Habits
Generally found in firm ground rather than pure sand dunes, the spiny-tailed lizard is often found living in colonies, sometimes on the outskirts of villages. It prefers elevated patches of land especially in Kutch where it is invariably found on isolated patches of high ground (called Bets) above the monsoon water level.
Birds of prey are a major predator of the lizard in the desert. The Saker Falcon Falco cherrug has been recorded in literature but the Tawny Eagle Aquila rapax and other falcons such as the Laggar Falcon also prey on these lizards. The Cattle Egret has also been known to prey on it.
Read more about this topic: Uromastyx Hardwickii
Famous quotes containing the word habits:
“Almost always tradition is nothing but a record and a machine-made imitation of the habits that our ancestors created. The average conservative is a slave to the most incidental and trivial part of his forefathers’ glory—to the archaic formula which happened to express their genius or the eighteenth-century contrivance by which for a time it was served.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“The habits of our whole species fall into three great classes—useful labour, useless labour, and idleness. Of these the first only is meritorious; and to it all the products of labor rightfully belong; but the two latter, while they exist, are heavy pensioners upon the first, robbing it of a large portion of its just rights. The only remedy for this is to, as far as possible, drive useless labour and idleness out of existence.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Long accustomed to the use of European manufactures, [the Cherokee Indians] are as incapable of returning to their habits of skins and furs as we are, and find their wants the less tolerable as they are occasioned by a war [the American Revolution] the event of which is scarcely interesting to them.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)