DAILY CAMERA (Boulder, Colorado) 10 June 04 Lizard lover aids science- Retired dentist a pioneer in gila monster research (Andrew Wineke)
Monument: The largest captive group of gila monsters in the entire world resides in Dr. Mark Seward's basement.
Seward, a 47-year-old retired dentist, has been breeding and researching his seven Mexican beaded lizards and 60 gila monsters for the past 10 years.
"If you feel a searing pain on one of your fingers, you'll know you're too close," Seward says while showing off a 3-foot-long Mexican beaded lizard, close cousin of the gila monster.
The beaded lizard — one of seven Seward owns — looks irritated. Seward has a firm grip on the beast because the critter has sharp teeth and a bite like a bulldog. More to the point, gila monsters and beaded lizards are the only venomous lizards in the world.
Gila monsters are smaller and prettier, with black bands or patterns alternated with a delicate salmon pink. Sixty gilas live in Seward's basement in clear plastic bins lined with sawdust.
During the spring, each cage also contains a tiny video camera so Seward can observe the lizards' nighttime breeding behavior.
"Every morning during breeding season, I'm watching an hour and a half of lizard porn," he says.
It's not quite as salacious as it sounds. Very little is known about gila monsters, particularly about their breeding habits.
"They've bred in the wild for millions and millions of years," Seward says. "It's just that we don't know what the environmental factors are that encourage them to breed."
Tim Trout, a reptile zookeeper with the Denver Zoo, says Seward's work with breeding gila monsters has important implications for many species of reptiles. One major advance, Trout says, was Seward's use of ultrasound to determine the lizards' gender and follow fertility and egg development in females.
Seward, whose love affair with reptiles started at an early age, is the biggest gila monster breeder in the world. Although that's a pretty small niche, he says lizard lovers, zoos and research institutions line up to buy every gila he can hatch at more than $1,000 a pop.
He retired from dentistry early because of nerve damage in his hand and chose to focus on gila monsters because so little is known about them.
Gila monster research may seem ridiculously esoteric, but the lizards have another surprise in store. Medical scientists have found a protein in the monsters' poisonous saliva that helps diabetics increase insulin production and lose weight. Unlike existing drugs for type 2 diabetes, the drug derived from the gila monster protein goes into action only when blood sugar levels surge, sort of like a home's thermostat turning on the heat when the temperature drops.
A synthetic version of the protein is being developed by the drug company Amylin in conjunction with pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly. The drug, exenatide, has had its initial human trials and will be submitted to the Food and Drug Administration for approval this summer.
Retired dentist a pioneer in gila monster research