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Lizards in Movies   Life of Pi (2012)   Spoiler Alert ! Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.   In this Oscar-winning movie directed by Ang Lee, Pi Patel's family have a zoo in Pondicherry, India, but the city no longer will support it, so they pack up all the animals in crates and put them on a boat to Canada. The boat sinks, and Pi and a tiger become adrift on the ocean together on a lifeboat. (Yes, that's a terrifying situation!) During the opening credits we see the zoo and many of its animals. We see a wild monitor lizard on the zoo grounds, with the camera placed at ground-level. The lizard runs up to the camera, stops, turns around, then runs away just as two people come walking through its path. This actually is a very impressive shot, since getting the lizard to run up, stop at its mark, then turn around could not have been easy. I suspect they did something to lure the lizard to the camera, something involving food or a feeding opportunity, probably.