Here is an outstanding video of — what looks like — an adult female Cuban knight anole (A. equestris) testing out a potential nest site for egg laying. However, around the 3 minute mark in the video it seems to get spooked and possibly abandons the operation!
What do Anole Annals readers think the lizard is trying to measure when gently prodding the soil with her snout? Substrate firmness? Avenues of easy digging? And when she appears to be licking the substrate? Moisture? Fascinating!
Special thanks to Florida resident Janie Barbato for recording and posting this wonderful video as an addition to her iNaturalist observation of this female.
I am most interested in understanding how different species of lizards live together. Specifically, I research the ecological mechanisms that facilitate coexistence and the subsequent evolutionary consequences. I am a post-doc in the Losos Lab at Washington University in St. Louis. Website: www.jamesTstroud.com
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Dr. James (Skip) Lazell
Remarkable indeed! Good questions, too. I have no answers…. Skip. in Guangdong, China
Brian Hillen
Awesome video, thanks for sharing 🙂
George C Gorman
Great video. The sorts of questions James raises about what Ms. equestris might be testing…. substrate firmness, moisture etc…. might be amenable to experimental study… using an abundant, easily-bred-in-captivity species such as sagrei… and setting up single variable pairwise environments. In many years of watching anoles in the field (many years ago), about the only activity I’d never seen was egg-laying (and hatching).
Arthur In the Garden
Lovely
Kurt Schwenk
Great video. The apparent licking is standard hyolingual transport and swallowing, behavior (mostly the latter), which suggests to me that she’s merely clearing her mouth of grit she picks up when poking in the dirt. The snout tapping is very interesting—unclear what she’s doing with that. What I find strangest, however, is the hind limb raising… I’ve seen desert lizards do this on very hot substrates, but it’s hard to believe that the ground was that hot there. Does anyone know what this is about?
Chris Thawley
I’ve seen the limb-shaking/raising behavior in equestris on the ground myself, though it wasn’t associated with nesting (can’t find my vid of it). Initially, I thought that it might be something to do with ants on the feet. This equestris nesting vid (which is awesome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ8YsQDhJ_A) shows a little bit of that behavior as well and you can see a few ants around the nest. The snout tapping behavior seems to be used to tamp down the soil on top of the egg here. The covering up of the nest site is really interesting as well!