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Texas Horned Lizard — printable fact sheet
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Texas Horned Lizard
Phrynosoma cornutum
The Texas horned lizard (Phrynosoma cornutum) is famous for the strangest defence in North American herpetology: it can rupture small sinuses behind its eyes and squirt a jet of its own blood up to about 1.5 metres. This is not a general-purpose weapon. It is aimed almost exclus…
Did you know?
- Despite its fearsome appearance, the Texas Horned Lizard is harmless to humans and relies almost entirely on ants for its diet.
- The blood squirted from the eye socket is targeted: horned lizards fire at dogs, coyotes and cats but generally will not waste it on a bird or a snake. A Texas horned lizard can eat 70 or more harvester ants in a single sitting and thousands in a week. Its scale grooves move water against gravity by capillary action, so it can drink from wet sand simply by standing in it. Its decline is closely tied to fire ants, which both displace its prey and are themselves fought with pesticides that finish the job.
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