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Cordylus giganteus
They live in colonies and dig burrows into the silty soil of the Themeda grassland in South Africa. The name Sungazer comes from their habit of sitting at the burrow entrance and facing the sun. Sungazers are protected by spiny dorsal scales and large spines run along the back of the head. The tail is armed by whorls of large spines and is waved at predators that pursue it into a burrow. Adults are 150-180 mm from the snout to the vent. The back is yellow to dark brown and the sides are yellow. Males can be identified by the presence of enlarged scales on the forearm. (Wikipedia)
Aqua Terra Zoo Vienna; in the wilde: grassland in South Africa
Spotted on Jan 4, 2012
Submitted on Feb 26, 2012
15 Comments
no problem!
Thanks a lot Laurie and Apple to help me to ID this little dragon.
Looks like Laurie found it! I would agree with that assessment. I looked through the horned lizards more thoroughly and all of them are much too flat to resemble this one.
looks a lot like the lizard in the pictures on this site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Girdl...
Another possible resource: http://www.phrynosoma.org/home.html
Likely some type of horned lizard, do you know where it originates from in the wild?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horned_liza...
Added another pic to the series. Any ID suggestion?
Thanks Karen and Vipin.
Handsome little guy!
Such a beautiful lizard... :-)
Thanks Lars. I think it's the right direction too.
You're right Rebecka, but I could not find the ID at the blog. Did you?
looks kinda like the lizard in this photo...
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_eh847pUiFYs/Sm...
Looks like a sort of Dragon Lizard (Agamidae) to me. Just a guess.
Beautiful dragon-head!