Photo by Osoandino, iNaturalist

This week’s anole is one of three recorded species of anoles with a proboscis, the Pinocchio Anole, or Ecuadorian Horned Anole. The other two proboscid species being Anolis phyllorhinus and Anolis laevis.

Anolis proboscis has been featured on this website several times and is well loved here, so you may already know that only the males have the proboscis.
They are capable of raising and lowering their appendages and use it for attracting mates. They move their heads side to side in displays referred to as ‘proboscis flourishing’ (Quirola et al. 2017). Males also stimulate females during courtship, by rubbing the nape of their necks with the appendage. The horn can’t be used as a weapon for fighting other males as it is very flexible, capable of folding right over (Losos et al. 2012), but they display their horns during these interactions, raising them, most likely to appear larger and more intimidating to the rival male. Their dewlaps are small, which is common in anoles with other physical signals, but more research is needed into the uses of the appendage to further confirm its uses.


Female Pinocchio Anole, photo by Nelson Apolo, iNaturalist

The Pinocchio Anole males, unlike other proboscid anoles, are born with a small horn. Why do they have the horn so early? We don’t know… yet!

This anole is very hard to find, actually even being assumed extinct after going unseen by locals and visiting scientists alike, after specimens were collected in 1966, until accidentally being spotted by a birdwatching group in 2005 when a male crossed the road. They typically prefer dense vegetation but on occasion may be found active on the ground. Pinocchio Anoles are endangered, and only found in the protected forest reserves that make up their range in Ecuador, where they are endemic.

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