A submissive male is usually brown or gray. The brighter the color, the more dominant the male is, and the more attractive he is to females. According to the San Diego Zoo, a chameleon's skin changes colors in response to its emotions, such as anger or fear, changes in light, temperature or humidity. If chameleons don't change colors for camouflage, why do they change their colors? Chameleons generally change colors for two reasons: To regulate body heat and to communicate.Ĭhanging skin color is an important part of communication among chameleons. “People believe that if you put a chameleon on chessboard it’s going to hide by taking the same pattern or color, but this is of course is not true,” says Michel Milinkovitch, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Geneva and an expert on animal skin color.Īnd videos on YouTube, he says, some of which show the lizards changing colors as they encounter different surfaces or objects, “are completely fake.” National Geographic explored this topic in a 2018 article:Ĭontrary to a widely held belief - bolstered by the likes of Disney’s Tangled, which co-stars a chameleon named Pascal-these enigmatic lizards cannot transform the color of their skin to match any background. While many people seem to be under the impression that chameleons change colors based on the surface they are touching, this is not the case. One reason this video may have fooled some viewers is that it plays on a common misconception about chameleons.
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