The extent of the blue suffusion on a male Xenagama can be easily seen on this breeder male.
When I looked in the terrarium at the dealer’s I could hardly believe my eyes. Soaking up the Florida sunlight in an outside pen were a number of little brownish lizards that lay, basking, their bodies as flat as the proverbial pancakes. And except for a short slender tip, the tail was flattened, rimmed with enlarged spike-shaped scales, and turnip or shield shaped when viewed from above.

This was my introduction to the pudgy little turnip-tailed agama. Collected from the aridlands of Somalia and Ethiopia, this agama, Xenagama taylori, is adult at about 4”. Quietly colored like many desert lizards, they may vary from tan through various browns to terracotta. Dark flecks, spots, or ocelli may be present on the back and sides as might small whitish spots. The various markings are most pronounced on young examples. Some metachrosis occurs with an individual lizard being lighter in color when it is warm than when it is cold. Males displaying territorial tendencies or in breeding readiness develop a suffusion of rich blue on the snout, chin, throat, anterior chest and upper forelimbs. Females in breeding readiness may (but not always do) develop a very pale blue suffusion on the chin and throat.

Females produce about a half dozen eggs in a clutch at the end of a nesting burrow and the hatchlings are about an inch long. Although these lizards may also dig shallow sleeping burrows that are “plugged” by the flattened spiky tail, ours seemed to prefer squirming into loose sand beneath their flattened basking rocks.

Adults are omnivorous, eating a broad array of insects and leafy greens. Hatchlings are primarily insectivorous.

These are not “flighty” or nervous lizards and if you like Uromastyx you should love Xenagama. The latter are not always available, so watch the ads carefully.