Legless Lizard - Tumblr Posts

Day 10 of posting cute creatures we found on the field trip:

This is one of my favorite reptiles in the world. Behold:

slow worm (Anguis fragilis)! This is a legless lizard, not a snake and you can easily tell because she blinks (snakes don’t have eyelids and can’t blink) and look at her tongue: it’s not forked, more like spoon shaped.

She also has a tiny ear hole right behind her eye. It looks like white > sign. Can you spot it? Snakes don’t have external ears!

I know it’s a female because males have blue spots and an exaggerated dark stripe on their back. This girl is tiny which means that she’s not gravid this year. Or maybe she’s already laid her eggs!

Here she tried posing but got super bored. Slow worms feed on insects, other invertebrates and rarely eggs. They spend most of their lives digging through earth. There was a belief that they were made of glass and if you dropped them, they would shatter. This was because of their very hard, but also very smooth scales. They do kind of feel like rough glass and such scales help them move through earth and not get hurt. They rarely bite and even if they do, their teeth are tiny and can’t do any damage. They will however poop on you. She sure did.

Day 38 of posting cute creatures we found on our field trip:

Sheltopusik also known as European legless lizard or blavor (Pseudopus apodus) is the largest European lizard. This animal is completely harmless, so don’t panic if you see it. They feed on insects, other small animals and eggs. They rarely bite and usually just poop on you in self defense:

They look very angry from the front:

And very sad and confused from above:

They are very big, over 150cm long at most. I love them beyond words. They can be kept as pets, but please don’t do that, they are all wild caught, because we don’t know how to breed them in captivity. They are super chill and fun to interact with, but don’t support wild animal trade please.

Legless lizards have ears and eyelids which snakes don’t have. They also have much different belly scales and much longer tails than snakes.

Checkerboard Worm Lizard (Trogonophis wiegmanni), family Trogonophidae, northern Morocco

Legless lizard.

photograph by Kristian Stengaard Munkholm