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What is a lizard? Lizards are part of a group of animals known as reptiles. They are most closely related to snakes. In fact, some lizards, called sheltopusiks, look like snakes because they have no legs! Many lizards today resemble the ancient reptiles of the dinosaur era. Their ancestors appeared on Earth over 200 million years ago.

In general, lizards have a small head, short neck, and long body and tail. Unlike snakes, most lizards have moveable eyelids. There are currently over 4,675 lizard species, including iguanas, chameleons, geckos, Gila monsters, monitors, and skinks.

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Lizards can be found in every continent except Antarctica, and they live in all habitats except extremely cold areas and deep oceans. Most lizards live on the ground, but others can be found making their home in a tree, in a burrow, or in the water. Tree dwellers have special toes: long with sharp claws or short and wide. They often have a prehensile tail for grasping thin branches. Those that live in a burrow tend to have smaller legs, or none at all, to help them move underground more easily. Marine iguanas spend much of their lives underwater, although they come to shore to rest on rocks or a sandy beach. Desert dwellers, like the ground gecko, usually sleep during the day underneath the warm sand and then come out when the sun has gone down.

Different lizard species eat different types of food. Some are predators, eating mammals, birds, and other reptiles. Others are mainly vegetarian, eating leaves, fruits, and flowers. Two are venomous: the Gila monster and the Mexican beaded lizard. Their venom comes from saliva glands in the jaw, and the lizards chew it into the victim. Caiman lizards are adept at eating snails and other mollusks. Upon seizing a snail, the lizard raises its head and relaxes its grip, causing the snail to roll to the back of its mouth. It then bites down with flattened, molar-like teeth and cracks the shell. By alternating bites and rotating the snail with the tongue, the lizard completely removes the shell and pushes the pieces out of the mouth.

Male lizards use a variety of methods to attract a female's attention. They bob their head vigorously or display their brightest colors or best features. The green anole lizard inflates a rust-colored throat sack, called a dewlap, to win over the lady of his choice, sometimes keeping up this display for hours. Red-headed agamas are African lizards with brown skin. But when the male needs to make sure others see him, his head turns fiery red and his body and tail change to a bright, shiny blue. Other males may fight with each other until the weaker one gives up.

The tokay gecko lays soft eggs that harden in the dry air and stick to the surface on which they were laid. The sandstone gecko lays eggs in rocky crevices, so these eggs have a tough cover. The Nile monitor lizard lays her eggs in termite mounds. The heat from the termites in the mound helps incubate the eggs. Some skink mothers return to the nest to warm their eggs, and some female skinks give birth to live young.

What can you do to help lizards in Southern California? Be water wise! Over watering our yards in San Diego attracts nonnative Argentine ants, which then displace the native Southern California ants, which then causes the now-endangered San Diego horned lizard to starve! By supporting San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, you are our ally in saving and protecting wildlife worldwide.

Lizard is the common name used for all squamate reptiles other than snakes (and to a lesser extent amphisbaenians), encompassing over 7,000 species,[1] ranging across all continents except Antarctica, as well as most oceanic island chains. The group is paraphyletic as some lizards are more closely related to snakes than they are to other lizards. Lizards range in size from chameleons and geckos a few centimeters long to the 3-meter-long Komodo dragon.

Most lizards are quadrupedal, running with a strong side-to-side motion. Some lineages (known as "legless lizards"), have secondarily lost their legs, and have long snake-like bodies. Some lizards, such as the forest-dwelling Draco, are able to glide. They are often territorial, the males fighting off other males and signalling, often with bright colours, to attract mates and to intimidate rivals. 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.

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[2] to nearly 3 m (10 ft) in the case of the largest living varanid lizard, the Komodo dragon.[3] Most lizards are fairly small animals.

