Central bearded dragon
Pogona vitticeps
— Where the name comes from
Pogona comes from the Greek pṓgōn, the beard: under its throat it carries a pouch covered in pointed scales that it can inflate until it looks like a bristling collar, and that turns black in moments of tension. Vitticeps is “banded-headed”, for the dark bars between the eyes. Agama is a Caribbean word that passed into French and then into science.
— Facts
- Group
- Reptiles · Reptilia
- Order
- Squamates
- Habitat
- Deserts, arid scrub, open woodland of the Australian interior
- Range
- Central and eastern Australia
- Size
- 40–60 cm including the tail, 350–600 g
- Diet
- Insects, leaves, flowers, fruit
- Lifespan
- 10 years, up to 14 in captivity
— Characteristics
- 01
It perches on logs and stones in a raised position all day.
- 02
It waves one foreleg slowly in a circle to say “I give in”.
- 03
The beard turns black when it is frightened or courting.
— What sets it apart
In this species heat changes sex. Genetically male embryos, if the egg develops above thirty-two degrees, become perfectly fertile females — and in 2015 it was shown that this happens in the wild too, not only in the laboratory. Those females then lay more eggs than the others, and their offspring no longer have sex chromosomes that matter: in some Australian populations a genetic system of sex determination is being replaced by temperature under the researchers’ eyes.
