Burton’s legless lizard
I found a Burton’s legless lizard (Lialis burtonis) today. It was sunning itself on a gravel path in a park in Springwood. I photographed it.
Burton’s legless lizard (Lialis burtonis)
Update:
I don’t keep any lizards, legless or otherwise, as pets. If you’re after a legless lizard as a pet, have a look at this listing of reptiles for sale in Australia. Legless lizards are uncommon in captivity in Australia. Burton’s legless lizards only eat other lizards, which makes them a bit tricky to keep as a pet.
It’s illegal to take reptiles from the wild and keep them as pets.
Update: 12 March 2008
This page is one of the most popular posts on my blog. It’s the number 1 result from Google for the words “Burton’s legless lizard”. Below are some more Burton’s legless lizards I’ve seen since first writing this post.
Burton’s legless lizard found on Rottnest island.
Burton’s legless lizard found near Springbrook, Qld.
Burton’s legless lizard found near Moranbah, Qld.
Burton’s legless lizard found in the Simpson Desert.
Burton’s legless lizard found in the Simpson Desert.
Burton’s legless lizard from the Pilbara in Western Australia
September 14th, 2006 at 7:44 pm
do u have any idea how to look after that breed of lizard?
October 16th, 2006 at 4:34 pm
were do you keep him/her?
What do you feed it?
Do you no if it’s a girl or boy?
October 17th, 2006 at 11:18 am
Burton’s legless lizards feed exclusively on other lizards, mainly skinks and geckoes. If you want to keep them in captivity, you need to make sure you have access to a good (and legal) supply of small lizards.
I don’t keep that particular specimen as a pet. As the post says, I found it in a park in Springwood, and that’s where I left it.
Stewart
October 18th, 2006 at 1:18 pm
I own an Burton’s leggless and he loves to eat cockoroaches and crickets.
i also breed up little skinks and insects to feed my legless.
1 question do you breed your skinks up or do you catch them?
October 18th, 2006 at 2:20 pm
Hi cloe’/linda/michelle,
I’m not sure if you’re joking around or not. As I’ve stated above, I don’t have any Burton’s legless lizards.
What skinks do you breed for your Burton’s? Are you in the NT?
Stewart
October 18th, 2006 at 4:57 pm
I am not joking around i love reptiles i have heaps of them i even have two crocodiles of my own and there salt water.
shaded-litter rainbow-skink is the breed of skink i feed my lizard.
Oh yes i’m in the N.T and Cloe’ is my sister we shear the same e-mail address and whos michelle? ’cause thats Cloe’ middle name.
October 18th, 2006 at 5:06 pm
Hello Stewart my name chloe i live in the out back and my dream is to become a famous herbatoigest.
my family and i own lots of reptiles i i’m am very exitred to here that you are a herbatoligest.
I also would like so infomaition on the burton’s legless lizard as i’m doing a report on them.
October 18th, 2006 at 5:14 pm
So what reptiles do you have? Do you guys have any pics of them? How old are you both?
Chloe, this looks like it may be useful for your report:
http://www.jcu.edu.au/school/tbiol/zoology/herp/Lialisburtonis.PDF
Stewart
October 19th, 2006 at 4:59 pm
Thanks Stewart the info you gave me is ganna be very helpful.
my age is twelve.
October 19th, 2006 at 5:01 pm
I’m 13 and my sister is 11.
we have 12 snakes, 3 montiors, 15 blue tounges, 2 crocs and 3 legless.
October 20th, 2006 at 12:35 pm
If you can could you get some complecated diagrames and scientific pictures of the burton’s legless for my report.
October 20th, 2006 at 2:56 pm
Just a redome question do you have any info on green turtles
’cause i’m doing a report on them and my good friend chloe said you wear alsome with infomation.
October 20th, 2006 at 3:09 pm
Hi Ellen,
This might be helpful:
http://www.deh.gov.au/biodiversity/threatened/publications/pubs/tsd06green-turtle.pdf
I just did a Google search to find that page.
Chloe, unfortunately I don’t have any complicated diagrams or scientific pictures of Burton’s legless lizards.
