More fun with reptiles!

This viper is the classic reptile that we see on the border at night. I am hesitant to identify it, although it looks like a close relative of the desert horned viper. This particular one is about two feet long, which isn't terribly large but still probably adult size. I also caught one about half that size. These poor vipers are the target of constant hassling by everyone from civilians to Kuwaiti and US military personnel. They are routinely being run over by trucks, beat into the ground with miscellaneous objects, captured for sale to the Scientific Center in Kuwait City, and even shot. I feel a little badly about having caught them, but they would probably be dead by now had I not snatched them up.

This little guy may not be terribly unusual, but he definitely won the "cute reptile competition." He is a gecko known in Latin as "Stenodactylus arabicus," that my turret gunner caught. He is about as long as a finger, and a fairly fast runner. I was at first surprised to find out that he wasn't able to climb walls, but then again there are no naturally ocurring smooth vertical surfaces for geckos to climb around here. Instead, they have little hands that look a lot like human hands. This gecko is the most fragile-looking of the many species of small lizards I have found around here.

And the greatest reptile I have ever found is this one: a Diplometopon zarudnyi worm lizard. I found it while looking for buried sand boas. These worm lizards burrow so close to the surface of the sand that they leave a little raised track everywhere they go. By following these tracks to their end I can just dig around the sand and pull them right up.

Worm lizards are technically known as Amphisbaenia. Amphisbaenia are legless lizards that live underground and tunnel through the substrate to find small prey (arthropods, whatever is available). I got a lot of information from the webpage http://garaje.ya.com/aligatorjazz/amphisbaenia.htm, which is great but in Spanish. This species excavates its tunnel by moving its head from side to side, unlike its relatives which have shovel-shaped noses and move their head up and down, and those that have a recurved snout and swing and turn their heads. The only species that doesn't use only its head to dig is a Mexican one that has two tiny arms near its head and uses them to get the burrow started. To deal with underground life, worm lizards have a layer of clear skin over their eyes, a layer of keratin on their forehead, and their nostrils face back.