Photo by Alan Franck, iNaturalist
Hey!
Since we had some questions about tail curling in Brown Anoles last week, I figured we should just talk about them today!
Anolis sagrei, or the Brown Anole or Bahaman Anole, is a trunk-ground anole whose range originally included islands like the Bahamas, Cuba, and the Cayman Islands. Brown Anoles are great stowaways and have now made it to the mainland US, other Caribbean islands and Pacific islands like Hawaii.
Brown Anoles can get up to 8.5 inches long (including their tail), and have a snout-to-vent length of about 55-60mm. They are, as their name suggests, often brown, but may also be grey. Despite the drab colouring, these anoles have a lot of variation in their patterns between individuals, with some almost looking plain and others appearing very striking with an array of spots, striping and marbling. Brown anole’s dewlaps are typically red-orange with a yellow border, but there are some who have splotches of yellow.
Since the introduction of another brown coloured anole, Anolis cristatellus (the Crested Anole), the two may be confused, but Brown anoles can be differentiated from them by the dewlap colouring (Crested anoles have opposite dewlap colours, typically yellow with a usually large border of orange), and if you can get close enough, by the presence or absence of light coloured ring around the eye or front limb stripe. Brown anoles don’t have this ring, but instead have dark eye bars (I like to think of it as winged eyeliner, that’s just how it registers the fastest in my mind). They also don’t have a light stripe above their front limb. Female Crested anoles have only a cream-coloured stripe down their backs that Brown anole females might have between diamond or bar patterning.
As we all may know ,they’re also very feisty anoles, going after questionable prey and prey larger than themselves. They are also one of several anoles that eat other anoles (and other lizards)!
Photo by Gecko Girl Chloe, iNaturalist
In the pet trade, Brown anoles with red/orange colouring are called Flame morphs, and lucky for you here’s a study on why that red might be showing up.
Photo by Sam Kieschnick, iNaturalist
I also get a lot of questions on Brown and Green anole interactions, typically about why Brown anoles are killing off Green anoles and here’s some posts to help answer that!
