Source: Anole 4

Length of Segment: 00:01:08

Hi, I'm Dr. Jerry Jackson, out with the wild things. Summertime is prime-time for breeding for green anoles, and these slender green lizards can often be seen defending territories and courting. The bigger, brighter colored males move around a lot, pausing now and then to catch an insect, to display or to court the females that he guards from the attentions of neighboring males. Females have a much smaller home range, and up to about six females may live within the home-range of each breeding male. A green anole female lays tiny, white, jellybean-shaped eggs. Unlike many lizards, she doesn't lay them all at once; each female lays one or two eggs about every ten to fourteen days for a total of about fifteen to eighteen eggs per summer. Each egg is buried in loose soil or mulch, usually on the ground but sometimes in material collected in depressions on tree surfaces. Once an egg has been buried, the female never returns to it. Eight to ten weeks later, the egg hatches, and the tiny green lizard fends for itself, catching larger and larger insects as it grows.

'With the Wild Things' is produced at the Whitaker Center in the College of Arts and Sciences at Florida Gulf Coast University. For 'The Wild Things', I'm Dr. Jerry Jackson.



< Back to Anoles