Anoles: Florida's
Garden Gremlins of Summer
by Brian Cleary
WWW.BCPIX.COM
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Anole photos from www.bcpix.com
It's like a scene out of the movie "Gremlins".
You open your front door and step out onto the
porch. Hearing a gentle rustling, you look in the direction
of the barely audible sound. A couple of branches on a
nearby shrub wave gently up and down, but there's nothing
there. Your peripheral vision picks up a darting movement
down by the base of the plant. You shift your gaze down
there, but again see nothing.
Relax. You're not going crazy, nor has your front door
stoop been possessed by demons. Most likely the culprits
are members of the largest group of reptiles in the Western
Hemisphere: the anoles.
Numbering over 200 species worldwide, seven of which occur
in Florida, anoles spend much of their time jumping from
branch to branch or foraging below shrubbery in search of
insects, on which they feed.
The two most commonly seen anoles in the United States are
the Green Anole (anolis carolinensis) which is the only
anole native to North America, and the Brown Anole (anolis
sagrei). Among the other anoles introduced to the U.S. from
the West Indies is the Knight Anole (anolis equestris)
which came to the U.S. from Cuba and Jamaica and has been
established in the Miami, Florida area. The Knight Anole
can reach a length of 19 inches and is the giant of the
family.
Anoles are egg layers, with adult females laying their eggs
about every couple of weeks in the summer. The eggs hatch
in about 6 weeks.
Like all lizards, anoles are equipped with movable eyelids
and external ear holes, unlike their reptile relatives, the
snakes. Like snakes, anoles shed their scaly skins. Adults
molt about every month, but unlike snakes, they don't shed
their skin in one piece, but cast it off in bits and
pieces.
Unlike most lizards, anoles have feet which are well suited
to their arboreal lifestyle. Each toe has an adhesive pad
on its central portion, enabling the anole to climb and
cling to vertical surfaces such as walls, fence posts,
trees and leaves, on which they spend much of their time.
The long, slender tail of the anole is designed as a rather
clever defense mechanism. Like most lizards, the tail may
break off at the slightest pressure and continue to wiggle
on the ground. If an enemy gets a grip on the tail and
pulls it off, he'll be occupied with this squirming decoy
while the anole makes good its escape to a nearby hiding
place. Conveniently, a new tail will soon grow to replace
the departed one, but it won't be as perfectly formed as
the original.
Another striking feature of the anole is its dew lap, or
throat fan. Attached to the throat and displayed by means
of a flexible rod of cartilage which can be swung downward
and forward, thereby revealing a brightly colored patch of
skin. Males of the species display their dew lap during
courtship and when defending their territory.
This display is often accompanied by a series of head-bobs
and push-ups.
Speaking of defense of territory, these little creatures
are no shrinking violets when it comes to guarding their
real estate. Although encounters between rival males often
do not go beyond the display of the throat fan accompanied
by a bobbing head before one of the fighters takes flight,
I recently spent about 45 minutes and shot an entire 36
exposure roll of film watching a pair of brown anoles
battling over a piece of property on the shore of the
Halifax River in Daytona Beach, Florida. When it was time
for me to leave for an appointment the fight was still
going full force.
In the course of his skirmish the fighters ran the gamut of
their tactics including throat fans, head-bobs, push-ups, a
pronounced ridge along the spine, rushing at each other and
grabbing onto each other with their mouths and feet and
holding on as they rolled in the dirt..
Anoles are sometimes called chameleons. This is undoubtedly
due to the green anole's ability to change its skin color,
much like its old world cousin, the true chameleon. While
the green anole isn't able to change colors as noticeably
or rapidly as the chameleon, it is able to alter its color
from green to gray to brown, depending on light,
temperature and mood. The brown anole, on the other hand,
is always some shade of brown.
In the past, billed as "American Chameleons", these
fascinating little lizards were often sold at circuses and
carnivals, but because of the time, effort and knowledge
required, the capturing and long term keeping of anoles is
not always a good idea.
If you'd like to catch and observe an anole, you might want
to grab one and install it in a terrarium for a week or two
and then return it to the wild at the same spot where it
was captured.
In captivity the anole will eat captured worms, flies and
other insects, and may even become tame enough to eat from
his masters fingers.
It was once thought that a captured anole could thrive on a
diet of sugar water, but this is not the case. In fact, it
is possible for an anole to die of thirst even with a full
dish of water in its cage. Rather than drinking from
standing water in the wild, the anole will lap dew drops
off of stems and leaves. For this reason it's better to
spray a captured anole's environment with a spray bottle
than to simply place a dish of water in its cage.
A five or ten gallon aquarium can be set up as a temporary
home for a captured anole. Supply a dirt floor, some twig
and small branches for climbing, plenty of freshly caught
live insects, and an occasional thirst-quenching wet-down,
as described above.
But the best place to observe these "gremlins" of the
garden is out in your own backyard. the next time you've
nothing to do on a lazy summer afternoon, take a cool drink
and a lounge chair out amongst your shrubs and sit back to
watch your little backyard denizens as they go about their
busy lives.
Anoles of Florida - Images by Brian
Cleary
All Text and Photographs on this site © Brian Cleary
