Lizards

FotD: A couple lizards actually have horns around or near their eyes, and when they want to they can squirt blood up to four feet away!

So, today I picked up a lizard. It was small and didn’t have any teeth, so I really was surprised when it bit me. I still have a big red mark on my thumb. (I’m pretty sure that the lizard that bit me is the type in the picture. A five-lined Skink) Anyways, that got me thinking about lizards and stuff.

They’re actually pretty cool. Some lizards have different coping mechanisms to different threats. You know, just like humans. Some run, some fight…Some bite.

So, there are many ways that these small lizards can defend themselves. Such as, squirting blood out of horns, have venom(though very few are actually graced with venom), having teeth(even if they don’t have teeth, trust me it hurts.), sometimes they change color depending on their mood or environment. And of course they can regenerate slightly.

The lizard can actually go through what is called Caudal Anatomy, and what this means is that they can literally amputate their own tail. Their tail is made so that there isn’t much blood loss or trauma to the parts surrounding the tail. This means that when you grab a lizard and its tail falls off, you probably didn’t pull it off and hurt the poor thing. It more than likely done it on purpose to get away from you. Yep, they literally cut off their own tail from their body.

However, after they amputate their tail, they also regenerate. They regenerate by sending leukocytes and making sure there isn’t very much inflammation. By doing this, their tail will regenerate and be fully functional a little more than 60 days. It may seem like a long time, but think about it. How long does it take you to grow hair from being bald to down to you shoulders. Yep, it takes a while and our hair isn’t even a limb. We can’t grow those back.