|
Home / News / Tags / lizard
|
|
Today, only five groups of reptiles still exist: chelonians (turtles and terrapins), Sphenodontia (the tuatara of New Zealand), lizards, snakes and crocodilians (crocodiles, alligators and caymans). (there is also a recently recognized group related to lizards and snakes, Amphisbaenia). They are relict groups (except... |
18 April 2008
16:11 GMT |
 |
|
It is by far the largest living lizard: the Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis) grows over 3 m (10 ft) in length, weighing over 154 pounds (70 kg). But even if the giant monitor lizard manages to kill animals as large as water buffaloes (and in the past it may have feasted on pygmy elephants), its bite is relatively... |
15 April 2008
03:11 GMT |
|
|
Lizards wandered the world along with the dinosaurs. And even if small, they proved tougher, as they survived into the era of the mammals. A 130-million-year-old fossil found in the Ishikawa Prefecture of Japan and described by the journal "Paleontology" is the oldest found plant-eating lizard, a discovery with impli... |
25 March 2008
03:57 GMT |
|
|
There is only one true living sea lizard: the marine iguana (Amblyrhynchus cristatus), a native of the Galapagos Islands. Despite their terrific look, with short snout, black eyes, large mouth and the crest of spikes (which are in fact soft at touch), long, flattened and powerful tail, long, sharp claws that give the... |
26 February 2008
14:06 GMT |
|
|
Geckos are really some of the most amazing lizards. They are mostly known for their ability to climb vertical walls and walk on ceilings using their adhesive toes. The secret behind this amazing ability lies in an unique quick-release mechanism that permits geckos to strongly adhere to a surface, but then detach with... |
18 February 2008
03:39 GMT |
|
|
Female Komodo dragons do not need stem cell technology and genetic engineering to do it. They really can skip the male chapter in the case of breeding. Two Komodo dragons have hatched at the Sedgwick County Zoo, Wichita, Kansas, without the contribution of a male. These are the first dragons born by parthenogenesis i... |
11 February 2008
02:49 GMT |
|
|
When Europeans heard about it for the first time, they thought it was a legend. But the existence of the huge lizard whose skin could not be penetrated by bullets was real. The Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis) is the world largest living lizard: males can be up to 3 m (10 ft) long and weigh 150-200 kg (320-440 pou... |
29 January 2008
14:06 GMT |
|
|
There is a widespread opinion that the chameleon changes its color in order to imitate the environment, as a defense against predators. Those jerks at work, or anywhere, who shift their behavior in accordance to their interests are compared to a chameleon, but this does not happen in the case of the animal. These liz... |
29 January 2008
04:33 GMT |
|
|
You already know this: the sex chromosome from your father dictated your sex: boy for Y, girl for X. It's the same case with all the mammals. The mother will always come with an X chromosome. But in reptiles, there are neither sex chromosomes, nor sex portions on the chromosomes. All the eggs have the potential ... |
24 January 2008
05:43 GMT |
|
|
Gecko lizards are amazing due to their capacity to walk on walls and upside down on the ceilings. Lizards' ability to defy gravity and attach to smooth surfaces like glass is due to their setae, hair-like structures of their feet. They do not secret glue, but use weak molecular forces, called Van der Waals, to g... |
21 December 2007
02:52 GMT |
|
|
1. The Chameleons' closest relatives are ...the iguanas and dragon lizards (Agamidae). In fact, there are iguanas living in Americas called false chameleons, that resemble a lot the real chameleons of the Old World, and even have the ability of changing their color. The oldest known chameleon is the Mimeosaurus,... |
20 October 2007
07:53 GMT |
|
|
They are separated since the Jurassic era (175 million years ago) by the Atlantic ocean, still the European common lizard (Lacerta vivipara) has been found to display the same love game as a North American lizard, the side blotched lizard (Uta stansburiana). "The triangle of competing strategies may be far more commo... |
5 October 2007
06:37 GMT |
|
|
While you waste hundreds of liters of water daily, as it flows continuously through the faucet (the question is for how long will we be able to afford this?), others struggle for any water droplet they can get. In some desert lizards, their entire body surface turned into an engineering miracle, a type of water spong... |
21 August 2007
06:28 GMT |
|
|
Nature prevails over human technology in many cases. Gecko lizards have amazed people for long with their ability to walk on walls and ceilings. The secret behind this amazing ability lies on an unique quick-release mechanism that permits geckos to strongly adhere to a surface, but then detach with ease, unlike conve... |
15 June 2007
03:32 GMT |
|
|
If your white wife gives birth to a Black child in Africa or a Mongoloid one in China, you wouldn't be very pleased. But there are mothers that change the coloration of their offspring according to the local environment. A team at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has discovered that female side-blotche... |
13 June 2007
09:16 GMT |
|
|
Sexual dimorphism means that males look different than females. Sometimes, the differences can be so substantial that, rather than talking about different sexes, we might be inclined to see them as two different species: elephant seal males are 8 times larger than females; or, in some loris, the female can be green a... |
10 May 2007
07:26 GMT |
|
|
We know that flowers are pollinated by bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, sunbirds, white-eye birds, pollen-eating bats. And pollinators use to fly. But a pollinating lizard? Yes, they do exist, and on the island of Mauritius (in the Indian Ocean), the blue-tailed day gecko is the key factor in the survival of the nat... |
24 April 2007
03:10 GMT |
|
|
Hot sex for lizards can mean ... no males!Because warmer temperatures bias the sex of dragon lizards while inside the eggs, transforming males into females. It seems that high temperatures turn off the maleness gene(s) on their sex chromosomes. "The sex-reversed lizards look female and have female organs but genetica... |
20 April 2007
03:11 GMT |
|
|
A team from the University of Alberta has discovered the oldest limbless lizard ever. The snakelike marine lizard is 95 million-year-old, thus lived during the Cretaceous (the last dinosaur age). "It adds to the picture we have of what was happening 100 million years ago. We now know that losing limbs isn't a ne... |
23 March 2007
11:03 GMT |
|
|
Scientists have recently discovered a lizard shockingly similar to current flying dragons roaming the air during the dinosaur era. Exactly like in the flying dragons, the ancient arboreal lizard presents a wing-like membrane stretched across elongated ribs. Named Xianglong zhaoi, the gliding lizard lived during the E... |
20 March 2007
05:39 GMT |
|
|
|
|
