Amy Guttery, age 10, of Hamlet, North Carolina for her question:
Is there really a glass snake?
Several animals are called glass snakes. They look for all the world like ordinary snakes. And sometimes they behave as if they are made of glass. But actually they are not genuine snakes. And naturally no living animal is really made of glass. The so called glass snakes are really legless lizards that tend to break apart, somewhat like shattered glass.
The glass snakes, or glass lizards, have snaky bodies and scaly skins, often marked with colorful stripes and spots. The largest one enjoys life in certain warm, dry regions of Europe and Asia. He is four feet long and two inches wide. Some of his cousins are two feet long and one is only 15 inches. And three medium sized glass lizards belong to North Americans.
They look so much like snakes that no ordinary person would guess that they are lizards. But the experts assure us that they are really lizards without legs. For one thing, they do not travel like the swift, graceful snakes. True, their long bodies wave from side to side to side, but in a rather clumsy fashion. What's more, after two or three wriggly yards, a legless lizard must pause to rest. He cannot climb trees or swim and he tries to avoid the water.
Reptile experts tell us that his eyelids and ear openings disqualify him as a snake. And certainly he does not have a snake type mouth. A snake's mouth is a stretchable contraption of loose jaw bones. He can swallow a whole egg without cracking the shell. A glass lizard breaks open the shell and uses his flat, forked tongue to spoon out the contents.
But the most outstanding difference is the tail. A snake has a long long body and a short short tail. The body of a glass snake is only one third of his total length, the rest is tail. And what a tail it is. When its owner gets into trouble, it breaks off, often in several pieces like bits of shattered glass.
A lizard has a break away tail that often saves his life. When grabbed by a hungry enemy, the victim escapes, leaving his tail behind him. Later, the lizard grows a new tail, usually shorter than the original. The glass lizard has an even bigger surprise for his hungry enemies.
When alarmed, he sheds his tail which may break. apart into two or three pieces. His tail is so long and his body so short that he seems to shatter apart. What's more some of the broken bits may wriggle. This distracts his hungry enemy and gives the tailless victim plenty of time to escape. In time, he grows a new tail.
Our native glass lizards are two or three feet long and their favorite food is grasshopper meat. The average female lays eight or ten soft shelled eggs, under mosses or fallen leaves. She stays fairly close to her brood until the five inch babies hatch. They are dusky grey and usually marked with spots or stripes. Glass lizards grow slowly but, barring accidents, they may live to be 60 years old.