We quantified the effects of different auditory stimuli on the locomotor performance during the escape responses of two species of arboreal lizard, Anolis sagrei and Anolis carolinensis, with two different groups per each species, that were either long-term captives or recently caught. Other than the presence or absence of a loud sound, we used conventional methods for handling the lizards and eliciting an escape. For both species and times in captivity, the addition of a loud sound significantly increased the escape running speed, in part by decreasing the amount of pausing. Although the trends were similar for the recently caught individuals and the long-term captives, the magnitude of the effect of the loud sounds was less for the recently caught individuals. Anolis sagrei was faster than A. carolinensis regardless of the stimulus, and the rank order of individuals based on performance within each experimental group and species did not change significantly with different auditory stimuli. Our results suggest the auditory system may be important for detecting and evading threats despite the lack of vocalization in these lizards.