Megalania

Weight: 0.685 tons

Length: 18 ft

Height: Up to 4'9"

Social Unit: Solitary

Status: Locally Common

Native to: Atlantea (Naturalized on Ryu 97)

Habitat: Mostly Jungle and Savanna

The Megalania is a massive monitor lizard native to Atlantea, occurring all over the Yiri archipelago. Megalania are by far the apex predators of Yiri's entire web of ecosystems, challenged only by the drop bear in the more alpine parts of its range. Megalania also will not hesitate to prey on sentients, resulting in many attacks in remote areas on Yiri. Megalania's saliva carries a cocktail of extremely dangerous bacteria that causes rapid blood poisoning in most creatures, allowing the Megalania to subdue prey much larger than itself with only a single bite. Whatever unfortunate animal was bitten by the Megalania will limp off to die of blood poisoning in a matter of minutes, allowing the lizard to follow the trail of blood to its kill and consume it. While they have been known to prey on sentients on occasion, megalania are far more interested in larger prey animals, such as diprotodon, mihirungs, mountain camels, marsupial tapirs, jungle rhinos, water buffalo, spiked tortoises, kangaroos, gigantopithecus, and others. Despite this, megalania is by no means a picky eater and will scavenge large carrion when it is available.

Megalania are cold-blooded, meaning they cannot survive in the cold for long. As a result, they are mostly absent from the highest parts of the Coorabar Alps, only venturing as far up as the redwoods. Even in the redwoods and eucalyptus forests on the lower slopes, megalania are forced to retreat into caves during cold spells and overnight to conserve heat, with many entering a form of hibernation. Instead, most Megalania prefer the warmer, flatter areas of Yiri, absolutely dominating the jungles and savanna where drop bears are absent. The bottom of megalania's clawed feet are covered in millions of tiny microscopic hairs called setae that allow them to adhere to any known substance in the galaxy with the sole exception of teflon.

This adhesive ability allows megalania to climb literally vertical surfaces, such as rocks, walls, and cliffs. This has proven very useful to Megalania in redwoods areas, as many of them use this ability to climb the trunks of the massive trees and pounce down onto unsuspecting prey below in emulation of the drop bears that dominate those areas. Megalania can even hang upside-down from ceilings, an ability they often use when hibernating in caves in the colder parts of their range.

Megalania usually live for around 30 years, and reach sexual maturity at around 8-9 years of age. Mating takes place generally between May and August, with the eggs usually being laid in September. During this period, males fight each other over females by grappling with each other upon their hind legs, with the loser eventually being pinned to the ground. The winner gets to choose any of the females in the immediate area to mate with. Unlike most other reptiles, Megalania are often monogamous, much of the time repeatedly mating with the female they met their first sexually active year.

To protect the vulnerable eggs from threats such as snakes, crocodiles, dingos, mihirungs, drop bears, quinkana, thylacines, redwood devils, and other omnivores and carnivores, female megalania typically build their nests deep inside caves, laying up to 20 eggs that take 7-8 months to hatch. Like their dinosaur and dragon cousins, megalania young will imprint on the first creature they see when they hatch, meaning that if a sentient were to steal a megalania egg from its nest, they could raise a tamed Megalania that would not attack sentients. The most famous case of this happening was around 20,000 years ago when Priyanka, the sister of Subhraj Anand, accidentally stole a Megalania egg while exploring a cave on Atlantea. Priyanka was able to raise the beast as her own personal pet and mount, naming him Jayaputra.

Jayaputra and another megalania Anand raised from an egg taken from a different cave eventually started a stud farm of megalania on Borobudur Island on the planet Ryu 97. After Anand's death and Priyanka's disappearance, the stud farm was abandoned and led to crumble, allowing the megalania to escape and become feral on the island. Since Borobudur Island had a similar climate and wildlife to those of Yiri, the megalania thrived there and are today strongly associated with both Ryu 97 and Atlantea, despite being native only to Atlantea.