Anole was born and raised in Fairbury, Illinois, he lived a normal life despite his reptilian features, a result of his being a mutant. The close-knit community accepted the boy for who he was until anti-mutant sentiment began to spread. For his own safety, his parents sent him to the Xavier Institute where he quickly excelled academically.

Anole is a mutant with reptilian-like physiologyincluding:

Enhanced Agility: Anole's natural agility, balance, and coordination are enhanced to increased levels, allowing him to perform feats that those of normal agility would find incredibly hard to do.

Enhanced Speed: Capable of moving and running slightly faster than a normal human, but he is not on par with powered speedsters.

Enhanced Reflexes: He has the reaction time that is roughly half of that of normal base-line human's.

Enhanced Strength: Anole possesses superhuman strength enabling him to lift weights to, as of yet, unmeasured levels. But we have some examples of this strength: 1) during his first journey in Limbo his strength was enough to scramble a magical force field that was imprisoning him and his friends; 2) during a fight against a Sentinel, Anole's strength was enough to break the metal armor plate of his adversary. However this power is present only in his right arm, and only appeared after regrowing his limb. The rest of his body remains in general human strength. Beast affirmed that any new limb that will regrow on Anole, it will be gifted with super strength exactly as in his right arm.

Enhanced Stamina: Anole's muscles produce far less fatigue toxins during physical activity than the muscles of an average human. He can exert himself at peak capacity for several hours before fatigue impairs him.

Long, Elastic, Sticky, Prehensile, Forked Tongue: Anole has an incredibly long tongue (apparently longer than his own body length) which he is capable of rapidly and abruptly extending out of the mouth. The tongue has a sticky tip on the end, which serves to catch anything that he would otherwise never be able to reach...