Animals with limbs have short for team broke columns, and they walk just like you know, your dog or turtle walks.

And there's various things that they can do, the little adhesive pads on their toes and things like that.

Basically, they move through the world like anything that has four lives.

The movement is kind of that.

That's right.

And if you think about their their vertebral column, this turning as they walk.

So I'm doing this thing a side to side thing.

The thing about limbless lizards is not that they'd lose their limbs so much as the vertebral column gets longer and longer.

So the wheelbase gets longer and you get that fleck shirt, then becomes multiple.

And so, at that point, there in its scent, swimming to their environment.

And that's the point that you can start to lose your limbs.

I'm in Mexico's Baja peninsula and nearing the southern end of Highway number one, which has brought me into the heart of moral visit country on here in the past, I've got an appointment with two herpetologists with a passion for this most peculiar Mexican lizard.

Their favorite location for finding them might not be the most picturesque.

Take me to a ll.

The best sites don't butt in this show.

We tell it how it is very often nature.

Where there's dust, there are diamonds still no worm lizards.

But we've got plenty more derelict building sites that victor and car insist are crawling with them.

Well, there's a little is it too little?

Get little house.

Who's that?

Oh, don't be out.

I did.

I was looking for While I'm playing with dolls at the other end of the lot, Carl has struck gold.

Go on.

After traveling thousands of miles, I may just have reached the Eldorado of her.

You got one?

You keep away.

How cool is that?

Oh, my goodness.

May on.

It's freezing cold as well.

Look, look at that.

And if you're not blown away by this amazing beast, then frankly, I think you need your head examined.

That is the most peculiar thing.

It's like a little piece of intestine little legs on it, with little hands.

Yeah, this site has redeemed itself, having been such an interesting her political experience so far.

It's just unbelievable in the biggest pile of human excrement and waste comes.

Listen, old fella.

There's absolutely nothing like anywhere else in the world.

It's like a worm lizard.

There's retained its legs, so it seems like a sort of an oxymoron.

Really.

There's not enough words in the English language to describe what I'm feeling right now.

Normally you pick up a snake, and if you had a bit of experience picking up snakes, you kind of know what you're letting yourself in for.

You pick up a lizard.

Do you know what a lizard feels like?

What, How lizard moves.

This is like nothing else.

It doesn't move like a snake.

It doesn't move like a lizard doesn't feel like either.

It's half walking.

Half crawling is using a bit of rectilinear motion what we saw the rattlesnake doing the other day as well to show you just how peculiar this animal is.

I want to go back to our two classic if simplified reptile body forms Linde on limitless.

The limb lizard with legs mounted sideways is a blueprint that could be adapted for crawling, climbing or digging.

Snakes and limitless lizards have evolved.

A different stressed.

They propel themselves through signs, soil motion that's waves moving along their body on dhe rectilinear motion dragging themselves along on their belly scales.

At first glance, it appears that the mole is it has adopted these two forms of locomotion together and added, A bit of that has been unearthed.

Worm.

That's how worms move.

It's sort of a Paris style tick motion.

It's sort of just like a worm.

It's got sex, weird segments.

But then the segments don't continual way around the body.

It's got belly scales as well.

That's gonna be one of the weirdest of the We'd surely and I said that a few times in these Siri's but on its tongue, flicking like like like you, like a lot of reptiles don't.

So I'm assuming this guy has a Jacobson's organ, and it tongue flicks in the same way as a zit was all the others.

Now I want to examine how and why it's attained this remarkable shape, But while we're here, there's still time for a little bit more borrowing of our own.

What I love about this right is that this is what I've been doing ever since I was a little boy eight or 10.

All I did was go around and ruin me Mom's rookery by flipping over stones on, I'm glad to say is a skill which has becoming very, very useful.

So if you're a parent, don't be too hard on The kids were doing this because one day they, too, might turn up one of nature's real treasures.

So that's mine.

Oh, man.

So just then, um, just what?

Look at that.

Just while we went off, which is bumbling around the backyard, I flipped over Ferry a fairly normal pics of looking concrete.

Just let me hear flipped it over on this animal was sitting just under the surface.

Obviously assumed it was disturbed.

It started backing up down its borrow.

And then, if you ever tried pulling an earthworm out of his borrow when 2/3 body were already in the ground just like that, I got wide for a moment because it felt like it was gonna break in half.

It's kind of a pile driving animal.

What he's doing is he's getting a purchase with His body is gripping his body, but he's using his incredibly hard, heavily bone head on Dhe his legs to kind of alternate between driving his head, pushing his head through the substrate and sort of scraping away any obstacles with his is highly modified mole like front limbs.

All right, well, that's, uh, he's number two.

Very cool back.

This one you got.

It's time to get a closer look at these animals in action and find out why they've evolved into this remarkable shape on we're better place to do so than Victor's reptile haven, Bella Pan's servant, Teri sticking on there.

So you look peculiar.

You're collecting a number of these animals For what purposes?

Well, one of the things is there's a lot of as, you know, there's a lot of mystery behind this animal.