Burton's Snake Lizard

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS:

These robust, legless, elongated lizards are up to two feet in length. Long, sharp, wedge-shaped snouts are covered with small scales. Mouths have numerous large, backward-pointing, sharp teeth. Tympanums (ear openings) are visible and eye pupils are vertically elliptical. Color and markings are extremely varied - most are striped, some are not. Yellowish, reddish, gray, black, white or brown. Special scales which aide in reproduction are about 5mm long. Their tongues are broad and fleshy, unlike snakes' tongues.

DISTRIBUTION AND HABITAT:

Burton's snake lizards are well-known and distributed over virtually all of Australia (except the cool, high altitudes). They are also present in New Guinea, but absent in Tasmania.

These lizards thrive in most habitats from desert sand ridges and flats to woodlands, dry forest and margins of rain forests.

BEHAVIOR:

Ground-dwellers, they seek shelter beneath rocks, logs or leaf-litter and in hummock grasses and abandoned burrows. They are active during daylight hours and sometimes at night. When at rest, they adopt a distinctive posture with head and neck held at approximately 45 degrees to the ground. They are not venomous.

Lizard eating a skink (click to enlarge)

DIET:

Burton's snake lizards are active and alert predators that feed on arthropods and small lizards, especially skinks. They also hunt geckos, adamids and small snakes. They normally grip their prey in the chest region, hold them until they suffocate, then swallow them head first.

REPRODUCTION and GROWTH:

Burton's snake lizards, like others in the family Pygopodidae, are oviparous (egg-layers). The eggs are rather elongated, and usually only two or three in each clutch.