Stewart
October 20th, 2006 at 4:32 pm
That’s alright but thants any way.
October 20th, 2006 at 4:35 pm
Thank you so much it will really help with my report.
October 23rd, 2006 at 1:28 pm
hey stewart
the information reall helped me chloe was right u r good
from Ellen
October 23rd, 2006 at 1:50 pm
Hi Ellen,
Glad to hear!
Stewart
October 23rd, 2006 at 4:02 pm
hay Stewart have you got any maps on were the Burton’s legless live and any picture
of them mating and there bone stracture.
October 23rd, 2006 at 9:49 pm
Hi Chloe,
Have you looked for these things yourself? I did a quick search and found this distribution map. I don’t have any pics of them mating or of their skeletons.
Stewart
October 24th, 2006 at 1:48 pm
Thanks i looked every were and could not find one any were.
Thanks agian your the best.
chloe
October 25th, 2006 at 4:04 pm
Ha stewart just woundering why do you ask for peoples e-mails but you just don’t e-mail them ’cause i thought you were going to e-mail me?
by the way your still the best.
Chloe
October 25th, 2006 at 4:27 pm
Chloe,
You need to enter an email address when you submit a comment on my site to make sure that you’re a person, and not an evil, spam-delivering robot.
Stewart
October 25th, 2006 at 5:01 pm
ok and have any evil spam-delivering robots tried to write on your site?
do you get the email addresses any way? if you do please email me.
October 25th, 2006 at 6:07 pm
Hi Chloe,
Your email address doesn’t work.
Stewart
October 27th, 2006 at 2:39 pm
ok um here have my other email address its
chloebg_94@horsemail.com
so that should work.
November 24th, 2006 at 9:05 pm
Hay Stewart,
I got my report resoults and i self evaluated it 16……….
And guest i got 20/20.
thanks to your help.
it looed great. any way if you need help cause you are having trouble with some thing you couldc ask me if you like i’m realy good at snakes and crocs and my dad works at a crocodile farm.
thanks again your great!!!
Chloe
December 9th, 2006 at 7:17 am
Hi Chloe,
Congratulations on getting full marks! I saw another Burton’s legless lizard the other day. I got lots of photos of it that I’ll post later.
Stewart
December 31st, 2006 at 7:32 am
Hi Stewart,
Have just found a Lialis burtonis in my garden waiting to warm up after the rain from the night before. I have taken some great shots but did not disturb the little creature. If your interested in seeing them simply email me a reply.
I live in Gladstone QLD and searched the net and was very pleased to find your site. My garden is relatively reptile friendly and I seem to have a collection of tree snakes so Im not sure how long the lizard will be around for. Anyway was exciting to find out what the creature finally was.
October 4th, 2007 at 11:45 am
Hi Stewart,
It was very ammusing reading your assignment assistance. Great job in helping out the students. I just discovered a Burton’s legless lizard on the mine site that i work at in North Queensland. I know that in SA legless lizards are very rare. How rare is the Burton’s Legless in Queensland?
October 4th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Hi Ian,
Burton’s legless lizards are very widespread and common in Queensland. In fact, I just found another one last night. Do you get many other critters on your mine site?
Stewart
February 17th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Hi,
we just saw a burtons legless lizard at 1770…near Gladstone. I took a photo and have found your site which has given me some great info about what we saw. Thanks
Denise
March 16th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
We just found a Burton’s Legelss in the garden this afternoon- about 75 km NW of Toowoomba. We let it go.
The hard part was identifying it- there’s no easy aussie snake identifier website oor flowchart!
May 22nd, 2008 at 7:11 pm
madskey i want one
July 16th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
i live in cooktown and i recently found a burtons lizard in my driveway as its a juvenile and i have a large number of wild and tame snakes on my property ive decided to try and keep him or her,so a few questions. How big will it grow?How do i sex it?Are they easy too keep in captivity?How often should i feed her and on what?how much sun do they need or should it have a hot rock?Do they shed and how often and is there any way to tell their age. Any answers or additional information would be much appreciated, thankyou BRETT
July 29th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
I photographed two Burton’s legless lizards on a dirt road near Cooktown in Far North Queensland. They were fleeing from a bushfire and sat quite still in the road while I snapped them.
