The western fence lizard, or blue lizard is a medium-sized (up to about eight inches including tail), mottled lizard that ranges from Washington state to Baja California, and as far east as Utah. It doesn’t live in the harsh deserts, but it is found from the coast up to nearly 6,000 foot elevations, from the scrubbiest coastal chaparral to mountain forests.
It has a habit of sunning itself on high points such as rock outcroppings or fenceposts , which makes it a fine target for hawks and other predators in its habitat. This bold and careless lifestyle has required it to develop lightning reflexes and quick-burst speed.
Another of its defenses is the ability to change colors according to its surroundings. Like many other lizards, it can lighten or darken its coloration to match the background, but it will sometimes adopt a contrasting hue. Perhaps this mimicks a dappling of shadow, or maybe the little beast simply enjoys challenging fate. We admit the second interpretation because its underside reveals a suppressed gaudiness in its nature. Its central coloration is characterized by gaudy patches of blue or turquoise reason of its nickname the name ‘blue-belly’. These are most pronounced in the males, and, as you might expect, become much brighter during the mating ritual.
It is a pleasant and inoffensive creature, dining mostly on insects, and in turn providing a good food source for larger predators. Successful over a wide range of habitats, it is in no way endangered. If all that were not life-affirming enough, its presence in an area reduces the incidence of ticks carrying Lyme disease from about 50% to about 5%. It seems that ticks who feed on the blood of the blue bellied lizard are unharmed, but the Lyme disease spirochetes that they harbor are destroyed.
The Essay on Blue Tongue Lizard Temperature Adaptations
... The Tiliqua or more commonly known as the blue-tongue lizard or just Blue tongue is the largest member of the ... six species of blue-tongued lizards or skinks in Australia. -Common or Eastern Blue-tongue Lizard (Tiliqua scincoides scincoides) -Northern Blue-tongued Skink ( ... three main temperature adaptations that a blue tongue lizard has to maintain its temperature. Blue tongues lie in a sunny spot ...
On any cold morning in the Western UnitedStates, go outside and look for blue bellied lizards.
You’ll find them under rocks, under lumber, any place that has shelter. Once you’ve found one, pick it up. If you got to it early enough, it’ll be too cold to move much. The lizard’s scales are spiny gently run your finger along them the wrong way. They’re like sandpaper. Its skin is paper thin. Most people are too afraid of reptiles to realize they’re some of the softest and most delicate creatures around. You may as well be handling a slime ball.
Break down “ectotherm”, outside temperature. Reptiles are ectotherms. This means they take warmth from the environment rather than generate it from within. But environment is really too broad a term. They take their warmth from the sun. Normally, this being would muster the strength to stick its face out in the light and let its blood carry the warmth throughout its body.
Like most lizards, blue bellies can alter their color slightly to match surroundings. Put a light lizard on a dark rock; it turns dark. Interestingly, they tend to stay dark when on light surfaces, appearing as shadows.
The blue belly is carnivorous, subsisting on ants and other insects. Its tendency to take up position in high places makes it easy prey for hawks, but it compensates for the devil-may-care attitude with lightning fast reflexes. When confronted without an escape route, males will perform jerky ‘push-ups’ to display the blue patches and upper body strength.
Mating season is May through June. Eggs are distributed ten or so per clutch in July and hatch as early as mid-August. As hatchlings go, blue bellies are quite large — counting tail, they’re about two inches long.
