Meet the Shingleback
With its armour of big, rough scales and a stumpy tail shaped like its head, the shingleback looks like a walking pinecone. The fat tail is a food store that helps carry it through the cool months, and the matching head and tail may confuse predators about which end is which.
Shinglebacks are mostly solitary, but each spring (September to November) males and females pair up. Long-term studies by Michael Bull and colleagues at Flinders University found that the same partners often reunite year after year, with many partnerships lasting more than a decade. The male trails behind the female as she feeds, keeping watch for danger.
Unusually for a lizard, the shingleback nourishes its embryos through a placenta. Females give birth to just two or three large young between December and April, and each newborn is already about 22 cm long, roughly half the length of an adult.
John Edward Gray described the species in 1825 as Trachydosaurus rugosus. It is now placed with the blue-tongues in Tiliqua, and like them it gapes and flashes a dark blue tongue when threatened.
Where it lives
Widespread across southern and western Australia, from the plains west of the Great Dividing Range through the semi-arid inland to coastal South Australia and Western Australia. Four subspecies are recognised, including one confined to Rottnest Island.