Imagine being able to regrow lost body parts. This sounds useful until it goes wrong: what happens if you grow an extra part you don’t need? This is what happened to a lizard I found last year – it had three tails.
The lizard was a Ragged Snake-eyed Skink (Cryptoblepharus pannosus) that lived near my house. It looked normal, except for the tip of its tail, which split into three. This is the first time this species has been recorded with three tails.
We can’t say for certain what caused this, but we can guess what probably happened. Some lizards, including skinks, can lose their tails and regrow them. If the lizard damaged its tail, this ability may have been accidentally used, resulting in a tail with two tips. The third is harder to explain – maybe something simply went wrong and it grew two new tails instead of one? It’s hard to know for certain until we find more lizards like this.
This sighting has been published in Herpetological Review 50, and can be read at: http://www.danieljablonski.com/a/soubory/Jablonski_Reichstein_2019_Cryptoblepharus_pannosus_tail_trifurcation_HR.pdf
Lachlan Writes Science 