99 Fun Facts About Lizard

Roughly how many species of lizard have scientists described so far?

About 8,000 lizards were on the Reptile Database's list by 2026, nearly twice the number of snakes, and the total keeps climbing because some 200 new reptile species are described every year.

What is the largest living lizard?

Komodo dragon: males can top three metres, and the serrated edges of its teeth are tipped with iron, an orange coating that keeps them sharp enough to slice through a deer.

The world's largest lizard is native to islands in which country?

Indonesia: the lizards survive on a handful of its Lesser Sunda islands, where hatchlings climb straight into the trees and roll in dung so that the cannibal adults leave them alone.

Which animal, far heavier than itself, is among the prey of the world's largest lizard?

Water buffalo, deer and wild pigs are all on its menu: the lizard lies in wait beside a game trail, slashes with serrated teeth, and its venom keeps the wound bleeding.

The world's largest lizard tracks carrion from kilometres away using which body part?

Its forked tongue, not its nostrils, does the smelling: it samples the air and carries the scent to an organ in the roof of the mouth, while the lizard swings its head from side to side as it walks.

A 1926 hunt for the world's largest lizard inspired which film?

King Kong: producer Merian Cooper read his friend Douglas Burden's account of hunting giant lizards on a remote island, and at first planned a film in which a gorilla fought them.

Flora, a giant lizard at Chester Zoo, made headlines for laying viable eggs despite what?

Never having met a male did not stop Flora laying 11 eggs in 2006, and they were due to hatch around Christmas, which the zoo's curator said would suit a virgin birth nicely.

Male anoles display to rivals and mates by fanning out a colourful throat flap called what?

A dewlap is usually a different colour from the rest of the anole, so it catches the eye from a distance, and the male flashes it open and shut while bobbing his head up and down.

The Gila monster is the only venomous lizard native to which country?

The United States: it lives in the deserts of the Southwest, takes its name from Arizona's Gila River, and spends most of its life underground, since a few big meals may feed it for a year.

Exenatide, a drug copied from a hormone in Gila monster venom, is prescribed for which condition?

Type 2 diabetes: a doctor testing venoms in 1990 found a Gila monster hormone that prompts the pancreas to release insulin, and a synthetic copy of it went on sale as Byetta in 2005.

Where does a Gila monster store the fat that lets it live on a few large meals a year?

In its tail: a Gila monster can swallow a third of its own weight in eggs and nestlings at one sitting, then live off the fat in its plump tail through the months it spends in a burrow.

On the standard explanation, the millions of tiny hairs on a gecko's feet grip walls using which force?

Van der Waals forces are faint attractions between molecules, but a gecko's foot has so many hair tips touching the wall that they add up to hold its weight with no glue, though one 2014 study credits static charge instead.

Blue-tongued skinks stick out their vivid tongues mainly to do what?

Scare off predators: a cornered skink turns to face the threat, gapes and pushes out a broad blue tongue against a bright pink mouth, a bluff that it backs up by hissing and flattening its body.

Unlike most lizards, geckos are noted for doing what when courting or defending territory?

Vocalising: geckos chirp, click and bark at mates and rivals, and the word 'gecko' itself comes from a Malay name that is said to imitate one species' call.

How do most geckos, which lack eyelids, keep their eyes clean?

They lick them: with no lids to blink, each eye sits behind a clear, fixed scale, and the gecko wipes dust and grit off it with its long tongue.

The largest living gecko, Rhacodactylus leachianus, comes from which Pacific territory?

New Caledonia: its giant gecko is a case of island gigantism, and the islands probably once held an even bigger one, about 60 cm long, known only from a stuffed specimen found in a French museum basement.

More chameleon species live on which island than anywhere else on Earth?

Madagascar holds at least half of all chameleon species, including the world's smallest, and several are now critically endangered as their forest is logged and burned for farmland.

How far can a chameleon shoot its tongue, compared with its body?

Twice its length, and a little more in the smallest species, which outshoot the big ones; the tip is a ball of muscle that forms a suction cup as it hits the insect and hauls it back.

The word 'chameleon' comes from Greek words meaning what?

Ground lion: the Greek name joins khamai, 'on the ground', and leon, 'lion', perhaps because the crest on some species' heads reminded people of a lion's mane.

The common basilisk's nickname 'Jesus Christ lizard' refers to its ability to do what?

