No, it’s not a scene from a Godzilla movie, but merely part of the entertainment in the garden of a hotel we stayed at in Sri Lanka – the lovely Heritance at Ahungalla. As you were lying on your sun lounger reading a book, you would occasionally notice out of the corner of your eye that there were things moving around on the lawn:
Sri Lankan monitor lizards belong the the same genus (Varanus) as Komodo dragons and their appearance is quite similar. They are only just over half the size of a Komodo dragon, but that is still a pretty impressive lizard. People who saw them for the first time would often jump up in horror (providing additional entertainment for the other guests). However, they are not aggressive towards humans and are quite happy to ignore you completely. (On the other hand it is not advisable to approach them, as a bite could leave you with a very nasty infection.)
Every now and then a fight would break out between two of the lizards. The fight depicted in the photo at the top lasted about 15 minutes …
… and shifted in location several times …
… before one of the combatants finally sought refuge up a palm tree:
Brilliant.My first moment in Sri Lanka was seeing a Kabaragoya sliding into a Dutch canal north of Negombo.