Tiny, adorable lizard is tiny, adorable

Meet Brookesia micra, one of four newly identified species of ultra-small chameleons that live in Madagascar.

Never let it be said that reptiles can't be totally cute.

Submitterated by Dr. Sideshow and lecti.

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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MORE: adorable • island habitats • Science • species • tiny

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The Snowden Principle

http://2012diaries.blogspot.com/ tristan eldritch

You could have a small town of those as pets!
DeGreg

Hand model needs a nail trim
- http://maggiekb.com/ Maggie Koerth-Baker
  
  What is with you guys and nail care? ;)
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Chances are I’m the only BB commenter who has a really good manicure.
    - Tess
      
      Nope, but possibly for a slightly different reason… ;)
  - gerardwhelan
    
    like Niles says on Frasier, you have to be diligent with those cuticles
slashdottir

I CAN HAZ?!
http://twitter.com/rvitelli Romeo Vitelli

Perfect riding steeds for angels once they get tired of dancing on the head of that pin.
C.J. Hayes

In fig. C that thing is thinking big thoughts.
CHilke

world 2 big

i 2 little

home plz
blorgggg

Oh man! I was JUST looking at this in this awesome book my librarian wife just brought home: “Astonishing Animals” by Flannery
http://books.google.com/books?id=sZ7uAAAAMAAJ&q=astonishing+animals+book&dq=astonishing+animals+book&hl=en&sa=X&ei=PM09T_rIGIXftgey3-DgBQ&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAA

It has amazing pictures of the weirdest animals that i have never even heard of, and is just wonderfully well written! Check out the excerpt about the “Screaming Budgett’s Frog” ————- (image and full text available here:http://www.andrewisles.com/all-stock/publication/screaming-budgetts-frog-and-lt-i-and-gt-lepidobatrachus-laevis-and-lt-i-and-gt-original-artwork-from-and-lt-i-and-gt-astonishing-animals-and-lt-i-and-gt-)”In overall appearance it resembles the turd that a herbivorous mammal has left on the side
of a muddy pool – good protection perhaps from frog-eating predators. The species gets its
name from its threat display. If its turd-like disguise fails it, it rises up on its toes, inflates its body and screams loudly, mouth agape, like a woman in distress.
Budgett’s frogs have some other unpleasant habits too. They bite whenever they can and
are generally unclean creatures, which leaves them susceptible to infections and sores when held in captivity. They are also cannibals. ”
- http://www.facebook.com/Rose.Anthony.M Rose Anthony
  
  sorry what is the authors full name on that book, I want to read it now 0.0
RuthlessRuben

Thank god it’s not able to change color or anything, the dose of adorable would probably be way beyond anything the surgeon general allows.
Flashman

Charmer Chameleon

PS: Not *quite* as cute as a miniature chameleon, but my dad has discovered a couple of new tree species on Madagascar.
- Probiers Malaus
  
  I’m curious: Are they described already? Could you point out the species? What’s he doing there, working for MoBot/MNHN by any chance?
IshmaeLeaver

The chihuahua of the lizard world :)
Antinous / Moderator

Oh. ‘Adorable’, not ‘edible’. I was thinking of sprinkling them on ice cream.
prawojazdy

“Voucher specimens were euthanized using approved methods (anaesthesia with ketamine, followed by ketamine overdosis) that do not require approval by an ethics committee.”

That’s straying from the adorable a little bit, though the idea of tiny, ketamine-addled lizards has potential.
bardfinn

You put one of these in your ear and it decodes your brain-wave matrix with the language you hear, so everything is both understandable and grooooovy.
- MrsBug
  
  So kind of like the reptile version of the Babble Fish, right?
  - http://disqus.com/Kimmoth/ Kimmo
    
    Heh, Babble – it’s Babel.
GawainLavers

There’s a great segment on miniature chameleons in David Attenborough’s “Life in Cold Blood”; highly recommended in its entirety.
miasm

“hmm, I wonder what it smells liaaaaaargh!”
colin gardner

The amazing thing about these tiny lizards, who exist in the same order of magnitude as insects, and to paraphrase David Attenborough is that despite being so small, they have all the essential vertebrate kit. Full skeletons, liver, heart, kidney, veins, eyes brains &c they have it all just like any normal chameleon but somehow so very small. Its quite amazing.
- http://disqus.com/Kimmoth/ Kimmo
  
