Our feature OKI Wanna Know is your chance to get an answer to the question that's been buzzing around your head for a while. This week, we return to the field with an animal that's familiar to many. Here's WVXU's Bill Rinehart.
There are some subjects that come up where you might think "oh, everyone already knows that." But, not everyone does.
Like Robert Nussbaum, who moved to Union Township from Columbus.
"I wanna know about the geckos that are around the Downtown Cincinnati area, and then also if they're native to Cincinnati and if not, how did they get here?" he asks. "I thought maybe they're just trying to save us money on car insurance and I should be talking to them more."
The Cincinnati Zoo's Director of Education, was so helpful with our previous segment on vultures, we held him over for this question.
Dan Marsh says they're not native.
"They were brought to Cincinnati by children in the Lazarus family that were coming back from a vacation and it appears that one of the boys in the family, as boys and girls will do, they caught a bunch of lizards and put them into one of their socks," he says. "And then brought back to the United States, and then they were released in the Clifton area and there's an established population here now."
So, they're often referred to as Lazarus lizards. And Marsh adds they're not geckos.
"They're European wall lizards, so they're more like skinks," though there are some clear differences with those lizards too, he says. "Their morphology is very different than skinks. Skinks are very smooth scaled and if you just sort of imagine they didn't have legs, they're kind of snake like."
Wall lizards, or Podarcis muralis, are more scaly. Both species can drop their tail to distract a predator.
"So the cool thing about these guys, when they arrived in Cincinnati, the genetic studies that have been done, show that it appears only three individuals reproduced from that group of ten that were released," he says. "So, it's a very small gene pool that has created the population here in Cincinnati."
And it's not just Cincinnati. Lazarus lizards can be found in several places in Hamilton County, Boone, Campbell and Kenton counties in Northern Kentucky, and Dearborn and Ohio counties in Indiana.
The Indiana Department of Natural Resources says some were found in Clark County, across the river from Louisville in 2004. Though it's not clear if they were introduced, or hitched a ride on river debris. The DNR started an eradication program, and wall lizards haven't been seen there since.
The State of Missouri is trying to contain a close cousin to the Lazarus lizard. Some Podarcis siculus escaped from a private collector in Joplin in 2001.
But in Ohio, Lazarus lizards are not considered to be invasive. Marsh says they don't appear to have a negative impact, but, Ohio's DNR warns against catching or transporting them.
"They are preyed upon by creatures here in Cincinnati. An interesting thing is our red-shouldered hawk population has increased pretty dramatically over the past 30 years," he says. "I have seen, here at the zoo, red-shouldered hawks flying by with a Lazarus lizard in their talons. I'm sure other creatures eat them as well, opportunistically."
Sara Bedinghaus of Mount Airy is familiar with the lizards, but still has a question.
"I am curious how the Lazarus lizards survive the winter since they are cold-blooded and not from here originally, it seems like they would freeze when the temperature drops," she says. "The only theory I can think of is that where ever they come from has a similar climate."
And that is a good theory.
As Dan Marsh said, the lizards are from northern Italy...
"Which can be quite cold," he says. "The reason why they've survived here in Cincinnati is that we have lots of hand-laid rock walls with no mortar between the stones. And that creates kind of the perfect opportunity for those Lazarus lizards to go into those interstitial spaces between the rocks and back into the ground behind that."
Marsh says remember, the real name is the European wall lizard, and they came from a place where a lot of rock walls were built without mortar.
He says there, and anywhere else where they can get beneath the frost line is appealing. There, they can slow their metabolism and wait for warmer days.
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