Original subtitles

(ominous orchestral music)

- [Richard] Peculiar, mysterious, magical.

Chameleons are familiar to almost

every person on Earth, yet they are found

in just a handful of places on the planet.

We still know so little about them.

Join us as we embark on a quest to reveal the secret life

of these strange, exotic creatures.

(bright music)

And with the help of the latest technology,

we'll go right inside their amazing world.

We'll reveal new science and solve some age-old mysteries.

From the island of Madagascar,

(animals vocalizing)

the forests of East and Southern Africa,

(singing in a foreign language)

to the sand dunes of the Namibian desert,

meet the Chameleons of the World.

(wind howling)

(gentle music)

The distribution of chameleons is confined

to Africa, the Mediterranean, the Arabian Peninsula,

India, and Sri Lanka, and also the island of Madagascar.

Travel with our two experts as they reveal

the amazing world of chameleons.

Mario Spurga explores the world

in search of frogs and reptiles,

and he has a specific interest in chameleons.

- These are the moments that I live for.

- [Richard] Anthony Herrel has long been interested

in functional morphology and investigates

the feeding and movement of chameleons in his lab in Paris.

Witness never-been-seen-before

X-ray imaging and high-speed photography.

(insects chirping)

(birds chirping)

(dramatic orchestral music)

The life of a chameleon may be lived

at a slow pace, but it doesn't lack drama.

As with all life on Earth, the goal is

to stay alive long enough to reproduce.

No matter how you start life,

be it from an egg or born live,

those early days are the most treacherous.

It's a world where the predator

can become prey in the blink of an eye.

But for survivors, the reward

is ensuring the next generation.

The average life expectancy

of a chameleon is about five years.

However, a recent discovery on the island

of Madagascar revealed a most astonishing strategy.

But to observe the main participants,

your timing must be spot-on.

(leaves crunching)

- Yes, yes! (laughs)

I cannot believe it.

I've been looking for this one forever.

And it's been evading me like you can't believe.

Labord's chameleon has the most unusual story to tell

unlike that of any other chameleon.

Number one, it's a annual species.

Can you believe it?

It lives for only one year.

And what's more, it spends most of that time as an egg.

The actual chameleon stage is very, very short,

just a few months, three to four months.

And so when the babies hatch, they rush through the

juvenile stage to become adults, to mate, and to die.

Can you believe that?

The babies hatch, but they never,

ever get to meet their parents.

I know of no other land animal

that have such a radical life cycle.

(serene instrumental music)

(insects chirping)

(animals vocalizing)

- [Richard] Chameleons usually lay their eggs

in a shallow nest below ground,

keeping them safe from potential predators.

The strategy usually works well, but it's not fool-proof.

The Madagascar giant hognose snake

has an acute sense of smell, and a clutch

of chameleon eggs can be detected

even if buried a few centimeters deep.

The hognose snake, with its shovel-shaped snout,

makes quick business of excavating a nest.

(eerie music)

The eggs are consumed in rapid succession.

This is undoubtedly a setback for the specific chameleon,

but it's not disastrous for the species.

A synchronized egg-laying event

lasting about a month or two completely floods the market.

The hognose snake cannot find them all.

Although most chameleons lay eggs,

there are a few that give birth to live young,

up to 17 miniature chameleons at a time.

(gentle orchestral music)

The Cape dwarf may have two or even three

litters per year, a strategy which increases

the likelihood of some babies reaching adulthood.

This family's scenario will be short-lived,

as from here onwards, it will be each chameleon for itself.

The survival rate is low, as big lizards, snakes, and birds

all make an easy snack of a juvenile chameleon.

Even your own kind are not to be trusted.

(ominous instrumental music)

Almost 2,000 kilometers to the northeast

on the island of Madagascar, cannibalism is commonplace.

It is here where the world's largest chameleon

and some of the smallest may share the same neighborhood.

(ominous orchestral music)

Oustalet's chameleon, with a seemingly insatiable hunger,

is not fussy and will gladly devour

prey ranging from crickets to small birds.

And chameleons are not excluded from the menu.

The small-horned chameleon is easy pickings for the giants.

This is a real life-threatening encounter.

There are only two responses: freeze and hope

to remain undetected, or flee from the scene.

