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New Species of Legless Lizard Discovered Near LAX Runway
From an article at Discovery News:
"A bustling airport would hardly seem the place to find a new species of reclusive animal, but a team of California biologists recently found a shy new species of legless lizard living at the end of a runway at Los Angeles International Airport. What’s more, the same team discovered three additional new species of these distinctive, snake-like lizards that are also living in some inhospitable-sounding places for wildlife: at a vacant lot in downtown Bakersfield, among oil derricks in the lower San Joaquin Valley and on the margins of the Mojave desert." Here's some more information in the form of a press release from Cal State Fullerton, home to James Parham, one of the discoverers.
They are harbingers of the end times!!!
Are we sure their legs weren't just run over?
They're called snakes.
Not a wildlife specialist here, but put in the simplest form, wouldn't that be a snake?
\I know it is more complicated then this.
And thus it begins.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
He's been hiding behind my zipper for years.
Just the beginning of a wave of new mutant creatures in all of our carcinogenic waste laden environments (cities).
How's it taste?
I remember working pipeline as a lad and watching the Mexicans catch Anoles by the tail with their pliers. They'd fire up an Oxy/Acetelyne torch, char it and eat it like jerky on the spot.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Who needs legs when they can hop on an airplane and fly away!
Where's the articles about video games, movies and second rate sci-fi? I don't want any of this science bullshit.
Next: Biologists find five legged lizards near nuclear plant.
Didn't they just got their legs run off?
I gotcher legless lizard right here.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It Has begun , they have arrived!
All hail or new lizard overlords!
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
They hated flying, tried to steady their nerves, had a few too many, and then couldn't make it to the terminal for their flights.
Each awoke in unfamiliar environs the next day, how they got there they did not know, with scientists poking and prodding them.
inhospitable-sounding places (like) downtown Bakersfield
You got that right.
They've probably been getting into all that grog that the TSA confiscates.
All they've found is the place where California politicians are growing. They're a legless, balless bunch, so this must be the place.
The Miami airport is a sanctuary for the burrowing owl...they poke their little heads up out of the ground and watch you taxi by.
The open areas adjoining the old Denver airport had a population of raptorial birds that fed on the local jackrabbits and prairie dogs. When the airport moved, the birds moved too -- but not until several years later. Turned out the attraction of the old airport was that the ground critters were deaf from jet noise, and easy to catch. As the next generation of un-deafened animals grew up, the birds moved to easier pickings at the new site.
...how much they'd had to drink?
They are harbingers of the end times!!!
Or the harbinger of planes.
Found anywhere else than beside a very busy freight airport, you might be tempted to believe they have been there all along. But finding Four new species right next to an airport (and as yet, nowhere else), you have to allow for the possibility that they arrived in cargo.
Lizakes? Snakards? Slizards, no wait, that's a physicist, I think. Sliz or slidz might work.
...it's called a snake.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
The airport must be shut down immediately to protect this new and amazing animal!
I wonder if they were there BECAUSE the airport was there.
Save wildlife - build more giant complexes of buildings and asphalt .
They're called snakes.
Too right. "I'm sick of these motherfucking legless lizards on this motherfucking plane" just doesn't have the same zing to it.
It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said.
The title instantly made me laugh as the first thing I thought about lizards living around an airport is that they would get their limbs crushed off their bodies. Wait, why was I laughing about that? I think I have problems...
On Imperial hwy. 40 years ago were some apartments we called the great whites. at the top of the hill and more affordable ones at the bottom. Behind the big white apts I seen some of those things as a kid. I am almost certain there were icicle plants back then. So you may still find more in that area. There we no more apartments between these and the beach back then.
That's what they get for trying to 'beat the plane'.
You'll never hear stories about newly discovered 'headless' lizards living at the end of the runway.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsuchinoko
Any mutant wildlife found in the surrounding area is not the responsibility of the airport.
