Talk:worral

What modern animal is this?

I thought it might be the Komodo dragon. One old source says:

Here are several sorts of yellow lizards, among which is the worral, which is said to be affected by musick; Dr. Shaw says, he has seen several of them keep exact time and motion with the dervises in their circulatory dances, turning when they turned, and stopping when they stopped. This animal, which is of the lizard kind, is four feet long, eight inches broad, and has a forked tongue, which it puts out like a serpent, but it has no teeth, and is a harmless animal, living on lizards and flies.

Komodo dragons do, however, have teeth. Another source says that this creature is bright red with darker spots. Equinox ◑ 20:17, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

@Equinox: Out of the 50 or so lizard species in Egypt, the only ones that could conceivably fit the given size (‘four feet’, ‘thirty or forty Inches’) are the desert monitor, the Nile monitor, and the Egyptian mastigure. The mastigure is herbivorous (not ‘living on lizards and flies’) and doesn’t have a forked tongue, so it’s ruled out. Wikipedia claims the Nile monitor’s teeth ‘become blunt and peg-like in adults’; perhaps this accounts for the supposed lack of teeth.

This book, p. 331, identifies the worral as an (unspecified) African monitor lizard. This one, p. 468, says the waral is ‘considered by some as identical with’ the Nile monitor, and in this one, p. 303, the waral is identified as two different species, the ‘land waral’ (desert monitor) and the ‘water waral’ (Nile monitor). It seems safe to say these two lizards are the intended referent. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 08:29, 30 January 2018 (UTC)