Details
Pseudopus apodus
A large, limbless lizard of southeastern Europe and Central Asia that looks like a snake or a giant earthworm but keeps eyelids and ear openings. It is the largest member of the Anguidae, reaching well over a metre.
Map: Ecoregions 2017 © RESOLVE (CC BY 4.0) · Natural Earth (PD)
Ranges across the Palearctic from the Balkans through the Caucasus into Central Asia. It favours open country — short grassland and sparsely wooded, rocky hillsides where sun and shade meet.
Reaches up to 135 cm, the longest in its family. The body is tan, paler below, with a ringed, segmented look that recalls a huge earthworm. A deep fold runs along each flank, its scales expanding when a meal is swallowed, and tiny 2 mm vestiges of hind legs remain beside the vent.
A solitary, day-active lizard that becomes especially lively in wet weather. Despite its sluggish look it can rear up using its tail, and when harassed it sheds the tail, hisses, bites, and releases a foul musk to escape.
A carnivore that favours snails and slugs, crushing their shells with robust teeth and jaws. It also takes arthropods, earthworms, frogs, birds' eggs and nestlings, and small mammals.
Egg-laying, depositing around six to ten eggs in moist ground or under bark or a stone roughly ten weeks after mating. The female stays to guard the clutch, which hatches after 45–55 days into young about 15 cm long; the species is long-lived, with captives recorded past 50 years.
Listed as Least Concern. Hardy and adaptable, it appears in the exotic pet trade, though it is rarely captive-bred and most animals are wild-caught. Its bones turn up at Natufian sites in Israel, suggesting it was eaten by people there in prehistory.
