Right on the Nose

What am I looking at?

This is a male rosette-nosed chameleon (Rhampholeon spinosus) watching for predators or prey coming from above. You can see its eye (1); its grasping feet (2); and the distinctive, rosette-shaped, fleshy protrusion on the end of its nose (3).

Click on the right arrow to see another view of this chameleon.

Biology in the background

These chameleons are native to the Usambara Mountains of Tanzania and are listed as endangered on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List of threatened species due to their low numbers and restricted habitat.

While capable of slight changes in color, much of the time they are a dull gray-brown with rusty accents – a coloration that helps them blend in with the lichen and moss-covered bark of the trees they call home. These chameleons mainly hunt insects from ambush, sitting still, camouflaged in the trees, until an insect passes close by. Then the chameleon will shoot out its long, sticky tongue and pull the insect into its mouth. These chameleons have a tongue that can extend to more than 2.5 times the length of their body. In addition, their tongues can go from 0 to 60 miles per hour (about 97 kilometers per hour) in less than a hundredth of a second, making it the fastest-moving tongue of any chameleon.

A rosette-nosed chameleon can grow up to 5 centimeters long, or roughly 2.5 times the width of a human thumbnail.

Technique

These images were created using macrophotography.