fan-throated lizard

These fan throated lizards belong to the family agamidae, the same family of the south indian rock agamas, which we came across in an earlier article.

fan-throated lizard, sitana ponticeriana, hyderabad
They are known as fan throated lizards as they have an expandable flap of skin under their throat, known as a dewlap or a gular fan. These lizards expand this dewlap like a fan, for various purposes like warning enemies, courtship, identifying the species, etc. We did not see this one expanding its fan. May be next time!

fan-throated lizard, sitana ponticeriana, hyderabad

fan-throated lizard, sitana ponticeriana, hyderabad

Date: 14 Jun 2007
Location: @ Mrugavani, Hyderabad, India
Camera: Nikon D80 + Tamron SP AF90mm f/2.8 Di Macro Lens

24 Responses

  1. vgxb says:

    Its Just a male lizard thats the way they mate you’ll see it all over florida

  2. swapna says:

    Awsome macro photography. Cheers:)

  3. isnt this what we call “arana” in malayalam?

  4. Ohh, beautiful shots, great lens 😉

  5. Indrani says:

    Those are some gorgeous captures!

  6. Manjunath says:

    As usual another nice picture from the reptile world, i wonder how you will get the exact name and details of those lizards.

  7. sandeep says:

    another set of beautiful pictures from u. especially luved the last one with the thin dof & focus on the eye 🙂

  8. I love the last picture 😀 the smoothness in it is perfectly done 😀

  9. the sharpness is too good! the focusing and the angle of the last image is brilliant!

  10. jignesh trivedi says:

    hey the photos are very good as i have done my M.Sc dessertation work on fan throated lizard and i have presented my work at IISc bangluru. so if you are working on this lizard then we can share our observations

  11. anu says:

    interesting… 🙂

  12. Thomas says:

    Beautiful blog with some cool images of reptiles. I particularly like the images where the subject is incredibly camouflaged. Nice work.

  13. Abhilash says:

    It’s nice to see you after a long break. The lizard looks good as it’s image is captured by you 😉

    I hope I have seen such lizard before but never with its fan open. I will see wherher I get a LIVE experience. If you get those pictures sometimes later, do post them.

    • rocksea says:

      hi abhi, how are you doing? need to check up on your blog updates… thanks for the comment, let me see if i could get some fans in the near future 😀

  14. Wow! what a clean, neat picture! You amaze me with your “wild” “close” shots 🙂 Like Vibuthi says for a change lizards looks beautiful in your picture !!!

  15. Mohan says:

    Great shots once again. I find it really tough to name these animals/birds according to the nomenclature… I wonder how you get to the minute details to share with us.

    • rocksea says:

      Hey mohan, other than quoting my interest on it ;), I would say that there are many email groups (yahoo/google) discussing on the diverse lifeforms you find in India. Sometimes I depend on google scholar too, for scientific information.

  16. Mridula says:

    More amazing pictures from you after the break! Good to see a new post.

  17. Wow…its the first time I’ll be calling a lizard beautiful!!
    Thank God it didn’t fan out like in the video then Id have to change the adjective…hehehhe

    • rocksea says:

      Hehe. I am glad that you liked it. In fact, seeing this lizard for real, we felt that it was so tiny and lovely 🙂 We didn’t even notice it on first sight as it was neatly camouflaged on the rock.

  18. Man, I just googled to see how it will look if it opened its fans, and yaar, see what youtube gave me! You’ve probably seen this.. 🙂

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfPhDH7SQIU

    Just amazing!
    And the tail is almost double the body size, just some creature.

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