Wildlife on Tioman

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Being a tropical island, Tioman has its fair share of scary, fascinating and cute creatures. We had only been on the island a matter of hours before we turned a corner and were face to face with a monitor lizard. Unlike the the cute little 10cm geckos that you usually find on holiday, monitor lizards are carnivorous beasts that can reach up to 7 feet long and it was quite a shock to come face to face with one. Fortunately, they are normally pretty scared of humans and this one did scuttle away when it saw us.

Once we had done some exploring of Salang we found the river where the lizards live, which is where we met Jez and Faye. They had managed to get themselves a chalet too, they weren't sharing with the lizards. We watched the lizards for ages, swimming around menacingly and occasionally swatting at the water with their huge powerful tails. We also noticed that one of the restaurants nearby had a sign saying that they sold food for them. Got to give that a try we thought! I bought 2 large bags of raw fish for 10RM (2 pounds) and brought them back to the river. Faye and I started throwing bits of fish while Amy and Jez took pictures. The lizards have poor eyesight and detect food by smell and it was incredible watching them sniff around, only feet from where we were standing. When they came out of the water for the food we realised how big they were. Some looked around 6 ft long. When the food was finished Faye and I went to the restaurant toilets to wash the smell of fish from our hands. While I was stood at the only sink Faye called in and told me to hurry up because one of the lizards had followed the smell of fish to us and was waiting outside! Thankfully, with a bit of soap we managed to get rid of the smell enough to make a quick getaway. When we got back to Amy and Jez they said that two of the lizards had found some dead bats on the floor and had fought over them, something we wished we had seen.

The next day we took Henrik, Denise, Belen and Nils to feed the lizards as they had missed it the day before. However, this time we went to the same spot with a bag of fish and instead of staying put and eating the fish nicely like the day before one of the lizards charged Nils and Belen! They managed to run away in time but we decided that it was probably best to feed them from the bridge from then on. Towards the end, before they had found all the food we had thrown, a very brave stray cat decided to sneak up in front of one and snatch a bit away. We decided that he deserved it as we wouldn't have got as close as he did!

Talking of cats, we did fall in love with lots of the cute stray cats on the island. Some were healthier looking than others but they weren't as mangy as a lot of the strays you find on the Med.

There were also a colony of large bats nesting in a tree by the lizards which were very cool to watch at night and some monkeys living further along the beach, although we only got to see one running through the village.

Oh, and the bugs are huge. They sound like small planes coming towards you. No bed bugs though, thank god!

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Comments

[Diane]

KOMODO DRAGONS??!!
Wow! I remember seeing a Steve Irwin programme on these! That's so cool... can you bring one home for me? Or a bat, whatever's easiest! xx

[Akaash]

Snakes in Paya Beach Resort
There are a number of dog snakes and python in the river near the resort and me and my friend (we are 11 years old) and we caught 3 river python and 12 dog snake(in 4 days). And when we swam up river we found some gigantic python tracts. And have been attacked by one of those monitor lizards.