October 4th, 2022
Snake? Nope. Learn what makes this interesting-looking animal a legless lizard from Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom host, Peter Gros.
Transcript:
So people often ask me, "What is it?" What kind of a snake is that? And I have to explain, well it is actually called a legless lizard and that's because if you look carefully right there, snakes don't have ears. It has little ear slits.
He actually has a wonderful form of escape and defense. If you look right here in this section where his body or his tail gets really thin, there's a muscle there. So if a predator flies down and what are you doing when you're escaping from a predator? You're getting away, this is the last thing that's available. It's grabbed, the tail breaks off, the muscle closes and over the next several months it grows a new tail.
It's a win-win. One of those unusual stories of a win-win for both the predator and the prey. The predator has a meal, the prey escapes and grows a new tail.
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