Animal · Madagascar, Tanzania, Kenya
Pygmy chameleon
Brookesia — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
Pygmy chameleons are not one species but a whole group of tiny chameleons living in the forests of Madagascar and East Africa. Most are brown and no longer than a finger, and they spend the day walking slowly through the dead leaves on the forest floor.
Picture credit: Charles J. Sharp (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Frank Glaw, Jörn Köhler, Oliver Hawlitschek, Fanomezana M. Ratsoavina, Andolalao (CC BY 4.0) · frank wouters (CC BY 2.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the pygmy chameleon live?
Home: on the leafy floor of damp forests.
In the wild it lives in these countries: Madagascar, Tanzania, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Uganda.
The short profile
Fully grown: about 2 to 10 cm long. It weighs about 0 002 kilograms. On the menu: insects.
The story behind it
Pygmy chameleons belong to two main groups: the leaf chameleons of Madagascar and their relatives in the forests of East and Central Africa. Most are between about two and ten centimetres long, and one Madagascan species, the nano-chameleon, measures only about 22 millimetres in the male. They live in damp forest, walking over the fallen leaves by day and climbing onto a thin twig or grass stem to sleep at night. Their brown bodies, flat sides and pointed snouts make them look almost exactly like a dead leaf, and when they walk they rock gently back and forth, as if a breeze were moving that leaf. Each eye turns on its own, so a pygmy chameleon can watch two directions at once before shooting out its long sticky tongue at a fly or an ant. Females lay only a few small eggs and bury them in the leaf litter. Many live on a single mountain and nowhere else, so when a forest is cleared, a whole species can be lost.
Find it on the globe
Pygmy chameleon is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
Can pygmy chameleons change colour?
They can, but only within browns, greys and dull greens, and mostly to show how they feel rather than to hide. Their everyday brown is already such a good copy of a dead leaf that they need very little else.
Why do they sleep on a thin twig?
A thin stem wobbles as soon as a snake or a mouse starts to climb it. The sleeping chameleon feels the shake, lets go and drops into the leaves below, where it is very hard to find again.
Do they make good pets?
Not really. They are minute, need cool damp forest air and a steady supply of tiny live insects, and many of them live only two or three years. A lot of the animals in shops were also taken from the wild.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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