In the Nu River in Yunnan Province, a donkey friend from Guangzhou is hiking in the mountains. Suddenly, on a bare trunk, a dreamy blue flashed: its head glowed with a light blue light, which looked extremely chic and its tail was slender. Just now, as if foraging for food, I heard the voice of a person and slipped into the tree.
With years of experience in the wild, the donkey friend concluded that it was a tree lizard. Tree lizards were mostly brown, pale yellow, and close to the color of crocodile skin, but the blue tree lizard was so rare that she had never seen it before. Later, it was identified by animal experts at the Kunming Institute of Zoology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which is an extremely rare white-lipped tree lizard.
The white-lipped tree lizard is mainly distributed in the Indochina Peninsula of Southeast Asia, and in China, native populations are only distributed in Yunnan and Guangxi. The China-Myanmar border area in southwestern Yunnan province has been seen many times, in very small numbers; guangxi is even less numerous, inhabiting mainly in the forest edges of the Chongzuo and Baise Sino-Vietnamese borders.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" >01 China's prettiest lizard, blue triangular head, dragging a long tail like a balance stick</h1>
The white-lipped tree lizard belongs to the hyena subfamily of the diurnal reptile, and the most noticeable thing is its blue-colored blue head, which looks very similar to a frog, like a flat triangular cone, and a pair of bulging eyes on both sides, which crush the blue head a little deformed.
The white-lipped tree lizard has been called "the most beautiful lizard in China". Slender body, tail length is about 2-3 times the length of the head body. The male lizard has a head length of 9–14 cm and a tail length of 20–25 cm; the female has a head length of 7–11 cm and a tail length of 15–20 cm.
The white-lipped tree lizard also learns crocodiles, and its whole body is covered with tiny scales, arranged like a tile. The scales on its back, the tip of the piece is facing backwards, and there is a column of pointed toothed hyena scales in the middle of the back, about 35-52 segments, which stab backwards and upwards, which is particularly powerful!
The blue body color is a sign of sexual maturity of the white-lipped tree lizard. During the breeding season, adult females and males turn blue to varying degrees, most notably on the head and throat; what is even stranger is that the heads of males are bluer and more attractive than those of females.
The lip of the white-lipped tree lizard is wrapped in a white stripe that extends from the end of the snout to behind the ear, and there are many radial black stripes around the eyes. The back of the body is grayish brown , the abdomen is yellowish-white with dark spots , a creamy brown band on each side , and a faint ring on the tail.
The cargo often dragged a nice long tail and flipped between the bushes, chasing prey or avoiding predators. It relies on this long tail like a balance stick, which is very important for the white-lipped tree lizard to maintain its balance when it is active. White-lipped tree lizards generally do not cut their tails, because a broken tail will reduce their ability to survive in the wild, and even life-threatening.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" >02 hot days but lazy outside basking in the sun, at night they sleep clinging to tree trunks</h1>
Among the 6 species of animals in the domestic tree lizard genus, the white-lipped tree lizard should be the largest. This cargo is generally active during the day, especially when the sun is setting or when the sky is just dawn. When it is hot, he likes to lie on the bare trunks of trees and lazily sunbathe; sometimes he is active on the ground under the forest, chasing various small insects; at night, he sleeps clinging to the trunks, and when the wind blows, he immediately runs without a trace.
The white-lipped tree lizard is naturally bold and curious. Generally speaking, if it stays still in the tree, almost no one can find it, but fortunately, these guys are active, and most of the time it exposes itself. The white-lipped tree lizard adopts a evasive strategy of enemy entering and hiding, and once it is disturbed, it will flee into the bushes or climb the edge to hide in the tall trees and slowly climb up; if you stay still, the white-lipped tree lizard will not move, and sometimes it will peek at you.