Lizards typically have rounded torsos, elevated heads on short necks, four limbs and long tails, although some are legless.[4] Lizards and snakes share a movable quadrate bone, distinguishing them from the rhynchocephalians, which have more rigid diapsid skulls.[5] Some lizards such as chameleons have prehensile tails, assisting them in climbing among vegetation.[6]

As in other reptiles, the skin of lizards is covered in overlapping scales made of keratin. This provides protection from the environment and reduces water loss through evaporation. This adaptation enables lizards to thrive in some of the driest deserts on earth. The skin is tough and leathery, and is shed (sloughed) as the animal grows. Unlike snakes which shed the skin in a single piece, lizards slough their skin in several pieces. The scales may be modified into spines for display or protection, and some species have bone osteoderms underneath the scales.[6][7]

The dentitions of lizards reflect their wide range of diets, including carnivorous, insectivorous, omnivorous, herbivorous, nectivorous, and molluscivorous. Species typically have uniform teeth suited to their diet, but several species have variable teeth, such as cutting teeth in the front of the jaws and crushing teeth in the rear. Most species are pleurodont, though agamids and chameleons are acrodont.[8][6]

The tongue can be extended outside the mouth, and is often long. In the beaded lizards, whiptails and monitor lizards, the tongue is forked and used mainly or exclusively to sense the environment, continually flicking out to sample the environment, and back to transfer molecules to the vomeronasal organ responsible for chemosensation, analogous to but different from smell or taste. In geckos, the tongue is used to lick the eyes clean: they have no eyelids. Chameleons have very long sticky tongues which can be extended rapidly to catch their insect prey.[6]

Aside from legless lizards, most lizards are quadrupedal and move using gaits with alternating movement of the right and left limbs with substantial body bending. This body bending prevents significant respiration during movement, limiting their endurance, in a mechanism called Carrier's constraint. Several species can run bipedally,[10] and a few can prop themselves up on their hindlimbs and tail while stationary. Several small species such as those in the genus Draco can glide: some can attain a distance of 60 metres (200 feet), losing 10 metres (33 feet) in height.[11] Some species, like geckos and chameleons, adhere to vertical surfaces including glass and ceilings.[9] Some species, like the common basilisk, can run across water.[12]

Lizards make use of their senses of sight, touch, olfaction and hearing like other vertebrates. The balance of these varies with the habitat of different species; for instance, skinks that live largely covered by loose soil rely heavily on olfaction and touch, while geckos depend largely on acute vision for their ability to hunt and to evaluate the distance to their prey before striking. Monitor lizards have acute vision, hearing, and olfactory senses. Some lizards make unusual use of their sense organs: chameleons can steer their eyes in different directions, sometimes providing non-overlapping fields of view, such as forwards and backwards at once. Lizards lack external ears, having instead a circular opening in which the tympanic membrane (eardrum) can be seen. Many species rely on hearing for early warning of predators, and flee at the slightest sound.[13]

As in snakes and many mammals, all lizards have a specialised olfactory system, the vomeronasal organ, used to detect pheromones. Monitor lizards transfer scent from the tip of their tongue to the organ; the tongue is used only for this information-gathering purpose, and is not involved in manipulating food.[14][13]

Some lizards, particularly iguanas, have retained a photosensory organ on the top of their heads called the parietal eye, a basal ("primitive") feature also present in the tuatara. This "eye" has only a rudimentary retina and lens and cannot form images, but is sensitive to changes in light and dark and can detect movement. This helps them detect predators stalking it from above.[15]

Until 2006 it was thought that the Gila monster and the Mexican beaded lizard were the only venomous lizards. However, several species of monitor lizards, including the Komodo dragon, produce powerful venom in their oral glands. Lace monitor venom, for instance, causes swift loss of consciousness and extensive bleeding through its pharmacological effects, both lowering blood pressure and preventing blood clotting. Nine classes of toxin known from snakes are produced by lizards. The range of actions provides the potential for new medicinal drugs based on lizard venom proteins.[16][17]

Genes associated with venom toxins have been found in the salivary glands of a wide range of lizards, including species traditionally thought of as non-venomous, such as iguanas and bearded dragons. This suggests that these genes evolved in the common ancestor of lizards and snakes, some 200 million years ago (forming a single clade, the Toxicofera).[16] However, most of these putative venom genes were "housekeeping genes" found in all cells and tissues, including skin and cloacal scent glands. The genes in question may thus be evolutionary precursors of venom genes.[18] 17dc91bb1f