Habitat:
Description:
Physical Adaptations:
Behavioral Adaptations:
Diet:
Instincts:
- The gila monster lives in the dry southwest desert habitat of the United States.
Description:
- The Gila monster is a large heavy bodied lizard. It is a type of reptile.
- It has a large head with small beady eyes and a short fat tail.
- It's skin is bright pink or orange and black in color with warty-like bumps covering its body.
- The Gila Monster is a stout-bodied lizard that grows 18 to 22.5 inches in length.
- They can weigh 3-5 lbs.
- The Gila monster is the largest lizard in the United States, and one of the few species of venomous lizard in the world
Physical Adaptations:
- The colorful, beadlike skin of the gila monster helps with camouflage.
- Its claws are used for digging burrows and for digging out other animals' eggs.
- Its tongue helps it to hunt and to receive information about its surroundings by picking up the scents in the air.
- They also can store fat in their tails. This is very important to the survival of the Gila monster during times in which food supply is diminished, during hibernation and during pregnancy.
- These colors of the gila monster can serve as camouflage or as a warning to predators.
- They are poisonous. The venom of gila monsters help them to kill prey, and will also help them fend off potential predators as well.
- They have large bodies, and can consume large amounts of food during a brief period. Second, they need to feed infrequently because they can store fat in their tails.
- The Gila Monster is extremely slow moving, so it must have adaptations for defense purposes. One is the armor protected skin. Gila Monsters are beaded-skinned lizards, meaning each bead covering its body contains a small bone. These small bones protect the Gila Monster from its sharp teethed enemies.
- The lizard has 5 toes with sharp claws. It is a good climber.
Behavioral Adaptations:
- Gila Monster's generally escape the heat of the day by sheltering in abandoned burrows, under rocks or bushes, or in burrows that they have dug themselves.
- Gila monsters prefer rocky areas and tend to avoid large, open areas. In these rocky areas they will find burrows and spend large amounts of their life in them. Living in a burrow helps them avoid the extreme heat during the daytime and the cold at night.
- Female gila monsters will lay a clutch of eggs (up to 12) in shallow nests under the ground. The nests are shallow so that the sun will be able to incubate them; the mother will not. The eggs will hatch in approximately 10 months.
- Most of their life is spent underground and out of sight.
- Gila monsters are most active at night. They are nocturnal.
- Gila Monsters are rarely found during the winter. This is because they enter a state of hibernation during the winter months.
- Gila monsters are solitary which means they live alone.
- Gila monsters do not have very good eyesight; when they hunt, they use their senses of taste and smell. To track prey, the Gila monster flicks its forked tongue out to pick up scent particles in the air.
- These lizards are not very fast, so they need to sneak up on animals and bite them before they get away.
Diet:
- Gila monsters eat small mammals, lizards, frogs, insects, carrion (dead animals), birds and birds' eggs.
- They hunt primarily with their sense of taste and smell.
- As they grab their prey with their jaws venom flows into the bite wounds. Their venom attacks the nervous system of their prey.
- Gila monsters don’t chew their food but instead just swallow it whole
Instincts:
- Since the baby lizards are not taken care of by their mother, most young are born completely able to live on their own. They instinctively know what to eat, how to find and capture food, and how to escape from predators.