50 Fun Facts About Chameleon

Roughly how many chameleon species are known to science?

About 200. Older references list about 150, and the tally keeps growing as new species are named: one described in 2021 is known from only two specimens.

A large share of the world's chameleon species live only on which island?

Madagascar. Even a single species varies across the island: male panther chameleons are turquoise on Nosy Be and red or pink in other districts, so breeders name each colour form after its home area.

Chameleons have been introduced to which two places outside their native range?

Hawaii and Florida. Hawaii's wild Jackson's chameleons trace back to pets released at Kaneohe in 1972, and they have since settled on several of the islands.

The chameleon's grasping tail is often nicknamed what?

A fifth limb. It coils round a branch to hold the chameleon steady, which frees the feet to reach for the next hold.

The Greek roots of the word 'chameleon' translate literally as what?

Ground lion. Khamai means 'on the ground' and leon 'lion', perhaps because the head crest of some species looked like a lion's mane.

What are the specialised colour cells layered in chameleon skin called?

Chromatophores. Pigment is only part of the story: a 2015 study found that panther chameleons shift colour by changing the spacing of tiny light-reflecting crystals in their skin.

How do a chameleon's two eyes move as it scans its surroundings?

Independently. Each eye can track a different target, and once prey is picked out both swing forward together to aim the tongue.

A calm chameleon looks green because light reflected by skin crystals passes through pigment cells of what colour?

Yellow. The tightly packed crystals of a calm chameleon reflect blue light, which the pigment above turns green; when the lizard is excited the crystals move apart and the skin shifts towards yellow and orange.

Beyond camouflage, colour change in chameleons is most commonly used for what?

Social signalling and temperature. A chameleon that needs warming turns darker to soak up more of the sun's heat, then pales again once it has heated up.

When displaying aggression to a rival, a chameleon tends to show what?

Brighter colours. In contests between male veiled chameleons, the one whose head brightens most and fastest usually wins, and the loser signals defeat by turning dark.

How does a chameleon typically move along a branch?

Rocking back and forth. The slow sway between steps is thought to mimic a branch stirring in the wind, which helps the chameleon avoid being noticed by predators.

Smith's dwarf chameleon adjusts its camouflage depending on what?

It depends on which predator is threatening it: the chameleon matches its background more closely for a bird than for a snake, because snakes tell colours apart less well.

The 'American chameleon' sold in pet shops is really which kind of lizard?

An anole. The green anole of the American South can shift between green and brown, which earned it the nickname, but no true chameleon is native to the Americas.

Studies suggest chameleons most likely originated where?

Mainland Africa. Its chameleons are thought to have multiplied as the continent's great forest broke up into savannah, grassland and heath, cutting populations off until they became separate species.

Roughly how long, tail included, can the world's longest chameleons grow?

About 70 cm. Parson's and Oustalet's chameleons both come close to that, big enough to add small birds and other lizards to the usual diet of insects.

A chameleon's foot grips a branch like what?

Finger and thumb. Each foot looks two-toed but hides five: they are bound into a pair and a trio, and the pattern flips between the front and back feet.

A chameleon's upper and lower eyelids are joined, leaving only what for the pupil?

A pinhole. The cone-shaped lid turns with the eyeball like a gun turret, so a chameleon can take in almost the full circle around its body.

The short-lived Labord's chameleon typically lives about a year in all, most of it spent as what?

An egg. In the driest forests it lives only four or five months after hatching and no adults at all are found once breeding ends, so the next generation waits out most of the year as eggs.

A chameleon's unusual eye lens enlarges the image much as which camera lens would?

A telephoto lens. Unlike any other backboned animal's, a chameleon's lens spreads light rather than focusing it, giving the largest image for the eye's size and the sharp focus it uses to judge range.

The skull bones of many chameleons glow blue through the skin under which kind of light?

Ultraviolet. Bony bumps on the skull sit under skin so thin that it works as a window, and each species glows in its own pattern of dots, which suggests the lizards use it as a signal.

Which chameleons launch their tongues with the highest acceleration ever measured?

The smallest species. They carry a proportionately bigger tongue-launching apparatus, and one pygmy chameleon with a body under 5 cm long hit 264 g: zero to 60 mph in about a hundredth of a second.

Leaving the tail aside, how far can a typical chameleon shoot its tongue?

Twice its length. That is twice the body without the tail, and until it is fired the whole tongue sits bunched at the back of the throat like a compressed spring.

Because tongue projection relies on elastic recoil, chameleons can hunt effectively when?

On cold mornings. Chilled muscle slows right down but a stretched elastic band does not: a 10°C drop cost the tongue's launch less than 20% of its speed, against over 40% for the muscle-powered pull back.

What lets the tip of a chameleon's tongue hold on to an insect as it is yanked back?

Thick, sticky mucus. It is about 400 times more viscous than human saliva, which is how the tongue can haul in prey weighing nearly a third as much as the lizard itself.

Chameleons live wild in only a few corners of Europe, including the far south of which country?

Spain. Even there its status is argued over: some authorities count the common chameleon as native to the southern coast, while others list it as a species people introduced.

