Crowned Spiny Lizard

The crowned spiny lizard is a cryptically coloured agamid with a low crown-like nuchal crest and spines around the rear of the head. It is less heavily crested than the sympatric mountain horned dragon, an important distinction where their ranges overlap. Males and females differ in colour and proportions, but both blend readily with bark and leaf litter, making motion often easier to notice than pattern (Günther 1861; Ananjeva et al.; Wikipedia).

It inhabits lowland tropical forest in eastern Cambodia and southern Vietnam, with Vietnamese records from Lam Dong and Dong Nai provinces, including Cat Tien National Park. The species is active by day and often remains close to the ground, using camouflage while waiting for small invertebrate prey. When disturbed it can climb trees for safety. Available accounts provide little species-specific reproductive information, so no clutch or incubation figures are inferred here (Wikipedia; Vietnamese agamid reviews).