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