'Scuba-diving' lizards breathe underwater by wearing air bubbles on their noses — just like in a cartoon

Scuba-diving lizards have an aquatic trick up their sleeves: They can create air bubbles on their foreheads to breathe underwater, enabling them to stay submerged for long periods and escape predators, researchers say.

In 2018, scientists captured the first-ever footage of a semi-aquatic lizard known as a stream anole (Anolis oxylophus) breathing underwater using a bubble of stored oxygen surrounding its snout — an ability that had never been seen before in lizards. Since then, at least 18 other species of anoles have been found to do this too, including water anoles (Anolis aquaticus).

However, until now, researchers had no idea if this bubble enabled these lizards to stay underwater for a long time or if it merely formed as a side effect of their water-repelling skin.

In a study published Sept. 18 in the journal Biology Letters, researchers tested nearly 30 water anoles and found that those using air bubbles stayed underwater 32% longer than anoles without bubbles. In the wild, this extra time underwater likely helps them to evade predators.

"There are a lot of threats in their environment, and it makes sense that they would evolve a unique way of dealing with them using the resource — water — that they have available," study author Lindsey Swierk, assistant research professor in biological sciences at Binghamton University in New York, told Live Science in an email.

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Semi-aquatic water anoles spend most of their time living on boulders close to river banks in forests in Costa Rica and Panama. They are small lizards that can grow up to 8 inches (20 centimeters) long. When threatened, they have been observed jumping into nearby water to escape.