Animals Wildlife Blushing Pink Lizard With Only Two Limbs Is Too Wonderfully Weird (Video) By Melissa Breyer Editorial Director Hunter College F.I.T., State University of New York Cornell University Melissa Breyer is Treehugger’s editorial director. She is a sustainability expert and author whose work has been published by the New York Times and National Geographic, among others. our editorial process Melissa Breyer Updated October 11, 2018 Screen capture. National Geographic Share Twitter Pinterest Email Animals Wildlife Pets Animal Rights Endangered Species The snake-meets-worm legless lizard in hushed shades of rose surprised the scientists who found it. You think you know lizards. And then, this appears out of nowhere: The ol' Mexican mole lizard. Despite its appearance, it is not a worm, and it is not a snake. It is a legless lizard – but since everything about this creature is unusual, it is a legless lizard with legs. Even if they are just two little T-rex grabbers to help it effectively scoot about and dig.. University of California Berkeley graduate student Kaitlyn Kraybill-Voth along with herpetologist Sara Ruane from Rutgers University-Newark were out in Baja California, Mexico, setting traps for a general biodiversity survey. Since this candy-colored cutie – who is 9-inches long, by the way – rarely breaks the surface, the scientists were more than surprised to see it. “It was shocking to see one in this trap, I couldn’t believe it was in there,” says Ruane. Known to the science set as Bipes biporus, the animals belong to the family of amphisbaenians, a group of legless lizards that are more closely related to legged lizards than they are to snakes. martin harms/CC BY 2.0 Of the roughly 200 amphisbaenian species, only three of them have legs – cute little paddle legs meant for digging and getting around. Of which they do remarkably well! See it all in in the video below, taken by Kraybill-Voth, and marvel at what a wonderfully diverse world we live in, a world in which there may be long pink legless lizards taking care of business right below our feet.