You know what I love about this Wild Facts Mimicry week?  I love how you can find these imitators in every type of animal.  It doesn’t matter if you are an insect, bird, fish or as we will see today, reptile.  It is obvious that if you can use mimicry successfully you will not only survive but actually thrive in this harsh world of ours.  Today we are going to look at yet another different type of animal mimicry.  To do this we need to explore the intimate lives of the Common Side-Blotched Lizard.

You can find the Common Side-Blotched Lizard along the Pacific coast of North America – all the way from Washington into Mexico.  This particular lizard has developed a rather unusual mating strategy.  In fact, this strategy is often referred to as the “Rock-Paper-Scissor” mating strategy.  You can’t tell me you are not intrigued by this.  I guess I should explain what this means, right?  Well, there are actually 3 different types of males(Orange, Blue and Yellow Throated) and each have their own unique mating patterns.  Let’s talk about the Orange Throated males.  They are the strongest of the bunch and don’t form pair bonds.  Instead they just fight the Blue Throated males for their mating partners.  Basically, they are the bullies of the school yard.  The Blue Throated males form strong bonds with their mate and although they can’t fight off the Orange lizards they can successfully fight off the Yellow Throated Lizards.  So naturally this leaves us with the last type of male and the focus of today’s Wild Fact.

As you may have guessed the Yellow Throated males are the weakest of the three, however, there is an old saying about “Brains over Brawn”.  Well my friends, these little lizards have used their brains.  They have been able to successfully mimic the females in colouration and size.  This allows them to sneak in and mate with a real female while the Orange Throats are fighting off other males.  Cunning little lizards, aren’t they?

This has to be one of the most interesting mating strategies of all the animals I am aware of.  Obviously it works though since these lizards are still around.

Thanks for reading today’s fact.  Enjoy the rest of your day!