The secret of the lizard's underwater breathing has been found: it has its own "oxygen tank" and can dive for more than 15 minutes

Can lizards breathe underwater? Sounds like a weird question, how can it breathe underwater without gills or amphibious? It's possible to hold your breath underwater.

Do you have the same doubts? So let's find out in the next article.

In 2009, the underwater behavior of some American anoles came to the attention of researchers. At first, the researchers observed that the lizards could stay underwater for minutes or even more than 15 minutes, but they just thought the reptile was very good at holding its breath. However, the fact was unexpected, and a previously unknown fact was discovered in a subsequent study.

Common in tropical America, the petite, colorful anole lizards make ideal habitats from rainforests to natives' suburban backyards.

Even though these lizards may seem ordinary and uninteresting, researchers are intrigued and deeply researched by the creatures, raising many in-depth questions about lizard evolution, biology, and animal behavior.

One of them was a question about the diving of these lizards and what happened to them in the 15 minutes they were in the water? A herpetologist involved in the study was trying to see if there could be any useful clues by filming the lizards' underwater behavior.

But the researchers didn't notice anything unusual the first time they watched the footage, so they decided to watch the slow-motion playback more closely. While watching the replay, they noticed something unusual.

Researchers have found that these American lizards have an extraordinary ability to breathe underwater, but unlike amphibians, they are using their own stored oxygen to breathe, which is not the case in other lizards and even other terrestrial vertebrates. Never seen or recorded!

The original subject of the study was a female anole lizard, which crouched underwater for nearly 10 minutes when a magical little bubble above its head constantly expanded, contracted and disappeared.

The lizard appears to be recycling the air in the bubbles, like a human diver sucking oxygen from an oxygen tank. This observation shocked everyone present at the time.

We know that some invertebrates breathe underwater using air they carry, such as diving bell spiders and diving beetles, both of which can carry air bubbles underwater and use them to survive underwater indefinitely.

But the emergence of these anoles may be the only examples of land vertebrates that can breathe the same way underwater. At the time, it was unclear how they accomplished this feat, but the research never stopped.

As the research continues to deepen, finally in May 2021, after the researchers integrated a large amount of data, they found the scientific basis for these anoles breathing underwater.

Anole's breathing method is what researchers call "rebreathing." This method uses exhaling while jumping into the water. The exhaled air forms bubbles in the water. The formed bubbles attach to the water-blocking scales on the anole's nose, and the lizard can then inhale the bubbles again without being consumed. Lost oxygen.

They also detected a gradual decrease in the amount of oxygen in the air bubbles on the lizard's nose, which could also indicate that it was depleting the oxygen in it. That is, the maximum time the American anole can stay underwater depends on the relative oxygen content in the bubbles.

As of May 2021, the longest time the Anole lizards have been observed to "re-breathe" underwater is no more than 20 minutes, but it does not rule out the possibility that they can stay underwater for longer.

Moreover, the water-blocking scales of the anole lizard can also carry air after entering the water, and the anole lizard can also use this air to breathe. Even more researchers are trying to confirm the possibility that in well-oxygenated water currents, air bubbles can act as a kind of "physical gills" to pump gas out of the water.

Really looking forward to more gains here. But regardless of the results of the study, this ability of the anole lizards can help them avoid predators, because few predators have the patience to wait for this prey on the shore for so long. And the anole lizard may also be able to use this time to eat something underwater, such as small fish...

At the same time, this elusive reptile is yet another example of what is often found in biology: how little we know about nature.