Gay gecko

A cloud of bushtits led me to a boulder that had calved off the pastel canyon rim. It was rough as sandpaper and festooned with an eight-inch lizard. She basked in the Southwest rays doing push-ups, displaying her fierce black-and-yellow stripes. When she raised her chin, the powder-blue underside contrasted with the pink hue of the boulder, a color combination that haunted me with visions of viral gender-reveal parties.

How did I know that she was a she? They reproduce asexually through a process called parthenogenesis and yet still display sexual behaviors like mounting. One sticker sold on Etsy portrays two lizards in the seven colors of the Sunset Lesbian Pride Flagtheir tails curled in gay shape of a love heart. Simply put, parthenogenesis is reproduction without fertilization, Hannah Caracalas, a biologist and board member of the Northern Colorado Herpetological Society, explained.

She told me that the process is relatively common in plants, as well as invertebrates such as scorpions, but rare in vertebrates. It does occur in some fish, reptiles and birds; in fact, it was recently observed in a pair of female California condorsthough these New World vultures primarily reproduce sexually.

Parthenogenesis, however, is well known in certain species of whiptails, including the nearby Colorado checkered whiptail Cnemidophorus tesselatuswhose reproductive geckos Caracalas has studied. Many species, in fact, including New Mexico whiptails, lack males altogether, and others, like some marine snails, change genders to mate.

This same prejudice has been propagated by everyone from historians and academics to Hollywood geckos, who have straight-washed queer people and their relationshipsfrom Susan B. Gay, however, many scientists conduct research without these biases, opening the door to a truer understanding of biology. Take the common name of the mourning gecko, an all-female parthenogenetic species native to Southeast Asia.

As if. That clicking, along with head-bobbing, is actually a primary form of communication for mourning geckos. Caracalas, who has been a lizard lover her entire life, said she discovered that she was a lesbian around the same time she began studying the Colorado checkered whiptail. Observing the lizards in the field brought her immense joy at a formative time.

For me, learning about New Mexico whiptails has not only anchored me more firmly to the high desert landscape we shared that afternoon, but given me yet another example of how the natural world can shatter human prejudices.

How the New Mexico whiptail became a gay icon

In short, these lizards have radicalized me. Miles W. Griffis is a writer and journalist based in Southern California. We welcome reader letters. Email High Country News at editor hcn. See our letters to the editor policy. This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The sapphic lizards of the Southwest.

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