Decades ago, the evolutionary biologist Jonathan Losos found himself chasing a lizard around an island in the Bahamas. The island was little more than mound of craggy limestone the size of a baseball diamond, and Losos, an evolutionary biologist at Washington University in St. Louis, stepped carefully around the many holes in the ground in pursuit of the reptile, which was a kind of lizard called an anole. He carried his lizard lasso, a fishing pole tipped with a loop of dental floss. “If you can maneuver the lasso over the lizard’s head and then give it a quick pull,” Losos said, the lizard is yours. (Lassoing does not hurt a lizard.)
This lizard eluded Losos for a long time. “She’s really wily and moving around and staying just out of reach,” he said. “I don’t think much of it, other than, boy, this is a tricky one.” But when Losos finally caught the lizard, he was amazed. “She’s missing an entire hind leg,” he said. “The wound is healed completely over, and she’s fat and sassy.”
