Waiter, There’s An Anole In My Soup!

Anole in the drink. Photo by Pat Shipman

Editor’s note: through an editorial lapse, this post has remained unposted for a while. But given the great interest in the recent post on aquatic anoles of Costa Rica (be sure to read the comments), as well as the call for aquatic anole photos, now seems the time!

Some months ago I posted about A. maynardi playing possum in the birdbath after taking offense at my photo-taking and jumping in. Here is another post about this same behavior. A few days later, without any human intervention I found what is probably the very same anole doing the “dead anole float” in the birdbath, eyes closed, limbs limp. While I watched three different species of bird came to drink from the bird bath — a bananaquit, a Northern mockingbird, and a Zenaida dove. They did seem a trifle disconcerted to find an anole in their soup, but none showed any interest in eating it (which I would have expected only from the mocker). We are wondering if, in the height of the dry season, which it was, our anoles are soaking up moisture through their skin. The closest other source of fresh (-ish) water is a murky pond at least 1/4 mile away, which is a long distance for a little lizard.

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Pat Shipman

I'm a semi-retired paleoanthropologist with a particular interest in ecology and past ecosystems.Since I now spend several months a year on Little Cayman, which boasts the rare Anolis maynardi, I have gotten very interested in anoles and conservation. I remain an amateur but as there is so little known about A. maynardi I hope the observations my husband and I make will fill in a few gaps.I am also a science writer and biographer, so if you google me or look me up on amazon, all "those people" are really just me, from the scientific books like THE ANIMAL CONNECTION to FEMME FATALE (a biography of Mata Hari).