According to UTAS School of Natural Sciences PhD candidate Luisa Fitzpatrick, Caps on the ends of DNA found in all plants and animals called telomeres can become eroded during tail regrowth.

"I looked at the lizards that lost their tails and regrew them over two months to see if the telomere length changes during regeneration," she said.

"We expected telomeres to get shorter as regrowing the tail is associated with a lot of cell division, but in fact, we saw no change in telomere length in lizards regrowing tails."

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Lizard telomeres, unlike human telomeres, repair over the creature's lifetime.

Ms Fitzpatrick added lizards with their tails intact lengthened their telomeres during the two months.

"So the lizards are trading off investing in cell maintenance by instead investing in regrowing the tail," she said.

"This tells us that regrowing the tail comes at a cost to lizards outside the obvious investment of energy in growth - it also costs them in terms of their overall quality."

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