Hello and welcome to Natural World Facts. I'm on location here at Totternhoe Wildlife
Trust Nature Reserve, and I'm here to talk about Slow Worms.
Because slow worms are a form of legless lizard, they can't regulate their own body temperature.
This means that they often need to bask in the sun, so they prefer large flat stones
or pieces of metal. This means that this is the perfect place to find them, full of large
flat rocks and a few pieces of corrugated iron. The surface provides them with a place
where they can bask in the light of the sun, and provides them with shelter underneath
it.
All around are tons of empty snail shells and beetle carcasses, just like this.
Despite their appearance, slow worms are actually the UK's only species of legless lizard, and
they're classed as lizards rather than snakes for a few different reasons. The main ones
are that they have eyelids, whereas snakes do not. They also have small ear openings
and their tail here at the back, two thirds of their body length, is detachable. If a
predator grabs hold of them by the tail, they can drop it in an act of autotomy. It falls
to the ground and continues wriggling for s short period of time, which tricks the predator
and distracts it while the front half of the slow worm, the part that matters, slithers
away to safety. Beautiful little animals, often found brown in colour with a range of
shades from copper to grey. Their main defence mechanism when caught, apart from losing their
tail, the main one, the big one, is pooing on you. It will excrete on you in order to
ward off predators. I'll give you a closer look at this one. It has a black stripe going
down its back, it has a very black underside meaning it has not recently moulted. These
guys do shed their skin like most lizards. The telltale sign that they've recently done
so is their underside, their belly, will be a pale blue colour. This one I believe is
a female and is possibly even pregnant from the size and the girth of the body. When it
tapers down to the tail, it's very sort of sudden, the way that it narrows in.
Slow worms mate during Springtime, during which the male will clamp hold of the female's
head really tight in its jaws, and then the females after a few months will give birth
in mid August to mid September.
Slow worms are ovoviviparous, meaning that when they do give birth they give birth to
live young rather than laying eggs. The young fully develop inside the female before they
emerge in mid August to mid September.
These guys can be found across most of the UK, favouring quite a few different habitats.
You can see my surroundings are just full of bricks and rocks that animals like these
would love to hide under.
[Music]
These fellas are adorable. They're one of only three lizard species that we have here
in the UK. We have the common lizard and the sand lizard, both of which have legs. This
one looks like its on the hunt. What they eat is slugs, snails, worms, and other insects
too, but mainly those three.
If you look closely at the head, you'll be able to see a small black tongue that it's
using to taste the air, much like snakes do and other lizards.
[Music]
Just wiping off the poo.