Odisha witnesses the fourth sighting of an extremely rare legless lizard
Odisha witnesses the fourth sighting of an extremely rare legless lizard
admin
Bhubaneswar: In Buddhakhol hill in Buguda in Ganjam district, the Snake Helpline discovered an extremely rare and elusive legless lizard.
Harish Padhi, a local Buguda rescuer, sent a photo to Subhendu Mallik, general secretary of Snake Helpline and Honorary Wildlife Warden of Khurda, for identification in December of last year. Subhendu was certain it wasn't a snake and had heard of the limbless lizard that lives on Chilika's island, but he had never seen a photograph or a specimen.
The Snake Helpline dispatched a four-person team to the newly discovered environment, where they discovered the legless lizard. They photographed and videotaped the limbless skink in its new natural surroundings to document its life. It was afterwards released in the same location.
For three months, a team from the Snake Helpline had to scour the available literature, books, and journal papers.
This is the state's fourth sighting of the unusual lizard. Nelson Annandale discovered the limbless skink on Barkuda Island in 1917 and named it Barkudia Insularis, a new genus and species. This unusual species of lizard had eluded scientists and explorers for many years before being discovered in 1979 at Nandankanan Biological Park in Baranga, Odisha. However, no photos of support were published.
Chilika Development Authority officials documented the rare Barkudia Insularis from the same Barkuda island while performing a survey in Chilika Lake in 2003. The exceedingly rare lizard was not discovered anyplace in Odisha except for the Barkuda Islands and Nandankanan Biological Park.
"The Barkuda Limbless Skink is so uncommon that no recognised colour photograph or image of it could be found in Google when we looked until now." "Until now, no images have been found in the world's largest reptile database, the Reptile Database, or the Reptiles of India database," stated Subhendu Mallik, general secretary of Snake Helpline.
Mallik stated that the IUCN Redlist categorised Barkudia insularis as a Critically Endangered species in 2010, and that the species is only one step away from extinction.