Brookesia, the leaf chameleons, spend most of their lives where?

On the forest floor. These mostly brown lizards live among the leaf litter they resemble, and unlike their tree-climbing relatives they have short, stubby tails that cannot grip.

What is the main cause of declining chameleon numbers?

Habitat loss. Many chameleons live in one small patch of forest, so slash-and-burn farming or logging on a single hillside can take out most of a species' range.

The eggs of Parson's chameleon are notoriously slow to hatch, taking up to about how long?

About two years. Most chameleon eggs hatch within twelve months, and as a female Parson's lays at most one clutch a year, each new generation is a long time coming.

What does a female veiled chameleon do with her eggs?

Buries them. She digs a hole, covers the clutch of dozens and walks away for good, so the hatchlings never meet a parent and are hunting insects for themselves within days.

Jackson's chameleon gives birth to live young; how does the mother deposit each one?

She sticks it onto a branch: each baby arrives wrapped in a sticky, see-through membrane, bursts out of it, and climbs away to hunt for itself.

Which animated western's hero is a pet chameleon who becomes sheriff of a desert town?

Rango. The joke is a chameleon who has to stand out instead of blending in: a sheltered pet bluffs his way into the badge by posing as a tough drifter, then has to become a hero for real.

The insect-eating veiled chameleon is unusual among chameleons because it also eats what?

Leaves. It is thought to chew them mainly for their moisture, a way of getting water through the dry season.

What can many lizards do with their tails that a chameleon cannot?

Shed it and regrow it. Many lizards snap off the tail to escape a predator, but a chameleon's is a climbing tool it cannot spare, and a lost one never grows back.

When do chameleons do their hunting?

By day. Chameleons find their prey by sight and are nearly blind in the dark, so nightfall sends them to a sheltered perch to sleep until sunrise.

Hamlet's 'chameleon's dish' line refers to the belief that chameleons lived on what?

Air. Asked how he fares, Hamlet tells the king he eats 'the air, promise-crammed', a dig that he is being fed on nothing but empty promises.

Which ancient writer describes chameleons in his History of Animals?

Aristotle. He recorded the lizard's colour change more than 2,300 years ago, but put it down to the animal inflating itself.

The veiled chameleon is native to which part of the world?

The Arabian Peninsula. It comes from dry mountain plateaus where Yemen meets Saudi Arabia, yet it copes with captivity better than most chameleons and is among the most widely kept as a pet.

The tall casque on a veiled chameleon's head has what practical function?

Channelling dew and rain to its mouth. Chameleons lap up droplets rather than drink from pools, and those that settle on the casque overnight simply roll down into the open mouth.

A female panther chameleon that turns dark with orange stripes is telling males what?

She is carrying eggs. The colours warn males that she has no intention of mating, and one that keeps coming is met with a gaping mouth, hissing and sometimes a bite.

The panther chameleon's genus name Furcifer comes from a Latin root meaning what?

Forked. The name is said to point to the chameleon's split feet, but in ancient Rome 'furcifer' was an insult, thrown at slaves made to carry a fork-shaped yoke.

Jackson's chameleon, a popular pet, comes from the mountains of which two countries?

Kenya and Tanzania. Although it lives close to the equator, this is a mountain animal that keeps to cool, humid highland forest rather than steamy lowland heat.

The male Jackson's chameleon is often likened to which dinosaur because of its headgear?

Triceratops. Males carry three horns, one on the snout and one above each eye, and rivals may lock them together and try to push each other off a branch.

Brookesia nana, a chameleon described in 2021, is a contender for which title?

World's smallest reptile. The adult male measured under 22 mm from snout to tail tip, but as only two animals have been found the title is not yet settled.

In Disney's Tangled, what is the name of Rapunzel's pet chameleon?

Pascal. He never speaks a word, yet he is the one who keeps pushing Rapunzel to leave her tower.

International sales of wild-caught chameleons are regulated under which wildlife treaty?

The CITES Convention. Most chameleons sit on its Appendix II, so a wild-caught animal can cross a border only with a permit from the exporting country saying the trade will not harm the species.

Which band took 'Karma Chameleon' to number one on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1980s?

Culture Club. Boy George says his bandmates were reluctant to record the song because it sounded too much like country music; it became Britain's biggest-selling single of 1983.

The Namaqua chameleon walks the dunes of which African desert instead of climbing trees?

The Namib. To escape its extremes of heat and cold, the Namaqua chameleon digs itself a burrow in the sand.

Chameleon feet are called zygodactyl, a term also used for the two-forward, two-back toes of which birds?

Parrots. The label is a loose fit, though: a parrot's four toes split two and two, while a chameleon binds five toes into bundles of two and three.

How far east does the chameleon family's natural range extend across southern Asia?

India and Sri Lanka. Only one species, the Indian chameleon, lives that far east, so the rainforests of South-east Asia have no chameleons at all.

What kind of object in the far southern sky is Chamaeleon, named after the chameleon?

A constellation. Its stars cannot be seen from Europe, so it was only drawn by the cartographer Petrus Plancius once sailors began exploring the Southern Hemisphere.