Eden Richman Week 16 - Little Lizard

    The title of this might be a little misleading since what I am talking about is actually a chameleon and not a lizard. I decided to write lizard just for the purpose of making the title sound nice. Anyway, scientists have recently found the smallest chameleon ever - almost the size of a fingernail! The male bodies are a whopping 13.5mm long (about 0.53 inches) The females are 29mm long, bigger than the males, but still pretty small. These lizards were found in Madagascar on an expedition team that wasn't even looking for a new species. The scientists only found one male and one female of this species even after searching for a while. This lizard is called the Brookesia nana or nano chameleon, who has a cousin discovered in 2012 called the Brookesia Micra. the scientists do not know too much about them but are assuming that this species behaves similarly to the Brookesia Micra. 

    The discovery of this species is so cool. I still do not understand how they found it, especially since they weren't even looking for it. I just have so many questions about this. first of all, how did they know that the species wasn't already discovered? is there some sort of worldwide index of all animals ever known to man? How do they take care of it? the scientists don't know the type of habitat it lived in due to deforestation, but they have still kept it alive somehow? And how do they not lose these things, it's hard enough for me to catch a lizard running around my house, have it not jump out of my hand, and then bring it outside. I can't imagine what it would be like to catch that tiny lizard, put it on someone's finger, and take a professional photo of it! It just blows my mind. The last thing I want to ask anyone reading this, is do you think that there are even smaller animals out there that we haven't discovered yet? like the Whos from Horton hears a who but in real life?