Run across water: fringed hind toes spread on the surface and each hard slap traps a pocket of air that holds the lizard up for a few metres, and when it finally sinks it simply swims on.

The basilisk lizard's name comes from a Greek word meaning what?

Little king: the Greek basiliskos was a legendary serpent, said by Pliny to wear a crown-like crest on its head, and the lizard was given the name in turn because of the crest on its own.

Horned lizards defend themselves against dogs and cats by squirting what from near their eyes?

A stream of blood: the lizard dams the flow leaving its head until tiny vessels round the eyelids burst, and the jet tastes foul to dogs and coyotes, though birds of prey seem not to mind it.

The horned lizard's diet is built mostly around which insects?

Harvester ants make up most of its meals, so where pesticides and invading fire ants have wiped out the ant colonies, the lizards have disappeared too.

The Texas horned lizard, nicknamed the 'horned frog', gives its name to which university's sports teams?

Texas Christian University has fielded Horned Frogs since the 1890s, although the state reptile on its seal is a lizard, called a frog or toad only because of its squat, round body.

How does the thorny devil, a spiny desert lizard, get most of its drinking water?

Through channels in its skin: grooves between the scales soak up dew and the moisture in damp sand and wick it by capillary action to the corners of the mouth, so the lizard can drink through its feet.

What does the thorny devil carry on the back of its neck to fool predators?

A false head: when threatened, the thorny devil tucks its real head between its front legs, leaving a predator to snap at the spiny knob of soft tissue on the back of its neck instead.

The thorny devil's scientific name, Moloch horridus, borrows 'Moloch' from what?

An ancient Near Eastern god, pictured as a hideous beast and linked in the Bible to child sacrifice, lent his name in 1841 to a lizard that is in fact a slow, harmless ant-eater no longer than a man's hand.

The marine iguana, the only lizard that forages in the sea, lives only on which islands?

The Galápagos: their ancestors are thought to have drifted there from South America on rafts of debris, and Charles Darwin, meeting them on the lava, called them 'most disgusting, clumsy Lizards'.

How do marine iguanas get rid of the salt they swallow while grazing on algae?

Sneezing it out: glands by the nostrils filter salt from the blood, and each snort sprays a brine that dries into the white crust the iguanas wear on their heads like a wig.

During El Niño food shortages, marine iguanas have been shown to do what?

Shrink in body length by up to 20%: connective tissue can account for only about half of that, so even their bones are thought to shorten, and the iguanas grow back once the algae return.

The parietal or 'third' eye on top of an iguana's head can do what?

Detect light and movement is all it can do, since it has only a rudimentary retina and lens, but that is enough to catch the shadow of a hawk passing overhead.

In January 2008, cold nights in Florida caused invasive green iguanas to do what?

Drop from trees: the cold put the iguanas into a torpor in which they lost their grip on the branches, but many were only stunned and woke up again once the day had warmed.

The frilled lizard snaps open its famous neck frill mainly to do what?

Look bigger to predators: the frill flares like an umbrella while the lizard gapes and hisses, and if the bluff fails it turns and sprints away upright on its hind legs.

Besides the tropical north of its home continent, the frilled lizard is also native to where?

Southern New Guinea: its frilled lizards are close genetic kin of those on the continent, and may have walked across when ice-age seas were low enough to leave a land bridge.

Gliding lizards of the genus Draco form their 'wings' from skin stretched over what?

Enlarged ribs swing outwards to spread a flap of skin on each side into a wing; the lizard turns head-down on a trunk, leaps and glides to the next tree, but never takes off in rain or wind.

The slow worm, a legless lizard, can do what that no snake can?

Blink its eyes: a slow worm has movable eyelids, while a snake's are fused into a clear cap over each eye, so a snake cannot even shut its eyes to sleep.

The oldest slow worm on record, a legless lizard, lived in captivity for how long?

54 years is the record usually quoted, and since even wild slow worms can reach about 30, this slug-eater that spends most of its life hidden under cover may be the longest-lived lizard of all.

Lizards of cold climates tend to breed in which way?

Bearing live young: a mother who keeps her eggs inside her can carry them into the sun and out of the cold, and the aptly named viviparous lizard lives farther north than any other land reptile.

The all-female populations of which lizards reproduce without males?

Whiptails: several species in the American Southwest and Mexico have no males at all, each mother's eggs hatching into her daughters, yet the females still court and mount one another before laying.

What is the term for a lizard deliberately shedding its tail to escape a predator?

