies such as mice and rats, they live in the park in a monitor lizard paradise.
A monitor lizard in the supermarket
Things used to be different: monitor lizards had a bad reputation and were considered bad luck, probably because of their tendency to nibble on human corpses. Just ten years ago, the Bangkok authorities tried to drive back the reptiles in a large-scale hunting operation. However, there was no result, the population quickly grew again – a female monitor lizard lays up to 40 eggs, so vacant places are quickly filled. In the meantime, however, the image of reptiles has changed. They are becoming more and more an internationally known attraction and also popular with the local population.
Numerous videos on YouTube, Tiktok and Instagram have contributed to this, showing people encountering monitor lizards. Made last year one that caused a million-fold sensationwhich showed a rather stately monitor lizard that had gotten into a supermarket and was climbing the grocery shelves for lack of a tree. This is not an isolated case – the Bangkok fire brigade is more often deployed to catch lost reptiles than to put out fires, as the BBC reports. In the meantime, the city has come to terms and not only put up warning signs in Lumpini Park so that no one is frightened if a two-meter reptile suddenly runs into them, but also put up a large monitor lizard statue.
Banded monitor lizards are by no means the only reptiles in Bangkok parks. In the nearby Benjakitti Park, which only emerged from a company site in 2004, there is even a large population of big-eyed bamboo otters, a chic green close relative of Gary De’Snake, the blue island bamboo otter made very popular by “Zoomania 2”. The seriously poisonous but not particularly aggressive bamboo vipers crawl through the park after dark and are not deterred by its bright lighting. If young couples sit down on a park bench to hold hands, it is advisable to check beforehand whether an otter is already lying there.
In the latest issue of the specialist magazine treated Reptile expert Uwe Gerlach reports that he found a whole bunch of poisonous snakes there in the evening after just 45 minutes of searching. This does not detract from the popularity of the park. So there is a relaxed way of dealing with snakes; we should remind the Germans of this when they call in special operations teams again next summer just because a grass snake appears somewhere.
Of course, reptiles in cities are not a unique feature of Bangkok. Banded monitor lizards can also be seen in other Southeast Asian cities; in Australia, for example, you can often come across spotted monitor lizards in city parks. All kinds of snakes and smaller lizards crawl through city centers all over the world, just think of geckos in southern Europe. In the Ecuadorian coastal metropolis of Guayaquil, the Seminario Park in the center is famous, where a large population of green iguanas up to 2 meters long lives and is carefully fed by the park administration. And even in the old town of Trier, as soon as the sun comes out, reptiles scurry around the historic walls, namely wall lizards. They just live among us.