- I'm Coyote Peterson.
This is the southern alligator lizard.
And they're called alligator lizards for a reason.
Ah! Ow, ow, ow!
Yeah.
(fast-paced suspenseful music)
The Pacific coast is an incredible environment to explore.
And on this adventure, the crew and I were
in the Santa Cruz Mountains hoping
to experience some of its biological diversity.
From towering redwood forests to vast chaparral shrublands,
the range of landscapes presented countless opportunities
for encountering the local wildlife,
some of which is beautiful, yet equally as creepy looking.
That is the Jerusalem cricket, nonvenomous,
but they can give you a pretty good bite.
So I wanna be extra careful handling this guy.
And then there are the encounters
that happen so quickly, you aren't even prepared for them.
I flipped over this board over here, before the cameras
could even get turned on, found two little
coast garter snakes and I'm guessing these
two snakes are probably from the same clutch,
so they could be brothers, could be brother and sister.
And they're actually pretty calm at this point.
By the time, Mark, you got the camera turned on,
I was able to handle 'em a little bit,
but right when I first caught 'em,
key defense tactic of this snake is to poop on ya.
So I got musked, yeah, it stinks pretty bad.
Say I'm a predator coming into this environment,
I see these snakes on the ground,
try to grab it, I'm gonna get a mouthful
of you know what, not gonna taste very good,
and then hopefully they can make their escape.
Very cool, two little baby coast garter snakes.
Gonna put 'em right back under the board
where they came from and hopefully we're gonna
find somethin' a little bit bigger.
Traversing through the shrublands,
there is one common lizard species you can stumble upon
and we happened to find ourselves in just the right place
to experience the Pacific coast's tiny resident dragon.
He's just hunkered down.
do you see? - [Voiceover] What is it?
- [Coyote] See his tongue
stickin' out? - [Voiceover] No.
- [Coyote] That is a southern alligator lizard
come on, right there, pick it up.
Now they're not real quick.
Look at him, he just, he looks like a snake.
His legs are tucked right in close to him.
Right there, look how well he camouflages
right into that dirt.
Now these guys can be pretty aggressive.
Wow, look at him!
The southern alligator lizard.
All right, let's take him up here and into some better light
and get some good shots with him.
What's really interesting about this lizard
is look at the size of that tail.
Now this is a prehensile tail, and it actually looks like,
at some point in time, oh, he's poopin' on me.
Great, that's another defense mechanism,
to poop if you're handled.
That's one reason you probably don't wanna
pick these lizards up if you see 'em out there in the wild,
but the real reason that you don't wanna try
to come out and pick up this lizard
is that they will often times pop their tail off.
And this is called caudal autonomy,
which means that if a predator comes in,
like let's say a raccoon or a coyote, and tries to grab
this lizard and bites the tail, this lizard can
pop its tail off and the tail will keep flicking
and moving around, but the lizard can then
escape and find itself some safety.
Now this tail will grow back, but it will never grow back
as long as it originally was, and usually grows back
as like a little nub, and we wanna be as gentle
as we possibly can with this guy.
Yeah, we don't want that tail poppin' off, do we?
These guys can give you a pretty nasty little bite,
of course, they're nonvenomous, oh look,
there ya go, see how, look at that tongue.
Looks like a Komodo dragon with that tongue stickin' out.
He's sniffin' me right now.
He's got, oh yeah, you gonna bite?
You gonna bite?
Ooh, yeah, ah!
That's a pretty good little bite there.
Wow, look at that mark they can put in my finger!
Did you have to do that?
He's like, yeah, you put your finger in my mouth,
what'd you think was gonna happen?
Now this lizard is very, very interesting feeling.
He's very smooth.
The scales are a little rough, but just the slender nature
of his body allows him to easily skirt
through all of this rough terrain.
What I'm picking here, this stuff is all covered
in little prickers and spikes.
And I'm kneelin' in it, it doesn't feel good.
But his body is like armored plating.
So he's just kinda weavin' in and out
of all these twigs and those short little legs
allow him to quickly move through his environment.
Look at that eye, I mean, this little guy,
he looks like a dragon.
He's got that dark black pupil,
orange around the outside, and that bright yellow.
But it's really the scales on the head
that are the most impressive.
Go ahead and zoom in on that.
Look at the top of his head.
Now, he looks like an alligator,
just the general shape of his snout
and those rugged, tough, iron-looking scales
on top of his skull, this creature is built like a tank.
- [Voiceover] Does he smell or?
- He does, he stinks, he pooped on me this little bugger
and that's what happens if you come out
and you try to catch one of these lizards.
If you don't get bit, you're gonna get pooped on.
And he dropped bombs all over me.
And it, man it's bad.
It smells like a dead fish that's been sittin' in the sun
for a few days.
What are you been eatin'?
Probably birds eggs, it's probably bird eggs
that he pooped all over my hand.
And you see, look, it's all dryin' up on there.
My hand's gonna stink for days now.
What a cool experience, getting up close
with the southern alligator lizard.
I got bitten, I got pooped on, and I found
one of the coolest creatures out here
on the California coast.
For me, this was right place, right time.
If you guys ever just stumbled upon
an awesome creature in the wild,
tell me about it in the comments section below.
I'm Coyote Peterson, be brave, stay wild.
We'll see ya on the next adventure.
(peaceful slow-paced music)
If you thought that was one wild adventure,
make sure to subscribe to the Brave Wilderness channel
and check out these other episodes so you can stick
with us on this season of Breaking Trail.
(crunching of rocks)
Can we look at your belly?
Just for a second.
All right, let's look at the belly.
That belly is about as silky smooth
as it gets for a reptile.
Yeah, you wanna little belly rub?
He's got his eyes closed, too,
I think he likes that.
(animal chirping and growling)