Category: Reptiles
These hefty Australian natives are named for their large blue tongues that are used as a bluff to scare off attackers. Blue-tongued skinks are diurnal, omnivorous feeders and will happily consume a wide variety of food items that include proteins such as insects and gastropods, and vegetation including flowers, fruits, and greens. They are relatively slow moving and easily handled, making them popular as house-pets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue-tongued_skink
http://www.reptilesmagazine.com/Care-Sheets/Lizards/Blue-Tongue-Skink/
Here’s blood in your eye!
Horned lizards utilize a few tried-and-true ways of avoiding predators: like many other animals, they blend in with their surroundings and can puff themselves up to look larger and more threatening. But what they are best known for is a particularly messy hail-Mary play, where they startle and confuse predators by squiring blood out of their eyes! To accomplish this, the horned lizard increases the blood pressure in its head, rupturing the vessels in its eyelid, at which point a stream of blood, carefully aimed and up to 5 feet in length squirts the offending predator. The horned lizard’s blood is particularly foul to canine and feline (possibly due to the high quantity of venomous harvester ants in its diet), and should provide just enough of a diversion (or aversion!) for the lizard to scurry away and survive another day!
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