Blue Tree Monitor Varanus macraei

The Blue Tree Monitor, also called the Blue-spotted Tree Monitor, is an arboreal lizard native only to a limited area of Batanta Island, Indonesia

It was previously thought to be a subspecies of the Green Tree Monitor but given its own species in 2001.

Its habitat is rainforest. The blue colour varies from pale to dark and grey-blue, turquoise, blue and violet. It can grow just over a metre in length.

Unusually for monitor lizards, tree monitors have a prehensile tail to help in their arboreal habitat.

The Blue-spotted Tree Monitor is threatened by collection for the pet trade and is already extinct from one of the small islands offshore Batanta where it had still lived in 2001.