Behavior
Short-horned lizards are "sit-and-wait" predators. They feed primarily on ants, but will also take an occasional grasshopper or beetle. Often, they can be found sitting in the vicinity of ant nests or trails. They are diurnal creatures being most active during mid-day and burrowing at night. They rely extensively on camouflage to avoid predators. If provoked, some horned lizards can build up blood pressure in regions behind their eyes and accurately squirt their blood at attacking predators, which will deter Canids from continuing their attack. It is rare for horned lizards to squirt blood at humans however, reserving this unique defense primarily for Canids (i.e. foxes, coyotes, dogs) which have a strong reaction of distaste to the blood. Squirting blood has been observed in greater short-horned lizards but has not been observed in pygmy short-horned lizards.
Read more about this topic: Greater Short-horned Lizard
Famous quotes containing the word behavior:
“The confusion of emotions with behavior causes no end of unnecessary trouble to both adults and children. Behavior can be commanded; emotions can’t. An adult can put controls on a child’s behavior—at least part of the time—but how do you put controls on what a child feels? An adult can impose controls on his own behavior—if he’s grown up—but how does he order what he feels?”
—Leontine Young (20th century)
“Children, randomly at first, hit upon something sooner or later that is their mother’s and/or father’s Achilles’ heel, a kind of behavior that especially upsets, offends, irritates or embarrasses them. One parent dislikes name-calling, another teasing...another bathroom jokes. For the parents, this behavior my have ties back to their childhood, many have been something not allowed, forbidden, and when it appears in the child, it causes high-voltage reaction in the parent.”
—Ellen Galinsky (20th century)
“There are ... two minimum conditions necessary and sufficient for the existence of a legal system. On the one hand those rules of behavior which are valid according to the system’s ultimate criteria of validity must be generally obeyed, and on the other hand, its rules of recognition specifying the criteria of legal validity and its rules of change and adjudication must be effectively accepted as common public standards of official behavior by its officials.”
—H.L.A. (Herbert Lionel Adolphus)