Horned toads, or as we called them growing up, horny toads, are some of the strangest little creatures I’ve ever known. These things shoot blood out of their eyes at predators. What kind of evolutionary pressure makes that a defense?
I never saw one do it myself, even though I played with them all the time as a kid. My mom did too, in the vacant field across the street. Apparently, the blood confuses canids and tastes bad to them. Still, losing blood in a fight seems like a bad idea. It’s like those sea cucumbers that spit out their guts to distract predators. I don’t get it, but I’m not a horned toad.
They branched off from iguanas about 25 million years ago. Unlike their tropical cousins, these guys adapted to desert life. They’re found all over the southwest, from Mexico and Texas to Oklahoma and even up into Canada. Fossil records show the modern form has been around for about four and a half million years, maybe more. Mitochondrial DNA backs that up, though the range is more like 2.6 to 5.3 million years.
Horned lizards have some serious survival tactics. First defense is don’t be seen. They flatten their bodies, tuck their heads, and blend in with the ground. If that fails, they puff up and those spikes make them hard to swallow. Like a puffer fish. They’re not like skinks though. Dropping their tail isn’t their first move. They can regrow tails and legs like most reptiles, but blood spitting seems to be their go-to.
They’ve got voracious appetites. They love ants. They’ll sit by an ant trail and suck up hundreds at a time, several times a day. They’ll eat other bugs too, but ants are the main course. That’s part of the problem. East of I-35 in Texas, urban development and crop pesticides have wrecked the ant population. That’s hit the horned lizards hard. They’re practically extinct in some areas. And they’re an anchor species. Birds, plants, and other animals depend on them. Even though they’re not great food, they’re still part of the system. So yeah, they’re weird little guys. Spiky, camouflaged, blood-spitting ant vacuums. But they matter. And they’ve been around a long time.
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Also, if you, or a teacher friend, would like a 20-30 minute lesson plan about horned lizards, feel free to download and share this one:
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