Slender Glass Lizard: Side-Grooved, Speckled, Striped Legless Body

Summary: Grassy, woody North American slender glass lizard habitats get legless, grooved, pale-scaled, speckled, striped bodies with ear holes and mobile eyelids.

eastern slender glass lizard (Ophisaurus attenuatus longicaudus); Francis Marion National Forest, South Carolina; Saturday, April 9, 2011: Chris M Morris (cm195902), CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr

North American slender glass lizard habitats accept distribution ranges in eastern Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, southern Virginia, Kentucky and Wisconsin and throughout North Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, Tennessee and everywhere in-between.

Slender glass lizards bear their common name for slimness and shatterable tails and as easterners throughout their biogeography and westerners west and northeast of the Mississippi. The species, eastern subspecies and western subspecies names Ophisaurus attenuatus, Ophisaurus attenuatus attenuatus and Ophisaurus attenuatus longicaudus consider slender, slenderer and slender long-tailed serpent (like) lizards. Descriptions in 1880 by Spencer Fullerton Baird (Feb. 3, 1823-Aug. 19, 1887) and in 1952 by Edwin H. McConkey drive respectively western and eastern scientific designations.

Slender glass lizard life cycles expect dry, open grasslands and woodlands, fallow fields, longleaf pine flatwoods, oak savannas, prairies and sand scrublands with ponds and streams.

May through June fit into eastern and western slender glass lizard life cycle breeding months and into related eastern and island glass lizard spring-summer mating months.

Slender glass lizards go out early in the morning to grab crawling and slow-flying, ground- and near-ground-level, invertebrate and vertebrate, opportunistic prey despite clawlessness and leglessness. They have external ear openings, mobile tongues, sharp-toothed lower and upper jaws, somewhat expandable mouths and two cornea-moisturizing glands to help harvest low-flying, low-lying food sources. Defenses against human predators, natural enemies and rival lizards involve releasing excrement and wriggling away from writhing tail tips whose shattering they initiate at fracture lines.

Agro-industrialists, breeders, collectors, polluters and predatory foxes, raccoons, raptors, skunks and snakes jeopardize grassy, oak- and pine-sheltered, open, sandy, woody North American slender glass lizard habitats.

Slender glass lizards know brief courtships and internal fertilizations of calcium carbonate-shelled eggs that females keep laying in 4- to 19-egg clutches in June and July.

Mothers-to-be live day-in, day-out at the grassy, woody locations where they lay current season clutches since incubations last two months, for hatching from August to October. Brooded eggs manage their embryos' moisture, nutrient, gas, waste and oxygen levels through amniotic, yolk, allantois and chlorion membranes and the umbilical cord's food-filled blood vessels. Ambushed, crawling, day-active, flying, ground- to canopy-level, opportunistic, stalked ants, beetles, centipedes, cockroaches, crickets, flies, gnats, grasshoppers, mosquitoes, moths, slugs, snails, spiders and termites nourish adults.

North American slender glass lizard habitats offer season-coldest temperatures, north to southward, from minus 25 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 31.66 to minus 4.44 degrees Celsius).

Flat rocks, grass mats, grassy clumps and underground burrows protect black-brown back- and side-striped, brown-and-yellow-bodied, dark-, dual-grooved, white-yellow-bellied slender glass lizards and contrastingly colored, six-striped juveniles.

Mature slender glass lizards queue 22- to 42-inch (55.88- to 106.68-centimeter) total lengths with easterners' and westerners' tails respectively under and over 2.5 times head-body lengths. Adults reveal bone-armored, center-, dark-striped bodies with dark-speckled, dark-striped, flexible, grainy-scaled, lengthwise-grooved, respiration-friendly, semi-expandable, soft-scaled sides, white-centered back-scales and removed tails that regrow within three weeks. Closeable eyelids, nictitating membranes, shape-shifting crystalline lenses and two cornea-moisturizing glands and vibration-sensitive tympanic membranes, tympanic cavity bones, Eustachian tubes and pharnxes scout sights and sounds.

Bone-armored, center-striped, legless bodies with closeable eyelids, dark-speckled, dark-striped, grooved sides, ear openings, white-marked back-scales travel throughout grassy, woody southeastern North American slender glass lizard habitats.

Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2013, map of "geographic distribution of Ophisaurus attenuatus (Native: United States)," with range data from Hammerson, G.A. 2007. Ophisaurus attenuatus. In: IUCN 2012. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2012.2. www.iucnredlist.org. Downloaded on 23 January 2013, @ https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/63716/12709295: rbrausse; IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, species assessors and the authors of the spatial data, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

eastern slender glass lizard (Ophisaurus attenuatus longicaudus); Francis Marion National Forest, South Carolina; Saturday, April 9, 2011: Chris M Morris (cm195902), CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/79666107@N00/5753010704/

Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2013, map of "geographic distribution of Ophisaurus attenuatus (Native: United States)," with range data from Hammerson, G.A. 2007. Ophisaurus attenuatus. In: IUCN 2012. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2012.2. . Downloaded on 23 January 2013, @ https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/63716/12709295: rbrausse; IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, species assessors and the authors of the spatial data, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ophisaurus_attenuatus_distribution.png

For further information:

Cope, Edward D. 1880. "On the Zoological Position of Texas: Opheosaurus ventralis Linn. . . . attenuatus . . . . varietal name of sulcatus." Bulletin of the United States National Museum, no. 17: 19. Washington DC: Government Printing Office.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/7529347
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/stream/bulletinunitedst171880unit#page/18/mode/1up

Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volume 7, Reptiles, edited by Michael Hutchins, James B. Murphy, and Neil Schlager. Farmington Hills MI: Gale Group, 2003.

McConkey, Edwin H. 1952. "A New Subspecies of Ophisaurus attenuatus, With a Key to the North American Forms: Ophisaurus attenuatus longicaudus, new subspecies." Natural History Miscellanea, no. 102 (April 18, 1952): 1-2. Chicago IL: Chicago Academy of Sciences.
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/MiscellaneaN102

Uetz, Peter. "Ophisaurus attenuatus (Baird, 1880)." Reptile Database.
Available @ http://reptile-database.reptarium.cz/species?genus=Ophisaurus&species=attenuatus&search_param=%28%28search%3D%27Ophisaurus+attenuatus%27%29%29