Turtles are photogenic and very easy to photograph (they don't usually run away), so they appear on TV (PBS, BBC and National Geographic) often. They have big, sad eyes, and are beloved by the same people that think pandas deserve special treatment.

WWF sponsored by Canon 

Ask those same sad sentimentalists how they'd treat a cockroach (or even a hamburger), and you'll get a very different answer.

If you really want to know what a cockroach feels about the world, go and see Archy

Water monitors are quite intelligent, and very good climbers. Mine was tethered to a coconut tree, and learned how walk backwards to unwind the rope from the tree trunk. He also realised that the tree became narrower above its base, loosening the rope loop, and climbed to the very top.

He became thoroughly tangled in the fronds and coconuts, and could neither go further up, or come down. He might have worked it out eventually, but I really wanted him back.

I had to engage Uyong the Mad Diver (who once dived 70 metres with just a compressed air hose and a large stone, to retrieve a tangled shell net for me) to go up and get him.

Had I been able to climb, barefoot, up a coco trunk as quickly as he did, I still wouldn't have gone. The thought of disentangling an angry 5 ft lizard with a fearsome bite was way beyond what I would consider as my duty.

Practical Experience

Just this afternoon, (17/2/06) as I was writing this, one of my  monitor lizards died, suddenly. I'd ignorantly fed it a fat freshwater eel, and it choked to death (An eel's a bit more than a quick gulp). 

I was suddenly faced with the need to get its skeleton, skull, and skin intact, so I proceeded to butcher, then and there. 

Skinning an animal you've just killed, I'm told by 'real' hunters,  is a visceral, emotional experience, reaching back to our supposed  'meat-hunting' forefathers in the Palaeolithic.

It's not at all like that when the damn thing has just died and you have to take it apart.

I soon appreciated that a small sharp flint flake or piece of broken shell would have served me a lot better than the array of Stanley, Escoffier, and other specialist modern knives I tried to use.

They were too big, too sharp, and altogether too clumsy to skin the animal properly. I really needed a sharp rock or a clam shell (the choice of the local pig skinners) to hold between my thumb and two first fingers.

I was quite chuffed to see that Bong, who I called in to finish the job off when I got stuck with the legs, didn't do a lot better.

I now have somewhat more respect for the stone tool expertise of Palaeolithic terrestrial hunters, but I still don't believe that the obsessive and detailed study of stone tools (bifacials, secondary retouching, and all that) will teach us much about the intellectual progress of Early Humans. But I do understand the need for academics to make the very best of what little they have.

It did, after all, take more than a million years to progress from the 'General Purpose Biface' to something a bit better.

Somewhere between 500,000 years ago, and the other afternoon, humans learned they needed something a bit better, and the genius of Messrs Stanley and Escoffier came to the fore. It's gratifying, though, to know that, if you just had a hunk of 'General Purpose Biface' around to knock another useful flake off, you'd have been better off.

In the eight years I've spent in this island town and eaten well, of locally caught sea foods, this was the first opportunity I've had to skin a terrestrial animal, apart from a chicken. A fish is easy; you snick! in a certain place, then peel off the skin. Shellfish don't need more than a bash and a scoop. 

Small wonder that Asian Homo erectus didn't seem to bother much to develop more sophisticated rock tools than crude choppers. There, virtually no one used stone, or anything other than bamboo, bone, and shell until malleable bronze and iron came along.

Tambuka'ka - Flying Lizard - Draco (volans?)

These quite small lizards really do fly - or at least, glide, for very long distances. I've seen one coast, without losing height, for at least 25 metres between coconut tree trunks.

They also seem to be able to control their flight very well, always landing upright, with a kind of upward swoop at the very last moment.

They're well-camouflaged, and are only really noticeable when you do catch one, out of the corner of your eye, actually in flight, or landing.

Of course, they won't fly to order, or whenever my camera's been ready, so I've got no photographs showing them actually in flight.

They also use their brightly coloured 'wings', and the webbed gular flap beneath their throats as threat signals. So I've had to make them a wee bit upset to be able to show them off.

Their wings are actually expanded ribs.

They eat insects, and are far too small and bony to make a decent meal for a human.

Flying lizards are common in South East Asia, but this particular species is different to the common Draco volans, and may be restricted to just this part of the Philippines.

