Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Ok ok maybe the title was over the top to get you guys to read this, but I was watching the Jeff Corwin Experience on Animal Planet, and he was exploring in Morocco, amoung ancient Roman ruins. He spotted something in the rocks, reached in, and yoink! out he comes with a beautifully colored Uro. It was so docile once he had a good hold on it. Great show, and I must say I was surprised and delighted that he found one.

Transcript:

Jeff Corwin
Lizard went behind those rocks.
Oh, no. No. No. No. No. No.
This is it. An extraordinary lizard. Check it out. The Uromastyx.
What I want to do is give you an example of how this creature eats. So I'm going to take a little bit of vegetation. Watch this. I might be able to stimulate ...
... watch this.
Cool, huh? Isn't that great? A nice example of how this animal eats its food. What I want you to do is touch this animal's tail like that and, of course, because you don't have touch-a-vision. But if you did, you would be able to see that this way going with the scales (rubs hand down across tail), okay, not much action. But here it's very sharp. For example, look at my skin. Ready? Look at this (rubs tail up across arm, scratching up arm). Oh, he's scratching. See this? That's what you call good defense.
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Mark Martinez
University of Florida

I saw that episode a month or so ago, I had never seen a uro on tv before. I was surprised how docile it was for being wild
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Adam - 0.0 African Sidenecked, 0.1 Redfoot, 0.1 Sulcatta, 1.0 Western Hognose, 1.0 Crested Gecko, 0.1 Mali Uromastyx

I remember it trying to bite him, he said it was an egyptian
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A servant named pat and his masters (Mali uromastyx) MAli and Bruno

Usually when they find animals or small reptiles they are really catpive animals. Usually they place the animal in a tree or on some rocks and then they film him finding it and he explains what it is. Sorry but this is what most of them do. I am not saying all of them do this, but a lot of them do it for the smaller animals. The people that use captive animals do find some animals in the wild but most of them are just captives getting a little sun. I am not saying they transport an elephant into the middle of the jungle, I am say they usually use small captive animals sometimes. Also, if the uro was what you guys say very tame in his hand it was probably a captive tame uro.

Mike

I dunno, often times Jeff will say that the animal is impossible to find, and so he states that he is showing a captive. He showed a captive Eye-eye for instance because they live high up and come out only at night.
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Mark Martinez
University of Florida

no he did iot say it was an egyptian he said it was a mali or a nigereian yellow.he did not say it was an egyptian.he said the largest species known is an egyptian