‘Elusive’ creature was last found in hawk’s throat in 1954 — until now. See it
In the skies surrounding Mount Moco, a predator scours the ground for its next meal.
The sharp-taloned dark chanting goshawk soars around Angola’s tallest mountain hoping to find small vertebrates like lizards, snakes, or even other birds.
In 1954, during bird surveys in Huambo Province, researchers captured a dark chanting goshawk at the base of Mount Moco and looked inside the animal, according to a study published April 25 in the peer-reviewed journal Zoosystematics and Evolution.
When researchers reached the bird’s crop, or a pouch-like pocket in the esophagus used to hold extra food before swallowing, they found five small lizards inside, according to the study.
The lizards were identified as Ichnotropis microlepidota, “small and elusive ground-dwelling” lizards found “in the savannas and woodlands south of the Congo River,” researchers said.
They were a species new to science, at the time, and researchers described the lizards in a study published in 1956, according to the study.
The species became known by these five lizards alone, and for the next seven decades the lizards were never found again in the scientific record — until now.
Lizards from the Ichnotropis genus, commonly called rough-scaled lizards, were collected throughout Angola between 2012 and 2021, including around Mount Moco where I. microlepidota had been collected before, according to the study.
Then, in October 2020, researchers found an adult male of the “lost” species.
The lizards are considered “medium-sized” and are about 2.5 inches long, on average, according to the study.
They are light brown with colored bands running down their sides in light and dark contrasts, researchers said. There is a patch of “light orange” scales at the base of their necks.
Their mouth opening is surrounded by black and white scales, appearing like the teeth of a skeleton, photos show.
“I. microlepidota represents a micro-endemic Angolan species only known to occur at Mount Moco, Huambo Province. The (lizards) were found in the crop of a goshawk, which was collected at the base of Mount Moco,” researchers said. “However, the locality may lack precision given that the bird could have captured the lizard elsewhere.”
The new specimen was “found during the day on top of an exposed small rock in open montane grassland habitat, with thick vegetation cover,” researchers said.
Because so few of the lizards have been recorded, they are considered “data deficient” in determining their conservation status, according to the study.
Mount Moco is in western Angola, a country in southwestern Africa along the Atlantic Ocean.
The research team includes Max Benito, Werner Conradie, Pedro Vaz Pinto and Javier Lobón-Rovira.
