Mountain Horned Dragon

The mountain horned dragon is a medium-sized arboreal agama with a conspicuous spine behind each eye and strongly developed nuchal and dorsal crests. Vietnamese measurements give a snout–vent length of roughly 94–138 mm and a tail of about 138–182 mm. Compared with the crowned spiny lizard, its dorsal spines and nuchal crest are much more pronounced; males are slimmer and more tapered than broader-bodied females (Vietnam National Biodiversity Database; Wikipedia).

It occurs in eastern Cambodia and southern Vietnam, including scattered localities in Khanh Hoa, Lam Dong and Dong Nai. This diurnal sit-and-wait predator lives mainly on vegetation in lowland and mid-hill evergreen forest, including some secondary forest, but not deforested ground. It feeds on large insects and small lizards, watching from a perch before striking prey with its extensible tongue, and is encountered more often during the rainy season (IUCN habitat account; Vietnam National Biodiversity Database).