Lots of their dead brethren were scattered along the way too.
I wasn’t sure it was a Burton’s until I saw your site, so thanks
August 11th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
it looks like a nice site, but it would better with multi language support, for example spanish.. but thanks..
August 11th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Hi ingiltere,
Thanks for the comment. It would be great if my site was available in Spanish. Unfortunately, no hablo Espanol.
Stewart
August 18th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
I came across a Burtons LL on the path near Flynn’s Beach, Port Macquarie on saturday 16/8/2008, most thought it was a brown snake, I tapped it with a bit of branch and it reluctantly slid back into the undergrowth, I fear the others may not treat it sympathetically if it continues to sun itself there regularly
it was about 45CM long and a lovely tan colour
August 20th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
high i am in melbourne and wish to puchase legless lizard pair to breed and study and habits can any one help in the legal purchase of them thanks tazie101@yahoo.com regards to all keith
September 10th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
hello, i jsut want to commend you on your fantastic effort to DISCOURAGE people from taking wildlife from the wild this is infact highly illegal and comes with huge fines and in some cases jail time so yes it is very importnant to remeber that becuase its in your back garden doesnt make it “yours”- i work in an aquarium and find it very frusturating when uneducated or just people who dont care about wildlife conservation keep or try and sell wildlife stolen from the wild if you are after a wild licence please contact the department of sustainability and environment and fill in a basic (or advanced) wildlife licence form its inexpensive easy and will save you a lota trouble in the long run! local aqauriums or breeders have reptiles for sale that have been legally bred from captive held specimens : ) thanks again! very happy to see someone who knows what there talking bout
December 17th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Great blog, on a very interesting, but not widely known reptile. Well done.
I have seen a few around Brisbane, and this morning i found one that had been stomped on, along a walking track
It looked identical to the one pictured at ‘Rottnest Island’ though found here in Brisbane?
Btw, Why do people ask silly questions?
Maybe they just look at the pictures?
January 9th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Hi
Great site * sorry if I am asking a stupid question but I couldnt find a list of identifiers for this lizard? I found ’something’ in the skimmer basket of my pool today & it looks like it has been there for a good few days so it looks a bit worse for wear & we cant tell if it is a legless lizard or maybe a baby brown. Do you have any suggestions? We are on the Gold Coast.
Thanks
March 2nd, 2009 at 10:02 am
Hi,
It’s cool this blog has been going on for so many years. I just found what I assume is a legless lizard in Brisbane. It sort of looked like a skink, maybe 150mm in length. It did have 4 of the tiniest little legs i’ve ever seen! It couldn’t use them as they were really only little, and if you looked really close you could see 3 little craws on each hand. It had a blue coloured tail too, but it was definately not a blue-tongue or a skink.
Any ideas what it might be? I took a couple photos, but i’m not sure if I can upload them on this site.
April 4th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Hi,
I found the same thing at Frazer Island. It was an interesting creature. I got some snaps of it also. Let me know if u want me to send you some pix.
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June 2nd, 2009 at 9:24 pm
Hello babes, I am really facinated by the legless lizard. I actually keep 3 in my aquarium. I have a rare African one with a red spotting over his belly. They truely are slippery little fellas when you try picking them up! btw, thanks for the pics Jimbo. I like the marco pic with the tongue hanging out.
Peace-out!
August 31st, 2009 at 7:31 am
We were re-doing our front rockery yesterday and found a dear little legless – he/she was about 13 cms long. Unfortunately during the course of the excavation his/her mate was accidently decapitated. Haven’t seen one of these since I was a kid (long long time ago).
December 6th, 2009 at 9:30 am
Like mentioned before, it is great to see how long this link has been running! We live just north of Mackay Qld, and find the LL fairly regularly in the garden etc. Our young boys just love them and are always wanting to keep them! It does take a bit of convincing that they are better off in the garden and that they can stay safer outside, especially considering we have 4 cats!! Thanks for the information contained here and keep up the good work!