Customer Reviews

Giant Lizards

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3 star:		(1)
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This book is an excellent overview of the "giant" lizards and touches on their biology and husbandry. It is packed full of beautiful photographs, and all the main families are covered: the Varanidae, Helodermatidae, Teiidae, Agamidae, Scincidae, and Iguanidae. I am always amazed by the variability in skin patterns exhibited by lizards, espeically in the Varanus tristis orientalis. You can feel the author's fascination with these marvels of the animal kingdom and he also gives a brief discussion on their vetinary care. I would have hoped he would have had more to say on the "black spot" problem in green iguanas but does not mention it.

Lizard lovers and all those interested in the keeping them as pets will enjoy the book, as well as those who intend to make herpetology their chosen profession.

This book is considered a land mark book by reptile breeders and hobbists. The primary focus is monitor lizards, but it does a complete over view of all giant lizards (3 feet or larger). This his all of the info one needs to properly care for a lizard.

The pictures are great and some of the info on wild lizards is good, but dont try to use the info in this book to raise a monitor, it is outdated 20+ year old recycled info. For a good book on natural history get King a Greens book or Harold DeIsle book. Get Daniel Bennets new book for captive husbandry on grassland monitors.
I dont think many of the authors monitors lived very long on some of his books advice and I know they didnt reproduce using that info. Dont get me wrong he has good intentions but some bad advice. Research many other books to reference any captive husbandry info contained. There are some good drawings,and some other good advice contained in it.

Giant Lizards provides excellent, easy to understand information for those interested in Monitors, Agamids, Iguinids etc. It's a must have for any serious collector or researcher.

For a book that's almost 20 years old, this is a really wonderful birds-eye view of big lizards. I remember that it came out about the same time as Vivarium magazine, the first serious lizard book that addressed herpetoculture. Yeah, a lot has happened since then, but I understand that there's a new edition coming out soon. This book is still a nice read, has great photos, and was put together by someone who really seems to like the lizaards he wropte about.