The lizard goes to sleep about the middle of April, the beginning of winter in New Zealand, and wakes late in August, when spring is well underway. Then for seven months it grows fat on insects.
The creature is reportedly capable of living for 500 years and more. It shares its longevity with its distant relatives, the great turtles. Its long life, during most of which it continues to breed, doubtless has been a major factor in its racial survival.
The ancient reptiles were plentiful when white men first came to New Zealand early in the last century. The Maoris regarded them with superstitious awe and avoided them as much as possible. But early British settlers and their dogs used to kill the inoffensive creatures for sport. This was the first active enmity the tuateras ever had known. They saved themselves by withdrawing to the barren islands and becoming even more seclusive in their ways of life. Thus they clung to a thin thread of existence until an enlightened government threw the protection of the law around them.
Today the three-eyed lizard is probably the world’s most rigidly protected animal. The New Zealand government has placed all sorts of legal restrictions on hunting or capturing it, and to kill one would be a major crime. For that matter, very few persons living ever have seen a tuatera. It stays in seclusion most of the time. There is a single specimen in the zoological park at Wellington. When a party from a Byrd Antarctic expedition visited there they were told that the lizard had not been seen for several months and that it was highly improbable that it could be lured out of hiding. One day it would appear of its own volition, take a philosophical look at the twentieth century, eat a few flies, and retire to its lair under some rocks again. Here probably is the secret of the race’s longevity. The little lizard has spent most of its time sleeping. It has existed with the minimum of effort. It has been satisfied with its lot and, above all, it never has gotten in the way. It has been observed, for example, that one of the creatures never climbs over even the smallest obstacle. It always will walk around.
Prodigious Fertility of Insects
The capacity of insects to reproduce is almost incalculable. A single over-wintering house fly theoretically might have 5,598,729,000,000 descendants in a single year. It has been calculated that a single cabbage aphis, which weighs less than a thirtieth of an ounce, might give rise in a year to a mass of descendants weighing 822,000,000 tons, about five times as much as all the people in the world. Fortunately nearly all insects have an enormous mortality rate.
The Lizard That Runs Out of Its Own Skin
There is an animal that can get out of its own skin. It is a little brown lizard, a gecko, which lives in native houses on the Palau Islands in the South Pacific. This creature, about six inches long, is closely related to the house geckos, which are found throughout the tropical Pacific islands and as far north as Florida in the New World. The Palau species is almost impossible to capture by hand.
Grabbed by the tail, it immediately sheds that organ. This is a rather common practice among certain lizards and apparently brings little inconvenience. A new tail can be grown. But as soon as a hand is laid on this particular species it immediately and literally “runs out of its skin.” This is done with lightning-like rapidity. The would-be captor is left holding the animal’s empty skin. All the rest of the lizard is running away, presumably seeking a hiding place.
This “running out of the skin” is a far different phenomenon than that of shedding the skin by various reptiles, which always takes place after a new skin has been formed underneath. The gecko just abandons its skin altogether. It flays itself alive. Escape in this way apparently is suicidal in most cases. That it ever could grow back a complete skin is highly improbable.