Common Chuckwalla

• GeneralIt wedges itself into a crack and inflates with air so it cannot be pulled out.
• It jams itself into the crack: on detecting a predator it slips into a fissure in the rock and inflates its lungs until it doubles in volume, wedging itself so tightly that no animal can pull it out. The indigenous peoples of the desert extracted it by pricking it with a sharpened stick to deflate it.
• It is a strict herbivore and gets all its water from the flowers and leaves it eats, with nasal glands that excrete the excess salt as a white crust around the nostrils.
• It can live more than twenty-five years, a notable lifespan for a lizard weighing under a kilo.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (reptile)

Habitat and environment

Rocky outcrops and lava fields of the Mojave and Sonoran deserts

Sexual maturity

2.5 years

Gestation / incubation

35 days

Litter / clutch size

8 eggs

Sources consulted: Wikipedia (es): Sauromalus ater

The pins mark the parks where its presence is documented.