The capital is also home to moths with no mouths and a grasshopper that's not very good at hopping.

So why are so many Canberra creatures lacking?

The answers, according to ACT Parks and Conservation Service ecologist Dr Brett Howland, vary.

In the case of the grassland earless dragon and the striped legless lizard, what people may perceive as a disability is actually the result of evolution.

"Earless dragons are an animal that lives down spider burrows," Dr Howland said.

"With an ear opening, you can get soil going in there, which opens you up to infection.

"They're also moving between short grass tussocks that can stab, so having an ear opening is a vulnerability.

"Over time, closing that up actually makes sense."

The striped legless lizard has a similar story of adaptation.

"For a legless lizard, it may seem like losing legs is a disability, but for an animal that burrows into the soil and has to move through thick grass, legs just get in the way," Dr Howland said.

"If you watch other reptiles in these landscapes, they tuck their legs against their bodies when they move through the grass, so from the evolutionary point of view, it actually makes a lot of sense that these animals have had these changes."

As for the golden sun moth, which has no functional mouth parts, it turns out there are more pressing priorities than having a feed.

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The moths live underground for years as larvae, feeding on the roots of native grasses.

When they emerge as fully grown moths without mouths, they must rely on their fat stores, giving them just a matter of days to live.

By this stage, with their lives drawing to a close, they have an important task to attend to: breeding.

"So basically for five days, the males fly around during warm, non-windy conditions, looking for a female," Dr Howland said.

"They don't really need to spend their time feeding, so it's all just focused on trying to find the female."

In the ACT's natural temperate grasslands, you'll also find the native perunga grasshopper.

As the name suggests, most grasshoppers have plenty of spring in their step, but Dr Howland said perunga grasshoppers struggled in this department.

But while the plights of the striped legless lizard, grassland earless dragon and golden sun moth have logical explanations, the perunga grasshopper's situation remains a mystery.

"I don't actually know why it's so bad at hopping," Dr Howland said.

"It's just not very good at it."