Hardwicke's bloodsucker (Calotes minor ) is an agamid lizard and found in South Asia.
Bengali: আগামা গিরিগিটি, পাতি রক্তচোষা, পাতিয়াল গিরিগিটি (Patial girigiti), হার্ডউইকের গিরিগিটি।
English: Hardwicke's bloodsucker, Hardwicke's short-tail agama, dwarf rock agama, and lesser agama.
Hindi & other Indian languages: ?
Urdu & Sindhi: ?
The species-name minor, a Latin word, meaning 'less' or 'smaller', also referring to the smaller size of this agamid.
Diurnal animals are active during the daytime, with a period of sleeping or other inactivity at night. The timing of activity by an animal depends ...
Crepuscular animals are those that are active primarily during twilight (that is, the periods of dawn and dusk). This is distinguished from diurnal...
An insectivore is a carnivorous plant or animal that eats insects. An alternative term is entomophage, which also refers to the human practice of e...
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TerrestrialTerrestrial animals are animals that live predominantly or entirely on land (e.g., cats, ants, snails), as compared with aquatic animals, which liv...
Oviparous animals are female animals that lay their eggs, with little or no other embryonic development within the mother. This is the reproductive...
Precocial species are those in which the young are relatively mature and mobile from the moment of birth or hatching. Precocial species are normall...
Arboreal locomotion is the locomotion of animals in trees. In habitats in which trees are present, animals have evolved to move in them. Some anima...
A burrow is a hole or tunnel excavated into the ground by an animal to create a space suitable for habitation, temporary refuge, or as a byproduct ...
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starts withPhysical structure: This is a small stocky and pot-belly lizard with a short tail. Its head large and elongated, flat above, sloping towards snout. Its dorsal scales larger, strongly imbricate and keeled, pointing backward and upward, ventral scales smaller than dorsal; upper head scales larger, unequal, strongly keeled or tubercular. Females are larger than the males.
Color pattern: Dorsal color is olive-brown with three rows of dark-brown light edged spots on the back and base of the tail; spots of middle row are most prominent and rhomboidal; a white streak on each side of the neck is bifurcating behind and an oblique one from the eye to the angle of mouth; limbs are with dark-brown cross bars; throat is profusely spotted with dark-brown and orange; belly is yellowish-white with numerous orange dots. Color inside the mouth is ink-blue. Females are more brilliantly colored during breeding season.
Length: Maximum:18 cm, Common:10 cm. (Snout to vent 6 cm.)
Found in Bangladesh (southeast part of the country), India (Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Odissa) and Pakistan (Sindh).
This lizard is terrestrial and sometimes arboreal; inhabits frequently fragmented dry forest, arid environments, barren desert and desolate areas across the Indo-Gangetic plains.
This lizard is mainly insectivorous; feeding on grasshoppers and their nymphs, earwigs, beetles, bugs, arthropods and spiders. Sometimes it also eats flowers.
This lizard is oviparous; the breeding season extends from April to June; it lays four to six hard shelled white eggs in burrows under the roots of vegetation.
