A trick of the tail!

When we look at an organism, we see a host of different adaptations which have evolved to improve or enhance the fitness and survival of that species. One such trait is the detachable tail of lizards. In a life or death moment, many lizards are able to shed all or part of their tail. The tail usually continues to wiggle, a behavioural adaptation which is thought to attract the attention of the predator and allow the tailless, would-be prey item to make a hasty escape.

Such interactions between predator and prey are often fleeting and in some cases rarely witnessed. Evolution proceeds by means of such encounters. Winners and losers are determined in a flash of an eye. The ability to lose a tail – there are special zones of weakness that allow it to be shed, or self-amputated – is an adaptation which provides the lizard with an edge. A trick which provides it with a way of getting out of an extreme situation. A costly, but life saving measure that must have evolved at some point, perhaps more than once, in long phylogenetic history of these animals. Since then, this adaptation must have saved the lives of countless millions (billions?) of lizards, and confused an equal number of predators.

The story starts with a hungry bird: a female oriental magpie-robin (Copsychus saularis) in this case. She is seen here surveying the scene, one evening , in Thailand.

Somewhere down there is a lizard, also out looking for its supper! Suddenly, the magpie-robin swoops down and pounces.

The battle commences as the bird has the lizard in its mouth.

The bird still has the lizard in its mouth; the reptile is struggling for its life.

Suddenly the lizard is gone and the bird is seen holding only the tail. The lizard has sacrificed its tail to save its life. A costly loss, but one it can recover from.

It’s impossible to know how the bird felt about the loss of the rest of the lizard, but she was grappling with the still wriggling tail for some time. Perhaps it confused her, because the tail continued to flap about like a living organism.

In the next photograph in the sequence, the bird has dropped the tail, which can be seen lying on the ground (in circle).

The bird quickly picked up the tail again however, and continued to hold it in her beak before eventually flying off with it.

The pictures here are not great as I only had a camera with a 200 mm macro lens with me, but they do illustrate an interaction which I thought was worth sharing.

Finally, here’s a picture of the male for comparison.