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An adult salamander generally resembles a small lizard, having a basal tetrapod body form with a cylindrical trunk, four limbs, and a long tail. Except in the family Salamandridae, the head, body, and tail have a number of vertical depressions in the surface which run from the mid-dorsal region to the ventral area and are known as costal ...
In many cases the cast skin peels backward over the body from head to tail, in one piece like an old sock. A new, larger, and brighter layer of skin has formed underneath. [ 5 ] [ 7 ] An older snake may shed its skin only once or twice a year, but a younger snake that is still growing may shed up to four times a year.
Aside from legless lizards, most lizards are quadrupedal and move using gaits with alternating movement of the right and left limbs with substantial body bending. This body bending prevents significant respiration during movement, limiting their endurance, in a mechanism called Carrier's constraint .
A skink thus often manages to escape and hide under some rock, log, or fallen leaves while the predator still contemplates the wildly thrashing severed tail. (This is an instance of what is called autotomy: voluntarily shedding a body part in order to escape, and later regenerating the body part.) After the tail regenerates, it usually has the ...
In glass lizards, the tail can be up to three quarters of their body length. The slender glass lizard, which is usually tan or brown with long stripes along the length of its body, can grow as ...
The tail grows back in most species, but some, like crested geckos, lose their tails for the rest of their lives. [147] In many species the tails are of a separate and dramatically more intense color than the rest of the body so as to encourage potential predators to strike for the tail first.
Like most lizards, geckos can lose their tails in defence, a process called autotomy; the predator may attack the wriggling tail, allowing the gecko to escape. [ 8 ] The largest species, Gigarcanum delcourti , is only known from a single, stuffed specimen probably collected in the 19th century found in the basement of the Natural History Museum ...
Other common names for P. fasciatus include blue-tailed skink (for juveniles) and red-headed skink (for adults). It is technically appropriate to call it the American five-lined skink to distinguish it from the African skink Trachylepis quinquetaeniata (otherwise known as five-lined mabuya) or the eastern red-headed skink to distinguish it from its western relative Plestiodon skiltonianus ...