The lizard that drinks water through its skin
This desert lizard drinks water through its skin — and never has to take a sip.
Which one is REALLY true about the Thorny Devil?
The short version
The thorny devil's skin is covered in microscopic grooves that pull water by capillary action from dew or damp sand all the way to its mouth, so it drinks without sipping — even through its feet. It eats thousands of ants a day and its spikes are mostly a bluff against predators.
You could line up about 6 of them along a 7-year-old!
Why it's so weird
- ✓The Thorny Devil drinks water through its skin without ever using its mouth.
- ✓The Thorny Devil has skin covered in microscopic grooves that pull water in by capillary action.
- ✓The Thorny Devil lets dew or damp sand travel along its grooves all the way to the corners of its mouth.
- ✓The Thorny Devil can even soak up moisture through its feet.
- ✓The Thorny Devil eats almost nothing but ants, snapping up thousands of them a day, one at a time.
The full story
This spiky desert lizard can drink water without ever using its mouth. Meet the thorny devil, a small Australian reptile covered head to tail in sharp, intimidating spikes. But its real superpower is hidden inside its skin. The entire surface is covered in microscopic grooves, a network of tiny channels that pull water in by capillary action. So when dew lands on its back, or it simply stands on damp sand, the water travels along these grooves all the way to the corners of its mouth, where it is swallowed. It can even soak up moisture through its feet. On top of that, it eats almost nothing but ants, snapping up thousands of them a day, one at a time. And those fearsome spikes are mostly a bluff, making it far too prickly for any predator to swallow. Follow for more weird animal facts.
The thorny devil's skin is covered in tiny half-open channels between its scales. When the lizard touches dew, damp sand, or a puddle, these channels act like the spaces between bristles in a paper towel: water clings to the walls and gets pulled along by capillary action (the same force that makes a drink climb up a straw). The channels carry the water across its whole body toward its mouth. Once the channels are full, scientists think rapid jaw movements act like a little pump, squeezing the water in so the lizard can swallow it.
📚 Source: AskNature — Grooves Gather Water (Thorny Devil) ↗Scientists placed tiny measured water droplets on live thorny devils and filmed them with high-speed cameras, watching the water vanish into the skin channels in about one to two seconds, and they weighed the lizards to calculate that each jaw movement takes in roughly 0.7 microliters of water.
📚 Source: Comanns et al. (2016), Cutaneous water collection by a moisture-harvesting lizard, the thorny devil — Journal of Experimental Biology ↗Check what you learned
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“The Thorny Devil drinks water through its skin without ever using its mouth.”
“The Thorny Devil replaces a host's entire tongue and becomes a living, working substitute for it.”
“The Thorny Devil has skin covered in microscopic grooves that pull water in by capillary action.”
Watch the 45-second version
Thorny Devil gallery
