A Snout of Significance

A Snout of Significance

Along the northwestern slopes of the Ecuadorian Andes lives a little lizard with a striking silhouette. Males of the species Anolis proboscis—called the Pinocchio lizard, among other common names—sport long, nose-like proboscises off the tips of their snouts. Such appendages are rare on reptiles, and the Pinocchio may be the only species that wriggles out of its egg with its “horn” already developed. By the time a male is fully grown to about th…