Monday, May 10, 2010

Blood Squirting Lizard!!


This lizard is called a Horned Lizard, better known as the Blood Squirting Lizard!  Pretty cool huh?  I bet you wish you had one as pet.  Don't worry, I did to until I seen it do this:



http://www.evtv1.com/images/regalzard.jpg

Still really cool, but I don't want it as a pet anymore.  Now for those who are not grossed out because of the blood and are still interested, I am going to give a little information about this Blood Squirting Lizard.

Blood squirting lizards are found all over North America, Central America, and Guatemala on the desert climate regions.  They eat a variety of different kind of insects such as ants, spiders, beetles, roaches, and grasshoppers.

Blood squirting lizards have a few defenses to protect themselves from predators.  One of their first defenses, as with most lizards, is to stay completely still hoping the predator can't see them anymore.  Blood squirting lizards next defense is to run quickly and then stop, this will confuse the predator.  Their third defense is to blow up their body and stick out their spikes hoping to scare the predator away.  These three defense are very similar to what other lizards do.

Now here is the really cool defense, now is the time to click away from this web page if you don't like blood.  Blood squirting lizards can shoot a line of blood at target that is 5 feet away!  This is a very effective method as the blood taste gross to predators or it suprises them and scares the predator off.  Blood squirting lizards perform this defense mechanism by restricting the blood vessels that are leaving the head, wich leads to a build up of extra blood in their head, wich they can shoot out through small tears in the eyes.

It amazes me how similar the resemblence is between the blood squirting lizard and the bearded dragon, the only difference to me is that a bearded dragon can't shoot blood through it's eyes.  This might be just me, let me know what you think.

I hope this article about blood squirting lizards was helpful and interesting, if you have any questions, feel free to email me or comment below.

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