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A Study of Respiration in Hibernating Horned Lizards, Phrynosoma cornutum

1931; American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists; Volume: 1931; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/1437336

1938-5110

George Potter, H. Bentley Glass,

Bat Biology and Ecology Studies

A LTHOUGH a number of investigations have been made during recent years on the respiratory exchange of different animals in hibernation, so far as the authors know, there have been none on the lizards and the horned lizard in particular. The horned lizard, or horned toad as it is commonly called, is very docile and is incapable of inflicting any kind of injury in self-defense. It will remain perfectly quiet for long periods of time without struggling to escape. These characteristics make it a suitable subject for metabolism studies. This animal hibernates, in common with the other animals of its group, by burying itself beneath the sand in late October or early November and making its reappearance late in March or early April in central Texas. It has an interesting method of burying itself, which has been described in detail by Weese. The snout is pushed into the sand with movements from side to side while the body also wriggles from side to side, thus hollowing out the sand until it rolls over the animal. The lizard buries itself under the surface of the sand in this fashion at night during its active period but goes much deeper for hibernation. It can subsist for relatively long periods without food or drink: one specimen which was kept through the period of hibernation and on through the spring with only one feeding and without water except in the last month of its fast, lived until the middle of July before it succumbed.