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Veiled Chameleon — printable fact sheet
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Veiled Chameleon
Chamaeleo calyptratus
The veiled chameleon (Chamaeleo calyptratus) of Yemen and southwest Saudi Arabia is the chameleon most people have actually seen, and it corrects two persistent myths. The first is that chameleons change colour to match their background. They do not, in any general sense; the co…
Did you know?
- Unlike many lizards, Veiled Chameleons have a long, sticky tongue that can shoot out up to twice the length of their body to capture prey with incredible accuracy.
- Chameleons do not change colour to match their surroundings; they change it to signal and to control their temperature, by tuning the spacing of nanocrystals in their skin. Each eye moves independently and can see almost all the way around the animal, and the chameleon judges distance by focusing rather than by comparing two eyes. The tongue is launched by an elastic spring, not by muscle contraction, and it hits with an acceleration a sports car cannot match. Unusually for a chameleon, this species eats leaves, apparently for the water.
What I learned
Draw the veiled chameleon
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