This adult female ornate Nile monitor, is approximately 1.5 meters long and fully capable of destroying a man's hand in an instant. In his book Monitor Lizards: Natural History, Biology, and Husbandry, Daniel Bennett states that "there are few lizards less suited to life in captivity than the Nile monitor...few of the people who buy brightly-coloured baby Nile monitors can be aware that , within a couple of years, their purchase will have turned into an enormous, ferocious carnivore, quite capable of breaking the family cat's neck with a single snap and swallowing it whole." Enough said! (Photo: Brian Child)