- Unlike any other lizard in the subcontinent, spiny-tailed lizards are vegetarians, an unusual dietary specialisation in a desert with scant rainfall and sparse plant life.
- Vulnerable to starvation in drought years, they make do with locusts.
- Otherwise, they don’t give the insects a second glance.
- Unlike other herbivores, the spiny tailed lizards lack the teeth to chew their greens.
- And unlike other lizards that lead independent solitary lives, these social creatures live in colonies.
- This combination of exceptional habits fascinated Ramesh.
- For a hundred years, no one had investigated the species.
- Studying it isn’t for anyone who wilts like a flower in the infernal desert summer.
