Lizards Pull A Wheelie

Posted by Alex H.

I've recently discovered an incredible website, Science Daily. The incredible thing about this website is that the cumbersome task of finding interesting science news is changed to being an explorable adventure with new information always just around the corner. This has led me to find a bevy of fascinating articles I will be sharing over many of my next few posts.

One such article, Lizards Pull A Wheelie, piqued my inner cravings for understanding reptilian locomotion (we all  get them once and a while, trust me). I'll be brief, as this article is already a summarization of the research paper "Why go bipedal? Locomotion and morphology in Australian agamid lizards." Essentially, several studies performed by Christofer Clemente indicate that bipedalism (locomoting/moving on two limbs, like humans) has taken shape in many dragon lizard species because they are essentially pulling a wheelie - going so fast that they rear up on their hind limbs (!!!). Their ruling out of other explanations (e.g., evolved behavior, efficient energetics) was impressive, which is what I found most interesting about this article. Go give it a read and let us know what you think.