Nature & Environment

Meet the world's most constipated lizard

By T.K. Randall
May 11, 2020 ·  13 comments

The unfortunate lizard was starving as it was unable to digest nutrients. Image Credit: Natalie Claunch There's no denying that a diet consisting of large amounts of greasy food can have an adverse effect on your health and this unfortunate lizard, which was discovered near a pizza parlor in Cocoa Beach, Florida, is perhaps the perfect example of what can happen.

When University of Florida researcher Natalie Claunch found the creature, it didn't take long for her to realize that its enormous belly wasn't the result of it carrying eggs.

It turned out that the lizard's tendency to ingest particles of grease-soaked sand from the vicinity of the pizza parlor had caused a huge mass to form inside it that was too dense for it to pass naturally.

Even picking up the ridiculously bloated lizard to examine it proved to be a trying exercise.

"I was concerned that unless I was careful, I might pop it," said scientist Edward Stanley."I was blown away by how little room there was left for all the other organs... it has only a tiny space left over in its ribcage for the heart, lungs and liver."

After weighing and scanning the animal, it turned out that the mass inside of it constituted 78.5% of its entire body weight.

According to Claunch, this is in fact "the largest feces-to-body mass ratio recorded in a living animal".

Sadly, due to the lizard's unfortunate situation, there was no choice but to humanely euthanize it.

Source: Live Science | Comments (13)

Tags: Lizard