Mindanao Flying Lizard or Draco mindanensis

Hello Amazing Nature Community, @aezielove here joining you today and will share an interesting and beautiful nature finds that we had witness the other day.

Mindanao Flying Lizard

Draco Mindanensis or also known as a Mindanao flying Lizard is a kind of lizard that is capable of gliding flight via membranes that may be extended to create wings (patagia), formed by an enlarged set of ribs. They are arboreal insectivores.

Source

It was almost lunch time when my children called for my attention. I was curious what they called me for. I thought it was about school stuffs but when I opened the door they presented the lizard that they had found on their way back home.

_{Captured closely as I kneeled beside it}

_{Captured not zooming the camera to see it's whole body}

This lizard looked so weak when my son put it on the floor. According to their story, a cat from one of our neighbor almost had the chance to eat it if they hadn't came. It was good that they were able to stop the cat before it's going to eat it.

I tried touching it's body and it reacted by raising it's head but it didn't try to crawl away from us. But it's eyes were kept on looking at us maybe waiting for the next thing we would do.

After waiting for a couple of minutes to see of it would crawl away from us, we decided to transfer it to another area. When my eldest son hold it, it spread it wing-like structure and I'm amazed looking at it's color. The gliding membrane which is formed by an enlarged set of ribs has yellow green color right after it's tiny ribs. Until now while looking at these photos, I'm still amazed at how beautiful that part of the lizard. Are you amazed looking at it?

Putting it in this area, there's no sign that it would crawl so we again transferred it to the place where there are grasses and falling leaves.

We placed it above a falling leaf and the lizard became alert. It instantly move its head and while my phone moved, its head followed it too.

In these four photos shown, it's body started moving too and it's eyes was scanning the place maybe it's finding a perfect spot to crawl into. Now that I'm sure that this gliding lizard is okay, I slowly picked it up to put it on the big tree just beside our house. At first I was scared holding it but after few seconds of it in my hand I felt calm as it didn't move only when I put him on the tree.

After I successfully put it on the tree we still waited for it to climb up. It's to make sure that it's now safe from our cat. By the way, our cat loves hunting lizard so we really made sure that the lizard was out of our sight before we left.

Now that I'm done telling the story about this flying Lizard, let's talk a little about the two particular part of it, the dewlap and the gliding membrane.

Dewlap

A dewlap is a flap of skin just beneath the chin. In some lizards, the color of the dewlap differs. When the lizard is in shaded habitat, usually it's color is yellow while in brighter or less shaded habitat it's color is orange or red. This is according to the articles I have read before writing this blog. The dewlaps were also most commonly seen in male lizards while it's very rare to see it on female lizards. The purpose of dewlaps is to indicate territorial boundaries, to intimidate predators and to attract females during the mating season.

Gliding Membrane

The gliding membrane is the wing-like part of the lizard that assists it in getting lift when gliding or flying. According to what I read earlier, a low-angle glide can carry the lizard as much as 50 metres (about 160 feet) to another tree or to the ground. You can read the blog here.

Do you find Flying Lizards interesting? Share your thoughts in the comment section.

This is all for today. Hope you had fun reading this blog today!

Thank you, guys! See you on my next blog.

©All photos presented in this blog is own and taken by me.

🪷 AEZIELOVE 🪷