Overachieving Lizard Grows Three Tails
Found recently in Kosovo, the unusual reptile is among only a handful of three-tailed vertebrates known to science, a new study says.
If the ability of some animals to regrow lost tails isn’t weird enough, a lizard has been found with three new tails in the place of one.
Spotted in June in the Metohija region of Kosovo, the adult blue-throated keeled lizard (Algyroides nigropunctatus) had tails that measured 30, 15, and 10 millimeters in length.
The freak individual, besides being a first known in the species, is among only a handful of triple-tailed lizards documented worldwide, according to its co-discoverer Daniel Jablonski, a biologist at Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia. Two-tailed specimens are more often seen—though are still relatively rare.
“I have been studying reptiles for a long time and examined hundreds or maybe thousands of specimens, but this was my very
