Lizards and Snakes
KNOWN SPECIES
11,348
0.48% of our world's living things are lizards and snakes
CHARACTERISTICS
- animals with a backbone (vertebrates)
- they periodically shed their whole skin
- their skin has scales
- specially jointed skulls and jaws allow them to open their mouths very wide to swallow unusually large prey
SIZE RANGE
0.6 inch to more than 29 feet (1.5 centimeters to more than 9 meters)
WHERE THEY LIVE
- on land
- some in oceans and in fresh water
Here are just SOME of the world’s lizards and snakes:

Komodo dragon
SCIENTIFIC NAME:
Varanus komodoensis

corn snake
SCIENTIFIC NAME:
Pantherophis guttatus

crocodile skink
SCIENTIFIC NAME:
Tribolonotus gracilis

king cobra
SCIENTIFIC NAME:
Ophiophagus hannah

Egyptian spiny-tailed lizard
SCIENTIFIC NAME:
Uromastyx aegyptia

northern redbelly snake
SCIENTIFIC NAME:
Storeria occipitomaculata

King's alligator lizard
SCIENTIFIC NAME:
Elgaria kingii

eastern worm snake
SCIENTIFIC NAME:
Carphophis amoenus

tusked chameleon
SCIENTIFIC NAME:
Furcifer balteatus

Guess what?
Several snakes are venomous, but most are harmless to humans.
Image Credits:
Corn snake, crocodile skink, eastern worm snake, northern redbelly snake, John White/© California Academy of Sciences; tusked chameleon, © California Academy of Sciences; Egyptian spiny-tailed lizard, © AMNH; king cobra, © Dr. Anand Titus and Geeta N. Pereira/CC BY-SA 2.0; King's alligator lizard, © AMNH; Komodo dragon, Gerald and Buff Corsi/© California Academy of Sciences.