But at the moment, Petren says, Lazarus lizards don’t stray too far from the rocky banks of the Ohio the farther west they go.Īpparently they want a river view. A greenish ten-inch lizard with a long tail and a pointed snout, the Wall Lizard likes to be around human cities and is seldom found far away from buildings, parks or parking lots. “At some point in the future, they will cover North America,” Petren says. The Lazarus lizard, aka European wall lizard or common wall lizard, hails from Europe. But a slow, steady, natural migration west is also underway. Petren believes this happens when a lizardnapper impulsively collects specimens from one locale and then releases them miles away. Petren and his students have a website where people can report sightings, and they’ve identified pockets well outside the lizards’ eastern epicenter. Neither, according to Ken Petren, an associate professor of biological sciences at the University of Cincinnati.
The west side? Not so much.ĭoes that mean the west side is fundamentally inhospitable to them? Or that the animals have inherited their adopted city’s neighborhood snobbery? Lookout, and they’ve spread as far east as Milford. After recovering for a few weeks, Ol’ Rip was given a new home in a fishbowl in the window of. Today Lazarus lizard population density reaches up to 1,000 per acre in parts of Walnut Hills, Hyde Park, and Mt. The Lazarus lizard became an instant celebrity, and was soon renamed Ol’ Rip after Rip Van Winkle. For instance, some lizards prefer eating ants, while others might look for bird nests and suck on the eggs. Of course, they should have been named 'Georges Lizards' in honor of their true sponsor. Size of the Animal Most of the lizards are predatory by nature, which means that they rely on different kinds of insects in your yard. They are characterized by a sharp jaw and a triangle-shaped head. Local residents called them 'Lazarus lizards' in misplaced recognition of the lizards perceived patrons.
As a kid, Rau smuggled the reptiles to Cincinnati after a vacation and released them in the backyard of his east side home. The lizard species has a leopard print body and is native to South America, mainly found in Chile, Argentina, and the Patagonian Desert. Known everywhere else as European wall lizards, they were “imported” by George Rau, a member of the Lazarus family. The immigrants in question are unique-so much so, they’ve been given their own special name: the Lazarus Lizards.
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