On New Tail Growth

How to Recognize New Tail Growth

It's a fact of life: Iguana's break their tails.

"Break" can mean one of two things:
1) A simple broken bone, with no loss of tail flesh involved.
2) A literal break, where part of the tail actually falls off.

Barring infection, neither is a life threatening matter.

So, broken bones heal, right? But what about when part of the tail actually falls off? What then?

Nature takes it's course. In time (again, barring infection), the tail will begin to grow back on it's own.

Like many iguana owners today, I belong to a number of on-line mailing lists, e-groups, e-clubs, etc., which are dedicated to iguanas and helping their owners/caretakers understand and care for them. Lately, I've seen a lot of new ig owners in a panic over something odd they've noticed about their ig's tail. Pictures are posted, pleas for advice are made... And in almost every case, the answer has turned out to be perfectly normal new tail growth.

The picture below shows Bailey's tail before his most recent amputation. The red arrow is pointing to where the new growth of his first tail loss begins. Everything to the left of the arrow is new growth. As you can see, new growth appears much darker than the rest of the tail, and also does not show any color patterns. In addition, the dorsal spikes which grow along the top of the tail will not regrow; new tail growth will not have spikes or spines.

The blue arrow in the photo below shows where a bone break occurred; as you can see, it healed a bit crooked.

Many new ig owners find it hard to believe that their little (or big!) friend could have met with some disaster without them knowing about it... or resist thinking their ig lost a piece of it's tail because they never found the severed piece. What can I say? It happens. The first two times Bailey lost the end of his tail, it was never found... is wasn't even *noticed* until the new growth started to appear (the third time he lost tail length was a vet administered amputation, so there was no mystery there!)

The photo above shows what new tail growth looks like after several years of regrowing. Below, you will see what fresh new tail growth looks like. Xander had to have his tail amputated when we first got him, and this photo shows the new tail growing in about two months after the amputation.

When new tail growth is brand new, it looks like shiny, black rubber - as it grows, it will turn more grey than black and eventually it will regrow scales as seen in the first photo.

In this next photo, you see what the fresh end of an amputated tail looks like. This photo was taken shortly after Bailey had to have the last few inches of his tail amputated by the vet after he (try not to laugh) bit his own tail while sparring with the iguana in the mirror.