Lake Kandy Monster

A photosearch turned up this photo of a large swimming water monitor in a lake in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) and labelled as "The Lake Kandy Monster"



Location of Lake Kandy 

This is evidently one of the creatures that Bernard Heuvelmans classified as a "Buru" only the differences in habit and habitat make this less likely. This creature looks like the standard water monitor (Varanus salvador) but there are local record sizes for the monitor at 12 feet long or longer, bigger than the Komodo dragon. In the Philippines there is a similar sort of water monitor of a simlar size and we have a photo of it. In all these cases of outsized water monitors (including also in the Meikong River) it is likely we are dealing with a larger and similar species rather than the commoner water monitor. This would be the species which Heuvelmans says can be found living in symbiosis with saltwater crocodiles. This sounds unlikely but it at least does indicate the witnesses do discriminate this species from the commoner, smaller water monitors and we are still talking about the same Cryptid category. It is also confused with the similarly-named Varanus salvadorii.