The Paradox of the Lizard Tail, Solved

upstart writes:

The Paradox of the Lizard Tail, Solved:

When choosing between life and limb, many animals willingly sacrifice the limb.

[...] But lizards may be the best-known users of autotomy. To evade predators, many lizards ditch their still-wiggling tails. This behavior confounds the predator, buying the rest of the lizard time to scurry away. While there are drawbacks to losing a tail - they come in handy for maneuvering, impressing mates and storing fat - it beats being eaten. Many lizards are even capable of regenerating lost tails.

[...] Yong-Ak Song, a biomechanical engineer at New York University Abu Dhabi, calls this the "paradox of the tail": It must be simultaneously adherent and detachable. "It has to detach its tail quickly in order to survive," Dr. Song said of the lizard. "But at the same time, it cannot lose its tail too easily."

Recently, Dr. Song and his colleagues sought to solve the paradox by examining several freshly amputated tails. They did not want for test subjects - according to Dr. Song, the N.Y.U. Abu Dhabi campus is crawling with geckos. Using tiny loops attached to fishing rods, they rounded up several lizards from three species: two types of geckos and a desert lizard known as Schmidt's fringe-toed lizard.

[...] Back at the lab, they pulled the lizards' tails with their fingers, coaxing them into acts of autotomy. They filmed the resulting process at 3,000 frames per second using a high-speed camera. (The lizards were soon returned to where they were first found.) Then the scientists stuck the squirming tails under an electron microscope.

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