When danger threatens many lizards can detach their tails, leaving them behind as decoys in the hope that the predator will attack it rather than the lizard itself. But the tail doesn't just lie there as bait. For half an hour after they've been severed, the disembodied tails perform a complex dance, flipping, lunging and jumping up to an inch in the air. These acrobatics serve to distract the predator even further.
For the first time, Timothy Higham and Anthony Russell have studied the movements of severed gecko tails to understand how they can move in such complex ways without any input from the animal's brain. They anaesthetised four leopard geckos and implanted electrodes into their tails. Once the animals awoke, a small pinch in the right place was enough to prompt them to jettison their tails and scuttle for cover. As the tails started convulsing, Higham and Russell filmed them with high-speed cameras.
