The Tenerife Lizard: Gallotia galloti on the Lava

You notice them first at the car park, where the tarmac meets the lava. A dark shape basking flat on the black rock, its head angled to catch the sun. As you step closer, the lizard scuttles sideways, freezes again against a stone it matches almost perfectly. Of all the animals that live on Teide, this one — Gallotia galloti, the Tenerife lizard — is the one you will almost certainly see.

A reptile of two islands

The Tenerife lizard is endemic to Tenerife and La Palma. That means it occurs nowhere else on Earth. On Teide, it is the most conspicuous reptile in the national park, and for a visitor walking the Roques de García circuit or eating lunch on the terrace at El Portillo, the encounter is nearly guaranteed. They are the park’s default wildlife sighting — not shy, not rare, but by no means ordinary.

The genus Gallotia itself is endemic to the Canary Islands, and biologists have studied it closely as an example of island evolution. On different islands the lizards have grown to dramatically different sizes, and some species are among the largest in the family Lacertidae. That variation — the way a single ancestral population adapted across isolated islands — makes the genus a textbook case. Gallotia galloti sits somewhere in the middle of that story: large enough to be easy to watch, but not huge. It is the version of the story you can see without a permit, a torch, or a guide.

The blue of the male

The most striking thing about the species, once you look properly, is the difference between males and females. Tenerife lizards are strongly sexually dimorphic. A mature male is larger and darker, often a deep grey or almost black on the back, with a pattern of small pale spots. Across the throat and along the flanks run patches of vivid blue — sometimes turquoise, sometimes a deeper cobalt, depending on the light and the individual. These patches are brightest in the breeding season and are used in displays: head-bobbing, push-ups, the flash of colour as a signal to rivals and potential mates.

Females and juveniles are plainer. They are browner, with two pale stripes running the length of the body and a less pronounced pattern. They lack the blue. On a cold morning, when the females emerge onto the rock later than the males, the difference is immediate. You see a streak of colour on the lava and you know it is a male.

The blue itself is structural, not pigment-based — the scales reflect certain wavelengths of light through microscopic layers, the same trick that gives a butterfly’s wing or a starling’s feather its colour. From one angle it is brilliant; from another it fades to grey. The lizard can control the display to some extent by posture and the angle of its body to the sun.

What they eat, and what they do for the mountain

Tenerife lizards are omnivores. They eat insects — beetles, flies, grasshoppers — and they eat plant material: leaves, flowers, and above all, fruit. On the lower slopes and in the pine belt, that includes the berries of the Myrica faya (the fayatree) and the fleshy fruits of the Rhamnus glandulosa. They also take fallen fruits introduced by people, including grapes and figs, particularly near picnic areas.

It is the fruit-eating that makes them ecologically important. Seeds ingested by Gallotia galloti pass through the digestive tract intact. The lizard moves around the lava fields, and when it defecates, it deposits the seeds in a small pile of organic matter — a prepared spot on otherwise barren volcanic rock. On an island with very few native mammals, the lizards perform a role that elsewhere might fall to birds or foxes. They are seed dispersers, and on Teide that matters.

The low scrub of the high mountain — the broom scrub of Spartocytisus supranubius, the rosettes of the Teide violet — does not rely on the lizards for dispersal; those plants use wind and gravity. But in the lower parts of the park, where the lava flows are older and vegetation has begun to reclaim them, the lizards are one of the few animals moving seeds around. Every blue-throated male sunning itself on a rock has a path of plants behind it.

Habituation, feeding, and why it matters

At the principal viewpoints — the cable car station at La Rambleta, the Roques de García car park, El Portillo — the lizards have become thoroughly habituated to people. They approach. They will run onto a boot or a bag or a picnic blanket if they think there is food. This behaviour is not natural boldness; it is learned. And it causes problems.

Visitors routinely offer the lizards scraps of sandwich, bits of crisps, fruit. Feeding them is prohibited in the national park, and for sound reasons. The lizards’ digestive systems are adapted for insects and native plant matter. Processed food, bread, and sugary fruit disrupt their gut flora and their nutritional balance. The larger issue is that feeding concentrates the lizards in unnaturally high numbers around picnic areas, which alters their behaviour: they spend less time foraging, more time waiting, and the males compete aggressively for the artificial food source. The seeds they would have moved across the lava fields stay where they are.

The practical rule is simple: watch them, photograph them, let them scuttle over your hand if they choose to, but do not feed them. They are not starving. They are basking on volcanic rock, high on an oceanic island, surviving on a diet that the ecosystem has built for them over thousands of years. A piece of white bread is no help.

Seeing them well

You do not need to go looking for Gallotia galloti — the lizard comes to you. But if you want a good view of the blue throat-patches, timing and place matter. Early morning is best: the lizards emerge to bask and are slow while their body temperature rises. By midday they are quick and wary, even when habituated. The south-facing rock walls at Roques de García catch the morning sun early and are reliable. The walls around the Parador de Las Cañadas, where the building radiates heat, also hold lizards on cooler days.

For a less crowded encounter — away from the car-park audiences — the trail up from Montaña Blanca to Altavista (Trail 7) passes through good habitat on the lower section, where the pumice slopes hold scattered bushes and the lizards move between them. On that trail you are more likely to see them behaving naturally: hunting, sunning, disappearing into crevices at the sound of footsteps. The sight is less theatrical and more satisfying.

A summary of the key points:

Feature	Males	Females & juveniles
Colour	Dark grey to black, pale spots	Brown, two pale stripes
Blue markings	Throat and flank patches	None
Body size	Larger	Smaller
Behaviour	Territorial displays, basking in open	More cautious, shorter basking periods
Likely location	Viewpoints, walls, rocks	Among vegetation, rock crevices

What else shares the lava

The Tenerife lizard is the reptile you will see, but it is not the only one. The island’s other terrestrial reptiles — the Tenerife wall gecko (Tarentola delalandii) and the Canary Island skink (Chalcides viridanus) — are present in the park but far shyer. The gecko is nocturnal and sticks to rock faces; the skink moves through grass and leaf litter and disappears before most visitors register it. On a single hiking day, if you see a lizard, it is almost certainly Gallotia galloti. If you see a reptile at all, it is almost certainly a lizard.

The birds compete for attention: the Berthelot’s pipit (Anthus berthelotii) flicks across the open ground, and the Tenerife blue chaffinch (Fringilla teydea) stays in the pine belt below. But the lizard holds its ground, warming itself on the same volcanic stone that holds the heat of the Canarian sun. It was there before the park was a park, and it will be there when the cable car has stopped running for the night. Tenerife’s most visible animal is a small, dark, blue-throated thing that moves across the lava as it always has — and that is precisely the point.