Animals, features and articles | Educational Science

Apr 2, 2018

Here's Why an Ancient Lizard Had 4 Eyes

About 49 million years ago, a long-tailed monitor lizard perceived the world not with two but with four eyes, a new study finds. The all-seeing lizard, called Saniwa ensidens, is the first jawed vertebrate on record to sport four eyes, the researchers said. These days, the jawless lamprey is the...

May 16, 2018

We Still Don't Know Why These Lizards Have Lime-Green Blood

If you ever examine the innards of a green-blooded skink, you might take a second (or even a third) look: The muscles, bones and even the tongues of these lizards have a bright, lime-green color — not from their diet, but because of the copious amount of green bile that's...

May 30, 2018

This 240-Million-Year-Old Reptile Is the 'Mother of All Lizards'

HBO's Game of Thrones features a Mother of Dragons, but a fossil that's hundreds of millions of years old was recently identified as the mother of all lizards (and snakes, too). This ancient lizard was the direct ancestor of approximately 10,000 species alive today that have inhabited the planet for...

Jul 26, 2018

Death-Defying Lizards Fly Off Sticks During Leaf-Blower Wind Experiment

The Turks and Caicos anole is a small brown lizard found running through the undergrowth in the Turks and Caicos Islands. It’s an endemic species, meaning these few islands are the only place to find Anolis scriptus anywhere in the world. Despite the species being fairly common there, scientists know...

Aug 31, 2018

There Be Dragons: 6-Foot-Long Lizard Terrifies Florida Family

A Florida family is afraid to use their swimming pool — and with good reason. Earlier this week, the family spotted a giant monitor lizard the size of an adult human lurking on their property. The Lieberman family in Davie, Florida, discovered the uninvited visitor roaming around their backyard, Miami-Dade's...

Oct 18, 2018

Hail the Lizard King. T. Rex's Puny Arms Were Useful After All.

By studying the arm movements of two distant relatives of T. rex — the domestic turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) and the American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) — researchers have learned that T. rex and other theropods (a group of mostly meat-eating, bipedal dinosaurs) could likely turn the palms of their hands toward...

Dec 21, 2018

WATCH: First-Ever Footage of a Lizard Breathing Underwater

Lizards can't breathe underwater — or can they? Footage of a river anole that was recently filmed in Costa Rica revealed that the species — Anolis oxylophus — possesses a highly unusual ability. The anoles breathe stored oxygen while underwater, something that has never been seen or documented before in...

Aug 5, 2019

Frogs, Toads, Lizards and Bats ... Were Found in Bagged Salads

In recent years, dozens of people in the United States who bought prepackaged salads at their local grocery stores found unexpected extra ingredients mixed in with their kale and romaine: frogs, lizards, rodents and even a bat. In 10 instances, the animals were still alive. (Perhaps, that made the encounters...

Jan 23, 2020

Florida weather forecast: Cloudy with a chance of falling iguanas

Jan 21 - This isn't something we usually forecast, but don't be surprised if you see Iguanas falling from the trees tonight as lows drop into the 30s and 40s. Brrrr! #flwx #miami pic.twitter.com/rsbzNMgO01January 21, 2020 See more Chilly winter weather brings a chance of snow, ice ... and falling...

Feb 25, 2020

'Shocked' scientists find brain parasites in baby lizards still in shells

A newfound species of parasitic worm wiggles its way into the brains of baby lizards long before the reptiles hatch. How do the nematodes break into developing lizard brains? They sneak in through the lizard mothers' ovaries, a surprising new study finds. Parasitic nematodes that prey on mammals can sometimes...

May 8, 2020

Florida lizard breaks world poop record, dies constipated

A greasy, sandy diet left a northern curly-tailed lizard with a belly distended by a heavy ball of unpassable poop. The mass was so large that it made up nearly 80% of the animal's body weight — a record-breaking body-to-poop ratio, according to a Florida biologist. As the lizard gulped...

Jul 16, 2020

Lizards with multiple tails are more common than anyone knew

Lizards that lose and regrow their tails can go overboard and grow back more than one tail — and sometimes they sprout as many as six. Those haywire multiple tails appear a lot more often than you might think, scientists recently discovered. Numerous reports from around the world mention multi-tailed...

Nov 3, 2020

'Lost' chameleon rediscovered after a century in hiding. And it's spectacular.

More than a century after it was last seen, a spectacularly colorful chameleon is back. Conservationists announced the rediscovery of the Voeltzkow's chameleon (Furcifer voeltzkowi) on Oct. 30 in the journal Salamandra. The animal, endemic to Madagascar, was last seen in 1913 — and until now, no one had ever...

Jan 12, 2021

Desert geckos glow neon green in the moonlight, scientists discover

A desert gecko from Namibia has brilliant glow-in-the-dark markings that shine neon green by the light of the moon. The mechanism that produces its glow has never been seen before in land animals with backbones. Web-footed geckos (Pachydactylus rangei) have translucent skin with large, yellowish markings: stripes on their sides...

Jan 25, 2021

Man tried to smuggle chameleons in socks and empty ice-cream tubs

A man attempted to smuggle 74 protected chameleons through an Austrian airport by hiding the animals in socks and empty ice cream containers in his luggage. The man was caught at customs control in Vienna after traveling from Tanzania via Ethiopia, The Associated Press reported. After authorities confiscated the colorful...