So, you’re suspecting that a lizard could eat your strawberries?
Let’s check out if it’s possible!
Do Lizards Eat Strawberry Plants?
Lizards sometimes can eat your strawberries. However, it’s rather unlikely, because lizards eat mostly insects, and meat. Animals that can eat your strawberries include birds, mammals, and snails.
If you’re suspecting that a lizard ate your strawberry, you need to make sure that you live in an area where big lizards live. By big, I mean, at least 12 inches long (30 cm), and 6 inches (15 cm) high.
Small lizards won’t eat your strawberries, because they prefer eating meat. You are most likely to find such lizards in your backyard. However, bigger lizards like green iguanas feed on plants, so they can definitely eat strawberries, but they rather stay away from backyards.
In 99% of cases, your strawberries are eaten by other animals.
Keep on reading to find out what animals eat strawberries in your backyard, and how to get rid of them.
What Do Lizards Eat?
There are many different species of lizards, and they don’t all eat the same thing. Lizards live in all sorts of different locations, including deserts, rainforests, and your backyard. Their natural environment will go a long way towards dictating what they eat.
 A lizard’s diet in the wild will be largely dictated by its natural habitat, which means, it’ll eat what’s available to them.
These are the favorite food of lizards in the wild:
Insects
Crickets, flies, worms, grasshoppers, ants, spiders, and cockroaches are very common foods for lizards because they are abundant in the wild. Some insects like lightning bugs are actually poisonous to some lizards.
Eggs
Lizards like to steal mammal eggs from the nests of other animals. Eggs are easy to capture and require minimal effort for lizards to steal. Gila monsters are an example of a species of lizard that steals eggs for food.
Meat
Some lizards feed on other lizards, including their own species. Lizards that eat other lizards also often eat insects and other forms of meat, like mice, small birds, small snakes, and rodents.
Plants
Some lizards such as green iguanas are strictly herbivores. Other lizards will eat insects and other forms of meat, but will also supplement their diet with plants. For example, in the wild, they eat flowers, leaves, soft fruits like berries, and young plant shoots.
What Lizards are Most Likely to Eat Your Strawberry?
Almost all lizard species might occasionally eat your strawberries. However, some species are more likely to eat strawberries than others, because they feed mostly on plants.
The species that eat strawberries are always big, usually bigger than 12 inches (30 cm). They veer towards plants and will totally bypass the smaller insects crawling around in the garden. Smaller lizards aren’t able to eat strawberries.
Some lizards that eat strawberries include:
- Green iguanas
- Uromastyx
- Chuckwalla
- Cuban Rock Iguana
- Lesser Antillean Iguana
What Animals Can Eat Your Strawberries?
As you know, lizards probably won’t eat your strawberries. These are strawberry lovers that are likely to eat your strawberries.
Snails and slugs
They eat almost the whole strawberry plant, from the ripened fruit and leaves to young plant bark. When snails and slugs are eating your strawberries, you will observe deep and small holes in the berries and there will be silvery slime trails on the leaves and stems.
They are active when the weather is damp. To protect your strawberries from these animals, regularly remove plant debris, and don’t grow plants too densely. Also, apply slug and snail killer (buy here on Amazon).
Birds
Birds eat strawberries and they also use these plants as a shelter from predators.
Birds that enjoy eating sweet strawberries are sparrows, finches, quail, pheasants, partridges, doves, pigeons, parrots, parakeets, finches, crows, blue jays, American robins, and scrub jays.
To protect your strawberries from birds, you can put up a few scarecrows and some netting.
Mammals
Bats, mice, moles, raccoons, squirrels, deer, rabbits, and skunks. They all love strawberries way more than lizards do.
To protect your strawberry plants, put up a fence around my crops to keep these animals out. It will probably not protect your plants from all the invaders, but it’s definitely worth trying.
Insects
Spittlebugs, mites, aphids, Lygus bugs, moths, strawberry bud weevils, sap beetles, or tarnished plant bugs enjoy strawberries. They also consume the leaves and secrete toxins that damage the plant.
To remove insects, hand-pick and remove the infected leaves, and apply neem oil (buy here on Amazon).
If insects are eating strawberries, they often leave holes in the fruit, leave a bubbly foam at the base of the plants, and the stems will also be punctured.
