Fascinating article about yellow-spotted goanna nests in Australia. I wonder if other goannas have the same sort of thing going on?:
By the time they were three feet down, with nothing to show for their efforts, Doody was confused. When most reptiles bury their eggs, they do so less than a foot beneath the surface. Even big sea turtles dig shallow nests. But the backfilled goanna burrow kept going. Stranger still, its path began to twist, corkscrewing as it descended. “My partner, who is also a herpetologist, was on the phone, saying, ‘You know, Sean, reptiles don’t dig that deep,’” he told me. “I was starting to doubt myself.”
At five feet down, on the second day of digging, Doody was mentally composing an apology to his colleagues when one of them, lying flat on the ground with his head out of sight and his arm curled down the spiraling burrow, screamed out, “EGGS!”
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