In his boyish book Journey to the West, Fabre recorded that the southern part of Europe produced very beautiful and expensive gem-jeweled lizards, which existed only in Spain and in the Pyrenees to the north, and that the Spanish king only allowed officials and nobles to collect them, and that no one else could privately capture or sell them, or be sentenced to death.
As one of Spain's specialties, this lizard has been sold to central Europe and around the world for nearly a century, and it is rumored that Tsar Catherine II and Tolstoy once raised this lizard.
The former is called "жить драгоценности" (living jewelry)
The latter named it "bijoux lézard" (jewel lizard)
Until 1996, the Jeweled Lizard (Timon) was classified under the genus Lacerta lepita until the early 21st century when it was reclassified in the subgenus Timon as an independent family of jewelry lizards (Timon lepidus).
At present, a total of 21 subspecies have been found in the wild, of which:
Timon pater
Timon nevadensis
Timon tangitanus
Timon lepidus
It is the four most famous subspecies of the family, most of which are distributed in the wilderness of Spain, Portugal and southern France, living in the bush forests near rivers, under the roots and in the crevices of the stone, while the other subspecies are very rare until now due to their scarcity.
<h1>The flowers are similar from year to year</h1>
Jewel lizards are very strong lizards, in the wild, they usually feed on insects, snails, slugs, frogs, but also eat some fruits and flowers, and occasionally catch rat cubs to taste fresh.
According to local Spanish books, when a jeweled lizard is found in a dense bush, the sound of its body crashing into the bushes when it escapes can be heard far away, and people who capture jewelry lizards sometimes set up a fence based on this habit, while in the laboratory, adult jewelry lizards can drag more than three times their weight.
Spring is their breeding season, and female lizards lay 10-20 eggs at a time, most of them under dead leaf piles, haystacks or tiles near rivers, and a few bury them in place. Fertilized eggs take about 60 days to hatch, and newborn lizards reach sexual maturity after about 2 to 3 years, and if nothing unexpected happens, a healthy jeweled lizard can live longer than 25 years.
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Years vary from year to year
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The color of the back of the jewel lizard is usually green or brown, and is covered with dark spots. These spots are sometimes connected to each other, forming a code-like pattern.
Similar to human fingerprints, the pattern on the back of each jeweled lizard is unique. Studies have shown that the pattern distribution on the back of almost every jeweled lizard is different, and the repetition rate is extremely small. According to the calculations, the probability that the main pattern on the back of the two jewelry lizards is exactly the same is about one in 50 billion.
That is to say, once a jewel lizard dies, it may take centuries for another jewel lizard with the same pattern to be born.
<h1>Fickle markings</h1>
A previous study published in the journal Nature showed that the pattern of spots on the skin of jewelry lizards changes according to a specific mathematical model, and this pattern, scientists believe, is somewhat different from the pattern formation mechanism of other animals.
In fact, the mechanism for the formation of markings on the surface of the jewelry lizard's body was first proposed by code-breaking expert Alan Turing.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Turing proposed a hypothesis that the spots on all jeweled lizards were produced by a pair of hormones. This pair of hormones is called "activator" and "inhibitor". Through a mathematical principle he calls "reaction-diffusion," the pigment cells on a jewelry lizard spontaneously organize themselves into stripes, stripes, rings, spirals, or mottled spots.
According to Turing's hypothesis, scientists have imaged hundreds of jewelry lizards of varying ages. They found some special rules: the scales on the jeweled lizard would decide whether to change from green to black or from black to green, depending on the color of the surrounding scales. Usually, green scales are surrounded by four black and two green scales, while black scales are surrounded by three black and three green scales.
As for what factors the initial distribution of dark scales on them depends on, the academic community is still inconclusive, and one of the more common ideas is that "this is determined by genes." "
Unlike most timid reptiles, the jewelry lizard is a very close human species, and the jewelry lizard under captive breeding conditions can quickly adapt to the close observation of humans and can interact with its owner to a certain extent. The observations of foreign climbers have shown that they can not only recognize the owner's smell, but sometimes even understand the name given to them by the owner.
Some people think
The value of jewelry
It's in its luxury
And the value of luxury
It is inseparable from the background of civilization
They're not just jewelry
Or history
Real value
They are the ones who accompany history
Those free-wheeled trips that have been experienced