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Chameleons Not Seen by Scientists for Century Found in a Madagascar Hotel Garden
- Normille 6y ago>Chameleons Not Seen by Scientists for Century... Damn! --they're good!
- Shugarl 6y agoI wonder if finding this one will help them figuring out a pattern to find other Chameleons ?
- bryanrasmussen 6y agoYou can find them by looking by starlight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars_(M._C._Escher) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars_(M._C._Escher)
- WilTimSon 6y agoWow, that is stunning. Somehow I never thought about Escher having other works besides the stairs stuff.
- Igelau 6y agoThis must be what Danforth saw in 'At the Mountains of Madness'
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoAll that Danforth has ever hinted is that the final horror was a mirage. It was not, he declares, anything connected with the cubes and caves of those echoing, vaporous, wormily-honeycombed mountains of madness which we crossed; but a single fantastic, demoniac glimpse, among the churning zenith-clouds, of what lay back of those other violet westward mountains which the Old Ones had shunned and feared. It is very probable that the thing was a sheer delusion born of the previous stresses we had passed through, and of the actual though unrecognized mirage of the dead transmontane city experienced near Lake's camp the day before; but it was so real to Danforth that he suffers from it still.
- Igelau 6y agoThanks, Cthulhu_. I always knew I could count on you. Iä! Iä!
- bbarnett 6y agoI really want to vote you down. For some reason, I felt physical pain after reading your comment. :P
- Ygg2 6y agoI found the joke pretty good. I don't think it's cringe. More of a dad joke.
- code_scrapping 6y agoIt was a good dad joke. (bases for analysis: am a dad, did laugh, was going to make the same joke myself)
- sosborn 6y agoInteresting, I was going to make a joke about scientists needing to take more vacations!
- roastsquirrel 6y agoPeople thought they were extinct, but they were just on holiday
- louthy 6y agoThis was the comment I hoped to see when clicking the link. And if it wasn't here, I was going to write it! I know we don't often do the flippant remarks thing here, but that headline was far too inviting.
- eyeundersand 6y agoMe as well! Glad someone else already did it and spared us the shame :)
- spodek 6y agoOr they suck, depending on whom you mean by "they".
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoThis is why the ninja society haven't been found yet. They are among us, but we don't know where because they're so good at what they do. Lizard people? NWO? Worry about the ninjas first.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kronks 6y agoGo back to reddit
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bayesian_horse 6y agoI wonder if they took some living specimens to try and propagate them in captivity. I didn't read the paper thoroughly, but it seems they didn't take any alive, though they did kill two chameleons for study.
- tsjq 6y agoThat's sad
- bilkow 6y agoWhat, they found only 3 males and 15 females, suggested themselves it should be considered an endangered species, yet they killed one of each to study??? Also looking at the paper it seems that the female had 7 eggs in her
- bayesian_horse 6y agoYou can reason that they didn't exhaustively search all the area the animals could exist in, so they certainly missed a huge proportion of the total population. It's a tradeoff. They had to kill two animals in order to adequately catalogue and study this species. Just as it would be a tradeoff to decide and take some for captive breeding. Which may also fail.
- teeray 6y agoThis kind of thing is the most amazing thing about Madagascar. When I visited, I saw a frog that literally only exists and has ever existed in a 10 sq. mile area. The other cool thing about chameleons there is that they are like everywhere (though apparently there’s still surprises!). Open any random bush outside your hotel and half a dozen will stare back at you.
- smabie 6y agoThere's some paper called roughly "why mountain passes are higher in the tropics." Basically the closer you get towards the equator, the more unique species that exist in a very small amount of land. My theory is that the more stable climate promotes diversity and specialization, since species don't have to be general enough to live through significant temperature changes
- omgwtfbyobbq 6y agoThat reminds me of some stuff on entropy and biodiversity. https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/bio_info/ https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/bio_info/ I think my sense of things is similar to what you articulating. Take something like a water bear. It can survive in extreme environments and is very specialized to do so. If it changes certain characteristics, it's range of habitable environments may decrease significantly. To maximize it's survivability it minimizes it's evolutionary flexibility. Species in more stable/predictable environments on the other hand can change more characteristics without impairing their ability to survive in their environment, so their stable/predictable environment allows them to maximize their evolutionary flexibility at the expense of being confined to that environment.
- DrBazza 6y agoThat story reminds me of the Bermuda Land snail rediscovered in....an alleyway. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48527398 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48527398
- quadcore 6y agoI wonder if species can reappear like they appeared in the first place, with evolution schemes.
- gus_massa 6y agoThe exact same specie is very difficult, but in some cases you get two species that are very similar in spite they are not very related https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution
- andrewflnr 6y agoI would say if they don't have continuous common descent, they're definitionally not the same species.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y agoI grew up in Africa. African chameleons are very cool critters. Where I lived, most were about three inches long (in the body). The tails could be a lot longer. The tails are prehensile, and the lizards use them as anchors. Their feet end in these opposable little claws. Their eyes are completely independent of each other, and are usually wandering around, looking at everything around them. Their camouflage is very good. They can become downright invisible in seconds. They are also slow, and easy to catch. We used to catch them, then put them on our index fingers, facing out. They would wrap their tails around our fingers, and didn't usually make much of an effort to escape. Real laconic little buggers. We'd point them at flies. When they spotted a fly, both eyes would snap to the front, forming a binocular pair. Their mouths would slowly open, exposing their tongue. Then the tongue would shoot out, fast as hell. It was often a lot longer than the chameleon. The end of the tongue has a sticky bulb that grabs the fly. The next thing you know, they are calmly chewing (yes, they chew) their new snack. After we got bored, we'd put them back into a bush, where they would calmly get off our finger, and change color.
- hobby-coder-guy 6y agoLaconic doesn’t mean lazy.
- pakwa 6y agoSuch a sweet story. Thanks for sharing. :)
- RotANobot 6y agoI’m not sure how I haven’t come across the goodnewsnetwork site before but I sure am glad you posted this. Thanks!
- anuila 6y agoChameleons in photos always look like they're thinking "I think they see us."
- dmix 6y agoMadagascar sounds like such a cool place for nature-type stuff. Kind of like New Zealand or Australia. Places I want to visit but are so far from where I live, you really need to plan it out.
- frugalmail 6y agoI never realized chameleon camo is so good that it took a century to find them. Yes the above is meant as a joke.
- vmception 6y agoI wonder if this is just a recurring mutation.
- zadkey 6y agoMaybe they were hiding.