Lizard with 2 penises found in Philippines

BEIJING, April 7 (Xinhuanet) -- Scientists have found a new species of lizard that lives in the trees on the northern Philippines island of Luzon, according to media reports Wednesday.

Dubbed Varanus bitatawa, the dragon-sized, fruit-eating lizard measures  6 feet 6 inches (about 2 meters) in length, but only about 22 pounds  (about 10 kg) in weight, and the creature is endowed with a double penis,  according to the study published in the British Royal Society Journal  Biology Letters.(Photo: huanqiu.com)

Dubbed Varanus bitatawa, the dragon-sized, fruit-eating lizard measures 6 feet 6 inches (about 2 meters) in length, but only about 22 pounds (about 10 kg) in weight, and the creature is endowed with a double penis, according to the study published in the British Royal Society Journal Biology Letters.

"It lives up in trees, so it can't get as massive as the Komodo dragon, a huge thing that eats large amounts of fresh meat," said Rafe Brown of the University of Kansas, whose team confirmed the find. "This thing is a fruit-eater and it's only the third fruit-eating lizard in the world."

However, how many of the lizards have survived is unclear.

"They are extremely secretive," Brown said, adding, "I think that centuries of humans hunting them have made the existing populations ... very skittish and wary and we never see them.

They see and hear us before we have a chance to see them, they scamper up trees before we have a chance to come around."

The brightly-colored beast, a monitor lizard, is a close cousin of the Komodo dragon of Indonesia, according to the finding.

The Varanus bitatawa has unique markings and an unusual sexual anatomy, according the study, which stated that the creature's scaly body and legs are a blue-black mottled with pale yellow-green dots, while its tail is marked in alternating segments of black and green.