Meet the Boyd's forest dragon
With its oversized cheek scales, curved spiny crest and yellow dewlap, Boyd's forest dragon looks like something from a lost world. Yet it is remarkably hard to spot, clinging motionless head-up on a rainforest trunk.
Unlike most dragons it does not bask in the sun. Its body temperature simply tracks the air temperature, and it stays active even in the rain. It is a sit-and-wait predator that drops down to snap up prey, especially earthworms, and moves up into the canopy in cooler months.
When a person approaches, it shuffles around to the far side of the trunk to stay out of sight. Researchers think its ancestors reached Australia from Southeast Asia via a land bridge to New Guinea during an ice age.
William John Macleay described the species in 1884, naming it after collector John Archibald Boyd. It was long placed in the genus Hypsilurus before being moved to Lophosaurus in 2016.
Where it lives
Found only in the rainforests of the Wet Tropics of north Queensland, from just north of Townsville to near Cooktown, in both upland and lowland forest. Often seen around Lake Eacham and Lake Barrine on the Atherton Tableland and at Mossman Gorge.