Common basilisk
Basiliscus basiliscus
The common basilisk sprints across ponds on its hind legs. Each step slaps the water, strokes backward inside a pocket of air, and pulls free…
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Common flying dragon
Draco volans
The common flying dragon is a small Southeast Asian lizard that glides from tree to tree on a membrane held out by five to seven elongated ribs.…
Five-lined skink
Plestiodon fasciatus
A five-lined skink can shed its own tail on purpose. The tail breaks at built-in weak points and twitches to distract the predator, and a new one…
Gila monster
Heloderma suspectum
Yes, some lizards are venomous, and the Gila monster is the best known. Its venom glands sit in the lower jaw, and venom flows along grooved teeth…
Komodo dragon
Varanus komodoensis
The Komodo dragon is the largest living lizard, and the textbook says islands made it huge. A 2009 fossil study argues its lineage was already big…
Marine iguana
Amblyrhynchus cristatus
The marine iguana of the Galapagos grazes on algae in cold seawater, clears extra salt through glands near its nose, and can shrink in body length…
Panther chameleon
Furcifer pardalis
Panther chameleons change color mostly by shifting the spacing of tiny crystals in their skin, not by moving pigment around. Studies suggest the…
Thorny devil
Moloch horridus
The thorny devil is a spiny, ant-eating lizard of central Australia that cannot lap up water. Instead, tiny channels between its scales draw…
Tokay gecko
Gekko gecko
A tokay gecko can hang from glass because its toes carry microscopic hairs that split into roughly a billion tips, and each tip clings through…
Boa constrictor
Boa constrictor
A boa constrictor's coils halved the blood pressure in a rat's leg artery within six seconds in a 2015 study. Here is how constriction stops…
Common garter snake
Thamnophis sirtalis
The common garter snake bears live young instead of laying eggs. This article explains how a mother feeds her babies (mostly yolk, with some help…
Corn snake
Pantherophis guttatus
Corn snakes shed their old skin in one piece, and the eyes go cloudy blue first. Studies of the clear eye cap and the new skin beneath explain…
Cottonmouth
Agkistrodon piscivorus
Cottonmouths have a reputation for chasing people and biting on sight. A field test and several wildlife agencies describe a more defensive animal…
Golden lancehead
Bothrops insularis
The golden lancehead lives wild on a single Brazilian island of about 43 hectares. Cut off from the mainland, it became a yellow, bird-eating pit…
King cobra
Ophiophagus hannah
King cobra venom is a cocktail, with 16 protein families in the one animal studied closely. Genome work points to old genes copied and reworked,…
Sidewinder
Crotalus cerastes
A sidewinder lifts some body sections forward while others stay planted, a gait thought to help it avoid slipping on loose sand. Lab studies show…
Western diamondback rattlesnake
Crotalus atrox
Western diamondback rattlesnakes sense warmth with two pits between nostril and eye. A thin membrane heats up, a heat-sensitive channel fires, and…
Yellow-bellied sea snake
Hydrophis platurus
Researchers call the yellow-bellied sea snake the only pelagic squamate reptile, drifting with currents across the Indo-Pacific. This article…
Aldabra giant tortoise
Aldabrachelys gigantea
Aldabra giant tortoises are often said to live well over a century, yet almost nobody can prove an exact age. This article looks at records, shell…
American alligator
Alligator mississippiensis
A broad U-shaped snout, lower teeth hidden behind the upper jaw and a freshwater home mark the American alligator. We test each clue against what…
Eastern box turtle
Terrapene carolina
The eastern box turtle can shut itself inside its shell because of a hinge in the lower plate. Behind that trick sits a shell built from ribs,…
Gharial
Gavialis gangeticus
The gharial's long, thin snout suits fish, not force: a 2012 test found its relative bite the weakest among living crocodilians. Two recent…
Green sea turtle
Chelonia mydas
In green sea turtles, the warmth of the nest, not a coin flip at conception, tips hatchlings toward male or female. A Great Barrier Reef study…
Loggerhead sea turtle
Caretta caretta
Baby loggerheads that have never seen the ocean swim the right way inside a tank of copied magnetic fields. Studies suggest adults use similar…
Nile crocodile
Crocodylus niloticus
A Nile crocodile nest is a hole in the ground, and the mother is its exit door: field studies describe her digging up eggs when the young squeak…
Painted turtle
Chrysemys picta
Painted turtles spend winter in cold pond mud, sometimes with almost no oxygen. Research points to a slowed body, a shell that soaks up acid, and…
Saltwater crocodile
Crocodylus porosus
A 2012 study put a force sensor under the back teeth of captive crocodilians. According to its authors, the strongest bite measured in any animal…
American bullfrog
Lithobates catesbeianus
The American bullfrog starts as a floating film of eggs and may spend a year or more as a large tadpole before it transforms. We follow each stage…
American toad
Anaxyrus americanus
Scientists file every toad under frogs, yet the word still points to a real group, the true toads. The American toad is a handy test case for the…
Darwin's frog
Rhinoderma darwinii
Male Darwin's frogs guard their eggs, then take the young into a vocal sac and carry them for roughly six to ten weeks, depending on the source.…
Fleischmann's glass frog
Hyalinobatrachium fleischmanni
Fleischmann's glass frog has a see-through belly, and a 2022 study found that sleeping frogs tuck about 89% of their red blood cells into the…
Golden poison frog
Phyllobates terribilis
The golden poison frog of Colombia stores batrachotoxins in its skin, but the research points to its diet, not its own glands, as the source.…
Goliath frog
Conraua goliath
The goliath frog is the largest living frog, with adults commonly 20 to 30 centimeters long and the largest somewhat more. The smallest known…
Panamanian golden frog
Atelopus zeteki
The Panamanian golden frog is a bright yellow frog of Panama that Smithsonian's National Zoo describes as extinct in the wild. Sources name the…
Spring peeper
Pseudacris crucifer
Male spring peepers fill early-spring nights with a single clear whistle from an unusually large vocal sac, while females listen and choose. We…
Wood frog
Lithobates sylvaticus
The wood frog survives winter partly frozen: ice forms under its skin, its heart stops, and glucose and urea protect its cells until spring. We…
Axolotl
Ambystoma mexicanum
An axolotl regrows a lost limb by building a bud of progenitor cells called a blastema, and it does so without a scar. Here is how the process…
Chinese giant salamander
Andrias davidianus
The Chinese giant salamander is among the largest amphibians alive and is Critically Endangered in the wild, even though millions are kept on…
Hellbender
Cryptobranchus alleganiensis
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service calls the hellbender the largest of North America's salamanders. It breathes mostly through its skin. That…
Mudpuppy
Necturus maculosus
The mudpuppy is a salamander that keeps its red, feathery gills for life and never metamorphoses. This article explains what staying young means,…
Olm
Proteus anguinus
The olm is a pale cave salamander from the Dinaric Alps with eyes hidden under its skin. It spends energy slowly, handles long fasts and may live…
Red-backed salamander
Plethodon cinereus
The red-backed salamander is a lungless amphibian that takes in oxygen through its moist skin and the lining of its mouth. That one fact helps…
Ringed caecilian
Siphonops annulatus
Caecilians are legless, burrowing amphibians that few people ever see. The ringed caecilian of South America feeds its young skin and a milk-like…
Rough-skinned newt
Taricha granulosa
The rough-skinned newt carries a potent nerve toxin called tetrodotoxin. Some garter snakes evolved resistance and eat toxic newts anyway, at a…
Spotted salamander
Ambystoma maculatum
On a few warm, rainy nights each spring, spotted salamanders leave their underground homes and walk to fishless breeding pools. Warmth and rain…
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