Green Anoles Eats Moth Larger Than Its Head

That’s right, you heard it here first. Read all about it, including a great sequence of photos and the story behind it, at Daffodil’s Photo Blog. We’ve mentioned this site before, as it’s the site of anole lover and author Karen Cusick, who wrote Lizards on the Fence. If you check out her blog, you’ll see that there are regular posts on the antics of her backyard greens and browns. Worth a visit!

Jonathan Losos

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6 Comments

  1. Very cool series of shots. It’s too bad the anole disappeared with its quarry over the fence as it would have been good to know if it actually was able to fully ingest the moth. I’m guessing no, given that the moth’s abdomen appears to be bigger than the lizards gape. Although I saw an anole grab a really big moth and it kept wiping the prey against a tree branch to help break it down to a manageable size (at least it broke off the wings that way). Thoughts, anyone?

    • KarenC

      Thanks for commenting on my pictures! I don’t know what happened after the anole dragged the moth away over the fence. The moth was much too big to swallow whole, but if the anole was able to break off parts of it, it could have eaten at least some of it. I once saw a brown anole with a big cicada, and it managed to eat the entire cicada piece by piece as it carried it along the fence. This moth was much larger than the cicada though.

  2. What an amazing series of photos! The anole can’t possibly have eaten that moth though. The story at Daffodil’s Photo Blog ends with the moth being dragged out of view.

    • Ambika Kamath

      I agree. The one time I’ve seen an anole (A. occulatus in this case) catch an insect (a large grasshopper/cricket) much larger than itself, it gave up trying to eat it soon after putting in the effort to catch it.

  3. Having eyes bigger than one’s stomach seems to be a common theme among anoles. This is a photo of A. cybotes that Michele Johnson took several years ago while working in the Dominican Republic.

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