Frilled lizard
Chlamydosaurus kingii
— Where the name comes from
Chlamydosaurus is “lizard with a cloak”, from the chlamys, the short mantle the Greeks pinned at the shoulder. Kingii recalls Phillip Parker King, the captain who surveyed the Australian coasts aboard the Mermaid. The frill is a flap of skin held out by cartilages connected to the jawbone: it opens only when the animal gapes.
— Facts
- Group
- Reptiles · Reptilia
- Order
- Squamates
- Habitat
- Dry eucalypt forest, wooded savannah
- Range
- Northern Australia and southern New Guinea
- Size
- 70–90 cm including the tail, 0.5–1 kg
- Diet
- Insects, spiders, small vertebrates
- Lifespan
- 20 years
— Characteristics
- 01
It spends most of its time flattened and vertical against a trunk.
- 02
Threatened, it opens the frill, hisses and runs off on two legs.
- 03
The open frill reaches thirty centimetres across.
— What sets it apart
It is all bluff, and a perfectly built one. The frill has no spines and no venom and does nothing except make the animal look suddenly four times larger, coloured and loud; if the predator keeps coming, the lizard folds the cloak away and runs off upright on its hind legs with the forelimbs raised. Australians made a symbol of it: it appeared on the two-cent coin until 1991.
