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Anguis fragilis

 
Anguis Fragilis

 
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Anguis fragilis
 
 
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Anguis fragilis, or slow worm, slow-worm, slowworm, blindworm or blind worm, is a limbless reptile
Reptile

Reptiles, or members of the class Reptilia, are air-breathing, cold-blooded vertebrates that have skin covered in scale as opposed to hair or feathers....
 native to Eurasia
Eurasia

Eurasia is a large landmass covering about 53,990,000 km? or about 10.6% of the Earth's surface . Often considered a single continent, Eurasia comprises the traditional continents of Europe and Asia, concepts which date back to classical antiquity and the borders for which are somewhat arbitrary....
.

Slow-worms are semifossorial lizards spending much of the time hiding underneith objects.






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Anguis Fragilis 20050721 002
Anguis fragilis, or slow worm, slow-worm, slowworm, blindworm or blind worm, is a limbless reptile
Reptile

Reptiles, or members of the class Reptilia, are air-breathing, cold-blooded vertebrates that have skin covered in scale as opposed to hair or feathers....
 native to Eurasia
Eurasia

Eurasia is a large landmass covering about 53,990,000 km? or about 10.6% of the Earth's surface . Often considered a single continent, Eurasia comprises the traditional continents of Europe and Asia, concepts which date back to classical antiquity and the borders for which are somewhat arbitrary....
.

Slow-worms are semifossorial lizards spending much of the time hiding underneith objects. The skin of the varieties of slow-worm is smooth with scales that do not overlap one another. Like many other lizards, slow-worms autotomize
Autotomy

Autotomy or self amputation is the act whereby an animal severs one or more of its own appendages, usually as a self preservation mechanism designed to elude a predation's grasp....
, meaning that they have the ability to shed their tails in order to escape predators. The tail regrows, but remains smaller.

These reptiles are mostly active during the twilight and occasionally bask in the sun, but are more often found hiding beneath rocks and logs. They are carnivorous
Carnivore

A carnivore , meaning 'meat eater' , is any animal with a diet consisting mainly of meat, whether it comes from animals living or dead .In a more general sense, an animal may be considered a carnivore if it prefers feeding on animal matter over plant matter....
 and, because they feed on slug
Slug

Slug is a common non-scientific word, which is often applied to any gastropod Mollusca whatsoever that has a very reduced shell, a small internal shell, or no shell at all....
s and worm
Worm

A worm is a common name given to a diverse group of invertebrate animals that have a long, soft body and no legs. There are hundreds of thousands of species of worms, 2,700 of these are earthworms....
s, they can often be found in long grass
Grass

Grass is the common word that generally describes monocotyledonous green plants. The family Poaceae are the "true grasses" and include most plants grown as grains, for pasture, and for lawns ....
 and other damp environments.

The females give birth to live young (ovoviviparous birth). In the days leading up to birth the female can often be seen basking in the sun on a warm road.

They are common in gardens and can be encouraged to enter and help remove pest insects by placing black plastic or a piece of tin on the ground. On warm days one or more slow worms will often be found underneath these collectors of heat. One of the biggest causes of mortality in slow worms in suburban areas is the domestic cat, from which it has no defense.

Although these lizards are often mistaken for snakes, there are a number of features that differentiate them from snakes. The most important is they have small eyes with eyelid
Eyelid

An eyelid is a thin fold of skin that covers and protects an eye. With the exception of the prepuce and the labia minora, it has the thinnest skin of the whole body....
s that blink like lizards. This is a feature that is not found in snakes. They may also have visible ear
Ear

The ear is the sense organ that detects sounds. The vertebrate ear shows a common biology from fish to humans, with variations in structure according to order and species....
s like lizards do, which snakes do not have. They shed their skin in patches like other lizards, rather than the whole skin as most snakes do. Also, the pattern of their ventral scales
Ventral scales

In snakes, the ventral scales are the enlarged and transversely elongated scales that extend down the underside of the body from the neck to the anal scale....
 is totally different from that of snakes.

Adult slow-worms grow to be about 50 cm long and are known for their exceptionally long life; it has been said that a slow-worm is the longest living lizard, living about thirty years in the wild and up to fifty-four years in captivity (this record is held by a male slow worm that lived at the Copenhagen Zoo
Copenhagen Zoo

Copenhagen Zoo is one of the oldest zoos in Europe. It was founded by the ornithologist Niels Kj?rb?lling in 1859. He was given the summer garden of "Prinsess Vilhelmines Have" by the chief directorate of Copenhagen....
 from 1892 to 1946) . The female often has a stripe along the spine and dark sides while the male may have blue spots dorsally. Juveniles of both sexes are gold with a dark brown belly and sides with a dark stripe along the spine.

Protected species in the UK

In the United Kingdom
United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
 the slow worm has been granted protected status
Conservation status

The conservation status of a species is an indicator of the likelihood of that species remaining extant taxon either in the present day or the near future....
, alongside all other native British reptile
Reptile

Reptiles, or members of the class Reptilia, are air-breathing, cold-blooded vertebrates that have skin covered in scale as opposed to hair or feathers....
 species. The slow worm has been decreasing in numbers, and under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981
Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981

The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 is an Act of Parliament in the United Kingdom which aims to protect the wildlife and countryside of the United Kingdom....
 it is illegal to intentionally kill, injure, sell or advertise to sell them, although there are currently no laws protecting their habitat.

Taxonomy

  • Anguis fragilis Linnaeus
    Carolus Linnaeus

    Carl Linnaeus was a Sweden botanist, physician, and zoologist, who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of binomial nomenclature. He is known as the father of modern alpha taxonomy, and is also considered one of the fathers of modern ecology....
    , 1758
    • Anguis fragilis fragilis Linnaeus
      Carolus Linnaeus

      Carl Linnaeus was a Sweden botanist, physician, and zoologist, who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of binomial nomenclature. He is known as the father of modern alpha taxonomy, and is also considered one of the fathers of modern ecology....
      , 1758
    • Anguis fragilis colchicus (Nordmann
      Alexander von Nordmann

      File:Alexander von Nordmann.jpgAlexander von Nordmann was a Finland zoologist. He was born in Kymi .Nordmann was a professor at Odessa, and collected natural history specimens in southern Russia....
      , 1840)


The subspecies Anguis fragilis fragilis is found all over Europe, while Anguis fragilis colchicus is found in south-eastern Europe, the Caucasus
Caucasus

The Caucasus or Caucas is a geopolitical region located between Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. It is home to Europe's highest mountain ....
 and Iran
Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran and formerly known internationally as Persian Empire until 1935, is a country in Central Eurasia, located on the northeastern shore of the Persian Gulf and the southern shore of the Caspian Sea....
.

See also

  • Ophisaurus
    Glass lizard

    The glass lizards or glass snakes, genus Ophisaurus, are a group of reptiles that resemble snakes, but are actually lizards. Although most species have no legs, their head shape and the fact that they have movable eyelids and external ear openings make it obvious that they are lizards....