Boy Brought Lizards from Italian Vacation and Now Ohio Has a Growing Invasive Reptile Issue
Thousands of common wall lizards, known as Lazarus lizards, are roaming around the Cincinnati streets — and now they're getting bigger in size!
Although the common wall lizards are 'permanent residents' — declared by the Ohio Division of Wildlife — in the city, they aren't native to the U.S. They're an invasive species native to Italy.
In 1951, a then-10-year-old George Rau Jr. and his stepfather, Fred Lazarus Jr. (founder of the Lazarus retail store, later rebranded to Macy's), smuggled 10 Italian lizards from a family trip to Lake Garda. Once back in Ohio, he set the lizards loose in his backyard. In 1989, Rau Jr. confirmed the truth of the local story to the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History and The Cincinnati Enquirer.
Related: Man Attempts to Smuggle Tortoises Disguised as 'Chocolate' Into German Airport
The National Geographic reported in March that Ohio's entire lizard population is believed to have come from three of the 10 original lizards.
Cincinnati has the "perfect lizard habitat," due to its weather and hilly geography. "Cincinnati is extremely hilly, and a lot of the old neighborhoods have stacked-rock retaining walls," Jeffrey Davis, a herpetologist who has been monitoring them since the early 2000s, told National Geographic.
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Related: California Man Accused of Smuggling 1,700 Reptiles into the U.S.
In the 1980s, researcher S.E. Hedeen discovered that the city's climate is "remarkably similar" to Milan, about 70 miles west of Lake Garda. However, with decades in Cincinnati, it is believed that the Lazarus lizards may be evolving to navigate the more urban environment, Eric Gangloff, a biology professor at Ohio Wesleyan University, told National Geographic.
Gangloff and his teams of student researchers have discovered that the lizards are "getting larger and developing longer limbs,' which could be a result of helping them better escape urban predators or house cats.
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