If I were a brown anole, I’d take offense at a flag like this, too!
Pat Shipman from the AA Little Cayman Bureau checks in:
The observation that anoles nod at inanimate objects (or possibly at anoles the observer hasn’t spotted) is not new.
A few days ago, I watched an adult male sagrei repeatedly unfurling his dewlap and displaying… at an orange landscaping flag that marks the location of a large septic pipe underground. What was most interesting is that the flag was fluttering in the breeze and that it was a shade of orange almost exactly the same as the sagrei’s dewlap. Alas, I did not have a camera handy to record this event.
Has anyone else noticed sagreis paying special attention to orange objects?
Professor of Biology and Director of the Living Earth Collaborative at Washington University in Saint Louis. I've spent my entire professional career studying anoles and have discovered that the more I learn about anoles, the more I realize I don't know.
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