One of my cats cornered a gecko this evening. Fortunately it managed to escape by separating from its tail. Yet its tail flailed about for three to five minutes after separating. How does that work?
July 20, 2009
%d bloggers like this:
July 20, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Presumably the same way as severed spinal cords in humans: the brain may not connect to the feet, but the feet will react to touching. Similar things happen with amputees, the whole phantom limb thing. Patrick Wall’s Pain: The Science of Suffering is pretty good and very accessible on this. Quite interesting stuff.
July 20, 2009 at 9:28 pm
Yeah Craig, that’s what I figured… Still quite startling to see it first hand.
July 21, 2009 at 5:42 am
Caudal autotomy is a fairly common occurrence in reptile species such as your gecko. In order for this to occur there is a split, or autotomy plane, in the vertebra of these critters which allows for a predetermined break point. It seems the muscles around these areas of vertebra are circular and that they contract and twist in order to snap one’s own tail off. The lizard does this to distract the predator. As the tail lay flopping about mesmerizing your cat the lizard is able to make a hasty escape. Genius!
The lizards tail serves many functions and the loss of it can be physiologically and emotionally devastating to the lizard. Your lizard will suffer from a decreased growth rate, loss of his lipid energy reserve, and decreased capacity for reproduction. Not only that, the poor lizard will lose some of his social status within the lizard population and girl lizards won’t find him as attractive.
You really ought to keep better tabs on your tabby.