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Draco Lizard — printable fact sheet
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Draco Lizard
Draco volans
Draco lizards glide on their ribs. Where every other gliding vertebrate stretches skin between its limbs, a Draco has five to seven pairs of enormously elongated ribs that swing outward like the spokes of a fan, opening a brightly coloured membrane along the flanks and folding i…
Did you know?
- Despite their nickname 'flying dragon,' Draco lizards do not truly fly but glide using their extended rib membranes.
- The rib-supported membrane is unique among living vertebrates, though a few extinct Triassic reptiles independently evolved almost exactly the same solution. A gliding Draco loses only about one metre of height for every two or three metres travelled, and it lands head-up on the target trunk by pitching upward at the last moment. The throat flag is often a different colour in each species, which lets several Dracos share the same forest without confusing one another. Even though they can glide, they cannot gain height, so a Draco must always climb back up before it flies again.
What I learned
Draw the draco lizard
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