Swimming Through Sand

Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Gerrhosauridae

by Inspector Barry Mins on January 18, 2022

Hey kids, welcome back to our series on the mysteries of created kinds.

Last week we took a detour from the kinds on Noah’s ark since a fishy character stole my list of kinds to cover. But I’ve got it back, cleaned the mud off it, and can now resume writing about the kinds that got on Noah’s Ark.

Two by Tuesday

This week we are moving to Africa, looking for a lizard—a bunch of lizards. This kind has over thirty species in it. They are highly understudied, and some species have not been seen in over 100 years and were thought to be extinct. We know they are carnivores1 with diets that include smaller lizards, newborn mice, insects, and worms, depending on the size of the predator.2 Some are more opportunistic, which means they feed on both plants and other animals.3 Depending on their food choice, they will use either their tongue or their jaws to grasp it.4 Some species spend most of their lives just beneath the surface, moving through the sand like a fish through water.5

Females will lay up to eight eggs and incubate them for roughly three and a half weeks. There is some evidence that how long it takes might be influenced by the temperature.6 The hatchlings are tiny adults, ready to forage and hunt for themselves.

This week I won’t blame anyone if they haven’t figured out our animal kind yet. There is not a lot of available information on it. Unlike the last ark kind, this one does at least have a common name, the plated lizards of family Gerrhosauridae.

  • Plated Lizard

    Yellow-Throated Plated Lizard: Gerrhosaurus flavigularis
    William Kreijkes, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

  • Plated Lizard

    Giant Plated Lizard: Gerrhosaurus validus
    Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Don’t forget to try out this fun plated lizard crossword puzzle!

Next Week’s Clue

This kind has ten living species and resembles a small owl with monstrous eyes for its size. Can you guess it before next week?

Footnotes

  1. Achille Philippe Raselimanana “Field Observations of predation events in Malagasy amphibians and reptiles” Herpetology Notes, 11 (2018), 659-662.
  2. Stephane J. Montuelle, Anthony Herrel, Paul-Antoine Libourel, Lionel Reveret, and Vincent L. Bels. “Separating the effects of prey size and speed on the kinematics of prey capture in the omnivorous lizard Gerrhosaurus major.” Journal of Computational Physiology A, 196 (2010), 491-499.
  3. R.D. Pietruszka, S.A. Hanrahan, D. Mitchell, and M.K. Seely. “Lizard herbivory in a sand dune environment: the diet of Angolosaurus skoogi.” Oecologia, 70 (1986) 587-591.
  4. Stephane J. Mountuelle, Anthony Herrel, Paul-Antoine Libourel, Lionel Reveret, and Vincent l. Bels. “Locomotor-feeding coupling during prey capture in a lizard (Cerrhosaurus major): effects of prehension mode.” The Journal of Experimental Biology, 212 (2009) 768-777.
  5. D. Mitchell, M.K. Seely, C.S. Roberts, R.D. Pietruszka, E. McClain, M. Griffin, and R.I. Yeaton. “On the biology of the lizard Angolosaurus skoogi in the Namib desert.” Madoqua, 15, no. 3 (1987), 201-216.
  6. Sarah Esser, and Dennis Rodder “Notes on the reproduction of the Yellow-throated plated lizard Gerrhosaurus flavigularis Wiegmann, 1882.” Herpetology Notes, 5 (2012) 13-14.