Lizard Feeling His Oats (Cat Doesn’t Care)

The head-bobbing threat display is used by many kinds of lizards, mostly unrelated to each other, all over the world. I call that a mystery.

Here a young bearded dragon is trying to show a plastic doll who’s boss. He pays no attention to the cat until the cat pays attention to him. [Note: Human standing by to make sure no one gets bitten.]

8 comments on “Lizard Feeling His Oats (Cat Doesn’t Care)

    1. The thing that fascinates me about this phenomenon is that the lizards who do it are not related to one another. All kinds of lizards, all over the world, head-bob. Very strange!

    2. Yeah, that is strange. Like I said, the local lizards do push-ups and there’s an exceptional comedy to a tiny lizard trying to intimidate a human by showing off its upper body strength.

      I found a Swift in my mailbox, last week. I think someone stuffed it in there as a prank. It was terrified and ran to the back of the mailbox when I opened the door. I finally was able to brush it out of there using the stalk of a nearby weed. It hit the ground running and quickly disappeared into the brush. I felt sorry for the little critter.

    3. I’ve had a lot of pet swifts. They do very well in a terrarium (one pair had a mess of eggs, a.ll of which hatched).

    4. They are ubiquitous in these parts. I’m probably within 10 yards of a Swift as a type. In fact, it’s probably rare for me not to be within 10 yards of a Swift.

Leave a Reply