A short history of the war between brown and green anoles
Deep thoughts on the occasion of the first lizard sighting of 2023.
The story goes like this: for 6 million years, the green anole, A. carolinensis, lived peacefully in New Orleans. He skittered down sidewalks, enjoying the feel of the hot cement on his toe pads. He sunned himself on shiny metal trash can lids, a delightful habit we slow-witted humans would only discover 1964 after NASA invented the space blanket. There were flies. And gnats. And cockroaches! So many cockroaches to eat.
Things went sideways around 1900, when some nitwit shipped in potted plants from Key West. Hitchhiking in the foliage: the wily brown anole, A. sagrei, cousin to carolinensis. He’s a trickster. A bully. He’s prolific. Sagrei started elbowing carolinesis out of his own territory through aggressive reproduction and aggressive behavior, including puffing out the ol’ dewlap.
It’s not like the world is going to run out of cockroaches, so no one is starving, but damn! So many brown anoles swarming the sidewalks, slithering out of foundation cracks, and arrogantly holding court on top of the much-more comfortable black plastic trash can lids, which are still solar collectors, but don’t turn anoles into fried anoles — more on that in a moment — during the heat of the late afternoon.
Because brown anoles aren’t adapted to cold weather, freezes kept populations in check for a spell. But now that winters are warmer (thanks, climate change!), they’re a universally despised, and officially invasive, species.
What team are you on?
My lizard knowledge is limited to western whiptails, who like to sit on rocks in Southern Utah. That is, till they see a giant human shadow approaching, at which point they disaapear so quickly you’d think Scotty beamed them up.
New Orleans anoles are not that shy. They pip out from every crack, cranny and weed patch, fairly oblivious to people. We got our first close look at them in September. We saw a huge crew of them, some as small as insects, others several inches long, congregating on a trash can lid in Bywater (which suggests it wasn’t the tidiest situation, since they were there to consume all the bioforms living in the garbage).
But they were still evasive fellows, which is why I thought they were skinks until recently. (Anoles and skinks really don’t like each other.) I use an app called Seek to ID plants and animals I don’t know, and as much as I tried, these wee lizards dashed away before I could snap a picture.
I only remember seeing brown anoles, never green. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, because I didn’t realize green anoles lived in NOLA first. After reading about the green-brown anole situation, I stated digging around, and discoved this isn’t one of those classic invasive “garlic mustard is the WalMart of plants and has smothered everything else,” scenarios. Scientsts’ current hypthoesis is there’s been a territorial split: brown anoles own the streets, while green anoles moved back into the trees, reclaiming their original aboreal habitat.
Because I love a good heretic — see Wednesday’s post on Joan of Arc — I read stuff like Tao Orion’s Beyond the War on Invasive Species. She argues that the puritanical, scorched-earth approach to destroying entire categories of plants and animals seems to have resulted in pyrrhic victories at best, and is probably futile. It also literally misses the forest for the trees; not every invasive species situation conforms to that binary “old thing good, new thing bad” definition.
The YouTuber Reptiles Uncaged definitely lands on the side of Team Green Anole. “Green anoles fighting and brown anoles fighting is a hot topic in the reptile community,” he writes in the video intro. “A green anole attacking another green anole, or a brown anole attacking another brown anole is common. But, what happens when the native green anole is faced up against the invasive brown anole? Which species is truly the dominate species?”
He’s edited together footage of NOLA’s original anoles being, well, straight-up badasses, bullying brown anoles and even larger reptiles:
Fun fact: anoles “taste like bacon”
Because humans are master omnivores, there’s been a movement in the last decade or so to solve the invasive species problem through culinary means. For instance, there’s been a huge push to cook with another Louisiana invasive, the nutria. Not even the good people of New Orleans, who can turn anything into a delicacy, seem super excited about using this good-natured, dopey-faced little creature as protein. (If you’re up for a challenge, though, here’s Chef Philippe Parola’s nutria recipes, including one for Nutria l’Orange.)
Naturally, there have been some folks out there who have experimented with cooking anole, with the caveat you should only eat the invasive brown ones. Apparently they are one of the few exotic meats that don’t taste like chicken — word on the street is they’re super umami, like bacon. This page gives a cursory scientific description of anoles, as well as some cooking advice. “Numbing them in the fridge,” and then frying is apparently the way to go. If you want to get fancy, use “dry taco seasoning and cook them to a crackly crunch on the Foreman Grill.” A sushi approach is not recommended, as one person noted in reply to a poster who asked, “My son was dared by another boy to eat the tail of the lizard he was playing with after it fell off. He is 9 and of course he ate the tail raw. It won’t make him sick will it?”
Some final thoughts on the NOLA Anole-a
Just this: I finally caught an anole on camera! I suspect the cool January weather slowed him down from full skitter mode. It’s a very bad, very brown photo, and he looks pretty sluggish, but here’s documentation of the first anole sighting of 2023.
May there be green anoles on the camera roll, too, in the coming months!
If they’re really everywhere, and it sounds like it since each kind of anole has divided up the habitat squarely, how are you supposed to get anything done outside? I’m pretty sure I would step out into the street and follow one after another all day.