Re: what do monitor lizards monitor?

[Richard W Travsky <rtravsky@uwyo.edu>]

On Wed, 29 Sep 1999, Jaime A. Headden wrote:
> Dann Pigdon wrote:
> <Monitor lizards are known in Arab countries as the
> Ouran or varan. Apparently "Ouran" sounds a bit like a
> German word, (for "Sentry" I think) that was later
> mis-translated into English as "Monitor". I don't have
> the exact text with me (it's somewhere in Rodney
> Steel's "Living Dragons").>
> 
>   Funny thing is, _ouran_ means "brave guardian" or
> similar, and was the point when Taquet called his
> Nigerian iguanodont *Ouranosaurus*, meaning the "brave
> monitor lizard," for a mythic dragon (or lizard)
> killed and buried in the sands, and later uncovered
> (by Taquet) so the name has a lot of religious and
> historical context.

Guardian? Sentry? Monitor fits in with that. Could it refer
to guarding nests?