University Throws It Out

Varanus olivaceus

Student fuming over loss of lizard dung

Feb 7, 2009

A British graduate student was left “reeling” after his university threw out a bag of lizard excrement he had spent seven years collecting in the rainforests of the Philippines, he said on Friday.

Daniel Bennett had collected 35 kilograms of faeces of the rare butaan lizard during field work abroad, as part of his PhD research at Leeds University in northern England.

But he was devastated on returning from the Philippines to find that the bag, which was unmarked, had been thrown out with the rubbish in a clear-out of his laboratory.

“To some people it might have been just a bag of lizard shit,” he told Times Higher Education, which ran the story under the headline “Oh crap, there goes my work.”

“But to me it represented seven years of painstaking work searching the rainforest with a team of reformed poachers to find the faeces of one of the world’s largest, rarest and most mysterious lizards.

“Its loss left me reeling and altered the course of my life forever.”

The butaan is closely related to the Komodo dragon, although it is extremely reclusive, so methods usually used to study the Komodo are not suitable for the butaan.

The University has offered him 500 pounds ($1,000) in compensation and an apology, after the student lodged an official complaint about the loss.

But Mr Bennett says this is not enough, and has vowed to “see them in court”.

“Whether it was the largest collection of lizard shit in the world is uncertain,” he said.

“But it certainly contained the only dietary sample from that little-known species Varanus olivaceus, and probably the most complete dietary record of any single population of animals in South East Asia.”

In a statement the university said: “The loss of these samples was an unfortunate mistake. They were thrown away in error because they were in an unmarked bag.

“Lessons have been learned and protocols improved to ensure this cannot happen again. Mr Bennett is due to graduate with his PhD this year, subject to minor corrections to his thesis unrelated to the loss of the materials.” AFT

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

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