Tiki - Common House Gecko - Gekko gekko

Geckos are very much a component of every South East Asian household, and probably of most parts of the tropical world.

I like them, because I keep hoping, vainly, they will rid my house of mosquitoes, at least.

Regrettably, they don't seem to be able to tackle cockroaches, and show no great taste for ants, both of which are also constant denizens of my household.

They are also somewhat stupid, and rush around the ceiling, either threatening and chattering at other geckos who encroach on their territory, or trying, in vain, to catch moths and other conspicuous insects which are far too big for them.

Their amazing ability to stick to ceilings is due to their foot pads, which have adapted scales on each toe, with quite wonderful adherance powers. Their bellies and tails also have rudimentary flaps that help suction.

But not that wonderful; every so often, one will suddenly drop from the ceiling, with a damp plop!, usually onto you, your evening drink, or your computer keyboard. Then they show a moment's bewilderment, and skitter off.

Tabili - Emerald Green Skink - Lamproletis smaragdinus

These are very beautiful creatures, common on tree trunks.

They can grow to about 20cm (8"), exluding the tail, and would make tasty mouthful or two. 

They live on an undistinguished diet of insects and seeds.

(I thought, while I wondered where my geckos went)

Buwaja - Crocodile - Crocodylus porosus

Crocodile eggs, 20 to 90 in number and about the size of goose eggs, are buried in sand, mud, or vegetable debris, where they are left to hatch by the heat of the sun or of vegetable decomposition. The temperature of the incubation determines the sex of the emerging crocodiles. Females come from the lower, cooler eggs.

Like any other eggs, they are highly nutritious, and can easily be found by a knowledgeable beachcomber on river and estuary banks, in backshore lagoons, or behind mangrove swamps, but very seldom on the open shore. 

They must be harvested quickly, though; water monitors are estimated to eat approximately half of all crocodile eggs laid. 

They must also be harvested with care; crocodiles are unique among reptiles in caring for, and protecting their eggs, so Mama may be around.

The jaws of crocodilians are powerful; perhaps they have the strongest bite power in the animal kingdom. But this is only exercised in closing, to crush the bones of small animals. It's so weak in opening that they can be held together by hand. This is the secret sleight-of-hand of the derring-do of alligator tamers in Florida, and Dr. Brady Barr of National Geographic TV fame.

Most crocodiles live by rivers or lakes; none in the sea, except in estuaries and lagoons, and only two species (porosus, the Saltwater Crocodile, and niloticus, the Nile Crocodile, regularly take human prey).

"The Nile Crocodile has evolved on a continent where it has had to contend and compete with a far greater variety of competitors, as well as potential prey species, than any other crocodilian in the world. Competitors in the aquatic habitat include predatory fish and sharks, monitor lizards, three other crocodile species, and hippopotamuses. On land, it needs to defend territory, nest sites, and offspring against a range of predators and competitors ranging from small mongooses to elephants, and, of course, humans. Consequently, the Nile Crocodile is one of the most aggressive of all crocodiles. In order to survive in habitats populated by such a diverse fauna, it has become a versatile and opportunistic hunter, and master predator of the aquatic environment."

Crocodiles in the open sea ?

In Mr Moore's discourse, Predators',  he makes the common mistake of conflating tales of crocodile

predation, then attributing them to 'saltwater' crocodiles, which he assumes, wrongly, to live mainly in the sea.

Crocodiles can, indeed, swim long distances at sea, but so can elephants. Few people would consider the elephant a real problem at the shoreline. 

Saltwater crocodile eggs are sometimes laid in vegetation mats in rivers and estuaries. It doesn't take a great deal of imagination to envisage such a mat being washed out to sea after a heavy rainfall, and drifting to places like Palau, 900km from land, and the Cocos Islands (over 1000km from Sumatra), where Indo-Pacific crocodiles have become established. 

After all, humans can make the same voyage relatively easily:

Fedor Jagor, in the late 19thC, met some Palauans who had come to the Philippines deliberately - about 900km across the open sea - to collect mother of pearl shells (not pearls; they discarded those) and wrote:

"They had sailed from Uleai (Uliai, 7° 20’ N., 143°57’ E. Gr.) in five boats, each of which had a crew of nine men and carried forty gourds full of water, with coconuts and batata. Every man received one coconut daily, and two batatas, which they baked in the ashes of the coco shells; and they caught some fish on the way, and collected a little rain-water. During the day they directed their course by the sun, and at night by the stars. A storm destroyed the boats. Two of them sank, together with their crews, before the eyes of their companions, and of these, only one–probably the sole individual rescued–two weeks afterwards reached the harbor of Tandag, on the east coast of Mindanao".