(suspenseful instrumental music)

(stirring instrumental music)

- Chameleons are elusive and secretive.

And most of them are rather cryptic.

Even the most colorful species are so easily missed

when you move through the rainforest.

East Africa's a mecca for chameleon diversity.

It includes the smallest pygmy chameleons that live

in the leaf litter and a giant of up to two feet long.

And then you have chameleons with horns.

And I'm searching for the most handsome of these,

certainly the icon of East African chameleons,

and that is Jackson's three-horned chameleon.

(leaves crunching)

(chuckles) These are the moments that I live for.

I can't believe it.

After I plodded through the forest like a mad fool,

I finally got to meet Mr. Jackson himself,

king of the mountain rainforest.

But now what is the business

with the long horns in the face?

Well, chameleons don't have good hearing.

In fact, they have no external signs

of ears the way other lizards do.

Their communication is mostly visual.

Chameleons convey their dismay in several ways.

They can do head bobbing, gaping wide

to show a bright orange mouth,

and they can even flap their occipital lobes.

But some of these clues are more subtle.

Merely the presence of a well-developed cask and horns

can be a very strong language.

Big horns will impress a female,

but also intimidate another male.

The bigger the horns, the stronger your artillery.

So when two males meet each other,

and if one has small horns, he will quickly turn and flee.

The one with the big horns won't chase it.

It will just let him go.

But as soon as you get two males

with equal-sized horns, then things become

a little bit more complicated.

It's kind of a stand-off, a duel

while they assess each other's horns.

Sometimes they just turn and flee.

But once in a while, they engage in combat.

(birds chirping)

- [Richard] The urge to procreate may be

as strong as that of surviving another day.

And when females are in short supply,

males may find themselves squaring up.

These Jackson's males of East Africa are doing just that.

(suspenseful music)

Horn lengths are key to the outcome of this face-off.

And in this particular case, they settle

the matter by agreeing to a draw.

Physical contact is best avoided because

a chameleon's bite is worse than we may imagine.

(intense instrumental music)

At the Natural History Museum in Paris,

Dr. Anthony Herrel has been conducting

bite force experiments on chameleons.

- So, this little contraption here in front of me

is actually a bite force meter.

I use it to measure bite forces,

or basically how hard an animal can bite.

Bite forces are really important to animals

because it allows them to eat bigger prey.

So the harder you can bite, the bigger the food you can eat.

So, let's see how hard this one can bite.

Wow.

- [Richard] 144 newtons.

But what does this mean?

Well, it's important to view the bite force

in relation to the size of the animal.

And therefore, one would expect a much harder bite

from a large creature, such as a human being.

Let's see how Anthony fares.

- With 240 newtons, don't even compare.

(ominous orchestral music)

- [Richard] If body size were factored

into bite force measurements, then the bite of a dog-sized

chameleon would be worse than that of a Rottweiler.

The champion chomper lives in the deserts of Yemen.

The veiled chameleon.

It may not have horns to intimidate opposition,

but the cask on their head conveys

just as powerful a message.

The higher the cask, the stronger the bite.

This chameleon bites harder than

any other chameleon in the world.

(dramatic orchestral music)

(electronic music)

The force of the bite is not only

relevant in male-to-male contact.

It's also key in feeding.

Much of the chameleon's diet consists

of hard-body invertebrates, and a good, strong bite

facilitates the chewing of its meal.

Chameleons obtain moisture from their prey.

However, when they get the chance

and find droplets of water, they do also drink.

The Namib Desert is the ultimate

example of a water-scarce area.

To survive here in this harsh environment,

the chameleons need to be superbly adapted

in their hunting and feeding behavior.

(wind howling) (eerie music)

The Namaqua chameleons will lick

the condensation that forms when thick mist

rolls into the desert from the cold Atlantic Ocean.

But this doesn't happen every day.

And for the most part, they rely

on the moisture in their prey.

Back in Paris, Anthony is about to debunk

the myth that chameleons catch their prey

by using their sticky tongues.

By using high-speed imagery, Anthony's research

demonstrates that this is far from the truth.

(gentle electronic music)

(camera clicking)

- X-ray high-speed cameras really reveal

to us how chameleon tongues work.

Think about it.

How does a chameleon tongue work?

