What on earth is a Sumpah-Sumpah?

In recent articles I described the activities of Alfred St Alban Smith who sent a large number of animals, particularly reptiles, from south-east Asia to London Zoo between 1927 and 1936. The Annual Reports of ZSL listed them all the species by common name. But some of those common names are not ones we may recognise nearly 100 years later. One was Sumpah-Sumpah. I had no idea what a sumpah-sumpah is. Some digging found it on a 2005 Malaysian postage stamp, one of four is a set of ‘rare reptiles’.

The Sumpah-Sumpah is Gonocephalus grandis which goes under three common names in English: Giant Forest Dragon; Great Anglehead Lizard; Malayan Crested Lizard. They are mainly arboreal, living along forest streams of peninsular Malaya including Singapore, Sumatra and nearby islands, and Borneo. They are agamids, as one would expect from the distribution, but are sometimes in the Malay region called chameleons which just adds to any confusion. The IUCN has them classified as of ‘least concern’.

Giant Forest Dragon. Brinchang, Cameron Highlands, Pahang, Malaysia
By Bernard Dupont 2013