Spanish Wall Lizard

• It is in fact a complex of several distinct genetic lineages across the Iberian Peninsula, whose taxonomy is still under revision.
• It eats small arthropods such as insects and spiders.
• It lives on rocky ground, stone walls and Mediterranean scrub of the Iberian Peninsula.
• It sheds its tail to escape, and the tail keeps moving on its own for several minutes to distract the predator. It regrows it, but with cartilage instead of vertebrae and never quite like the original.
• It is one of the most abundant reptiles in the Iberian Peninsula and one of the easiest to see, precisely because it copes well with walls, boundary walls and buildings.
• Males defend territories and display the colouring of their flanks to rivals.
• Its taxonomy has been a puzzle: what used to be called Podarcis hispanicus turned out to be a complex of several cryptic species, outwardly very similar and separated by DNA.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (reptile)

Habitat and environment

Rocky ground, stone walls and Mediterranean scrub of the Iberian Peninsula, north-western Africa and southern France

Birth weight

2-2.5 cm snout-to-vent at birth

Size at birth

2-2.5 cm snout-to-vent at birth

Gestation / incubation

~8 weeks of incubation

Litter / clutch size

1 to 5 eggs per clutch

Sources consulted: Animalia.bio; Wikipedia (Podarcis hispanicus); PMC (genome sequence Podarcis liolepis); PMC (genome sequence Podarcis vaucheri); PMC (genome sequence Podarcis erhardii); Wikipedia (Podarcis liolepis); PMC (genome sequence Podarcis bocagei)