Why did lizard die

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In India sometimes I see lizards inside the room comming from outside the window. I don't know if lizard is the right word for it -- when i google it, it seems like the lizards shown on the internet are a lot bigger than the ones i see in my room. But still I will stick to this word since I don't know how else to call them.

Anyway, I share a bathroom with two more people living in the hostel of the Institute I am working at, and I saw a lizard there. I didn't want anyone to kill that lizard, so I took it inside my room. Since sometimes people come to clean my room, I put the lizard inside the closed area of my table. That way when I go away for the day I know the lizard won't get out of there and get killed.

Anyway, when I came, sure enough, the lizard was where I put it. But it was nearly dead. I am not sure if it was actually dead or not. It was lying on its back and not moving. But when I turned on the light and was desperately doing things to get it to move, like rolling it around in my hand and sticking pieces of food in front of it, probably after 20 minutes i noticed its hands making very small jerks and also its mouth jaws moving slightly. But I am not sure if it was genuine or if it was just because I kept moving it which "mechanically" caused things to shake (I know, for example, chickens would keep running few seconds after their heads are cut off by the slaughterer).

Anyway, I figured that home is not a place for lizards to live in, so I decided to let it go "just in case" it is not too late. Unfortunately it was late at night, so I had to wait till the morning, and now its morning and I went and placed it on a grass somewhere, hoping it would revive.

Anyway, what do you think killed that lizard? Was it lack of light inside the drawer I stuck it into? Or was it lack of food? Or is it simply that lizards are supposed to live only for a short period of time? I know butterfiles live for only few days. But I don't know about lizards. How long do lizards normally live?

How long did you have the Lizard in your drawer?

I wouldn't expect it to die after a few hours as long as there was enough air. Generally speaking, you shouldn't try to keep wild lizards, or any lizard, without the proper environment to house them in. The types of environments lizards need vary from species to species.

Reptiles are not capable of creating internal heat and likewise cannot maintain their temperature internally (cold blooded organism...). It might have been too hot inside of the drawer, or too cold. Or there might not have been enough air for it to breath- it might have used up most of the oxygen and gotten carbon dioxide poisoning. I had a lizard for years, and you need to give them a warm place (I had a heating pad under the aquarium and a heating lamp, and for night time an ultraviolet heating lamp so it wasn't bright and kept me awake) and also a small artificial cave where he could get shade and cool off. It also needs to drink... but you are in India so I imagine the reptiles there are more adapted to going without water for longer periods. So it could have been any of those factors.

I placed lizard into the drawer around 10 AM, and then I came back and found it (either nearly or totally) dead at midnight, same day. So that would be 14 hours. Then I took lizard out of the drawer and kept it inside my room for the night, and then 10 AM next morning I put it outside into the grass. So it is total 14+10=24 hours.

Okay, the shape of the drawer was 10cmX30cmX40cm. The size of a lizard was probably 1 cm length and 0.1cm thin. How can such a small lizard get all the air out of such a large drawer? Or are you talking about more "mild" stuff such as it is not healthy for humans to be in a room all day long either because of that same lack of air? Are you basically saying that because lizards are not used to be in a house, the same thing that makes humans "slightly tired" would actually kill a lizard?

I have answers!! ! YAY I probably know this!

One of my obsessions is reptiles...... Lizards, snakes, and turtles.

My first assumption is the lizard simply dehydrated-- a lack of water. Since it's cold blooded, it's metabolism is relatively slow and they can easily go a few days without food. Unless it was already close to starvation before you found it, that would not be the case. Unless the drawer you put the lizard in was EXCESSIVELY hot it did not die due to temperature. If it got too cold, it would have become sluggish, but I doubt that your room would get cold enough to cause death (lizards are cold-blooded). Also in regards to the cold-blooded nature of lizards and their slow metabolism, they consume oxygen at a slower rate than warm-blooded animals do. I've seen lizards survive an excess of 6 hours in an air-tight coffee can.
As I am not familiar with the biodiversity of the wildlife in your country, it is possible that your creature MIGHT not be a reptile, it COULD be an amphibian-- a newt or salamander. Reptiles have scales while amphibians have skin. If it was an amphibian, it probably dried out and died due to asphyxiation-- they can not breathe if their skin dries out.

