Don McLeish has photo-documented an amazing battle between two green anoles in his backyard. The fight went on for at least an hour, and when he checked in on the lizards at night, one was still breathing hard hours later. Check out the photos!
- Anole Annals is written and edited by scientists who study Anolis lizards. Our goal is to disseminate new scientific research, natural history anecdotes, and a wide range of other anole-related information. To find posts on a particular topic, type a key word into the search box.
Anole Tweets
- Plush toy maker deceived by anole ecomorphology: anoleannals.org/2013/05/08/gli… 1 week ago
- A new supermatrix phylogeny for squamates from Pyron et al.: biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/13/9… 2 weeks ago
Recent Comments
- Rich Glor on Taxonomic Splitting And The Meteoric Rise In The Number Of Reptile Species
- Jonathan Losos on Taxonomic Splitting And The Meteoric Rise In The Number Of Reptile Species
- Frank Burbrink on Taxonomic Splitting And The Meteoric Rise In The Number Of Reptile Species
- Taxonomic Splitting And The Meteoric Rise In The Number Of Reptile Species | Anole Annals on Polymorphic Amazonian Anole Finally Gets What It Deserves
- Jonathan Losos on Glitter Anole
Categories
Blogroll
Links
-
Meta
Fascinating! As best I could tell, even after that long vigorous fight, both tails were still intact. It seemed like there were bite marks on the tails but no breakage. Just one more observation in the ongoing debate about how to interpret tail autotomy – predation or intra-specific interaction or both?
OK, so that was amazing! Did anyone else notice that they were battling on the ground? Is that common in native populations of A. carolinensis?
Years ago in Mississippi, I observed a prolonged (>30 minutes) engagement between two large male anoles about 4 meters high on the limbs of a small tree. The crunching sounds of teeth-on-teeth when they were jaw-locked were quite noticeable. That contest ended when one lizard fell to the ground. The flipping behavior that Don McLeish described may function to throw the opponent out of an elevated arena.