Welcome back to Taronga TV, I'm with Dean he's a reptile and amphibian keeper here
at Taronga and we are with one of my favourite
animals on the planet when i was a kid growing up
this lizard was one of my top 10 animals all i wanted to do was see one in real
life and i came to Taronga and i saw this
animal it is a gila monster Dean please tell us about this great
creature yeah no worries Hayden so gila monsters they were thought of to be
one of only two venomous lizards
in the world um recently it's been found that that's
not true but um for a long time they were thought
to be the two most two venomous lizards in the world um
they're adapted to an arid environment and so they've got
different specializations that help them live in that environment
and they're found in southwestern united states and northern mexico
they are just beautiful mate now when you say venomous lizard
i think this is really important to learn folks and i've made the mistake
when i've spoken about it in the past as well sometimes you'll hear people say a
poisonous snake well poison and venom are two different
things aren't they dean could you explain to everyone what the difference
is okay so we'll start off with poisonous
so poisonous is something that affects you if you eat it or it
absorbs through the skin like if you eat a poisonous fish like a
toad fish or something like that um or there's frogs called poison dart
frogs that you know you ingest the the poison
whereas a venomous animal um either like it injects the the
venom into into your body somehow so either a venomous snake for example or a
healer monster it bites it can inject the venom into
your blood system or something like a wasp that stings you
with a sting so that's a really great thing to learn
about the difference between poison and venom
these guys here there's two females in here correct yeah
yep both girls and can you tell us a little bit about
what they would their behavior would be like in the wild
so in the wild they're quite unusual i guess a lot of it is because
it's so hot where they live for a lot of the year but they spend probably about
90 percent of their time under the ground
so you don't see them yeah ninety percent wow i never knew that
so they live in i live in a lot of other animal burrows things like
desert tortoise burrows rabbit burrows um
in southwestern united states so these rats called pack rats and they often
live in in these pack rat nests so utilize another animal's burrow yeah
yeah yeah and um their diet is pretty
specialized as well they mostly prey on um vertebrate animals that live in nests
so things like baby birds and the eggs ground nesting
birds um things like the the pack rats that i
mentioned before that that they nest in burrows and and they they
the young of the pac rats and even young rabbits
yeah right incredible now in this arid environment a lot of animals have
adaptations with water because water is so scarce what would these guys do for
water well actually it's been said that they
actually binge drink so they don't come across water very often at all
but um when they do they'll they'll drink a lot of it
now um it's been shown that they can drink up to
20 of their body weight so someone like me that's probably you know
around 18 liters of water for someone my size so yeah
so they just go for it yeah and get as much as they can when they can
yeah they are truly spectacular absolutely beautiful that gorgeous
gorgeous orange pattern that was the thing that got me when i was a kid i
just could not believe that this lizard looked like that
can you just talk to us a little bit about those beautiful raised scales on
the skin so um that's actually where they get their name from so the
genus is uh heloderma and hilo means stud
in latin derma dermis means skin so that's actually where
they get their name from so in each little individual speed like scale
um there's what's called osteoderm which is like a little bone
in the middle of their skin and i guess that acts as a defense
um for either other predators or males will combat each other in during
the breeding season when a mate is nearby a female nearby
and they'll bite each other so it could be armour to protect them for
for either of them two reasons wow so what would what animals would
prey on these i i'd imagine like raptors coyotes
that's probably the extent of it in their natural environment maybe young
ones like some snake species would eat them as well
they are truly spectacular they really are
and we've got two females in here what would you feed them here at taronga
uh rodents so i don't mind all mice mostly
yeah yeah and that's what they get most of the time how many times a week
oh once a week if that so they don't need much to survive on at all so
they'll go through a cooling period over the winter months where they don't
eat it at all um in the wild it's been proven on
average they survive on like i think it's around three and a half thousand
kilojoules a year wow which is probably like one takeaway
hamburger for us a year or something and that's
all they need to survive on well they are truly spectacular folks
and this is the sort of things these tiny little
wonderful snippets of information from our keepers here at taronga
and taronga western plains zoo that we're getting on taronga tv
dean thank you so much for your time mate i've never been this close to a
gila monster my favorite lizard in the world folks
you never know what's around the next corner we'll see you next time on
toronto tv thanks thanks