Merten's Water Monitor

The Merten's Water Monitor is a large aquatic monitor (over 1 metre long from snout to vent). This monitor can remain submerged for a considerable length of time and can sleep in the water.

The Merten's Water monitor lives in the far north of Western Australia, Kimberley south to the May and Mary Rivers. It lives around the watercourses, swamps and lagoons usually found along the waters edge where it seldom ventures far from the water.

Go Here to see our video of this large monitor at Armadale Reptile Centre.

Here you can see the monitors are shedding their skin. It doesn't come off in one piece like some snakes slough.

Up to 12 eggs are usually laid in a chamber 50cm deep and is sealed with mulch and leaves placed on top. Hatching is in the wet season (Perth's summer).

Here is a young Merten's Water monitor. These photographs were taken at the Armadale Reptile Centre in Perth.

Here they have observed the adult monitor biting its mate when trying to get the food and they have noticed it can swim fast.
Its nostrils are high up on its nose so its head can be nearly submerged with just its nostrils poking out like a crocodile.

What does it eat?

It's diet includes mainly fish, crabs and frogs and other invertebrates, which it herds into the shallows and then snaps up.

It is still a reptile and it needs to increase its body temperature by sunning itself on a warm rock. In its natural habitat the water would be warm most of the year.

http://www.goannas.net/species/infos/mertensi02.html
www.savanna.ntu.edu.au/information/ar/waterholes.html

Text
"Australian Reptiles A Photographic Reference to the Terrestrial Reptiles of Australia" by Stephen K Wilson, David G Knowles.
CD Rom "Australian Reptiles and Frogs" by Herald Ehnann and Micheal Tyler.