New Species of Legless Lizard Discovered Near LAX Runway 103
From an article at Discovery News:
"A bustling airport would hardly seem the place to find a new species of reclusive animal, but a team of California biologists recently found a shy new species of legless lizard living at the end of a runway at Los Angeles International Airport. What’s more, the same team discovered three additional new species of these distinctive, snake-like lizards that are also living in some inhospitable-sounding places for wildlife: at a vacant lot in downtown Bakersfield, among oil derricks in the lower San Joaquin Valley and on the margins of the Mojave desert." Here's some more information in the form of a press release from Cal State Fullerton, home to James Parham, one of the discoverers.
Kill them all! (Score:1)
They are harbingers of the end times!!!
Re:Kill them all! (Score:5, Insightful)
They are harbingers of the end times!!!
Or the harbinger of planes.
Found anywhere else than beside a very busy freight airport, you might be tempted to believe they have been there all along.
But finding Four new species right next to an airport (and as yet, nowhere else), you have to allow for the possibility that they
arrived in cargo.
Re:Kill them all! (Score:5, Interesting)
Or they're freaks caused by toxic waste.
Re:Kill them all! (Score:5, Funny)
Or there are a bunch of young boys living nearby.
Re: (Score:2)
"Or they're freaks caused by toxic waste."
Not at all, it's all those Hollywood agents.
Re: (Score:1)
Or they were hit by airplane wheels and lost their legs that way.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Kill them all! (Score:5, Funny)
Found anywhere else than beside a very busy freight airport, you might be tempted to believe they have been there all along. But finding Four new species right next to an airport (and as yet, nowhere else), you have to allow for the possibility that they arrived in cargo.
My GF reports encountering at least four species of legless lizard in that bar next to the airport on the left. She reckons they arrived as passengers though, not in cargo.
Re: (Score:3)
Might there not be some potential for migration due to the lack of aerial predators around airports?
Re: (Score:2)
That's the best possible thing that could happen for air transport in North America. I've been through airports in Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Russia, Italy, and all across North America, and LAX is the worst clusterfuck of an airport that I have ever seen in my life. Leave it to the legless lizards and start over somewhere else, the new airport can't possibly be worse.
Re: (Score:2)
Considering that it's 85 years old, one of the busiest airports in the world, and had to put up with anti-expansion efforts from locals, it's not that bad. I recommend reading a bit of the history (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_International_Airport#History).
Sounds like they need a lawyer. (Score:4, Funny)
Are we sure their legs weren't just run over?
Re: (Score:1)
Homeless? Maybe they were just regular passengers who had only been served airline food and then saw a tasty-looking lizard pass by.
Re: (Score:1)
Crap, you were quicker than me :P
Snakes (Score:5, Funny)
They're called snakes.
Re:Snakes (Score:5, Informative)
The lizards are distinguishable from their slithery relatives based on one or more of the following: eyelids, external ear openings, lack of broad belly scales and/or a very long tail. Snakes, conversely, have a long body and a short tail.
Re:Snakes (Score:5, Funny)
How does the gimp get around?
By being cheaper than Photoshop.
OR: Video 1 [youtube.com] Video 2 [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Now here's the question: Did they find a snake with eyelids or did they find a lizard with no legs?
I gotta admit, when I read the headline, I thought the same thing: "What do you call a lizard with no legs? A snake."
Of course, I also ask, "What do you call a woman with one leg? Ilene."
Thanks, I'll be here all week. Try the veal.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
They're called snakes.
You must be a fan of those trained sharks that jump through hoops and play with balls to entertain people.
Re: (Score:1)
SLJ (Score:5, Funny)
They're called snakes.
Too right. "I'm sick of these motherfucking legless lizards on this motherfucking plane" just doesn't have the same zing to it.
Re: (Score:1)
Snakes? On a plane?
Shirley, you must be joking.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, a snake without a tail is basically just a pair of eyes and a mouth.
Re:or a snake? (Score:5, Informative)
Your average observer would probably call it a snake and ignore it.
But its eyelids, jaws and the fact that it can shed its tail in an emergency makes it a lizard, and not a snake.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/zoology/reptiles-amphibians/legless-lizard-vs-snake1.htm [howstuffworks.com]
Re: (Score:3)
What they describe sounds very much like a slowworm. The article itsself lists the charactistics that differentiate snakes from lizards. It's about more than just limb count.
Legless lizards? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
It's too bad that movie didn't get a wider distribution. We might have been spared much of Kevin Bacon's subsequent 'acting' career.