I hope this helps!

I beat my lizard almost nightly and it still hasn't died. It does get sore though.

(Thread moved from General Autism Discussion to Random)

Lack of light? Photosynthesises?

Animals can't do that- just plants.
There's no wonder it died!

Why do you beat your lizard

^ I don't think you want to know!

He isn't speaking about a reptile.

No, that was just one suggestion I had. As I mentioned, they are not capable of managing internal temperature. Most of a reptile's life cycle (outside of hunting and reproduction) involves moving from cool places to warm places. ie 'Basking in the sun'. Someone else also mentioned that it could have been an amphibian- did it have scales or skin?

Vigilans-- What kind of lizard did you have? I had a Urasaurus Ornatus (common fence lizard, also commonly named "bluebellies" in my region), an Agama Butterfly, I also caught house geckos and released them in my house when I had an insect problem. I currently have a midland painted turtle which I've had the last four years. She's quite an interesting pet-- she's hand tame, at least with me. I can pick her up but she tries to bite anyone else that sticks their hand in her tank. My dog Lil Bit (that's her in my profile pic), learned the hard way not to fool with her! She got her nose bit! (just a little bit, though).

I'd have to say that a lack of light killed him.

I agree with klikmaus(i'm also a reptile person! as for lizards, i have two leopard geckos and an argentine black and white tegu). It's unlikely, unless you have some pretty extreme conditions in your drawer, that anything related to temperature, light, food, etc. caused it's death in only one day. Lizards can generally go quite awhile without food, so one day wouldn't do it.. Most diurnal lizards do need UVB light in order to make vitamin D3 so that they can metabolize calcium(otherwise they get Metabolic Bone Disease), but, again, one day(or even several days) without it wouldn't be enough to cause a problem. Certain woods, like pine and cedar, can be toxic to reptiles(which is why using pine or cedar shavings is bad for pet reptiles), but i seriously doubt that the drawer being made of one of those woods would be able to kill them that quickly(because they are exposed to some of it in the wild and it doesn't kill them... it would probably have to be a lot over a longer period of time). I think klikmaus is on to something with the amphibian idea. In my experience, people who aren't knowledgeable about herps rarely know the difference between a salamander and a lizard... but they are very different in how their bodies work. A salamander or newt definitely could have dried out and died in a drawer. If it really was a lizard, then maybe it was just a coincidence that this happened when it already was sick and about to die anyway. Some species of lizard will play dead when they feel threatened too, so if you look out there where you put him and he isn't there anymore then that could be a possibility too.

there is a very distinct possibility that this "lizard" could have been unhealthy, which would also account for it's entering the window. From my experience-- lizards "haunt" around a window (particularly at night) because the light from within attracts insects on which they feed. Occasionally the will enter through an unscreened window, but typically they will avoid well-lit locations. If it WAS sick, it's death could have been imminent anyways, possibly being subjected to stress from capture may have even helped reduce it's time spent suffering. You may have done this animal a small favor.
By no means am I a veterinarian or even a herpetologist. But as a child, well..... I passed many summers by catching and trapping ANYTHING I could find. Rattlesnakes, armadillos, skunks, lizards, bats, fish, tarantulas, birds, ground squirrels, horny toads, rabbits, fox, coyotes, crayfish, bobcats..... if it lived in West Texas in the 1980's through 1990's the chances are I've had one, if even for a few minutes. I was a regular Steve Irwin or Bob Hannah.
Now days, I take my kids down to the beach and we catch crabs.....
(please no bad remarks, I get the joke)