Hi Folks, > yes he saw the tail fall off? > Has any one else on the list ever seen something like this? I have kept my > share, and done many rescues with very sick animals and have yet to se > ethis...interesting. Jon? you? Julie? Well, I don´t have experience with the species that is in question, but I keep and breed Lygodactylus kimhowelli that are very quick with dropping their tails, too. I had one in a plastic box and it dropped it´s tail in panic all by himself. But I cannot exclude - and that might be the case, too, in the actual incident - that the tail was invisibly damaged but not yet severed, and then subsequently was dropped after the damage was too large. An example for this is another L. kimhowelli that broke the base of it´s tail - but not drop it - when caught, and lost it after two weeks, when the next shedding was due. So my guess is that one handler of the gecko only partly broke the tail, and it now was dropped after the damage had grown too much with every movement or other actions ... even though the damage was not plainly visible before. But ... he will regenerate it, so no real harm done ;-) Regards, Hartmut PS: As some of you will not be familiar with L. kimhowelli - well, they are often sold (falsely) under the synonyms "angularis", "luteopicturatus" or "capensis" ... and even the magazine "Reptilia" features it in it´s issue "Taggeckos" (germ. for Daygeckos) as "picturatus" ... ;-) If it works you will find a picture in the attachment ... together with P. ornata. They are currently sold incredibly cheap as WC on fairs ... :-(