Autotomy, from Greek words for 'self' and 'severing': the tail snaps at a ready-made weak spot and keeps writhing on the ground, holding the predator's eye while its owner gets away.

For many lizards, what decides whether an egg hatches as male or female?

The incubation temperature tips the balance: cooler nests tend to hatch females and warmer ones males, and in bearded dragons a very hot nest can turn chromosomal males into egg-laying females.

Bearded dragons, popular pets of the genus Pogona, are native to which country?

Australia: the 'beard' is a spiny throat pouch that the lizard puffs out and turns black to bluff an enemy, while a smaller dragon answers a rival's head-bobbing with a slow wave of one arm to give way.

The tuatara of New Zealand looks like a lizard but belongs to which separate order?

Rhynchocephalia was once the dominant group of small reptiles and the tuatara is all that is left of it; one male, Henry, became a father at a New Zealand museum at the age of about 111.

How does the way most lizards shed their skin differ from a snake's moult?

It comes off in pieces: a snake crawls out of its old skin in one long sleeve, but most lizards peel in large flakes, with the alligator lizards a rare group that can slip theirs off whole.

On most lizards, the round patch of thin skin in a hollow on each side of the head is what?

The eardrum: lizards have no outer ear flap, so the membrane sits in a small opening at the surface, and many rely on it for early warning, bolting at the slightest sound.

About how long is a full-grown Jaragua dwarf gecko, one of the smallest lizards known?

About 16 mm from snout to tail base, small enough to curl up on a coin; it was named in 2001 after Yvonne Arias, whose campaigning won protection for the Dominican forest where it lives.

The oldest fossils that are undisputedly lizards come from the middle of which geological period?

Jurassic rocks from the middle of the period hold the earliest sure lizards, found across Europe, Asia and North Africa, while older Triassic candidates such as Megachirella are still argued over.

Roughly how many separate times have lizards evolved a legless or nearly legless body?

About 25 times: skinks, slow worms, flap-footed lizards and others each lost their legs on their own, and snakes are simply the most famous and species-rich branch to have gone the same way.

Some anoles escape predators by staying underwater for many minutes, breathing from what?

A bubble on the snout: the lizard breathes out, the air clings to its skin and is breathed back in again and again, a trick that keeps some stream-dwelling species under for as long as 18 minutes.

Which large reptile's English name is a corruption of the Spanish 'el lagarto', meaning 'the lizard'?

Alligator is how English speakers mangled the name that Spanish explorers and settlers in Florida gave the beast. Early English spellings included 'alagarto'.

The red-and-blue males of the Mwanza flat-headed rock agama have earned the lizard a nickname after which superhero?

Spider-Man colours, bright red shoulders and neck over a dark blue body, have made the East African sun-basker a fashionable pet. The females are mostly plain brown.

What can a chameleon's turret-like eyes do that lets it scan for prey and predators at once?

Move independently is the trick: each eye swivels on its own, so the brain juggles two separate pictures. When a meal is spotted, both eyes swing forward together to lock onto it.

Pascal, the pet chameleon who never speaks in the 2010 film Tangled, belongs to which Disney princess?

Rapunzel shares her tower with Pascal, who gets through the whole film without a line, as does Maximus, the horse of the palace guard's captain.

The common lizard is the only native reptile of which island, famous for having no snakes at all?

Ireland has a single native land reptile, and the same hardy lizard ranges farther north than any other land reptile on Earth.

Which mammal lends its name to a South African girdled lizard that bites its tail and rolls into a ball?

Armadillo girdled lizards take the tail in the mouth so that only the thick, squarish plates of the back and the tail's own spines face an attacker.

Which actor voiced the pet chameleon who becomes sheriff of a desert town called Dirt in the film Rango?

Johnny Depp played the lost pet as a would-be actor bluffing his way through a Western, opposite Bill Nighy's rattlesnake gunslinger. The film won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature.

Male side-blotched lizards come in three throat colours whose rival mating tactics are likened to which game?

Rock paper scissors describes it: aggressive orange-throats steal mates from blue-throats, blue-throats catch the sneaks, and the female-mimicking sneaks cuckold the orange-throats.

Which explorer named Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef in 1770 after the only land animals seen there?

James Cook also climbed the island's peak to chart a course out to sea through the maze of reefs, and the summit has been called Cook's Look ever since.

How does the chuckwalla, a stocky desert lizard, stop a predator from pulling it out of a tight crevice?