How does the animal manage to shoot out its tongue

in a fraction of a second to reach that prey,

which is two body lengths away from it?

So, something really amazing that was revealed to us

by using this high-speed X-ray technology

is that the tongue in chameleons is actually not sticky.

So, if you think about how any lizard tongue

or any vertebrate tongue really works,

I mean, it's being basically, touching the prey,

creating a force between the food and the tongue,

and then that force is big enough

to pull the food back into the mouth.

Now, if you think about how that force works,

it's basically proportioned to the surface area of contact.

So the bigger your tongue is,

the bigger the food you can eat.

Now, what chameleons can do, which is really unusual,

they can eat prey like lizards,

snakes, birds, really big things.

And what you can see on the X-rays is that

they're not using that stickiness.

They're using an entirely different mechanism.

And that mechanism is suction.

And so if you look at the movies

and you look at what the tongue is doing on the X-rays,

you'll see that as it approaches the prey,

it's invaginating, it's creating a hole.

It's being placed on top of the head of the food item,

and that food item is actually sucked

completely inside to the tongue.

And by using that suction, it can create

about up to six times more force

than a regular sticky tongue could create.

And that way it can pull a lizard

or a bird or a really big prey item off a branch

and basically back to its mouth.

It's really unusual stuff that was revealed

by this X-ray technology, really amazing.

(energetic electronic music)

(bright instrumental music)

- [Richard] Contrary to popular belief,

chameleons do not change color primarily

to blend in with their environment.

Color change is used most often to convey messages.

They speak with their skins.

And sometimes they even speak in their sleep.

(ominous instrumental music)

(crickets chirping)

- A sleeping chameleon appears

white when you shine a light on it.

But what is amazing is that even whilst

it's still sleeping, it shows emotions.

Just the sound of my voice is

a disturbance, a perceived threat.

And gradually, it turns dark,

but only on the side of my voice.

The other side remains pale, remains relaxed.

Look at this.

Fascinating.

(eerie music)

To search for chameleons in the day is quite difficult

because they blend in with the vegetation,

and when they see you coming, they'll hide behind a branch.

But at night, it's easy.

Take your light, you shine it in the vegetation,

and if there's a chameleon, it reflects white,

almost like decorations on a Christmas tree.

Like a sitting duck, so easy to find.

And if it's easy for me, what about snakes?

Well, at the end of the day, when a chameleon

chooses a roost for the night,

it's usually something thin, a reed or a thin branch

too flimsy to carry the weight of a snake.

And even if a snake should try,

the chameleon feels vibrations.

And all it does is releases the grip, falls away to safety.

A simple plan, but effective.

- [Richard] Sleeping on thin branches and falling to safety

is the anti-predator solution by night.

But the daytime presents even more dangers with plenty

of predators, all in search of their chameleon meal.

(suspenseful instrumental music)

The boomslang of South Africa feeds on birds and frogs,

but chameleons are also a favored prey item.

This female basks in the early-morning sun

in the same tree as a Cape dwarf chameleon.

(ominous orchestral music)

Her cold blood warms, and she moves around

the tree to find potential food.

The revolving eyes of the chameleon

immediately detect the danger.

The boomslang's fixed gaze

somehow misses the potential prey.

She moves blissfully unaware of the

chameleon right in front of her.

Amazing how the chameleon tries to make itself

as invisible as possible, clearly very aware

of the danger the snake poses and

trying to avoid being detected.

For the Cape dwarf, this is too close for comfort.

Chameleons are not quick movers,

and the quickest way to escape

is simply dropping from the tree.

(ominous orchestral music)

(dramatic orchestral music)

Such is the life of chameleons.

Some days end with close calls.

Others end fatally.

(suspenseful orchestral music)

With so many predators around,

the ability to hide can be life-saving.

(stirring orchestral music)

- The world of chameleons never ceases to amaze.

- [Richard] From the largest to the smallest,

from high up in the trees,

right down to the leafy forest floor.

- Yes, yes! (laughs)

- [Richard] Masters of camouflage.

- It's really unusual stuff that was

revealed by this X-ray technology.

- [Richard] Snipers of the undergrowth.

We have only just begun to unravel

the dazzling world of chameleons.

(wind howling)

(sweeping orchestral music)

(logo whooshing)