  Yeah, surprising to see the architechture’s still viable at that scale; although I guess it’s down to the fact that vertebrates have a far more developed and adaptable design than insects…
  
  For instance, since they breathe with their skin, the non-linearity of surface area to mass ratio versus size means their respiration doesn’t really work above 100g. But anyone who’s studied much biology knows something of the mind-bogglingly tiny and intricate scale life operates on, so it’s not that astounding; the building blocks are fairly minute…
  - Probiers Malaus
    
    Kimmo, reptiles (including birds) do not breathe with their skin. Neither do insects. (There are, FYI, a lot of insects which actively breathe.)
    - http://disqus.com/Kimmoth/ Kimmo
      
      Look, I know lizard have lungs, man. Lizards get a lot bigger than 100g, so I don’t see much abiguity in my post…
      
      But hey, now I google it, aren’t those spiracles nifty. They need some pretty efficient packaging of surface area even down there under 100g…
jtegnell

I bet they could still kick Paedophryne amanuensis’s ass.
Ralf Reinecke

I was in northern Madagascar last year and found loads of the tiny chameleons (in the earth at the foot of bigger rainforest trees – too bad I wasnt aware that it was an undiscovered species on my thumb… LOL

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/251449_10150205979547902_738097901_7007419_5574564_n.jpg
- MrsBug
  
  ACK! Cyoot-ded
- Probiers Malaus
  
  Ralf, to see if it’s a new species you would have a) to check his hemipenae if it’s a male and/or b) check some microsatellite DNA. ;)
  However, the photo is nice. And there are loads of potentielly undiscovered species which would need a lot (and then a lot more) of work to be described in the first place – and then, possibly, protected. Same is true for plants and a hell of other animals. Try seaching for “biopat” on the web – you could sponsor some taxonomists doing that essential work.
http://www.hamishmacdonald.com/ hamishmacdonald

How can it be?! How can it have a brain?

Marvellous!
suede

F*^*king miniature chameleons, how do they work?!?!
http://www.facebook.com/felipe.esquivel Felipe Esquivel Reed

That’s a huge finger!
Foxymoron

Why do I keep thinking Sea Monkeys?
Layne

I love pic ‘D’ – is that supposed to be a shot of the chameleon in its natural setting?

“Oooh – I see it! Wait… no…”
- Felton / Moderator
  
  If you stare at the image long enough, the chameleon will appear.
guanto

I want to see the not-yet-discovered tiny, tiny insects this chameleon eats.
http://www.zachstronaut.com/ zachstronaut

Now normally anything that small crawling on me in Madagascar I would panic and flick off me immediately. But I wouldn’t dream of hurting that cute little thing. This poses quite the challenge for my brain. Can I find the patience to actually pause and assess whether the creepy crawly is a cute lizard or not.
- Probiers Malaus
  
  Hope you’re not going, then. You might the last of it’s kind.
  Literally. And, btw: there’s nearly nothing dangerous om Madagascar. Even the scorpions just sting like a bee, nothing harmful. No poisonous snakes, no dangerous animals (exept some lazy introduced crocodiles, and some tiger sharks, but currents make it near to impossible to swim and surf, anyway).
Robert

B: A chameleon pretending it’s a fingernail.

C: A chameleon pretending it’s a matchhead.

D: A chameleon pretending it’s a forest.
Jeb Adams

Tiny chameleon says, “Please don’t light this match.”
- http://disqus.com/Kimmoth/ Kimmo
  
  LOL
http://beautifulsynthesis.com Andrea

I’ve been squeeing over these things for about two days now. SO CUTE.
http://noctilucent-studios.blogspot.com/ Noctilucent Studios

How do you discover something that small without stepping on it first?
we_the_people324

Cute, harmless. Thats what they want you to think. In 3 million years those fuckers will be the size of dinosaurs preying on those who once mocked their comical size. Never fuck with reptiles.
jwkrk

Very neat, and the recent discovery of tiny frogs makes me wonder…can birds & mammals scale down to that size? Is it possible to have a viable bird the size of a house fly? If not, what are the limiting factors?
gwailo_joe

I, for one, welcome our tiny, adorable chameleon overlords…

We’ll need about 10 trillion…with wings. And venom.
http://www.facebook.com/Rose.Anthony.M Rose Anthony

It’s amazing how many animal species are discovered each year and how many we have yet to discover. P.S. I WANT