Thanks to listeners Finn and Leo, who suggested this week's topics of strange lizards, and the thorny devil and mata mata turtle, respectively! Join us this week to learn about those reptiles and a bunch more!

Thorny devil. Definitely do not eat.

The mata mata turtle. Big leafhead boi

A frilled lizard BWAAAAAMP

A Pinocchio lizard. Wonder where that name comes from.

Poke poke poke does this bother you? poke poke

om nom nom

A shingleback, or as I like to call it, an ambulatory poop:

Show transcript:

Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.

We have more listener suggestions this week! Ages ago, listener Finn suggested strange lizards, and more recently, listener Leo suggested a particular type of strange lizard and a strange turtle.

We’ll start with Leo’s suggestion, the thorny devil. He describes it as “a cool animal with spikes all around it,” which is definitely a good way to put it. The thorny devil is a lizard from Australia, and it does indeed have spikes all over its head, back, and tail, and smaller spikes on its legs. The spikes are modified scales and are sharp.

The thorny devil grows to around 8 inches long, or 20 cm, with females being larger than males on average. In warm weather its blotchy brown and yellow coloring is paler than in colder weather, when it turns darker. It can also turn orangey, reddish, or gray to blend in to the background soil. Its color changes slowly over the course of the day as the temperature changes. It also tends to turn darker if something threatens it.

It has a thick spiny tail that it usually holds curved upward, which makes it look kind of like a stick. It moves slowly and jerkily, rocking back and forth on its legs, then surging forward a couple of steps. Researchers think this may confuse predators. It certainly looks confusing.

As if that wasn’t enough, the thorny devil has a false head on the back of its neck. It’s basically a big bump with two spikes sticking out of the sides. When something threatens the lizard, it ducks its head between its forelegs, which makes the bump on its neck look like a little head. But all its spines make it a painful mouthful for a predator. If something does try to swallow it, the thorny devil can puff itself up to make itself even harder to swallow, like many toads do. It does this by inflating its chest with air.

The thorny devil eats ants and only ants, specifically various species of tiny black ants found only in Australia. It has a sticky tongue to lick them up. Because it has such a specific diet, it’s hard to keep in captivity. Only a few zoos in Australia have thorny devils on display. If you listened to episode 93, where we talked about invasive ant species having an effect on entire ecosystems, the thorny devil is an example of this. Fortunately the ants it eats are doing just fine, but if an invasive ant species were introduced to the areas where it lives, the thorny devil would probably be in trouble. So no moving ants around, everyone, I mean it.

The thorny devil lives in desert and scrubland regions, and in hot weather it digs a burrow to shelter in. Females lay their eggs in burrows. To get enough water in its desert environment, the thorny devil has microscopic grooves between its scales that suck up water by capillary action. At night dew condenses on the lizard’s body, and it also collects dew by brushing against dewy vegetation or just by standing or lying on damp sand. If it does happen across water in a puddle, it will put a leg in the water and the tiny grooves in its skin suck up water and funnel it to the mouth. It’s like a living straw.

While I was researching this, I found some information on how rattlesnakes drink. When it starts to rain, a rattlesnake will coil up tightly so that rainwater collects in its coils. Then it drinks the water. This sounds like something someone just made up, but it’s real.