The internet and email is pretty amazing

Russ Smith · January 15th, 2007, 04:12 PM

last night my girlfriend and I are watching Animal Planet and a show comes on about the monitor lizards of Polillo Island in the Philippines known as the "butaan". It apparently eats fruit and in particular one type of fruit where it climbs up trees, eats the fruit, then wanders around the forest and poops out complete seeds, intact, which then germinate and spread the tree. It had bugged researchers for eons just how these trees were spread out so weird on Polillo but not on any other island where they were always near the coast. The guy on this show, Daniel Bennett, studied these lizards and figured out they were the reason for the weird tree distribution on that one island because they are not on other islands that have those trees. Farmers have been clearcutting that tree to grow coconuts and other kinds of crops because apparently the butaan is the only thing that likes the fruit on that tree.

So I went online and looked up lizards polillo island and sure enough, there is Daniel Bennett's page. My girlfriend had told me before that the island she was born on, Siquijor, had monitor lizards on it they called halo. So I made a donation to Daniel Bennett's site and sent him an email saying FYI they have a similar lizard on another island.

Less than an hour later the guy replied to my email and said he was aware of the lizard halo, it's apparently a normal monitor lizard not a butaan(the only monitor that eats fruit instead of meat) but since he's not positive and will be near Siquijor in March, he's going to do more research and if sounds promising, try to go to Siquijor himself and see if he can find them.

pretty cool stuff that would have never been so easy without the internet and email. My girlfriend says as recently as 1999 they saw one of these lizards run down a tree in the forest they were hiking too which I would think might mean it is in fact eating the fruit in the tree?

I sent the guy an email and told my girlfriend I'm sure he rarely can check email but what they hey and less than an hour later I get an email reply from him pretty cool stuff.

Russ Smith · January 15th, 2007, 05:11 PM

update. Got another reply a few minutes later when my paypal donation came through. he said 50 bucks will pay for his team in Polillo for a few weeks food wise. And as an FYI just last week someone else had told him they may have butaans on Siquijor. So next week he's going to take a ferry there to ask around and see about possibly exploring the island in March to look for them on the island. Polillo is the only known island they live on and they're dwindling there so finding another island would be pretty significant if they are indeed on Siquijor.

So now we're going to hook the guy up with my girlfriend's family so he has a place to stay on the island if need be.

Just amazing, watch a show on tv and end up exchanging emails with the guy a day later about something like that.

devilalum · January 15th, 2007, 05:13 PM

Kind of like a techno "Butterfly Effect"

Not the movie, the effect.

Dback Jon · January 15th, 2007, 05:19 PM

abomb · January 16th, 2007, 07:50 AM

That is awesome. I am often amazed at how technology has really changed our lives.

Russ Smith · January 16th, 2007, 07:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dback Jon

Yep that's the Butaan. Did more reading on it last night I guess there are actually 2 known monitor lizards that eat fruit, the butaan is the largest(grows up to 7 feet in length) and there are far fewer butaans. There is a British group that has managed to get some to survive and breed that they plan to re-release.

My girlfriend's dad says he knows for certain there are 2 types of lizard like that on Siquijor. One they call ibid which we think is like an iguana, they can swim which iguanas do. The other is called halo which is the one that may be a butaan, locals think halo eat meat but that's what people on Polillo thought about the butaan before this guy proved with cameras that they were actually eating fruit.