Head to head
Girdled Lizard vs Plated Lizard
A girdled lizard and a plated lizard can look remarkably similar at a glance, both covered in neat rows of bony-reinforced scales, but the resemblance is a coincidence of evolution rather than a sign that the two families are closely related.
| Girdled Lizard | Plated Lizard | |
|---|---|---|
| Family | Cordylidae | Gerrhosauridae |
| Range | Southern Africa | Sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar |
| Primary defence | Wedging into rock crevices, spines | Speed, fleeing to cover |
| Signature species trait | Armadillo girdled lizard's tail-biting ring | No comparably extreme single-species trait |
| Lateral skin fold | Present in many species | Present in many species |
| Habitat | Rocky outcrops, semi-arid scrub | Savanna, grassland, rocky habitat |
| Reproduction | Mostly live-bearing | Egg-laying and live-bearing species |
| Evolutionary relationship | Distantly related to plated lizards | Distantly related to girdled lizards |
Girdled Lizard vs Plated Lizard: common questions
Why do girdled lizards and plated lizards look so similar if they are not closely related?
Both families evolved in overlapping parts of Africa facing broadly similar ecological pressures, including predation risk and, in many species, a need for a body plan able to expand for large meals or eggs, and independently arrived at a very similar solution, rows of bony-reinforced plated scales. This pattern, in which unrelated species evolve similar traits in response to similar environmental pressures rather than shared ancestry, is called convergent evolution, and the resemblance between these two African lizard families is considered one of its clearer examples among reptiles.
Which family relies more heavily on its armour for defence?
Girdled lizards generally lean more heavily on their armour as an active defensive tool, wedging tightly into narrow rock crevices where their spiny, bony-plated scales make them difficult to extract, and in the case of the armadillo girdled lizard, curling into a fully armoured ring as a dramatic last resort. Plated lizards more typically rely on speed and quickly retreating to cover when threatened, treating their armour as more of a secondary, passive backup rather than their primary means of avoiding predation.
Do girdled lizards and plated lizards ever live in the same places?
Their ranges do overlap to some degree within parts of southern Africa, since plated lizards are found across a considerably broader area of sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar while girdled lizards are more narrowly concentrated in southern Africa specifically, so it is entirely possible for both families to occur in the same general region. Even where they overlap, however, differences in specific microhabitat preference, such as girdled lizards' stronger tie to narrow rock crevices, generally keep the two families from directly competing for exactly the same resources.