08/12/2026
The tuatara- my all time favorite - and what a cutie!!!!!!!
The tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus) is a really odd, neat little not-a-lizard from New Zealand. As a four-legged reptile with tail, it does indeed outwardly resemble lizards. It is not a lizard though, and one of the major differences between the Rhynchocephalians (including the lonely extant tuatara) and the Squamate lizards is their ability to chew their food, quite well as it turns out. Often referred to as a “living fossil,” or even a “living dinosaur,” tuataras are very much alive and solidly of a different lineage than anything else we can compare them to. Research that was published back in 2012 examined the tuatara’s ability to chew, and what that means for our understanding of how chewing relates to metabolism.
Iconic New Zealand reptile shows chewing is not just for mammals
Below is a short excerpt from the article. For the full article (and an embedded video), follow the link: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2012/may/iconic-new-zealand-reptile-shows-chewing-not-just-mammals
“The tuatara, an iconic New Zealand reptile, chews its food in a way unlike any other animal on the planet – challenging the widespread perception that complex chewing ability is closely linked to high metabolism.
Using a sophisticated computer model, scientists from UCL and the University of Hull demonstrate how the tuatara is able to slice its food like a 'steak knife.' The tuatara’s complex chewing technique raises doubts about the supposed link between chewing and high metabolism in mammals.
The New Zealand tuatara (Sphenodon) is a lizard-like reptile that is the only survivor of a group that was globally widespread at the time of the dinosaurs. It lives on 35 islands scattered around the coast of New Zealand and was recently reintroduced to the mainland. Its diet consists of beetles, spiders, crickets, small lizards and, occasionally, sea birds.”
__________
Jones, M.E., O'higgins, P., Fagan, M.J., Evans, S.E. and Curtis, N. (2012), Shearing Mechanics and the Influence of a Flexible Symphysis During Oral Food Processing in Sphenodon (Lepidosauria: Rhynchocephalia). Anat Rec, 295: 1075-1091. https://doi.org/10.1002/ar.22487
__________
The photograph used with this post shows a tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus) observed near Auckland, New Zealand. The photo was taken by Hugo Viger, and shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license. The image was altered for use in this post: it was minimally cropped to fit a supported aspect ratio.
View license information here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
