with the highly developed Jacobson' s organ, permits the animals 

 to discover the food quickly, which they, in distinction from other 

 reptiles, do not swallow whole but tear apart with their teeth, 

 remindful in this respect of the carnivorous mammals. It should be 

 emphasized that, with the exception of crocodiles, giant monitors 

 are the only present-day reptiles that act in such way, which per- 

 mits speaking of a definite skip in character which, at greater 

 morphological comparison, distinguishes it from the other representa- 

 tives of the genus Varanus . 



In devouring the carrion the monitor, like a number of other 

 carnivores, first rips open the abdomen, swallowing the entrails. 

 In addition, it often buries its head in the abdominal cavity of 

 the host, to which the long neck of the reptile contributes much. 



The predator plays with the host, usually standing on stretched- 

 out legs, and by this its abdomen is quite visible which, as it is 

 filled with food, sags more and more, gradually reaching the ground. 



While eating chiefly carrion, the mammoth monitors are capable 

 of also attacking live prey, up to wild hogs and deer inclusively. 

 Table 2 give some concept of their ration on the Island of Komodo, 

 which was compiled on the basis of the selection of 18 specimens of 

 dry droppings, collected in the first half of August. It may be noted 

 that these specimens, in the majority of cases, have been collected 

 on open sunmits of hills, at the edge of wooded areas, and at other 

 sites apparently favored by the monitors as lookout points. 



To this should be added that in the stomach of one of the 

 monitors dissected by us a large rat was found, Rat t us sp, and in 

 another the skull of an adult boar, partly digested. As our observa- 

 tions on Komodo and Rintja indicate, the monitors regularly appear 

 on the shore after high tide, where they pick up the fish and 

 invertebrates thrown up by the sea. It is interesting to note that 

 the majority of the pit clusters of the brush turkeys ( Megapodius 

 freicineti ), observed by us on the islands, were dug by the 

 monitors in searches for eggs, which was easily established by the 

 tracks in the sand. 



It is puzzling to not^e that monkeys and deer, which are 

 regularly subjected to the attack of the monitor lizards on the 

 islands, fearlessly permit them to come close to them, discovering 

 the danger only at the very last moment when it is already practically 

 impossible to be saved from the teeth or a blow of the tail of the 

 carnivore. Similar observations in regard to monkeys (Macaca irus ) 

 have been made on the Island of Rintja by Hoogerwerf (19d8) and in 

 regard to deer by our expedition on the Island of Komodo (Darevskii 

 and Maleev, 1963). It is suggested that such an astonishing lack of 

 caution of the victim is explained in considerable measure by the 

 method of hunting of the monitor, which approaches the prey slowly 

 and completely noiselessly, reminiscent in this respect of snakes. 



