Common chuckwalla

Chuckwallas eat leaves, flowers and fruit.

Sometimes they eat a bug.

Chuckwallas are plant eaters. They eat the leaves and fruit of the creosote bush, a common desert shrub, and other desert plants such as browneyes and ragweed. Once in a while they eat an insect.

In the dry desert, they get the water they need from their food. They can also store water in pouches under the folds of skin along their sides.

San Francisco Zoo lists leaves and fruit of creosote bush, browneyes, ragweed and other vegetation, with occasional insects, and notes that chuckwallas obtain their water from their food. Zoo New England describes water stored in lymph sacs beneath the skin folds on the sides of the body, and a tail that enlarges when resources are plentiful. Creosote bush occurs throughout most of the range (IUCN, after Stebbins 2003).

A chuckwalla likes to sit in the sun.

If it is scared, it hides in a crack and puffs up!

Chuckwallas are active by day. They stay close to their shelters, basking in the sun or looking for food, and they can warm up to about 105°F (about 40°C). They live alone except in the breeding season, and they show off with head bobs, push-ups and open mouths to defend their patch.

When a rattlesnake, coyote or hawk comes near, a chuckwalla hides in a crack, fills its lungs and puffs up its skin. Wedged in tight, it is very hard to pull out. In winter it rests in an underground burrow.

Diurnal; solitary outside the breeding season; basks near its burrow and forages by day (San Francisco Zoo); basking body temperatures can reach 105°F; territorial displays include color, head bobbing, push-ups and mouth gaping; brumates underground in winter (Zoo New England). Predators include rattlesnakes, coyotes, kestrels and red-tailed hawks; when threatened it retreats into a crevice or burrow and inflates its lungs and skin to wedge itself in place (San Francisco Zoo; Zoo New England).

There are lots of chuckwallas.

In some places, too many are taken from the wild for pets.

The common chuckwalla is listed as least concern: it lives across a wide area, and there are probably more than 100,000 adults. But in some places, people have collected too many for the pet trade, sometimes breaking rocks to get at them, which also wrecks their hiding places. Damming the Colorado River reduced or wiped out some old populations in the Glen Canyon area of Utah.

Chuckwallas live in several national parks and other protected places.

Hammerson assessed Sauromalus ater as Least Concern (Global; assessed 1 March 2007, published 2007; needs updating): total adult population probably more than 100,000 and area of occupancy apparently stable. Local threats: excessive collecting, including microhabitat destruction when collectors move or break rocks; the easily reached South Mountain subpopulation near Phoenix is in demand in the pet trade; damming of the Colorado River reduced or eliminated historical populations in the Glen Canyon area of Utah; grazing by goats, sheep and burros is a potential threat. Habitat is protected in several US national parks, monuments and wilderness areas and in protected sites in Sonora (IUCN).