Anole Annals‘ woman in Florida, Karen Cusick, has photo-documented more interesting anole behavior (Karen has observed and photographed much interesting green and brown anoles behavior. Search this site for her name or “Daffodil’s Photo Blog” and you’ll find all kinds of interesting observations). oday I saw something I don’t think I’ve seen before, and I’m sending you a few photos. A big male brown anole was sitting in the sun on the upper rail of the fence when a big male green anole approached. He stopped about 6 inches away from the brown anole, and started bobbing his head and displaying his dewlap. The brown anole watched but didn’t react. The green anole moved closer and displayed again while the brown anole watched. Just as I was wondering if there would be a fight, the green anole suddenly ran past the brown anole along the rail and then down off the fence.
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Sean H
I’ve got some who have been hanging out in harmony the past week or two. First time I’ve seen them coexist so closely and so peacefully for so long.
Dave P.
Among my many regrets are not having the right camera and not otherwise documenting all the amazing and unexpected behavior I’ve seen in [mostly green] anoles over many years.
Seeing this great post leaves no excuse for not sharing a similar observation with a few interesting differences.
I keep a 40 gallon anole habitat indoors, with 14 locally [NC] caught greens* and two browns from a local pet store. Two males, one green and one brown, the rest females of course.
In this situation it’s the brown doing the displaying and the green just watching, then ignoring. The brown’s dewlaping and puffing are clearly from fear rather than aggression – if the green gets too close he runs. I’d have expected the opposite. It never escalates, and they never harm each other.
A couple of green females on the other hand have been quite aggressive with the brown male as well as each other, which includes the infrequent nip but no serious fighting with injury.
While more used to them lately, the brown male remains slightly fearful of all the greens even though he’s bigger than any except the male.
I’ve also observed the green male raping the brown female twice now, but have yet to see brown male go after any greens.
Admittedly I haven’t viewed Ms. Cusick’s or others’ related entries yet and imagine they’ve seen all of this and more, but hope this brings a smile and a thought or two as the post above did for me.
*Done with some trepidation because it still gets cold in winter around here and I missed seeing the buggers too much. I also couldn’t resist rescuing a select few green juveniles from death by feral cat or polar vortex.