The Bahamas were once crawling with pirates, but have always been crawling with lizards. Do the two have anything in common? Well, much like the old story of pirates missing legs and hands, many of the lizards of the Bahamas are missing them too. In fact, after decades of study and a worldwide academic collaboration, Professor Jonathan Losos, a renowned scholar in the field of evolutionary biology at Washington University in St. Louis, wrote a paper on the peg-legged lizards of the Bahamas. It all began when he was studying there over 20 years ago and noticed a female lizard that was missing part of her hind leg. He noticed that she was speedy and agile, despite her missing limb. Nevertheless, when Losos and his many collaborators subjected the peg-legged lizards to speed tests, many proved not only as fast as their 4-legged kin, but even faster in some cases. The team in their paper says that these lizards show that at least in some cases, natural selection isn’t as ruthless as Charles Darwin made it out to be, and that even substantial disfiguring injuries could be managed over long periods of time through on-the-spot adaptations. “You can tell just by looking at them,” Losos said. “They’re fat and sassy, and clearly aren’t starving.”
