Trivia question for Sep-01-2011

Carter picked out a feisty lizard for todays trivia.  These guys are marked with a mosaic of stripes and spots.  During the breeding season, males engage in fierce chases and fights to win females.

The females of these lizard lays eggs in loose sand in a sunny location, leaving them to be incubated by the warmth of the ground. They have a light underbelly and a dorsal stripe: males tend to be darker and color and turn partly or wholly bright green during the mating season. They can reach up to 10 inches in length.

So here are Carter’s questions: Tell us what this lizard is and where they can be found?  Also, tell us which high school in Arkansas is the only school in the USA that uses this lizard as their mascot?

Good Luck 😉

Answer:

Congratulations to Baldur from Tromsø Norway for being the first with the correct answer and thank you for sending us the cute picture of your pet. The lizard we featured is the Sand Lizard. The sand lizard is a lacertid lizard distributed across most of Europe and eastwards to Mongolia. It does not occur in the Iberian peninsula or European Turkey. Its distribution is often patchy.

Dardanelle High School, located in Arkansas, is the only school with the Sand Lizard as a mascot.   In the UK, the sand lizard is restricted to southern heathlands and the coastal sand dunes of north west England. It is regarded as threatened and is strictly protected under UK law – as it is throughout most of Europe (it is a European Protected Species). This is in contrast to Lacerta agilis exigua, whose Russian name translates as the “common lizard”.  Here is more on these cool lizards: Sand Lizard

Thanks for playing along 😉