The Faraglioni are three tall rocks that rise straight out of the sea off Capri‘s coast. They appear on countless postcards. Fewer people know that the rocks are home to a lizard found nowhere else in the world. It has a dark back and a blue belly.
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The blue lizard is a local form of a common Italian lizard species. Elsewhere, these lizards are usually green or brown. On the Faraglioni, they have a dark back and blue on the throat, belly, and sides. Scientists classify it as a subspecies, and it lives only on the rocks themselves, not on the main island.
Its scientific name is Podarcis siculus coeruleus, and the last word comes from the Latin for blue. The lizards feed mainly on insects, and males defend their territory, sometimes in ritual fights during the breeding season. The lizard has become one of Capri’s symbols, alongside the rocks themselves.
The German zoologist Theodor Eimer described the lizards in the 1870s. He was a professor at the University of Tübingen. His wife, Anna Eimer, illustrated the lizards for his research.
His study, published in 1874, referred to Darwin’s theory in its subtitle, though Eimer did not explicitly credit natural selection for the lizards’ colour, and he later became an opponent of selection as an evolutionary process.
Eimer noticed that the rocks have almost no plants, and he suggested that bluish lizards were harder for hunting birds to spot against the rock. Other naturalists point out that dark colours absorb heat, which may help the lizards to warm up early in the day.
Because the rocks are small and cut off from the island, the lizards have lived apart from other groups for a very long time.
The rocks have their own names. Stella is still joined to the island. Mezzo, in the middle, has a natural arch through it. Fuori, the outer rock, is also called Scopolo. They range from about 80 to just over 100 metres high, and the best views come from a boat or from viewpoints such as the Gardens of Augustus, beside Via Krupp.