Reptile
Cold-blooded vertebrates protected by keratin scales or scutes, laying shelled eggs or bearing live young.
Green Sea Turtle
The only sea turtle that is mainly a plant-eater, with a map in its head that is at least partly magnetic.
Indian Star Tortoise
Thorn-scrub grazer wearing a starburst camouflage shell, and one of the world's most heavily traded tortoises.
Inland Taipan
Rated the most toxic venom of any snake in lab tests on mice, carried by a shy snake whose handful of known bite victims all survived.
King Cobra
Up to eighteen feet of hooded crown, growling acoustic hiss, and specialized predator of other snakes.
Komodo Dragon
The largest living lizard, armored in bone and equipped with iron-coated serrated teeth and anticoagulant venom.
Leatherback Sea Turtle
The only sea turtle with no hard shell, and big enough to keep its core warm in near-freezing seas.
Leopard Gecko
A desert gecko with movable eyelids, no sticky toe pads, and a dropped tail that keeps moving for up to 30 minutes.
Marine Iguana
The only lizard in the world that forages in the ocean, grazing algae underwater and sneezing out the salt.
Nile Crocodile
An armored crocodile whose skin is more touch-sensitive than a primate's fingertips.
Panther Chameleon
The Madagascar color-shifter that retunes a lattice of skin nanocrystals within a couple of minutes, swivels its eyes through a 360-degree arc, and fires a hyoid-launched tongue up to twice its body length.
Paradise Flying Snake
The tree-dwelling serpent that splays its ribs and flattens its body into a triangular lifting surface when it glides.
Red-Eared Slider
Whether a slider hatches male or female depends on how warm its nest was.
Reticulated Python
The longest python, up to 33 feet of snake with black X's running down its back in a diamond-like pattern.
Russell's Viper
A South Asian viper whose venom varies across India, enough that one antivenom did poorly against snakes from the semi-arid north in mouse tests.
Saltwater Crocodile
Up to 23-foot apex archosaur, and the species behind the highest bite force measured in any animal: 3,689 pounds.
Satanic Leaf-Tailed Gecko
Dead-leaf camouflage down to the fake decay and missing pieces, horn-like brow scales, and a loud, red-mouthed bluff when confronted.
South American Bushmaster
The longest of all vipers, able to aim a strike in the dark by body heat alone, from the only pit vipers in the Americas that lay eggs.
Texas Horned Lizard
The armored desert lizard that turns its own eyes into blood-squirting weapons against predators.
Thorny Devil
Capillary skin channels that pull water from a puddle to its mouth, a spiny false head decoy, and big spines with no bone inside them.
Timber Rattlesnake
The big eastern pit viper that senses heat, waits in ambush and rattles a warning first.
Tuatara
The sole survivor of an ancient reptile order: a nocturnal New Zealand islander with a light-sensitive third eye it does not see with, and a sliding jaw that makes a shearing bite.
Veiled Chameleon
A tongue that can shoot to full length in 26 milliseconds, eyes that look two ways at once, and a casque that collects water.
Western Diamondback Rattlesnake
A desert pit viper with a heat-sensing pit on each side of its head. In one study, fasting snakes lost 30% of their body mass over 168 days.