Inflating its lungs wedges the chuckwalla fast inside the crack. For all the drama, the lizard is harmless to people and feeds mainly on desert plants.

Which Pokémon, picked by many players as their very first starter, is classified in the Pokédex as the Lizard Pokémon?

Charmander was drawn by Atsuko Nishida, who worked backwards from the mighty Charizard so that the leap from first form to last would seem unimaginable.

Which term do biologists use for animals such as lizards, which bask because their body heat comes from outside?

Ectotherms get by on very economical metabolic rates, so a lizard can sit out long spells without food that would starve a mammal of the same size.

Which bacteria do pet reptiles such as lizards commonly shed in their droppings, putting careless owners at risk?

Salmonella rides along in apparently healthy reptiles, and American regulators restricted sales of small pet turtles in 1975 after small children fell ill.

Pet lizards such as bearded dragons are kept under UVB lamps so that their bodies can make which nutrient?

Vitamin D, in its D3 form, is made only under UVB rays. Deprived of them, a dragon's skeleton weakens, bringing tremors, fractures and deformities.

In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, a giant Alice kicks poor Bill the Lizard back out of what?

The chimney was Bill's way in, since he and another creature had a ladder. Alice, grown huge with one foot wedged up the flue, booted him into the air.

Which legless reptiles, often mistaken for snakes, are named for tails that break off with startling ease?

Glass lizards, also called glass snakes, share a legless subfamily with Europe's slow worms. The biggest of the group, the sheltopusik, can grow well over a metre long.

Which river gives its name to Africa's longest lizard, a monitor that has become an invasive pest in Florida?

Nile monitors can top two metres, and animals descended from escaped or released pets have been breeding around Cape Coral since at least 1990.

Green iguanas have teeth sharp enough to slice human skin, yet the adults feed mainly on what?

Leaves and fruit, plus flowers and shoots from upwards of 100 plant species, make up the menu. The teeth are built for shredding foliage.

In Louis Sachar's novel Holes, the deadly lizards infesting Camp Green Lake are named for spots of which colour?

Yellow spots mark Sachar's invented killers. A real yellow-spotted night lizard lives from Mexico to Panama, and it is neither aggressive nor venomous.

Rather than camouflage, a chameleon's colour changes are most commonly used for which purpose?

Social signalling leads: the shifting colours broadcast a chameleon's condition and intentions to other chameleons. Blending in with the background is a lesser use.

Gecko toe pads can cling to smooth walls and ceilings, yet they struggle to hold on to which material?

Teflon, known to chemists as PTFE, has such low surface energy that it is harder for a gecko to stick to than many other surfaces.

The talking gecko mascot of the American insurer GEICO, a gold dust day gecko, speaks in which accent?

Cockney vowels, supplied by the English actor Jake Wood, helped turn the small green reptile into the insurer's best-known spokesman.

Water monitors, the world's second-largest lizards, are a common sight in the canals and parks of which Asian capital?

Bangkok's monitors have taken to city life, and the species remains common in large urban areas across Thailand.

A bearded dragon that waves one raised arm at another dragon is generally showing which attitude?

Submission is the message, most often an acknowledgement of another dragon's territory, while rapid bobbing asserts dominance instead.

The overlapping scales of a lizard are made of which protein, the same one that forms human hair and nails?

Keratin builds a lizard's scales from the outer layer of the skin, whereas the scales of a fish form in the deeper layer beneath.

The secretive desert night lizard is most often found under the fallen debris of which plants?

Joshua trees and other yuccas are such favoured cover that the species is known locally as the yucca night lizard.

The island night lizard lives only on three of the Channel Islands, which lie off the coast of which state?

California's San Nicolas, Santa Barbara and San Clemente islands hold the entire species, which recovered well enough to come off the federal threatened list in 2014.

The veiled chameleon, a popular pet named for its tall, veil-like casque, is native to which peninsula?

Arabian plateaus and mountains in Yemen and Saudi Arabia are its home, and the casque earns its keep there by channelling dew and rain towards the mouth.

Jackson's chameleon, whose males carry three horns like a tiny Triceratops, has lived wild since 1972 in which US state?

Hawaii now has the East African lizard on all its main islands, and exporting the invaders for the pet trade has been made illegal.

Which popular pet from the dry lands of Afghanistan and Pakistan has movable eyelids but no sticky toe pads?

Leopard geckos have been bred in captivity so extensively that they are sometimes called the first domesticated lizard. Without clinging toes they cannot scale smooth walls.

