Burton's pointed head fin foot
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Burton's pointed head fin foot ( Lialis burtonis ) |
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| Gray , 1834 |
Burton's pointed head fin foot ( Lialis burtonis ) is a legless lizard that is surprisingly related to the completely different looking geckos .
features
Burton's pointed head fin foot has a snake-like body and becomes 60 cm long, with the females becoming larger than the males. The tail is longer than the head and trunk together. There are 18 to 22 scales around the middle of the body. The scales on the sides are significantly wider than the rest. The front legs and shoulder girdle are completely missing, while only two tiny, fin-like, scaly appendages are left of the hind legs. The head is triangular, pointed. As with snakes, the jaws are highly mobile, so that Burton's pointed head fin foot can also devour very large prey. The teeth of the specialized lizard eater are movably attached, so that when it bites, the teeth that hit a scale are turned back, while the teeth that meet a gap between two scales penetrate the victim's skin and flesh. If the prey tries to tear itself away, the folded teeth can snap into a shed edge, straighten up and hold the victim additionally. The scales on the top of the snout are small and irregularly arranged. The ear opening is oblique and oval. Like all geckos, Burton's pointed-head fin foot has no eyelids and cleans his eyes with the indented tongue. The color of the lizards can include all shades of brown, but also gray, red-brown, olive green, including black and yellowish spots and stripes.
distribution and habitat
It occurs all over Australia , with the exception of the extreme southwest and the extreme southeast, and also not on Tasmania and Kangaroo Island . It can also be found on the islands of the Torres Strait and in southeast New Guinea . Its habitat is diverse and includes all sorts of biotopes, from deserts to grasslands to coastal damp forests. It does not occur in downright rainforests .
Way of life
Burton's pointed-head fin foot is active both day and night, especially early in the morning and at dusk. Its preferred temperature is very high at 35 ° C. It eats lizards, especially skinks , but also agamas , geckos and sometimes snakes . The prey is swallowed head first, whereby - similar to snakes - the highly mobile upper and lower jaws pull the food one after the other into the throat.
It reproduces oviparously . As with geckos, a clutch usually consists of two eggs. Sometimes the fin foot only lays one or three eggs. In the south of the distribution area, the breeding season is in early summer and summer.
swell
- Eric R. Pianka, Laurie J. Vitt: Lizards. Windows to the Evolution of Diversity (= Organisms and Environments. Vol. 5). University of California Press, Berkeley CA et al. 2003, ISBN 0-520-23401-4 .
- Timothy Trudgen: Lialis burtonis. James Cook University, Townsville 2001, online (PDF; 11.43 kB)
- Volker Ennenbach: Lialis burtonis - Burton's Legless Lizard. In: Terralog News. No. 85, 2009, ISSN 1430-9610 , pp. 10–11, digital version (PDF; 3.35 MB) .
