User:A.monino/sandbox

Physical Description

The agama lizard can be identified by having a white underside, brown back limbs and a tail with a light stripe down the middle. The stripe on the tail has about six to seven dark patches along the side of it. With females, adolescents and subordinate males they possess an olive green head. While a dominant male are characterized with a blue body and yellow tail. The maximum size for males is twenty-five centimeters and the maximum size for females is twenty centimeters.

Habitat

Agama agamas can be found native in countries such as Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cape Verde Islands, Chad, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Togo."Agama agama is well-suited to arid conditions. These lizards remain active throughout the day except for the hottest hour, when even shady spots can reach 100 degrees F. When the mercury climbs that high, even the agama finds a cool place to rest.

Diet

Agama Agamas are primarily insectivores, but they have been known to eat small mammals, reptiles and vegetation. Their main diet would contain mainly ants, grasshoppers, beetles, and termites. They catch their prey by using a tongue with a tip covered by mucous glands; this aids the lizard in holding onto small prey.

Behavior

Male agamas are territorial and must fight other males to claim their space. Agamas live in social groups including a lead male, about half a dozen females, and subordinate males. Subordinate males can only gain their own group if they eliminate the existing lead male -- the cock -- or establish a colony outside all other cocks' territory. Only the cock is allowed to mate with the females. The center of a cock's territory is usually marked by the presence of a physical object, such as a tree or boulder, on which the lizards congregate. In urban areas fights between males are more common because space is at a higher premium.

Reproduction

Females are sexually matured at fourteen to eighteen months, while males take two years. The Agama agama reproduces mainly during the wet season, but in areas of constant rainfall they have the ability to reproduce nearly year round.The female lays her eggs in a hole she digs with her snout and claws. The hole is five centimeters deep and is found in sandy, wet, damp soil that is exposed to sunlight nearly all day and covered by herbage or grasses. The eggs are usually laid in clutches ranging from five to seven ellipsoidal eggs. A. agama is a thermoregulated embryo species resulting in all males at twenty-nine degrees Celsius and all females at twenty-six to twenty-seven degrees Celsius (Crews et al. 1983). The eggs will hatch within eight to ten weeks. Hatchlings will be between 3.7 and 3.8 centimeters snoutvent plus their 7.5-centimeter tail. They will almost immediately start eating rocks, sand, plants, and insects.