Wildlife discovery:The multi coloured Chameleons

Chameleons are colour changers! All chameleons will change colour when in different surroundings or when they communicate with other chameleons.

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Chameleons are colour changers! All chameleons will change colour when in different surroundings or when they communicate with other chameleons.

Wherever they are, they change colours depending on the background. For instance when they are on grass, they change to green and on soil they change to brown.

This process of changing colours is known as camouflaging. It also protects chameleons because they cannot easily be identified.
Chameleons are like people who are not straight forward. A good example is someone who pretends to like you yet, they do not wish you well.

Well, these little animals are reptiles from the lizard family. They are normally deep green in appearance but some of them have yellow stripes with black spots on their skin.

Females are slightly smaller than the males. Chameleons are very rare and are of different types. There are over 160 species of chameleons in the world.

Most of them are found in the tropical regions of Africa especially in Madagascar while a few are native in Asia and Europe.
Chameleons mainly feed on insects and at times small birds. They trap these insects with their famous long tongue.

The chameleons tongue is highly specialised to catch insects from a distance. In fact, most chameleons can shoot their tongue as far as one and a half times their body length.

For example a chameleon about 8 cm long can extend its tongue to 12 cm to catch an insect.

Chameleons basically dwell in trees to flee from predators. Their strong feet grip and help them to cling onto trees. Their strong tails are used for climbing and balancing while up.

Before we forget, Chameleons are very, very, very slow when walking but when it comes to grabbing food, their tongues are fastest.

When chameleons grow up, most males develop horns. They lay eggs which they cover with soil to hide them from predators. Immediately after they are hatched, little ones are left to become independent.

Their large round rolling eyes are so pretty and make many people adopt them as pets.

Ends