You may be a little confused today if you read the title of our Wild Fact and then looked at the picture. You are probably thinking to yourself that the picture looks more like a snake than a lizard. If you picked up on this than good for you but believe it or not the Glass Lizard is actually a lizard and not a snake. As you can imagine these animals are also referred to as Glass Snakes for obvious reasons. You might be questioning how it can be a lizard if it doesn’t have any legs. I guess we should address that issue right now, shouldn’t we?
The majority of Glass Lizard species have no legs, however, a few select species actually have very small stub-like legs. So how is it that we call them lizards instead of snakes? Well, the Glass Lizard still has the head of a lizard including movable eyelids and external ear openings. These distinct features puts them into the lizard category as opposed to the slippery, slithery snake category. I guess this is another example that illustrates that looks can indeed be deceiving.
The Glass Lizard can get up to 1.2 m (4′) in length although two-thirds of this length is their tail. In previous reptile Wild Facts we have discussed that one of the main defense mechanisms for some lizards is to drop off part of their tail. The Glass Lizard is no exception and has the ability to easily break off sections of their long tail. This is actually how they get their name. Get it? Both glass and these lizards break easily? This is actually a pretty clever naming convention, for once. The coolest thing about this is the fact that the portion of the tail that breaks off remains mobile while the rest of the lizard stays motionless. Obviously this distracts the predator and allows the Glass Lizard to make an escape when the time is right. Unfortunately this cool defense mechanism requires a lot of energy to regenerate a new tail so it will often be smaller. I guess this is a good way to tell how often the Glass Lizard had to drop off its tail.
I guess that does it for the Glass Lizard. Make sure you check back here tomorrow for another crazy Wild Fact. Have a great day!
My mother who is near 80 years old tales of a snake that they referred to in rural Alabama as a “jointed snake”
The story goes that her brothers would cut it up at the joints, and if the snake got all us parts aligned back up before Sun down that he would carry on his merry way. Do you guys think this was actually the glass lizard and the imagination of a young girl.