How many times can a lizard regrow its tail?

Lizards have many things that make other animals jealous. Some species can climb walls, others are extremely good at hiding, but perhaps the most interesting is the ability to shed and regrow their tails when in danger. This ability of theirs is very famous, but is there a limit to the number of times it can be performed? Why do people sometimes encounter lizards with multiple tails?

In fact, once the first bony tail falls off, things are never the same again, but that doesn’t stop lizards from growing one or even more tails, according to Dr. Damian Lettoof at the School of Fetal Sciences. and Biology at Curtin University.

“Lizard tails are designed to regenerate when the tail spine breaks along a certain plane, triggering a hard rod of cartilage to grow in its place. A broken cartilage rod is less likely to trigger regeneration, although There is a lot of evidence that this happens with multiple regenerating tails and secondary tail buds (e.g. in the case of branching),” Lettoof said.

“The mechanism of this process has not been studied for a long time, but there is evidence that when the glia lining the spinal cord is damaged, regeneration is triggered – although this is less likely to happen. Because compared to the hard cartilaginous rod, the tail spine is much easier to break when the lizard tries to escape from a predator. Thus, if the original tail is still partially attached, additional tails can still grow. he explained.

Lettoof sums up that although most lizards can regenerate their tails as many times as they have the original vertebrae remaining, there is technically no limit to the number of additional tails that can grow from an existing tail. if conditions are right.

Branching is an interesting feature of lizard tails. There was even a report of a lizard growing up to nine tails, according to biology professor Hinrich Kaiser from Victor Valley Academy.

A study by Kaiser and Timothy Baum found branching in 250 lizard species across 25 families. The majority of them are two-tailed, but 13% have a greater number of tails. Kaiser and Baum say multiple tails in lizards are not rare or unusual, and citizen scientists can help better understand the ramifications through their observations.