Rare Video Shows Mysterious, Worm-Like Legless Lizard – via Herp Digest

This strange reptile spends most of its time underground, but researchers got lucky and caught it on camera.

For video go to: 

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/06/legless-lizard-bipes-mexico-spd/

By Shaena Montanari

National Geographic by Shaena Montanari, 6/30/17 

It’s not a snake. It’s not a worm. And as far as legless lizards go, the Mexican mole lizard is a strange one.

Hours after setting up a pitfall trap that is designed to catch any animal that walks over it, herpetologist Sara Ruane from Rutgers University-Newark was excited by what she saw: “It was shocking to see one in this trap, I couldn’t believe it was in there.”

She was surprised to see the Mexican mole lizard, also known as Bipes biporus, because their underground lifestyle means they don’t spend too much time on the surface.

This month, Ruane was out with University of California Berkeley graduate student Kaitlyn Kraybill-Voth, who took the video, setting traps for a general biodiversity survey as part of an Islands and Seas field course in San Juanico, Baja California Sur.

Bipes biporus is what is known as an amphisbaenian—a group of legless lizards that, surprisingly, are not snakes even if they bear a strong superficial resemblance. They are more closely related to other lizards with legs than snakes. 

All but three of the approximately 200 amphisbaenian species are legless, and all three with tiny legs are Bipes species. They possess flat, digging front limbs that help them move through lose soil while they are underground. They use both their front limbs and undulating movements of their bodies to get around.

They are only about 9 inches long with a very light pink appearance due to their subterranean lifestyle, where they live in shallow root beds and insects.

The original field study of Bipes biporus in the 1980s notes that out of over 2,000 individuals collected, only three were found on the surface, which is why Ruane was excited to find two during their field expedition.

They are not actually rare, but their life out of sunlight makes them an exciting and surprising site to people who want to see them. Still, this legless lizard is not completely beloved in Baja, where it is called ajolote by the locals.

Folklore surrounding these animals is dicey, at best. In kind terms, some are worried it will use its two front limbs to crawl up a certain orifice when one squats down to use the bathroom.

Although this story has no factual basis, Ruane says some locals did bring it up when she showed them the two Bipes biporus they found. “The rumor is out there,” she laughs. 

Four New Species of 'Legless Lizards' Discovered Living On the Edge

Sep. 18, 2013 — California biologists have discovered four new species of reclusive legless lizards living in some of the most marginal habitat in the state: a vacant lot in downtown Bakersfield, among oil derricks in the lower San Joaquin Valley, on the margins of the Mojave desert, and at the end of one of the runways at LAX.

"This shows that there is a lot of undocumented biodiversity within California," said Theodore Papenfuss, a reptile and amphibian expert, or herpetologist, with UC Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, who discovered and identified the new species with James Parham of California State University, Fullerton. The discoveries raise the number of California legless lizard species from one to five.

The herpetologists named the new snake-like lizards after four legendary UC Berkeley scientists: museum founder Joseph Grinnell, paleontologist Charles Camp, philanthropist and amateur scientist Annie Alexander and herpetologist Robert C. Stebbins, at 98 the only one of the group still alive.

"These are animals that have existed in the San Joaquin Valley, separate from any other species, for millions of years, completely unknown," said Parham, who obtained his doctorate from Berkeley and is now curator of paleontology at the John D. Cooper Archaeology and Paleontology Center. "If you want to preserve biodiversity, it is the really distinct species like these that you want to preserve."

Papenfuss and Parham reported their discovery this month in the journal Breviora, a publication of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University.

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