A spiky lizard that can eject a stream of blood from its eyes in defense from predators has started to disappear from backyards over the past couple decades.

Texas Horned Lizards, also known as the “horny toad,” have rapidly depleted in population since the 1960s, as mentioned in the article “Providing Texas Horned Lizards Populations, A Headstart” by Biologist Samuel Eliades, a graduate from the University of Oklahoma with a Ph. D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

From that same article, Eliades reports that once the OKC Zoo partnered with the Sam Noble Museum at the University of Oklahoma and the Tinker Air Force Base (TAFB), he had the ability to help incubate, hatch and release the spiky reptiles in the summer of 2019. 

In order to do so, he received a grant for non-academic projects from the National Science Foundation.

From that grant, he contributed towards a conservation plan of Texas Horned Lizards through the OKC Zoo as they partnered with the Tinker Air Force Base and the Sam Noble Museum.

Lizards are kept on the Tinker Air Force Base, as they prefer open, flat fields for their burrows where the lizards keep eggs safe from predators.

The main issue for their decrease in population is the pet trade during the mid 1900s, where people would catch, sell and keep the lizards as pets.

The other faults of this population issue are excessive use of insecticides, habitat dispersal and the red fire ant population rise by past imports.

The use of insecticide on plants has gone up as the Harvester Ant population—one of the lizards’ main food sources—has gone down.

The devastation of these lizard’s habitats are the result of the new roads being built, crops being planted and cities growing larger, and it has lowered the amount of areas the animal has to thrive in.

Reusing old land without meddling with plants is a start in helping save the population of horned lizards and other animals in general.

Red fire ants are also notorious for invading burrows and eating young lizards when the older lizards are away.

In order for the zoo to start conserving the Texas Horned Lizards, it must keep them safe from all those causes, so eggs are collected off the Tinker Air Force Base and are then brought to the Lizard Lab in the OKC Zoo.

The entirety of the lab is run by Samuel Eliades, and he ensures that the lizards hatch safely for a secure release into new environment

According to Eliades, they currently have fifteen eggs in incubation and ten hatchlings, with their first egg having hatched on Sept. 7, 2021.

Eliades disclosed that he has been studying the lizards by two groups that were released into the Tinker Air Force Base—one group is one year old and the other is two years old.

“We release them in two groups to see how old they must be to survive more effectively. We plan to do it again,” Eliades stated.

Once the lizard reaches a certain growth period, they will introduce it to a closed field in TAFB with trackers, and within this field, the staff will study their movement on the base and the reptile’s gut bacteria’s strength to digest food and fight off infections in comparison to a wild lizard.

Everything the OKC Zoo does to help the texas horned lizards is to help them thrive, so they can be finally released into the wild.

They plan to continue conserving lizards to help guide them to full capacity again in the coming years.

“Studying how these lizards are able to adapt from zoo-life to native habitats is a central part of my graduate work at the University of Oklahoma,” Eliades stated in “Providing Texas Horned Lizards Populations, A Headstart.”

Eliades is determined to help keep the lizard population rising for the upcoming years so that one day, the beloved reptiles will return to families’ backyards for everyone to appreciate as once before.