This one from abc news
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems...1/s1508747.htm
Australia's lizards are venomous too
By ABC Science Online's Jacquie van Santen
Australia is not only home to venomous snakes, spiders and jellyfish, now scientists have discovered that its lizards are venomous too.
For instance little bearded dragon lizards that cruise around the suburbs have classic rattlesnake venom, scientists report in the journal Nature.
But the venom is not dangerous to humans, Dr Bryan Fry from the University of Melbourne's Australian Venom Research Unit says, who led the international research team.
The lizards do not produce enough venom and what little they do is used to kill prey.
Dr Fry spent months in the Australian desert and tropics capturing, studying and milking dozens of lizards.
He and his colleagues then studied their toxins, DNA and evolution.
The researchers discovered that two common lizard lineages found in Australia, monitor lizards and iguania, have mouth glands that secrete venom toxins.
This was surprising as until now scientists had only found two lizard species around the world that produced venom, the gila monster and the Mexican beaded lizard.
Scientists had thought venom was mainly associated with snakes; about 2,500 out of the 3,000 snake species around the world are venomous.
Dr Fry says he had long questioned the common belief that it was a nasty bacteria that caused rapid swelling and prolonged bleeding after a lizard bite.
"This never sat right with me because [the symptoms] happened far too quickly for it to be a bacteria," he said.
"So it got me thinking ... and once we started to have a look it turned out that the monitors actually had venom, and it was very similar to the venom you get in the gila monster and beaded lizard that you find in the Mexican and southern US deserts."
But Dr Fry stresses that the venom carried by the lizards is only to capture prey.
"Just because they're carrying small amounts of rattlesnake toxins doesn't mean they're going to be dangerous to humans," he said.
"And while the monitor lizards has much better developed glands and are more venomous, they are not dangerous to humans either.
"If you were a five or 10 gram mouse it would be different, but the venom from a monitor lizard is not going to kill a human being."
The similarity of the venom used by both snakes and lizards also suggests that snakes and lizards are much more closely related than people think, the scientists say.
They say that snakes evolved from relatively advanced lizards, rather than having evolved separately.
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