Re: (Score:2)
I found it first! (Score:2, Funny)
He's been hiding behind my zipper for years.
All I wanna Know Is ... (Score:5, Informative)
How's it taste?
I remember working pipeline as a lad and watching the Mexicans catch Anoles by the tail with their pliers. They'd fire up an Oxy/Acetelyne torch, char it and eat it like jerky on the spot.
Re: (Score:2)
It tastes like chicken.
Re: (Score:2)
Always figured with all the animals that taste like chicken, some would end up being "natural flavors" in food touting chicken on the label.
Re: (Score:2)
Oddly enough though, pheasant, turkey, quail, and pigeon taste nothing like chicken.
When do we get a lizard that tastes like pheasant?
Science is wasting time on IT, we need better food.
Re: (Score:2)
chicken and turkey hen have the least distinctive taste among meat, so if some other meat has hardly any distinctive taste (as beef, pork or lamb have), you'd end up comparing it to - chicken!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Like a legless chicken.
Legless Lizard at strange location? (Score:2)
Next: Biologists find five legged lizards near nuclear plant.
Splut (Score:1)
Didn't they just got their legs run off?
Re: (Score:1)
The Geico spokesman finally made it out of the car park, but not without some mishaps.
yo (Score:1)
I gotcher legless lizard right here.
I, for one, welcome our new .... oh, screw it. (Score:1)
Not just lizards (Score:5, Interesting)
The Miami airport is a sanctuary for the burrowing owl...they poke their little heads up out of the ground and watch you taxi by.
The open areas adjoining the old Denver airport had a population of raptorial birds that fed on the local jackrabbits and prairie dogs. When the airport moved, the birds moved too -- but not until several years later. Turned out the attraction of the old airport was that the ground critters were deaf from jet noise, and easy to catch. As the next generation of un-deafened animals grew up, the birds moved to easier pickings at the new site.
Re: (Score:2)
Yikes. That sounds like FOD-city to me.
The technical writers would say ... (Score:2, Informative)
...it's called a snake.
wonder if they'd be there without the airport (Score:2)
I wonder if they were there BECAUSE the airport was there.
Save wildlife - build more giant complexes of buildings and asphalt .
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder if they were there BECAUSE the airport was there. .
Save wildlife - build more giant complexes of buildings and asphalt
FTA: "...among oil derricks in the lower San Joaquin Valley..."
Save the Slizards!
Drill baby, drill!
What sweet irony it would be to see the likes of The Sierra Club, PETA, ELF, etc protesting because new oil rigs aren't going up fast enough!
Strat
Right at the end of the runway. (Score:2)
Strip joints near airport (Score:2)
Conservationists Demand Status Quo (Score:4, Funny)
On Tuesday, a public hearing on shutting down the Los Angeles International Airport was again disrupted by conservationists. This is the second public hearing the LAX Airport Authority has held to consider repurposing the airport property into a nature preserve. Decreasing numbers of passengers and reduced tarmac requirements for liftoff for vessels such as the Boeing 998 Starduster have obviated the need for a traditional airport. In an attempt to stop the meeting, several conservationists handcuffed themselves to the podium. With signs and chants, the conservationists expressed their dismay at shutting down the fragile ecosystem of the rare legless lizard found only at LAX. "Every change the [LAX Airport] Authority makes to the airfield threatens to overturn the delicate balance of nature our legless comrades rely on." inveighed Charles Slatun, the group's putative leader. "We protested quite vocally when airlines began installing sound-dampeners on engines landing at the airport. But now, LAX as a nature preserve? This disregard for extant species must stop!" For months conservationists have been seen acting as informal greeters inside LAX as well as offering free taxi rides to the airport in an effort to convince the public that preserving LAX in its current form is in their best interest.
Legless Lizards at LAX (Score:1)
If the researchers would poke around Hollywood, they would find many more.
Fess up (Score:4, Funny)
Who's been giving all that booze to the lizards?
Re: (Score:1)
"There are MotherF***in legless lizards on this MotherF***in plane!"
Alternative explanation (Score:2)
Legless Lizards (Score:2)
... share all of the typical traits of lizards with one obvious exception. ( you get three guesses and the first two don't count)
to wit:
Snakes do not have true auditory sense organs. Legless lizards have true ears, as do all lizards.
Snakes do not have eyelids. Legless lizards do, along with all other lizards.
Snakes have a forked tongue, and a special chemo-sensing organ. Only a few lizards do, IIRC legless lizards do not.
Snakes have a short neck and shoulder region, a long torso region and then a short