More Morphological Oddities in Anolis sagrei

A few months ago, I shared with you some of the odder morphological variations my field assistants and I encountered while measuring Anolis sagrei in Gainesville, FL. We went on to measure quite a few more lizards, and saw quite a few more oddities, as well as some fairly gruesome injuries. Here are some of my favourite examples:

1. A far better picture of a doubly-regenerated tail.

double regeneration

2. A jaw injury that resulted in the left and right sides of the jaws being dissociated from each other.

jaw injury

3. A cut hyoid. I imagine this lizard was no longer able to extend his dewlap.

hyoid

4. A nasty head injury. We saw this lizard three or four more times after we measured him, and his wound seemed to have healed up completely.

head injury

5. A brutal leg injury.

IMG_0430

6. A male with not only an impressive tail crest but also some nice red tail coloration.

tail crest

 

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1 Comment

  1. jeff

    Curious about the pic with the red tail. What is the cause of this? Lived in Florida my entire life and in 29 years have never come across one like that until today. Found it in my yard in Central Florida. It had a speckled brown body as I’m used to seeing however it also had a tan head and the reddish tail. The tail looks nearly identical to that pictured above. Would love to hear what the story is!

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