Cordylus cordylus, the Cape girdled lizard, is a medium-sized lizard indigenous to the southern Cape region of South Africa, where it inhabits crags, rocky outcrops and mountain summits.

[citation needed] They live in large colonies (with social hierarchies) on crags, rocky outcrops and mountain summits.

If threatened, they retreat to their holes and cracks in the rocks, wedge themselves in and lock their bodies there by inflating their lungs.

Jammed into the cracks like this, with their thorny tail wrapped protectively over their faces, they are incredibly difficult to prise out.

[citation needed] In the autumn, the females give birth to one or two young, which stay very near the mother for the first year.