Brightly coloured tails are a common feature of young lizards, and can be tailored to the eyesight of specific local predators.

Takeo Kuriyama and his colleagues at Toho University in Funabashi, Japan, collected 15 juvenile Plestiodon latiscutatus lizards from three areas of Japan dominated by different predators — snakes, weasels or birds. Lizards' tails were vivid blue where weasels or snakes were common, but had high ultraviolet reflectance only in areas high in snakes. Weasels can see blue wavelengths, but, unlike snakes, cannot detect UV light, suggesting that the lizards have evolved to draw the attention of specific local predator species away from their bodies and towards their disposable tails. Brown tails were found in the area where keen-eyed predatory birds make camouflage a better strategy.

J. Zool. http://doi.org/bkqm (2016)