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Work astatine Boston's Museum of Science isn't ever glamorous. Someone's gotta cleanable the lizard boogers.
In a caller behind-the-scenes video, a depository worker cheerfully shares their acquisition cleaning snot from the solid of Rocky the chuckwalla's enclosure.
The achromatic worldly they are mopping up is nary mean nasal mucus.
When the chukwalla 'goes achoo', it sneezes retired salt. If the ample lizard didn't bash this, it would astir apt dice of dehydration successful the deserts of North America.
The specially salty snot is sometimes nicknamed 'snalt', arsenic it contains potassium and sodium bicarbonate salts that adust arsenic crystals. The taxon is often seen with white residue astir its nostrils, a remnant of an earlier snort.
Without this mucosal mess, the ample lizard mightiness precise good 'overdose' connected salt.
The chukwalla's fare successful the godforsaken consists chiefly of salty plants, and it rarely drinks water. Most of its hydration comes done food.
As such, the carnal has evolved peculiar glands that filter brackish from its body, expelling the excess done the chemoreceptor to forestall dehydration.
Some different lizard taxon with likewise salty diets besides spray snalt, similar marine iguanas successful the Galapagos, which feed connected algae, and mangrove show lizards, which tin really portion saltwater.
But the chuckwalla doesn't unrecorded adjacent the coast. This lizard dwells successful rocky godforsaken habitats similar Death Valley, 1 of the hottest places connected Earth.
Still, the lizard has nary fearfulness of the heat. It hibernates during wintertime and is astir progressive during the day, erstwhile summer temperatures tin scope 49 °C (120 °F).
When threatened by predators, the chuckwalla empties its lungs, flatten its body, and crawls into tiny crevices. By blowing its lungs backmost up, the lizard makes it adjacent intolerable for a predator to propulsion them out.
It mightiness unrecorded successful an utmost place, but the chuckwalla comes highly prepared. Each salty sneeze is simply a blessing… conscionable not for depository caretakers.
