Nat Geo says Cincinnati's lizards, smuggled in by a 10-year-old boy, are 'getting larger'
As the weather warms, you might find a few scaly friends running around Cincinnati.
For more than 70 years, thousands of common wall lizards, known as Lazarus lizards, have scurried across sidewalks and lurked in your garden. They're all over Cincinnati, but the reptiles aren't from here. They're an invasive species and native to Europe.
So how did they end up in the Midwest? It's all thanks to a 10-year-old boy from Walnut Hills and a sock full of lizards.
In 1951, George Rau Jr. and his stepfather, Fred Lazarus Jr. (who founded the retail chain Lazarus, which would later become Macy's), smuggled 10 Italian lizards home from a family trip in Lake Garda and set them loose in his backyard.
Many pass off the origin story as local lore, but in 1989, when Rau Jr. was an adult, he wrote to the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History explaining his role in the eventual lizard population boom. That same year, he also told The Enquirer he smuggled the lizards through customs and brought them back to his East Side home.
Last month, the Queen City's long and unique history with Lazarus lizards was highlighted by National Geographic. In the article, National Geographic stated Cincinnati has the "perfect lizard habitat," adding the city's hilly geography and weather as a contributing factor for the lizards becoming "permanent residents," as declared by the Ohio Division of Wildlife.
"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.
Davis said many of those walls have no mortar or cement between the rocks, which "makes a zillion little nooks and crannies and crevices that the lizards can dart into, and it also gives them access to the underground," where they go in the winter.
In the 1980s, researcher S.E. Hedeen found that Cincinnati's climate is "remarkably similar" to Milan, which is about 70 miles west of Lake Garda, where the lizards originated.
National Geographic also reported that Ohio's entire lizard population is believed to have come from three of the 10 original lizards.
Eric Gangloff, a biology professor at Ohio Wesleyan University, told National Geographic that although Cincinnati isn't "traditionally thought of as lizardy," it has proven to be a haven for Lazarus lizards. Gangloff, who spent five years studying the lizards in Cincinnati, believes they may be evolving to better navigate the urban world.
Gangloff oversees a team of student researchers dubbed the "Lizard League," who study reptiles in a lab and test how they respond to different environmental conditions. So far, the team has found that the lizards are "getting larger and developing longer limbs." National Geographic said this could be an evolutionary result to help them better escape house cats and other urban predators.
During their experiments, the team has also found that despite their "prolonged exposure to heavy metals in the city, the lizards seem unaffected," per National Geographic.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Cincinnati's unique lizards are 'getting larger,' Nat Geo says
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