A strange-looking lizard, thought to have been extinct for at least fifty years, has resurfaced in Ecuador.
The Pinocchio Lizard, which had been said to be extinct fifty years ago, was rediscovered by scientists in cloudy Ecuadorian forests.
A team of researchers and photographers had been searching for the creature for three years in the northeastern part of Ecuador, says a co-founder of Tropical Herping Alejandro Arteaga. Tropical Herping is an educational and eco-tourism company that had conducted a search for the elusive lizard.
The lizard is called the Pinocchio Anole (An Anole is a kind of lizard) and was named after a certain wooden puppet and had been first discovered in 1953. It had not been since since then, until 2005 when an ornithologist promptly saw one of the lizards crossing the road in northwest Ecuador.
Scientists usually go on search for the Pinocchio lizard at night when the animals are asleep. At this time they become paler and much less likely to escape. Arteaga relates how they kept one of the lizards overnight to photograph before returning it to the wild.
Arteaga and his team had been searching for the Pinocchio lizard because it was the last lizard they needed to put in their book "The Amphibians And Reptiles Of Mindo."
The Pinocchio lizard (Anolis Proboscis) are unfortunately, an endangered species, due to their limited range. They are currently only found in four locations on the world, among them a single stretch of road.
The lizard's extended snout does not indicate its knack of being dishonest, rather it is a sexually selected trait, meaning the Pinocchio-like snout can only be found in the males of the species. Another example of sexually selected traits are that of the flamboyant peacock, whose colorful tail feathers are used to attract their plain, brown female counterparts.
© 2017 Jobs & Hire All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
