Habitat:
Description:
Physical Adaptations:
Behavioral Adaptations:
Diet:
- The horned lizard lives in the dry desert habitat in southwestern part of the United States. It loves the hot dry desert. It prefers the sandy areas over the rocky areas.
Description:
- It is a reptile.
- The lizards can grow to be up to 7 inches long.
- Their body colors range from light brown, tan or gray.
- They have a short pointed nose.
- They have a broad, flattened body.
- Their tail is short.
- There are noticeable spines on the back of the head, on the center of the head as horns, on each side of the throat, and rows of spines on each side of the body.
Physical Adaptations:
- They also have the ability to lighten or darken the body to camouflage themselves against the ground, or bury themselves under loose soil. They use their claws to dig holes in the sand. This is called burrowing. Burrowing is also an important means of regulating their body temperature.
- Texas horned lizards collect water by "rain harvesting." They raise and flatten their bodies, then lower the head to collect water flowing along channels formed by their scales.
- When they really threatened their bodies can puff out to make it very difficult for predators to swallow.
- They also have ducts near their eyes, through which they can squirt blood a good distance at predators.
- The Horned Lizard features horns on the head. They are short horns that are found in a row along the crown of the head.
- Both the tail and the sides of the body for this Lizard feature spines that are very sharp. It is no wonder that the Horned Lizard has fewer problems with predators than many other species of Lizards
Behavioral Adaptations:
- Horned Lizards have very unusual defense mechanisms. The first defense mechanism they have is when they feel danger, they will flatten out their bodies and just freeze wherever they are at.
- The Horned Lizard spends most of their time heating up their bodies from the sun, eating harvester ants and chasing away predators.
- They dig burrows or occupy one constructed by another animals, often near the mounds of their favorite food source.
- They are most active during the warm days of summer and early fall.
- They hibernate around September or October until April or May.
- The female build a tunnel underneath the ground to lay up to 13 to 45 eggs. After that, the female sits on the eggs for one night and then leaves the eggs and never comes back to the nest.
- In order to ward off hungry predators, horned lizards are capable of inflating their bodies up to twice their size, resembling a spiny balloon.
- It is a cold-blooded animal. It uses its surrounding to control its body temperature.
- They are patient hunters and will stand very still. Then in an instance they flick out the long tongue and get their prey.
Diet:
- They feed primarily on ants, waiting for one to unsuspectingly crawl by before snapping it in and swallowing it whole.
- They are also known to eat grasshoppers, beetles, and spiders.
- The diet consists of an array of insects, spiders, ticks, butterflies, and moths.
- They are opportunistic and will eat when food is available even if they have had more than enough already.
- One of their main diet staples are ants.
- The young horned lizards are able to live on their own right after they are born. They instinctively know what to eat, how to capture food, and how to escape from predators.