What Eats Lizards? (10 Animals That Eat Lizards)

Last updated on November 27th, 2022

What eats lizards? This is the question on everyone’s mind

This calls for good news for most households and families as house lizards are a real menace.

These creatures often multiply by reproducing at a rapid rate and cause major trouble inside the house.

Animals that eat lizards:

• Frogs
• Blue Jays
• Raccoons
• Chickens
• Owls
• Rats
• Sparrows
• Bats
• Opossums
• Spiders

List of animals that eat lizards

1. Frogs

Frogs are carnivores, so it is only natural that their diet will consist of other animals.

While the smaller frogs eat insects, the larger ones eat small mammals and reptiles, like lizards, geckoes, and mice. Since frogs don’t chew their food, they devour their prey whole.

Lizards seem like a great delicacy for frogs. You will find it amusing to know that some frogs even use their ‘fingers’ to hold onto the food till they have finished swallowing it.

2. Blue Jays

Blue Jays eat a variety of things, and lizards are a great hit with them. Being omnivores, they have a connoisseur’s palate at their discretion.

While seeds, nuts, grains, and berries are their regular preference, they eat small animals like bats, tree frogs, deer mice, geckoes, and lizards now and then.

Many bird lovers hate blue jays for this indiscreet choice of food that they have, but there isn’t any reason to hold them in contempt.

3. Raccoons

Raccoons are great fans of lizards as food. However, they also favor having fish, amphibians, and other reptiles, not just lizards.

They like bird eggs, insects, fruits, vegetables, and even nuts. Being omnivores, they eat almost anything that can be digested.

However, they are pretty crafty and this leads them to look for and try, authentic dietary options.

Raccoons also eat geckoes as much as they eat lizards. Green iguanas are thriving in the everglades, and raccoons just love to predate on them and enjoy them as a snack.

4. Chickens

Chickens do eat lizards quite often. Chickens eat almost anything, like corn, grass, seeds, grains, small mice, and even lizards. They even eat other reptiles, amphibians, worms, and the like.

Small backyard lizards seem to be their favorite, though. Anything that is small and can be overpowered is a meal for chickens.

Since lizards contain protein in decent quantities, they are good for chickens. Also, they do have some good nutritional value that chickens require.

Moreover, what you might be thinking is quite true. Chickens are quite savory themselves; they have preferences too?

5. Owls

Being obligate carnivores, owls eat various flesh like skunks, rats, moles, mice, small mammals, rabbits, and even other birds.

Insects, frogs, arachnoids, and snails are also special delights for them. However, owls never let go of an opportunity to eat lizards.

They simply love eating lizards whole as a tasty and filling snack every now and then. These birds thrive as nocturnal predators since lizards also tend to move around in the dark. 

Interested in learning more about owls eating lizards. We wrote an entire article on the subject which you can read more of over there.

6. Rats

While a fully grown adult rat can attack and kill a lizard its size, rats usually avoid such a confrontation most of the time and will go for their decaying matter.

Rats eat almost anything at all and lizards are a part of their preferred food types. 

Since lizards have a good protein content and other nutritional elements, they are quite good for a rat’s diet.

In addition, certain rats are semi-aquatic, so they even hunt fish well. Unfortunately, this ability also allows them to also hunt and devour lizards looking to make an escape underwater.

7. Sparrows

A sparrow is an omnivore, which means that it will eat both plants and animals. Sparrows regularly feed on seeds, grains, berries, ripened fruits, small insects, and bugs.

Whenever an opportune moment brings a frog or a lizard, a sparrow will make good use of the moment and kill the prey for food.

However, sparrows aren’t active hunters of lizards but are rather the occasional delicacy for them.

Lizards are slender, making for a perfect snack for many birds as most do not have enough teeth to chew but rather swallow their prey.

8. Bats

What bats eat depends on the species and the environment. Most bats are carnivorous and love eating insects.

Some species of bats have evolved to eat meat and hunt down and consume vertebrates like frogs, fish, mice, and even lizards. Some bats eat other bats as well.

Bats are mostly nocturnal creatures and locate their prey through echolocation, which they use by sensing the echoes of their high-pitched squeaks – rather something like a radar system.

They can catch lizards and insects on the ground and also in midflight.

9. Opossums

Although opossums love to feed on vegetables and fruits, for the most part, they do eat a variety of other things, too, including smaller animals and insects.

Opossums just love to eat pollen and nectar and anything sweet whenever they can, but too much of such sweet things can be harmful as well.

Almost all opossums are harmless, sheltered, and cute creatures. But, of course, some species of opossums are quite a threat to other animals around them.

They love eating bird eggs and lizards, which are both good sources of protein that opossums need.

10. Spiders

You may find it quite impossible to believe when I say that spiders can consume lizards at least three times their size.

Unlike popular belief that spiders have been serving as meals for amphibians and reptiles, it has now been established some of these eight-legged arachnids make a good meal out of their predators.

The biggest family of spiders, known as jumping spiders, have been observed to eat vertebrates.

I must say that this is by far one of the most curious role reversals I have ever come across.