I’ve heard of this happening, seen a few photos online, but this is the first time I’ve seen it for myself.
Now I finally have one that I can tell apart from the others…
Some reptiles can regrow limbs, most especially the tails, if they lose them to predators; the skinks can drop them at will, where the severed tail, often brightly-colored, will writhe madly and hopefully distract the predator while the skink makes its escape. On occasion, the tail will grow back forked, which is likely what happened to this Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis.)
This was immediately alongside the front door here at Walkabout Estates, and curious in two ways. One, I’ve been trying to keep tabs on the various ones around the yard and have been unaware of any that have lost their tail recently, much less been in the process of growing it back, so this slipped right past me somehow; not impossible of course, but the posts here haven’t been reflecting anywhere near the number of times I see anoles in the yard – I’ve been sparing you. Second, the temperature dropped down into the low single digits last night (that’s Celsius,) and I would have expected these guys to have holed up for the winter – certainly not climbing up the shady side of the house. Not too long after this, however, my fork-tailed subject continued, somewhat sluggishly, up the downspout and onto the roof where the sun was beating fiercely, and so should have gotten plenty warm enough.
I was doing a little research on how this regrowth occurs and came across a comment in one article that said it may take more than 60 days, which I was skeptical of – I thought it was half that, give or take. And then suddenly I thought, Hey! What if this is Stubby? I went back to my stock images of the aftermath of that fight (it’s video – check it out,) from several days later, and started comparing images. Note, above, that there is a lot of fight scarring around the snout, and especially a distinct spot behind the left eye. Now we look at some images from April of the bob-tailed victor of those fights.
This was from eight days after that altercation, and we can see the damage behind the left eye. And another image showing the missing tail:
So is this is the same guy, with his new tail? I can’t possibly tell for sure, but the regrowth area, the size, and at least a little of the scarring seems to match up. This is on the other side of the house from where the fight occurred, but that’s not difficult or a great distance – I was up on the roof the other day and one was dodging around on the chimney while I was there.
Either way, I’m glad to have seen and photographed this in person, and I’ll be keeping my eyes open, though it’s liable to be next spring before I see him again. But I’ll close with another from a few days previous, a big one on a downspout on the back of the house that let me lean in close, in much better light.
