| Albatross | Lizard | Hummingbird |
| Ξ Poem | Lizard Notes | Song ♫ |
lurch: Prior to attacking, a lizard will often lurch the front of its body up and down as if doing push-ups. This enhances its ability to gauge distances by triangulation, adding another dimension to its binocular vision. Many lizards thrive in hot climates where ground heat refracts light and distorts distances.
lash: Lizards lash with their tails when fighting for dominance. Some lizards have spiky scales near the tips of their tails to increase the punishing effectiveness of their tail lashing.
slithering: Lizards' arms extend out to the sides instead of beneath it, so they often drag their bellies and tails along on the ground. This makes them well adapted for squeezing into crevices. Moreover, many lizards flex their spines sideways while walking, giving their motion a sinuous twist reminiscent of their close relatives, the snakes.
dash on a drizzle of legs: Lizards are champion sprinters. The basilisk lizard, unique among vertebrates, can run so quickly that it can actually run across the surface of water on its hind legs.
through a blizzard of ash: In areas with abundant food, lizards cannot compete with hot-blooded mammals, so most lizards live in deserts and other areas where mammalian predators cannot survive the scarcity of food.
arisen and gone in a flash: Most lizards rely on camouflage and stillness to hide from both predators and prey, so that they seem to emerge from nowhere in an instant and just as suddenly freeze again to melt back into their surroundings. Anoles and chameleons can rapidly change the color pattern of their skin to blend with their environments. They also use their color-changing ability for other purposes, such as communicating mood.
lunge: Lizards can accelerate from a standstill amazingly quickly, characteristic that makes them a top predator in many ecosystems.
latch: Almost all lizards are carnivores, and share a habit of tackling large prey by clamping down with their powerful jaws —often lined with hundreds of razor-sharp teeth— without letting go until they have bitten off a chunk, crushed the skeleton, or inflicted a mortal wound.
tail-severing, descissored, deserted, detached: In some lizards, the tail is easily separable from the body, and continues to writhe and twitch on its own, distracting predators while the curtailed owner makes its escape. A new tail will grow in its place, but the replacement generally has only cartilage in place of bone.
frenziedly tizzily dizzying clash: In many lizard species, rival males battle each other for females during the mating season, grappling each other with their jaws and paws. As each shakes his grasping head violently from side to side to tear and batter his opponent, and whips its tail and claws at the ground to remain on top, the pair turn into a writhing blur.
For more information on lizards, see the Wikipedia Lizard article.