In Nethack, lizards are also handy to carry around for other reasons. They're the only edible corpse that never goes bad, so they're good emergency rations if you can't find real food to carry. Additionally, eating a lizard corpse while confused will reduce the number of turns it takes to snap out of it. Also, they never "expire" as far as sacrificing on an altar goes - most corpses must be sacrificed within 100-150 or so turns to gain you any benefit with your god, but a lizard can be sacrificed to good effect no matter how long ago it died.