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One of the most unusual reptiles for sure is the Legless lizard. Hello. This is a Russian
variety. We see these in the United States too, down south in Florida they call them
Glass lizards, very similar, because they have a couple of unique characteristics.
First thing is, anybody seeing this for the first time says, "Jungle Bob, that's not a
lizard, that's a snake, because it's got no arms and legs." Well, if I'm a scientist and
I didn't make this up, but scientist classifies snakes as animals that do not have any arms
or legs, of course, but snakes also can not have ears or an eyelid that they can shut.
So, they give that designation to lizards. If an animal or reptiles, a cold blooded,
scaly animal, has no arms and legs, does not mean it's a snake. But if it has an ear opening,
and if it has the ability to close its eyes, it is a lizard.
One or the other would make him a lizard. Now if you look really close at this animal,
he's got about an inch behind his eye, he's got a true ear opening. So, this is a lizard,
not a snake. And then if it's nighttime, of if I can touch his eyes, he would close his
eyes, just like you and I do, whereas snakes can never do that. So, an animal that has,
a reptile that has an ear opening and/or an eyelid, has to be classified as a lizard,
not a snake, and that's what we have here.
This little guy is from the Ukraine area of Russia. Over there they call him the Scheltopusik,
I don't know why but that's his name in Russian. Here we call him the Legless lizard, and down
in Florida there's another species called the Glass lizard. They're called Glass lizards
because of their ability to do that trick called autotonomy, where they will just snap
off their tail at a moment's notice. If something was to grab them by the tail, he would leave
it behind that I'm trying very hard for that not to happen.
The *** opening of all reptiles, and birds actually, is called the cloaca, and on this
particular animal, right where my finger is, is where his opening is. So, from that point
down, all the way down, is his tail. That's all tail, that's the end of his body, way
up top there. So, that whole thing would snap off, which would be a shame; we don't want
for that to happen.
You see the way he moved his body when he wanted to move, lizards do that type of a
roll. Snakes don't usually try to get away from somebody holding them by rotating their
body, lizards do that, alligators do that, but he's got that in his DNA, to roll over
like that. So, most people conject that these animals at one point had arms and legs. We
know from scientific and fossil records that snakes descended from lizards, no question
about it, and this is an animal I think is kind of an in-betweener.
So, he's a great animal to talk about when we're doing educational shows, to talk about
the Russian legless lizard. He's a ferocious carnivore. He devours mice, but he can't grab
them with his legs and arms; he kind of just swallows them.
He doesn't have the same kind of body strength to wrap up a prey item like a snake would,
but he kind of walks over it. So, one of the most unusual animals we can see in the reptile
world, the legless lizard from Russia. He can open his mouth there, and he didn't bite
me, so this is a good episode.