Spade-Headed Wormlizards: Trogonophidae

Most of the spade-headed wormlizards eat termites, grubs, and ants. Grubs are actually young beetles, which are also known as beetle larvae (LAR-vee). When the grubs are old enough, they go through another life stage called pupae (PYU-pee) and then turn into the adult crawling beetles familiar to most people. Wormlizards in captivity will also eat larger animals by biting off chunks and chewing them up. Scientists are unsure if they eat larger animals in the wild because they have never seen a wild wormlizard eating a larger animal. On the rare occasions when they have been able to catch and cut open a wild wormlizard to check its stomach and see what it had been eating, scientists have not found pieces of large animals inside. Until more studies on wormlizards are done, scientists cannot say for sure whether they eat larger animals in the wild.