Kawuk

Kawuk Drawing of the kawuk (© AThrillosopher, Used with Permission). Category Neodinosaur Proposed scientific names Other names Country reported Indonesia (Java) First reported 1977 Prominent investigators • B. O. Nainggolan

The kawuk is a neodinosaurian cryptid reported from the small Indonesian island of Nusa Kambangan^↗, off the southern coast of Java. It supposedly resembles a very large monitor lizard similar to the Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis), but is predominately bipedal.

Attestations

Defined by dictionaries merely as a "giant lizard," the alleged existence of the kawuk was first widely reported in the Indonesian press, which referred to it as a "mini dinosaur," in August 1977. Descriptions and occasional sightings have since appeared only sporadically in the media, but in 2014, a Nusa Kambangan fisherman and tour guide named Heri told the Indonesian news network Merdeka that a pack of ten kawuks had attempted to devour the corpse of a recently-deceased friend at nightfall.

Description

Komodo dragons (Varanus komodoensis) are capable of standing upright, but only for a limited time (iStock).

The kawuk reportedly closely resembles a monitor lizard, but is larger than even the Komodo dragon, and, unlike the habitually-quadrupedal monitors, is an obligate biped. It is a carnivore and a scavenger, finding food with its powerful sense of smell, and will allegedly attack and even prey upon humans.

Theories

In 1977, B. O. Nainggolan of the Indonesian Animal Lovers Association spent some months on Nusa Kambangan researching the kawuk, and eventually came to the conclusion that it was a species of large monitor lizard (Varanus sp.) resembling the Komodo dragon, but with "slightly different legs."