Talk:Legless lizard

"independently lost legs

I'm wondering about the word "independently". I presume it means that the leglessness is not the result of one common legless ancestor, but what does it add to the sentence? If all the species (existing and known from fossils) of a genus are legless, have they dependently lost their legs? etc. --Richardson mcphillips (talk) 01:25, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

It means there were multiple losses, typically once per family (though more than once in skinks). This phrasing is the standard scientific way to talk about such convergent evolution, though I agree it could be clearer. Maybe, "Limblessness (and greatly reduced, non-functional limbs) has evolved multiple times in lizards, sometimes several times independently within a single family, as in skinks."? HCA (talk) 02:10, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Body and tail

... snakes have a long body and short tail.

But - being an amateur, and without seeing the skeleton - how (from just watching) does one know where the body ends and the tail begins? 2003:CE:BF04:2AB4:540A:6A2A:394C:A396 (talk) 11:17, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

From where the cloaca is. Everything below that is the tail. JorikThePooh (talk) 23:06, 6 April 2024 (UTC)