Many animals dig burrows underground to lay eggs, but the yellow-spotted goanna in Australia took it to the next level: it dug a helical burrow 13 feet below the surface to lay its eggs.
Herpetologist Sean Doody of the University of South Florida told Ed Yong of The Atlantic why the lizard went through all that trouble to bury its eggs so deep underground:
A few animals also dig (or dug) helical burrows, including scorpions, pocket gophers, an extinct beaver called Palaeocastor, and a mammal-like reptile called Diictodon that lived 255 million years ago. But the yellow-spotted goanna’s nests are deeper than those of all these creatures—extending as far as 13 feet below the surface. “That’s a ridiculous depth,” Doody told [Yong]. He thinks that the yellow-spotted goanna faces a unique challenge. Its large eggs need to incubate for 8 months before hatching—a period that takes them through Australia’s brutal dry season, when several months might go by without any rain. At shallow depths, the eggs would cook and desiccate. Only in deeper soil, which is cooler and wetter, can they survive.
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Image: Sean Doody