According to the changes in the environment, temperature and other factors, the blue pigment-rich white-lipped tree lizard also has the ability to change color, although its intracellular microscopic fine structure is not as delicate and complex as that of the chameleon. When the white-lipped tree lizard is in a state of excitement, its body color will gradually deepen with the state of excitement; if it is frightened, it will turn into an earthy brown that can hide itself; when it sleeps at night, its body color will also be dominated by a dull brown.
Strictly speaking, this color-changing ability and chameleon can actively change body color due to emotional changes, and it mainly relies on absorbing high heat to occur, which is a passive discoloration behavior.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >03 loves grasshoppers and licks the water on the leaves to quench their thirst</h1>
The white-lipped tree lizard is not particular about eating, mainly feeding on arthropod insects such as lepidoptera, such as crickets, beetles and spiders, as long as it is an insect it can catch, it will swallow it. There are also some white-lipped tree lizards, and their food is mainly plants.
Of course, it also has a hobby, especially like to eat grasshoppers, many times, it is on the ground to find them, but because the grasshopper legs are developed can jump dozens of times longer than the body, white-lipped tree lizards are difficult to get.
Don't look at the white-lipped tree lizards stupid, but the bite force of their mouths is still very strong, and they will sometimes go to hunt birds. Once it sees the nest in the tree, it sneaks to the side, slaps the nest with its tail, scares the big bird away, and then finds the chick or bird egg and eats it beautifully.
The cargo also preys on companions, occasionally eating small lizards, such as geckos, and to the surprise of scientists, it will even eat its own cubs, and scientists have not yet figured out under what circumstances it will swallow its own children.
Thirsty, the white-lipped tree lizard does not like to go to the creek to drink water, it generally likes to lick the water droplets on the leaves to quench its thirst, so early in the morning, the first thing after getting up is to lick the dew on the leaves.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" >04 male lizards pursue the opposite sex by changing color, and some females do not need male lizards to conceive and give birth</h1>
In late spring and early summer, the white-lipped tree lizard begins to mate and reproduce. The male lizard did not have any ability to show, so he had to use the ability to change color on the sister. The male lizards who are busy looking for objects have changed into the most beautiful clothes of the year - wedding clothes, which stink in front of the female lizards to attract the female lizard's eyeballs.
The male lizard became particularly excited by hormones, and the color of the bulging throat sac began to darken, quickly spreading to the head and chest, and the original blue head and upper body gradually turned orange-yellow, and then became orange-red, and a pair of black patches appeared on the sides of the cheeks. The whole transition process takes about 1 minute or so.
If the female lizard is seen looking this way, the male lizard begins to move, rushing in the direction of the female lizard, and then the two lizards quickly entangled. Scientists have found that some male lizard sperm can remain active in female lizards for several years.
Interestingly, scientists have also found female-only white-lipped tree lizards in certain areas of the Indochina Peninsula that are parthenogenesis breeding species, and the chromosomes of such white-lipped tree lizards tend to be heteroploid. That is, female lizards do not need male lizards to conceive and give birth to calves.
Some white-lipped tree lizards that normally reproduce in both sexes also switch to parthenogenesis breeding under certain environmental conditions. This kind of parthenogenesis reproduction is very rare in the animal kingdom, but it also facilitates the participation of all members in the reproduction of offspring, rapidly expanding the population and occupying the living field.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > concluding remarks</h1>
The white-lipped tree lizard is currently favored by the pet market for its eye-catching appearance. However, under the influence of illegal collection by pet traders, the wild population of the white-lipped tree lizard has declined year by year. Although the white-lipped tree lizard is included in the "three animals" protection list, there are currently no relevant protection measures. The lessons of the passenger pigeons are always a warning to us: don't wait until everything is lost, then we can't regret it.
Here, Xuelinggu would like to remind everyone: appreciate it, do not possess, this is the best love for the dreamy appearance of the white-lipped tree lizard.
Snow Spirit Valley Animal Lab/Production
References: Friends of Science Magazine, China Science Daily, Zoology of China, Nature Exploration, China Forestry Network, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences