[S3E9] Worm Lizards: Undulating and Unknowable

Happy Halloween from your grasslands PR Team! This month, Rachel confronts one of her worst childhood fears to bring us a tale of the strange and slithering: a group of animals so odd and cryptic that the existence of many species was only confirmed after their habitat was bulldozed. We're delving into the fascinating world of worm lizards, a world full of unknowns that still begs to be explored. After all, how can we learn about an animal that's virtually impossible to observe in the wild? A fanged and ferocious creature that creeps below our feet, hearing our every step, and slipping ever deeper into the darkness...

Primary Sources:

1. Baeckens, S., García‐Roa, R., Martín, J., Ortega, J., Huyghe, K., & Damme, R. V. (2016). Fossorial and durophagous: implications of molluscivory for head size and bite capacity in a burrowing worm lizard. Journal of Zoology, 301(3), 193–205.
2. Guynup, Sharon. (2021, June 6). “Race against time”: Saving the snakes and lizards of Brazil’s Cerrado. Mongabay Environmental News.
3. García, E. R. (2020). How to maintain underground social relationships? Chemosensory sex, partner and self recognition in a fossorial amphisbaenian. PLoS ONE. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0237188 
4. García, E. R. (2021). Offspring and adult chemosensory recognition by an amphisbaenian reptile may allow maintaining familiar links in the fossorial environment. Peerj.
5. Ribeiro, L. B., Gomides, S. C., & Costa, H. C. (2020). A New Worm Lizard Species (Squamata: Amphisbaenidae: Amphisbaena) with Non-autotomic Tail, from Northeastern Brazil. Journal of Herpetology, 54(1), 9.
6. Ortega, J. (2021). Going underground: short- and long-term movements may reveal the fossorial spatial ecology of an amphisbaenian. Movement Ecology. 

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