Which reptile, now bred in captivity as a pet, was thought extinct until an expedition found it alive in 1994?

Crested geckos were known to science only from a French zoologist's 1866 description until a team led by Robert Seipp came across living animals.

Iguanas are mainly animals of the Americas, yet a few banded species live far away on which Pacific island group?

Fiji's iguanas are thought to descend from ancestors that rafted some 9,000 km west across the ocean from the Americas, where their closest relatives still live.

The blue iguana, down to fewer than 15 wild animals by 2003, is found on which Caribbean island alone?

Grand Cayman's blue giants were pulled back from the brink by captive breeding: since 2004 hundreds of captive-bred animals have been released into a preserve there.

The black spiny-tailed iguana of Central America is listed by Guinness World Records as holding which lizard record?

Fastest sprinter is the title, earned with dashes of about 35 km/h. The iguana flees first, but lashes with its spiked tail and bites if cornered.

The world's largest skink, a tree-dweller that climbs with a grasping tail, is named after which Pacific island chain?

Solomon Islands skinks eat nothing but plants and live in a close-knit group called a circulus, a rare show of sociability for a reptile.

Shingleback skinks, also known as bobtails, are unusual among lizards for which habit, kept up for 20 years?

Keeping the same partner is the shingleback's way: pairs reunite before each breeding season, and a bereaved skink has been observed apparently grieving for its lost companion.

X-ray imaging showed that the sandfish skink 'swims' through desert sand by doing what with its legs?

Tucking them to its sides, the sandfish ripples forward like an eel. Robot models later showed that its wave shape carries it forward for the least possible energy.

The collared lizard, a hunter known locally as the mountain boomer, is the official state reptile of which state?

Oklahoma's emblem can rear up and dash along on its hind legs alone, and its menu of large insects stretches to smaller lizards and even snakes.

Ticks that feed on the western fence lizard are cleared of the bacterium behind which tick-borne illness?

Lyme disease is rarer where these lizards live, because a protein inside the lizard kills the bacterium in the gut of the feeding tick.

Which faint northern constellation, defined by Johannes Hevelius in 1687, bears the Latin name for a lizard?

Lacerta was also given the alternative name 'Stellio' by the astronomer, after a Mediterranean lizard with star-like spots on its back.

Which large South American lizards have been found to turn partly warm-blooded during the breeding season?

Tegus in the breeding season can be up to 10 °C warmer than the night air around them, on heat generated by their own metabolism.

The Mexican mole lizard, a pink worm-like burrower, is unusual among its relatives for having which limbs?

Front legs only, short and paddle-like, set this burrower apart: it is one of just three species in its otherwise limbless group to have any legs at all.

Which venomous reptile, larger and duller than the Gila monster, is that animal's only close living relative?

Beaded lizards average about 45% heavier than their famous cousin, and the two are the last survivors of a family traced back to the Cretaceous.

Which term, coined in 1965, describes the winter dormancy of lizards and other cold-blooded animals?

Brumation got a name of its own because the way a chilled reptile shuts down is very different from the hibernation of a warm-blooded mammal.

The rhinoceros iguana, named for the horn-like bumps on its nose, is native to which Caribbean island?

Hispaniola, shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic, is home to the endangered iguana, whose 'horns' are bony outgrowths that are most prominent on males.

Lizards and snakes together make up which order of reptiles, whose name comes from the Latin for 'scaly'?

Squamata is the largest order of reptiles, and among all living vertebrates only one order, a group of fish, contains more species.

Which dinosaur in Steven Spielberg's 1993 blockbuster was given a rattling neck frill copied from the frilled lizard?

Dilophosaurus owes the frill to the film's art department. Its fossils show no sign of one, nor of the venom the creature spits on screen.

When a lizard regrows a lost tail, the replacement contains what in place of new bony vertebrae?

Cartilage makes the second tail a cheaper copy: it is often shorter than the first, and its colour and texture rarely match the original.

The caiman lizard of South America's flooded forests uses its heavily muscled jaws mainly to crush which prey?

Snails are cracked open by those jaws, along with crayfish and freshwater clams, and the semiaquatic lizard spends much of its time in the water.

Male western fence lizards, nicknamed blue-bellies, defend their territories from rivals with which signature display?

Push-ups show off the bright blue belly and throat patches, and a male will posture this way over a home range up to 7.5 metres in radius.