Skink tails and cockle shells

I was walking the Beagle in the forest the other day. It was a warm, muggy late afternoon. I had had to fight my way through graduation traffic on campus to get the Beagle and myself to the forest. Part of me wanted to just abandon my car and walk straight home (which may have been faster).

Maximilian is not always the swiftest of creatures, but this day, for some reason to which I was not privy, he was on high alert (even though it was warm and muggy). This spelled badness (well, almost) for a skink who happened to decide to dart across the path in front of us, right in front of us. Had the skink not moved, the Beagle never would have seen it. He may have sniffed it, but it would have taken his sniffer longer to locate the skink's specific location (had he just hunkered down) than my patience at the other end of the leash would have allowed (being in the moving-forward mentality that I was).

But no, the skink thought he knew better about beagles and their propensity to spot a lone, tiny skink hiding in the leaf litter. The skink made the decision to bolt. And bolt he did. So fast that I hardly saw him.

Maximilian, for his part, saw him right away and darted to the right side of the path (from which the skink originated) quicker than you can say lickety split. Faster than the Beagle moves for most anything other than a scoop of food (which, to be fair, the skink may have represented). While I'm still trying to figure out what's going on (not really trying too hard because this is not an unfamiliar occasion - to have a beagle at the end of the leash chasing something in front of you), Maximilian chases this poor skink clear across to the left side of the path. By the time I figure out what in the world he's up to now, I think I see him give one mashy chomp onto a silvery blue little Squamatan.

But all he seems to have come up with is this...



The silvery blue little Squamatan has escaped! Er, minus his tail - or the end of it at least. This is not the first time Maximilian has induced a Squamatan to autotomize its tail parts. I bent down and picked up the little two inches of silvery blue tail and felt it squirm in my hand for a good while. It was a very odd feeling, to be aware that there was no living being attached to this wiggling piece of tissue. That this piece of tissue was accomplishing this feat all by its onesie. That the synapses and chemicals were working inside of the tissue, undirected. That instructions for this disaster management plan had been laid down long before and were now being implemented at precisely the right time (else the Squamatan may well have been in the Beagle's belly).

Autotimization has always been of particular interest to me - that some organisms have the capability to drop body parts at will. Starfish are probably the most well-known example. I have written numerous reports about this capability throughout my schooling years. But really, we don't know much about how it works. If we did (and maybe someday we will), we could possibly begin to facilitate the re-growth of lost human extremities.

Do we possess an ability to figuratively autotimize pieces of ourselves in an escape situation? To jettison some baggage to distract others and make a clean get-away? Hmmm, that could be handy. Note to self: think more on this later.

All of these thought processes were going on as I watched the tail twitching in my palm. Maximilian was watching me watch the tail wave back and forth (probably entreating me with his big beagle eyes to pass over his rightfully won snack (such as it was)). And after approximately 45 seconds of this, I realized... the trick had worked! Neither of us was thinking even the least bit about the actual Squamatan. The actual Squamatan was wriggling its way (tail-less) to safety somewhere in the forest outside of the radius of a leashed beagle (because, believe me, leashed beagles definitely have radii). The tail was an effective distraction.

I had just seen natural selection at work. What a rare treat. But really, when I thought harder about it, it probably isn't that rare that we get to be such an observer. Our noticing it, that is the rarer thing.



Note to readers:
Lest you think otherwise after reading this, Maximilian is not a vicious being. Just wanted to clear this up in case you got the wrong impression here. He is an animal, and he sometimes does what animals do (that is, when he isn't pretending to be human while doing things that humans do (like sleeping on beds, eating cheese and carrying on conversations with the neighbors)). I challenge you to look into those brown beagle eyes and see anything but sweetness.