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One of the newest chameleon species discovered in the wild is so small it’s no wonder they’ve slipped through the cracks for so many years. Found in Madagascar, the Brookesia micra is a miniscule 3cm in length, and is so cute that the Geico gecko has started looking for a new job!
Here’s more on this little cutie:
Ted Townsend, of San Diego State University did some genetic testing on the little guys and has come to the conclusion that they probably trace their roots back to a smaller variety of chameleon than what most of us are familiar with. “Their size suggests that chameleons might have evolved in Madagascar from small and inconspicuous ancestors, quite unlike the larger and more colourful chameleons most familiar to us today,” he told the Daily Mail.
As for the smallest reptile overall, that title still belongs to 16 millimeter Jaragua Sphaero, or dwarf gecko, but even at twice the size, the Brookesia micra are tiny little guys.
If you ever visit Madagascar, tread lightly and check your pockets before you head home, because these chameleons are so tiny that they’re easy to miss!
Link –image credit: Animal Press/Barcroft Media
Just try to navigate this massive stone forest in Madagascar.The Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park in Madagascar is home to a number of critically endangered lorises, which might actually be a good thing -who is going to brave traveling though this terrifying area just to poach a loris?
Three years ago, Alex linked to a story about a spider web that was 200 yards wide. It was made by many spiders sharing the same web. Scientists recently discovered a spider in Madagascar that can individually create a web 80 feet across. It’s called the Darwin’s bark spider, and makes the largest orb-type spider webs in the world:
It is so big that it can catch 30 or more prey insects at any one time.
Darwin’s bark spider weaves what experts call an orb web, the most familiar spider web design.[...]
“They build their web with the orb suspended directly above a river or the water body of a lake, a habitat that no other spider can use,” says Professor Ingi Agnarsson, the director of the Museum of Zoology at the University of Puerto Rico, in San Juan who made the discovery with colleagues.
That allows the spiders to catch insects flying over water, and explains why the web is so long.
To reach from one bank to the other, the spider must weave anchoring lines of up to 25m.
Because the web must sustain a comparatively enormous weight over broad distances, researchers are particularly interested in how the web is designed and the composition of the silk. It’s 100% tougher than any known silk and is the toughest biological substance known.
Link via Ace of Spades HQ | Photo: M. Kunter
Having large sucker-like structures that allow them to stick to vertical surfaces isn’t the weirdest thing about the sucker-footed bat of Madagascar. The real mystery that surrounds them is that no one has ever found a female of the species:
"We have netted enough times and in enough different places at Kianjavato to be sure they are not there," Prof Racey told the BBC. "We have netted up and down the valley and not found anything.
"We have also found a new population nearer the coast 100km away, but all males."
At Kianjavato, the researchers have so far located 133 roosts of sucker-footed bats, which roost in the partially unfurled leaves of the so-callled Traveller’s tree (Ravenala madagascariensis), a well-known plant in Madagascar that looks much like a banana tree.Each roost contained between nine and 51 individual males.
"My research assistant Mahefa Ralisata emailed this morning to say she had just netted another 26 males at Kianjavato, no females," says Prof Racey.
A city of limestone towers rises in western Madagascar.
Photo: Stephen Alvarez / National Geographic
Benson weaves through skin-ripping pinnacles. In Malagasy, the formations are called tsingy, meaning "where one cannot walk barefoot." The terrain resists intrusions from hunters, hungry cattle, and wildfires.
Photo: Stephen Alvarez / National Geographic
A couple of weeks ago, we featured a story of how NatGeo photographer Stephen Alvarez’s went deep underground to explore the caves in the corner of Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia.
This time, Stephen, along with Neil Shea and biologist Hery Rakotondravony and colleagues went the opposite way – they climbed Madagascar’s astonishing Tsingy de Bemaraha stone forest:
One afternoon, returning from a hot, wet slog, vines along the trail tripped me up, and my right knee landed on a small rock. Back home in New England, where rocks come in rounder forms, I would have walked away with a bruise. But this was tsingy in miniature. A barb of limestone drove in nearly to the bone. It took two days to reach a hospital, where a nurse removed dirt from the wound. "Why were you doing this?" she asked, twisting a swab deep into the hole. She looked up. I was sweating. "I think you are a little dumb," she said. The tsingy is the perfect foil to human ambition.
Links: Article | Photo Gallery
Photo: Quinton Robinson
National Geographic reader Quinton Robinson took this amazing photo of a Madagascar giant leaf tailed gecko that looked at the world with trippy colored eyes!
Yet another amazing photo from the Your Shot Daily Dozen selection by photo editor Susan Welchman: Link [September, week 2]
A newfound frog species in the Boophis genus, photo: Miguel Vences
After finding more than a hundred new frog species in Madagascar over the past 15 years, scientists thought that they’d found everything – but a new study done by a team of international scientists had found up to 221 new species in the island country:
The work suggests that tropical amphibian diversity has been underestimated at an "unprecedented level" worldwide, the study authors write in the May 4 online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"People think that we know which plant and animal species live on this planet," team member Miguel Vences, of the Technical University of Braunschweig in Germany, said in a statement.
"But the century of discoveries has only just begun—the majority of life-forms on Earth is still awaiting scientific recognition."
Which brings us to the obligatory statement from the President of Madagascar:
With apologies to the scientists
