Friday, August 17, 2018

Here be lizards



A review of "The Dragons of the Canaries" 

Despite all the filler about “dragons”, this isn't a documentary about the more sensational strands of crypto-zoology. Rather, it deals with perfectly normal lizards found on the Spanish-controlled Canary Islands off the coast of Northwest Africa. Some of them, known as Giant Lizards, can become around one meter in length. One of the giants, dubbed “the rarest lizard in the world”, was discovered as late as 1999. The documentary also shows the “mummy” of an even larger lizard (about one meter and a half) found in the 1940's. No living specimen has been found to match it – yet. I'm not particularly interested in herpetology, but if Oskar Simonyi's quest for outsized lacertids on volcanic islands is your cup of joe, “The Dragons of the Canaries” might just make your day.

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