New species of Lounge Lizard found at Nude! Girls! Nude! near LAX.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Los Angeles, August 12, 2082
On Tuesday, a public hearing on shutting down the Los Angeles International Airport was again disrupted by conservationists. This is the second public hearing the LAX Airport Authority has held to consider repurposing the airport property into a nature preserve. Decreasing numbers of passengers and reduced tarmac requirements for liftoff for vessels such as the Boeing 998 Starduster have obviated the need for a traditional airport. In an attempt to stop the meeting, several conservationists handcuffed themselves to the podium. With signs and chants, the conservationists expressed their dismay at shutting down the fragile ecosystem of the rare legless lizard found only at LAX. "Every change the [LAX Airport] Authority makes to the airfield threatens to overturn the delicate balance of nature our legless comrades rely on." inveighed Charles Slatun, the group's putative leader. "We protested quite vocally when airlines began installing sound-dampeners on engines landing at the airport. But now, LAX as a nature preserve? This disregard for extant species must stop!" For months conservationists have been seen acting as informal greeters inside LAX as well as offering free taxi rides to the airport in an effort to convince the public that preserving LAX in its current form is in their best interest.
...that this would be a joke about a traveling Republican.
If the researchers would poke around Hollywood, they would find many more.
Who's been giving all that booze to the lizards?
... Legless in LA.
The physicist is Szilard. Leó Szilárd. And legless lizards are known elsewhere, for instance the slow worm and the sheltopusik. No need to coin a new word for them, we know them already :)
reduced height keep them out of jet intake.
Bird scarers, toxic environments.
Both will discourage raptors so any wierd reptilia will in theory have a chance for a change.
... Time to shut LAX down, fire thousands of employees until an environmental impact study can be completed(usually takes a year or two). In the meantime, it's best to begin finding a new location for a replacement airport for LA. Of course, that means another environmental impact study process to begin now.
These poor creatures need to be on the endangered species list so we can close down that runway! Maybe then I can get my forest back from the spotted owl.
Perhaps they just pissed-off God. This suggests that airport waiting-lounges are what happened to Eden, which, IMHO, puts flaming swords to shame ...
What was a team of biologists doing on a runway?
Lets call them TSA. Very appropriate name.
Shut that airport down immediately! We MUST save that lizard.
... share all of the typical traits of lizards with one obvious exception. ( you get three guesses and the first two don't count)
to wit:
Snakes do not have true auditory sense organs. Legless lizards have true ears, as do all lizards.
Snakes do not have eyelids. Legless lizards do, along with all other lizards.
Snakes have a forked tongue, and a special chemo-sensing organ. Only a few lizards do, IIRC legless lizards do not.
Snakes have a short neck and shoulder region, a long torso region and then a short hip and tail region (yes, Virginia, motherfucking snakes have motherfucking shoulders and hips). Legless lizards have proportionally shorter body segments and a very long tail section, similar in proportion to other lizards.
Snakes cannot drop their tail segments, and if severed, the tail will not grow back. Legless lizards, like many of their legged relatives, can voluntarily drop their tails as distraction to evade predators. The tail will grow back.
Snakes don't chew their food, they always swallow it whole. Legless lizards, like most of their relatives, will at least crunch it up a bit.
Snakes have teeth that curve toward the back of the mouth. Legless lizards and most other lizards have sharp ridges on their jaws that act to help cut and crush their prey. Larger lizards have more obvious teeth, but they are straight not curved.
Most snakes have an unhinge-able jaw that allows them to swallow prey that is several times larger than their hinged jaw.
Legless lizards like their kin have a firmly hinged jaw. They can only take prey that can be crushed to fit their jaws, or tear off bite sized chunks.
There are many other more subtle differences. Of course, the DNA evidence also confirms that legless lizards are lizards.... and not weird snakes.
Given that the Otis College of Art and Design is a stone's throw away, you can't exclude the creative talents if the college kids coming up with something new
I grew up in the Sierra Nevada foothills (near Grass Valley) and once spotted a nearly legless lizard (really tiny legs - not actually useful for mobility) with a long snake-like body near my home. I recall thinking it seemed like a missing link between snakes and lizards.
That was in the late 1980's, so seeing similar creatures in other parts of CA is not too surprising.