LAZARUS LIZARD SKIN
Unlike snakes which shed the skin in a single piece, lizards slough their skin in several pieces. The skin is tough and leathery, and is shed (sloughed) as the animal grows. This adaptation enables lizards to thrive in some of the driest deserts on earth. This provides protection from the environment and reduces water loss through evaporation. Īs in other reptiles, the skin of lizards is covered in overlapping scales made of keratin. Some lizards such as chameleons have prehensile tails, assisting them in climbing among vegetation. Lizards and snakes share a movable quadrate bone, distinguishing them from the rhynchocephalians, which have more rigid diapsid skulls. Lizards typically have rounded torsos, elevated heads on short necks, four limbs and long tails, although some are legless. Most lizards are fairly small animals.Ī young Mediterranean house gecko in the process of moulting. The adult length of species within the suborder ranges from a few centimeters for chameleons such as Brookesia micra and geckos such as Sphaerodactylus ariasae to nearly 3 m (10 ft) in the case of the largest living varanid lizard, the Komodo dragon. 4.3.3 Escape, playing dead, reflex bleeding.Lizards make use of a variety of antipredator adaptations, including venom, camouflage, reflex bleeding, and the ability to sacrifice and regrow their tails. Lizards are mainly carnivorous, often being sit-and-wait predators many smaller species eat insects, while the Komodo eats mammals as big as water buffalo. They are often territorial, the males fighting off other males and signalling, often with brightly colours, to attract mates and to intimidate rivals. Some such as the forest-dwelling Draco lizards are able to glide.
Some lineages (known as " legless lizards"), have secondarily lost their legs, and have long snake-like bodies. Most lizards are quadrupedal, running with a strong side-to-side motion. Lizards range in size from chameleons and geckos a few centimeters long to the 3 meter long Komodo dragon. The group is paraphyletic as it excludes the snakes and Amphisbaenia some lizards are more closely related to these two excluded groups than they are to other lizards. Lizards are a widespread group of squamate reptiles, with over 7,000 species, ranging across all continents except Antarctica, as well as most oceanic island chains. Clockwise from top left: veiled chameleon ( Chamaeleo calyptratus), rock monitor ( Varanus albigularis), common blue-tongued skink ( Tiliqua scincoides), Italian wall lizard ( Podarcis sicula), giant leaf-tailed gecko ( Uroplatus fimbriatus), and legless lizard ( Anelytropsis papillosus)Īnguimorpha Gekkota Iguania Lacertoidea ScincomorphaĬladistically included but traditionally excluded taxa
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