Chameleons are famous for their ability to change colour as a defensive mechanism. But what if that wasn’t enough? You’d need something else — like, say, being the world’s smallest chameleon. This tiny little chap is only 16mm long from snout to backside, which means he fits on your fingertip.
The Brookesia micra are the tiniest chameleons in existence, and they were discovered recently by scientists investigating the entire family of miniature sized leaf chameleons, the Brookesia Minima group in northern Madagascar.
An article published at PLoS ONE details the discovery of the tiny leaf chameleons by scientists, who are genetically testing the teeny tiny critters to work out how you get so much variance in such a small geographic area.
All I know is that they’re almost unbearably cute, and I could stare at those images all day. Would it be wrong to want an army of them as house pets? [PLoS ONE]