Goanna in Australia likened goannas to the South American lizards.. Over time, the initial vowel sound was dropped. A similar explanation is used to link possum to the American opossum. Another possibility is that the name might have derived from the South African term for a monitor lizard, "leguaan", as the Cape of Good Hope was a popular refresher stop for immigrant ships to Australia from Britain. For a list of all monitor lizards of the genus, see Complete list of genus "Varanus". The following are found in Australia. For the most part, in common names, "goanna" and "monitor" are interchangeable.
Creature type (Dungeons & Dragons) a change to an animal creature that increases its Intelligence or grants it additional abilities, the designer is encouraged to also change the creature's type, usually from animal to magical beast. When real world animals are rendered as vermin (see below) in D&D, they have no Intelligence scores at all. In 3rd edition, the beast type was used for nonhistoric and fantastic, but not necessarily magical vertebrates. The beast type was merged into the animal type in 3.5 edition. A construct is either an animated object of some sort, or an artificially crafted creature. Most construct are mindless automatons, obeying