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Just Some Awesome Footage of Chameleons Doing Their Thing

Changing colors and preying on insects with their retractable tongues.
Rachel Pick
New York, US

This video from National Geographic shows the "highly charismatic" animals exhibiting their unique, specialized abilities in incredible detail.

Chameleons color-change to communicate more than to camouflage, as we see in the video when a female displays a vivid pattern to tell a male that she is not interested. They do use techniques to camouflage, but some of these are behavioral practices, like the reptiles' bizarre, slow swaying movements. It turns out that this solo slow dance, also shown in the footage, is designed to mimic the movement of a tree branch in the wind.

Scientists only just determined what element of the chameleon's body makes the color-changing possible. It turns out that cells beneath the chameleon's skin contain small guanine crystals. "Chameleons change color by actively tuning the spacing between these guanine crystals," says chameleon expert Christopher Anderson. "What that does is it changes the wavelength of light that is reflected off of those crystals, and thereby changes the hue or the color of the chameleons."

But chameleons are remarkable for more than just their color-changing ability. They're also notable for their lightning-fast, sticky tongue that they use in predation. A chameleon's tongue is longer than its body, and functions much like an arrow being shot from a bow. This is thanks to elastic tissue that makes up the structure of the chameleon's tongue, along with bone and muscle.

But these unique, ancient animals are being threatened by deforestation. Anderson says 36 percent of chameleon species are endangered, and this is not helped by the fact that some species have extremely small territories. Let's hope Anderson and his colleagues can help protect them before it's too late.