From: The Tracker Mentoring Manual, Course 1 – Introduction to Tracking in Southern Africa
An example: Daily Routine 2 – Practice being curious!
Here’s a link to a video on our YouTube channel that we took of a Spotted Sandveld Lizard (Nucras intertexta) digging a burrow just outside our tent in the Balule. It’s a long video, but it’s terribly interesting!
Wiggles, waggles, and those feet!
We can find surprisingly little out about them on the interwebs.
Watch closely and you’ll see, not only the digging, but where the small reptile lifts its feet off the ground – they do this a lot, both in sun and shade, but for what reason? It also rubs it’s belly into the sand, wiggling, at one point, and it makes me wonder if this is a pregnant female (and do only the females burrow)? It seems a bit early for egg laying, but we have had early rains, so maybe her clock is mixed up? I do not see a bulge on the base of the tail where the sex organs are stored in males (hemi-penal bulge).
Whatever it is, whatever it is doing, it did not complete the keyhole shaped burrow. Did the sand become too hard?
Nature is endlessly fascinating!
