CHAMELEONOLOGY: Chameleon Life History

There is a myth about Arabian Chameleons (Chamaeleo arabicus) from Oman, saying that populations east of Salalah live on the ground, are colored dark brown to black, never changing to yellow and green...

Reptile keeping is fraught with challenges, over the years many of these have been overcome by the inclusion of new products to aid in providing better welfare to our animals...

Fantastic adventure to find them and observe their life story even in a country that turned almost all coastline to a beach/hotel/holiday stripe emarginated by destroyed and modified biotopes...

Humans and chameleons have much in common. Especially those of us who like them and keep them and/or study them.

The Yemen Chameleon (Veiled Chameleon) is one of the most popular chameleon species in captivity today. Yet it is one of the mostly misunderstood and miss handled a Chameleons in captivity. Let us please finally understand it's climatic requirements to make them comfortable and thriving in captivity and not suffering...

Meller's Chameleons are absolutely stunning animals, unfortunately, in captivity, lots of myths are parotted, that are not true or only partly and in fact are a barrier for spreading this stunning species in captivity...

Furcifer pardalis is a superspecies: a group of populations of various level of mutual relatedness: some are genetically so distant from each other that they can be considered a separate species, some are very close to each other. This study just opens the door to our understanding of their differences in size, color, life history and gives first...

Chmaleleons of the bigger size categories (like Chamaeleo calyptratus, arabicus, zeylanicus; Furcifer pardalis, oustaleti, verrucosus; Trioceros melleri etc.) feed in the wild predominantly on small flying insects, pollinators. They are however capable of eating much bigger prey: a lizard, small rodent or bird...

Chameleons inhabit naturally-autochtoneously three continents:
Africa incl. Madagascar and many off-shore Islands (vast majority of species)Asia (from ear East to India and Sri Lanka) and Europe (here only some eastern Mediterranean islands)...

A new study presents a detailed examination of the best preserved chameleon fossil skull known, using micro-CT scans, geometric morphometrics and phylogenetic methods. An early Miocene fossil from Rusinga Island (early Miocene, Lake Victoria, Kenya), is assigned to genus Calumma, opening a wide field for interpretation of the origin of chameleons...

Well, YES, itnis just not as visible as in the mountains. Check the pic in the morning made from Ankify island around 7AM and the second from Nosy Komba at 9AM...

A population confined to a tiny, round, volcanic island, called also Nosy Ambariovato (approx 3miles across only), separated from Nosy Be and Ankify by few miles narrow straits, is small and unique...

My projects:   ARCHAIUS   │   CHAMELEONS.INFO