DALLAS MORNING NEWS (Texas) 06 October 08 If you spot a now-rare 'horny toad,' just leave it alone (Jacqueline Floyd)
It’s the rare reptile that inspires deep affection and sentiment in the human species. We’re just too different. But the Texas horned lizard is a notable exception.
Every Texan of a certain age remembers the exuberant joy of spotting a horny toad on a camping trip, or at Granddad’s farm, or even out in the back yard. It was like finding a little dinosaur.
Odds are, however, that it’s been a while, maybe years, since you’ve seen one. Now considered a threatened species, the horned frog (a misnomer: It’s a reptile, not an amphibian) has disappeared from much of the state over the last few decades. There are a lot of theories to account for the reduction, but still no definitive rationale.
“That’s still kind of a tough question,” said Diane Barber, curator of ectotherms (cold-blooded animals) for the Fort Worth Zoo. “There are a lot of theories, but we don’t completely know why.”
With the shrinkage of the once-plentiful lizard’s habitat, the Fort Worth Zoo has taken on the surprisingly difficult task of establishing a captive breeding program. Given the right conditions, they’re a sturdy, tough species. But in captivity, they’re fairly finicky customers.
“It’s pretty complicated, because you have to hibernate ’em,” Ms. Barber said. Two years ago, the zoo’s first clutch of nearly 30 eggs produced a disappointing two hatchlings.
With refined techniques, they’re finding success. The zoo hatched two dozen little horned lizards in early August.
In mid-September, the babies had grown to about the size of a nickel: perfect miniatures of the adult version, with spiky Muppet-like heads, narrow cream racing stripes down the back and stubby pointed tails. They were enchanting.
They’ll eventually join other horned lizards on display as part of the zoo’s Texas Wild! exhibit, which features native species.
Little baby horny toads are carefully nursed on termites, which are “nice and juicy and plump,” Ms. Barber said. They later graduate to fruit flies and cricket hatchlings, and, as a special treat, occasionally get a tasty waxworm, which is a particularly succulent kind of moth larva.
But the staple of the horned lizard diet, its very staff of life, is the harvester ant. These are the big-bodied, red-and-black insects that build huge, volcano-shaped mounds, the kind a lot of us called “army ants” when we were kids.
And harvester ants are likewise disappearing, thanks to urbanization and pest-control measures used to get rid of the universally loathed fire ant. No harvester ants, no horned toads.
It has also been theorized that horned lizards never really bounced back from an unfortunate fad to sell them as pets back in the 1960s and ’70s. They made lousy pets for a simple reason: They died.
“Yeah, they died pretty instantly,” Ms. Barber said. “You may love the creature, but you’re probably going to end up killing it.”
The problem is that horned lizards acclimate to a habitat about the size of a football field. Remove them, and they become disoriented, stop eating and die. If you take them home, or even drive a mile down the road and put them back out on the ground, the result is the same.
“They can survive in very harsh environments, but you can’t reintroduce them,” Ms. Barber said. “If you see one, it’s very important to just leave it alone.”
What you can do, however, is report sightings of horned lizards to the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department. As part of an ongoing effort, the state maintains a monitoring program to chart the distribution of the species.
“Just note where they are and report it,” Ms. Barber said.
And, she added, consider yourself lucky.
“They’re cute. They’re very charismatic.”
If you spot a now-rare 'horny toad,' just leave it alone