Training Day

Back to Iramoo Grassland for the training on striped legless lizard monitoring. There were about 20-30 people. First, Dr Megan gave a lecture on how to differentiate between a legless lizard and a snake. Here's one main point, lizards have ear holes but snakes do not. Legless lizards have reduced hind limbs (forgotten what that structure called >.<), which are still visible when you look closely at it. Furthermore, legless lizards lick their eyes similar to those common lizards and their tongues are rounded while the snakes' tongues are fork-shaped.



However, by the time a person has finished identifying all these characteristics, that person might have already lost his/her nose if the reptile in front is a snake instead of a legless lizard. Hehe... After the lecture, we had a chance to handle a captive striped legless lizard. It looks just like a baby snake. So cute! Shannon (president of Naturalist Society and a reptile expert) told me that the legless lizard has the lizard-look whereas a snake has a snake-look. @@" After lunch, Dr Megan demonstrated how we're suppose to do it. Basically all we needed to do was to lift up the tile and check for any striped legless lizards. At the same time, we also had to be aware of "unwanted" guests such as snakes and spiders.

We were split into groups. So we've formed a La Trobians Group. Hehe.. First, we checked the 50 tiles in grid A. There are a total of grids A-L. So calculate the total number of tiles yourself. xD Here is our first "unwanted" guest. A blue-tongue skink. Can tell its main characteristic by its name. The skink's tongue is really blue in colour.

Me with the cute blue-tongue skink! So cutee!! Really wanted to bring it back home! Imagine it running around the house... Hehe..

My group, or the La Trobe Naturalist Society. By the way, some of them know so well about Malaysia and they wanted to visit Malaysia so much. One of the Naturalist Society member, who I have no idea is that person, is actually in Malaysia now checking out Malaysia wildlife. Oh crap, why are they so smart? I don't even know where the national parks are located! Aiks... geography... I only studied for the sake of PMR. @@" They sure are special. Most mat salleh I met thought that Malaysia has got 4 seasons and is located on the right hand side of Phillipines.
Finally, some of the lucky people discovered the striped legless lizard. The lizard was then passed to Dr Megan and she did the rest. First, she took pictures of the lizard to recgonise the scales pattern and then she measured its length with a ruler.

Next, she checked its sex with a magnifying glass. All the lizards caught are males. The last step was suppose to weigh the lizard but the battery of the weighing scale went flat suddenly. So she can't record the weight.

After all the procedures, the lizard was set free. We had to place it back to where it was found. By the way, I painted the numbers there. Nice? Hehe.

Another "unwanted" guest discovered by other groups. The little whip snake. This is obviously not a striped legless lizard because this snake has a black head. This snake wasn't interested in us anyway. It went back into the ground.

We only found 4 lizards out of so many tiles. Maybe the others are still in their sweet dreams underground. Suppose we can find more next month. Here is a random picture of a river that we passed by. Actually it was the bird that caught my attention. =D

A tiring but interesting day. Hey, I handled a legless lizard and a skink!! =DD