{"id":1972,"date":"2011-01-01T14:59:20","date_gmt":"2011-01-01T03:59:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/?p=1972"},"modified":"2010-12-23T15:03:29","modified_gmt":"2010-12-23T04:03:29","slug":"ask-us-how-do-lizards-survive-when-they-lose-their-tail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/nature\/ask-us-how-do-lizards-survive-when-they-lose-their-tail\/","title":{"rendered":"Ask Us: How do lizards survive when they lose their tail?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_1975\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"width: 605px\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/lizard.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"lizard\" width=\"605\" height=\"375\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1975\" srcset=\"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/lizard.jpg 605w, https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/lizard-300x186.jpg 300w, https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/lizard-119x74.jpg 119w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 605px) 100vw, 605px\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Image: Shutterstock<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>Most skinks and some of the dragon species can drop their tail quickly to avoid being captured by a predator.<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When damage occurs, the lizard&#8217;s tail breaks at a fracture plane in one of its tail bones, causing small muscle rings to immediately constrict the blood vessels around the break. Taronga Zoo&#8217;s Herpetofauna Manager, Peter Harlow, says not all families of these species can drop their tails.<\/p>\n<p>In those that can, &#8220;nerves, blood vessels and even the skin easily separate from the body when the tail is lost,&#8221;\u009d he says. &#8220;They have evolved physiological mechanisms for rapidly closing off blood vessels. Very little blood is lost when the tail is dropped.&#8221;\u009d  This prevents the lizard from bleeding to death.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Most skinks and some of the dragon species can drop their tail quickly to avoid being captured by a predator.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,52,11,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animals","category-ask-us","category-in-the-mag","category-nature"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1972"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1972"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1978,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1972\/revisions\/1978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}