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A white-headed dwarf gecko with tail lost due to autotomy. Autotomy (from the Greek auto-, "self-" and tome, "severing", αὐτοτομία) or 'self-amputation', is the behaviour whereby an animal sheds or discards an appendage, [1] usually as a self-defense mechanism to elude a predator's grasp or to distract the predator and thereby allow escape.
Anole tails often have the ability to break off at special segments, which is known as autotomy. The tail continues to wriggle for a period after detaching, attracting the attention of the predator and commonly allowing the anole to escape. [62] The tail is regenerated, but it takes more than two months to complete this process.
Eurydactylodes geckos have a long and slender tail [3] – being approximately the same length as their body [4] and possessing a snout-vent length of 100% [7] - and are round in cross section. [3] The tail is muscular [ 7 ] and prehensile, [ 3 ] aided by a subcaudal scansorial pad and adhesive subcaudal tissue with soft, long hairs. [ 2 ]
As a defence against predators, they can autotomize (break off) their tails, and later grow a new replacement tail which gets longer each time they shed their skin. These new tails do not have the bony vertebrae of the original, and instead only have a rod of cartilage. This growth of cartilage does not have the ability to autotomise, so in ...
The tail can be dropped (via caudal autotomy) to distract predators. The crested gecko does not regenerate its tail once lost. Most adults in the wild lack tails. [4] The toes and the tip of the semi-prehensile tail are covered in small hairs called setae. Each seta is divided into hundreds of smaller (approximately 200 nanometres in diameter ...
The lesser thorn-tailed gecko from Western Australia can shoot goo out of its tail. ... And scientists found unusual creatures such as a rare type of silent frog and a gecko that shoots goo out of ...
The African fat-tailed gecko is equipped with the ability to lose its tail when threatened or attacked. If the tail is lost, the new tail will have a more rounded shape, similar to the head. It may not match the body coloration and pattern of the gecko. The tail is also where they store their fat, an important energy reserve.
Tail-chasing that occurs every once in a while and a dog can be easily distracted from is "not really an issue," she says. The tail-chasing shouldn't impact a pet owner's day-to-day routine either.