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Thorny Devil — printable fact sheet
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Thorny Devil
Moloch horridus
The thorny devil (Moloch horridus) of the Australian deserts is a slow, 20-centimetre lizard covered in conical spines, and it solves the two hardest problems of desert life in ways nothing else quite matches. The first is water. Between its scales runs a network of microscopic …
Did you know?
- Thorny Devils have a unique way of drinking: they collect water through their skin grooves, channeling it directly to their mouths by capillary action.
- A thorny devil can drink through its feet, wicking water up the skin's capillary channels from damp sand to its mouth. It eats one ant at a time and can take several thousand in a single meal, and nothing else. The spiny lump on the back of its neck is a decoy head, which it presents to a predator while hiding the real one. Its rocking, stop-start walk mimics a wind-blown leaf and appears to make it hard for predators to track.
What I learned
Draw the thorny devil
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