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A Guatemalan beaded lizard with bumpy black and yellow banded skin climbing a tree trunk.
Photo: Angeldeleon7, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Guatemalan Beaded Lizard

Heloderma charlesbogerti

An endangered venomous lizard that lives only in one dry valley in eastern Guatemala and helped lead to a diabetes medicine.

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About the Guatemalan Beaded Lizard

Guatemalan beaded lizards live only in the dry upper Motagua Valley of eastern Guatemala, a pocket of desert surrounded by mountains covered in humid forest. Their skin looks beaded because almost every scale has a tiny piece of bone inside. They move slowly, so instead of chasing prey they sniff out and dig up buried nests of eggs, baby birds and young mammals in the spring.[1]

Quick facts

Scientific name
Heloderma charlesbogerti[1]
Lifespan
50 to 60 years.[1]
Diet
Carnivore. Eggs, nestling birds and young mammals dug from nests.[1]
Habitat
Dry scrub and cactus desert.[1]
Where it lives
Only the upper Motagua Valley of eastern Guatemala.[1]
Babies
Eggs laid in a deep burrow in early fall hatch about 250 days later.[1]
Conservation status
Endangered (IUCN Red List, assessed 2021).[2]

Fun facts

  • A hormone from beaded lizards led to a medicine for type 2 diabetes.[1]
  • "Heloderma" means "studded skin" in Latin.[1]
  • Scientists described this species in the mid-1980s, but local people had known it for thousands of years.[1]

Vocabulary

venomous
Able to inject poison by biting or stinging.
osteoderm
A small bony plate inside the skin.
hormone
A chemical messenger in the body that controls how it works.
rain shadow
A dry area on one side of mountains that block rain clouds.
endangered
A conservation label meaning a species faces a very high risk of dying out in the wild.

See it in person

Sources

  1. [1] Zoo Atlanta. “Guatemalan Beaded Lizard.” https://zooatlanta.org/animal/guatemalan-beaded-lizard/ (accessed 2026-10-02)
  2. [2] IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. “Heloderma charlesbogerti (Guatemala Beaded Lizard).” https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/181151381/181151790 (accessed 2026-10-02)

Facts last checked 2026-10-02.

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