He also quotes an earlier report (1696) in which a storm-diverted group af Palauans (35 in all, including women and children, of which six died during their 70-day accidental voyage) arrived in Guiuan, just north-west of Siargao Island.

"When some one from Guivam wished to go on board to them, they were thrown into such a state of terror that all who were in one of the boats sprang overboard, along with their wives and children."

The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes

Some may remember that, 300 years later, when met  by the vigilant boats of the gallant Australian Navy north of Darwin, several boatloads of hopeful Indonesian migrants did exactly the same, and several drowned.

But then, for Mr. Moore to go on to imagine that Indo-Pacific crocodiles feel at home, or even predate, in the open sea, might need a little "chemical stimulation". Perhaps that's freely available in the Californian academic world.

- Pelagic fish are, more often than not, invisible from near the surface, except to certain pelagic sea birds, who can detect fish schools, and get to them quickly enough to do something about it. Crocodiles can't fly.

- Crocodiles are semi-aquatic, not fully aquatic. They do not like to stay (but can survive) under water for much longer than half an hour. They, like other cold-blooded reptiles, need to bask in the sun.

- They can lay their eggs only on land, or a close approximation of it, like vegetation mats. Unusually among reptiles, they tend their offspring.

- Crocodiles prefer still, or only slowly-moving waters. Waves of any kind, let alone surf, would, at least,  discomfort them.

- Crocodiles might 'survive but not prosper' in the open sea - they don't need to eat often, but well. Crocodiles in certain otherwise barren East African rivers are thought to eat only once a year, when the wildebeest migration goes by. If a few humans happen to go by at other times, the crocodiles might be persuaded to take a snack.

The saltwater crocodile has acquired a terrible reputation mainly because there are many in Queensland and the Northern Territories of Australia, a continent very recently settled almost exclusively by Europeans, most of whom have heard fables, but seldom met an actual crocodile.

It is hardly in the interests of the Crocodile Dundees, and those in the tourism racket, to underplay any points of interest about a sluggish, shy, ugly reptile that lives most of its life invisibly immersed in water, but is still the only thing around Darwin of any interest at all.

Although some people are very stupid...

Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Camperdown, NSW.

OBJECTIVE: To examine crocodile attacks in the Northern Territory with particular reference to risk factors, range of injuries, microorganisms isolated from wounds, and surgical management; and to make recommendations for optimal treatment. DESIGN AND SETTING: The case notes of patients treated at the Royal Darwin Hospital within the last decade were reviewed retrospectively. Autopsy and newspaper reports for the same period were also reviewed. RESULTS: There were 16 reported crocodile attacks in Northern Territory waters from June 1981 to June 1991. Four of these were fatal. Most attacks resulted from swimming or wading in shallow water (13/16). Half the victims were known to be affected by alcohol. The majority of attacks occurred in failing light or at night (10/16). 

We recovered the bones, but it's like trying to reconstruct the Book of Genesis from a bowl of alphabet soup. Snake bones are very, very disjointed. They are mostly joined together by ligaments, and the skull bones especially so, because they need to be flexible enough to open up and take in very large prey. Pythons have teeth, slanted backwards to pull in prey, but not venomous, and in no other way very sophisticated. They are needle-sharp. I can vouch for that.

Perhaps some herpetologist out there can advise me how these bits can be put back together again.

We have now acquired another two pythons; one is very, very young, only about 18" long, and is sitting happily in the lizard cage , but the other is about 5' long, so has a cage for itself. It disdains abatud, the huge larvae of coconut beetles, has ignored the tiki - geckos I've put in its cage, and is generally behaving like a prima donna. I've pressed Rhon to go out and get some young chicks, but there's no telling what he might come back with.

If he doesn't do something about it soon, I'm going to tell him to stick all the ribs back on the original python skeleton.

The larger one escaped one night, and found its way to my kitchen, where it caught a large rat. We found the snake next morning, comatose under the kitchen sink, with a large lump in its belly, and, I swear, a very satisfied grin on its face.