Prehensile Tail Loss

[jason longboard]

Well, autotomy, when a tail is detached whether from predation or poor handling and so forth, most lizards regenerate the tail to some degre and some almost look like it never happened.

We all know that ciliatus " crested geckos " do not grow much of a tail back at all.

Could this be, the complexity of a cresteds tail is too much to reproduce?
The muscles and nerves just cant regenerate to what it once was so its body just says forget it?

Why would it not regenerate just a length of flesh to give the gecko its original balance?

Now, what other lizards with prehensile tails deal with autotomy the same as ciliatus, or which ones if any, have prehensile tails yet still grow them back, to what extent?

 

[rudukai13]

It would probably be helpful to first list the known lizards with prehensile tails. The only one I know of is the monkey tailed skink;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehensile_tailed_skink

They are not capable of autotomy though, probably because they rely so heavily on their tails to be a solid anchor.

 

[jason longboard]

well the ciliatus is know for the tail to be semi prehensile. It does in fact use it to curl around fingers or branches and while jumping from limb to limb they use it as a catch a lot of times. So I wonder, what other prehensile tailed lizards we can find. I may do some searching later, fighting the flu, brain slowing down.

 

[Lester55]

interesting

 

[EricIvins]

Obvoiusly they don't need them if they don't grow back........Look at all the Cresteds with floppy tails.......By the same logic, that would mean Cresteds with Floppy tails wouldn't be able to function either......

 

[coura]

You guys dont forget cresteds come originaly from a island ecossistem that in its primordial before humans reached it, had very few land pretators, so once it had released its first tail set, for a crested it no longer makes sence in a evolutionary point of view to grow another one. That is for lizards in the major land masses that need to do that over and over again.

 

[rudukai13]

Here's a list I found:

Prehensile tailed skink

Chameleon

Crested Geckos

Some Alligator Lizards

Tree Monitors

It's important to note though that each of these only has what is defined as a semi-prehensile tail; lacking the full dexterity of, for example, a monkey's tail.

Also touching onto what coura noted, animals with prehensile tails are mostly found in South America, where forests are extremely dense and the trees are relatively close together, which would make it easy for the animal to get a grip on just about anything with it's tail.

Another interesting point, in Africa and Southeast Asia - where forests are much more sparse and trees are farther apart - there is a proliferation of gliding animals, rather than animals with prehensile tails. These animals have developed means of covering the large distances between trees, where no prehensile tail will be usefull in locomotion.

 

[jason longboard]

Obvoiusly they don't need them if they don't grow back........Look at all the Cresteds with floppy tails.......By the same logic, that would mean Cresteds with Floppy tails wouldn't be able to function either......

while aware that they do not need them, since I have one without a tail and he is great, the ones that do have them use them to the fullest to catch a branch while over shooting it, or we think they over shot it.

My female adult shows this regularly. To tell the truth, she uses that tail all the time which just makes me wonder why the species looses it so easily.

Still I wonder, why so many species with a useless tail other than for a predator to grab, grow it back almost full. Some use the tail as a weapon, so I see it growing back, ciliatus clearly use it to grab branches whether they need to or not, even as adults, I see it every day yet they grow practically nothing back. SOme of you feel its because they dont need it, well most of the lizards dont need one. Is their now, any semi prehensile tailed lizards that DO grow more back? Could it be prehensile tails dont grow back due to the complexity of the tail?

 

[Vicious_Fish]

Here's a list I found:

Prehensile tailed skink

Chameleon

Crested Geckos

Some Alligator Lizards

Tree Monitors

I know from that list above that chameleons and monitors can not lose their tails. Not sure about the skink or the alligator lizard.

 

[rudukai13]

Neither the skink nor the alligator lizards are capable of autotomy at all. It would seem that the only lizard with a prehensile tail that detaches is the crested gecko...