It was just one of these mornings when I found myself in the x-ray imaging facility downstairs, post-coffee, but still mostly functioning vegetatively, scanning my specimens. The most interesting incidences during these sessions usually involve Jon catching me dancing around to the mp3 player while waiting for the machine to finish or finding healed bone fractures and the like on the freshly acquired images. Sometimes I can even see gut contents, like what I think are elytras of coleoptera, or fractured snail shells. Well imagine my surprise when I scanned this massive male Anolis cybotes and found this in its stomach:
Image by K. Wollenberg Valero
It seems like it’s congener didn’t stand a chance – swallowed whole, head-first.
Image by K. Wollenberg Valero
Although the skull is pretty digested already and I can’t make out the shoulder girdle, it looks to me like a distichoid anole – a likely candidate, as these two types are frequently sharing their microhabitat (the trunks of trees and such).
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mike
pretty incredible images!
Rich Glor
Very cool discovery! Luke Mahler and I saw a large A. cybotes eating an adult A. marron in Haiti a few years ago. Luke got some excellent photos of the event. We submitted a Herp Review note on this back in September of 2009, but I’m not sure whether its been published. Perhaps Luke can fill us in and perhaps share the photos…
lukemahler
Rich, Kat’s images above are actually from one of the other anoles we collected on that same trip to Haiti – a big cybotes from Castillon! You’ll probably remember we grabbed some likely Anolis armouri at La Visite, and collected what have probably been called Anolis cybotes haetianus way out on the Tiburon, so I passed them along to Kat to have a look.
Our Herp Review note should come out soon, I think. We were waiting on museum numbers for awhile, but I got those in late last summer, and I think it should be published in one of the next issues.
Rich Glor
Those cybotes from the Tiburon were certainly big, but didn’t look like they should be a different species to me. I’ll be interested to hear what Kat learns.
We should post the photos of that predation event on anole annals! Especially the ones that didn’t make the cut for Herp Review.