HOW DOES A SLOW WORM CUT ITS OWN TAIL OFF TO EVADE PREDATORS?
Did you know?
Slow worms are native to Western Europe
Ross Woodley
Slow worms, like many other lizards, have a tail that can be broken as part of their defensive mechanism as an escape strategy. The scientific term for this phenomenon is ‘autotomy’ – auto meaning self, and tomos to cut – and is the self-induced releasing of a specific body part. One of their tail vertebrae is actually broken in half. Its tail separates at a ‘fracture plane’, one of many fracture planes that are regularly spaced along the length of the tail, either in between vertebrae or in the middle of each vertebrae.