Till death do us part
When things are bad, and I mean really bad, horribly you-are-in-the-jaws-of-death bad, sometimes you have to let go of something. Like a tail.
The leopard gecko can, when hassled, have its tail fall off. Losing a limb (autotomy) is not a particularly unusual trick for this species. Lots of animals can drop legs and tails if necessary. But this one is noteworthy because if it does so, the tail doesn’t just come off, but it will continue to twist and writhe for up to several minutes after the tail has been separated from the rest of the body. (…)
Higham and Russell show that that the tail is doing at least two things. One is a slow, rhythmic swinging, and occasionally, much faster contortions that made the tail flip or jump around. The flips tend to fade out faster than the slower swinging, though.
