“Chameleons” due Spring 2012 by the Natural History Museum, London and Princeton University Press, New Jersey. In collaboration with Nick Garbutt.  Please visit the “Chameleons” gallery for a preview of some of the illustrations from this book.

Chameleons are the most charismatic of all the lizards.  Although they are objects of fear and superstition in some of the places where they live, to Western eyes they are amusing curiosities even among the many people who otherwise dislike reptiles.  For visitors to Madagascar they one of the “must see” animals, along with other groups of unique animals from that remarkable island, and in parts of East Africa, small boys bring chameleons, clinging to a stick, to show tourists in the hope of earning a small reward.

Juvenile Warty Chameleon, Furcifer verrucosus, Berenty, Madagascar

They have made their way into the English language as a metaphor for fickle or changeable behaviour and they have lent their name to organisations that want to emphasise the adaptability of their services and products.  Chameleons appear in advertisements and in the titles of pop songs, a claim that few other lizards can make (or would want to, probably).

They are, of course, harmless, although a few can give a painful bite if they are handled roughly.  But it is their unique appearance that makes them so remarkable.  This is the result of the way in which they have adapted to their environment.  Their body shape and their ability to change colour keep them hidden from predators; their pincer-like feet and prehensile tails turn them into them expert climbers; while their independently swivelling eyes and projectile tongues help them to find and capture food.  The chameleon is the Swiss Army knife of the reptile world.

More details to follow…

This is something that none of us ever want to do but, if you photograph enough frogs, sooner or later one of them is likely to become extinct: an estimated 30% of all amphibian species are likely to be lost forever in the next 50 years.

Atelopus ignescens, Paramo near Guaranda, Ecuadorian Andes, now extinct

For instance, in 1985 on my first trip to Ecuador, I found and photographed some black Atelopus ignescens toads on the Paramo of Ecuador, just north of Guaranda.  I had been looking specifically for these toads, which live well above the tree-line and which are jet black above and orange below. They weren’t hard to find – on getting out of my car I could see several, in broad daylight, making their way across the grassy hillsides: in fact, they were everywhere.  But within a few years they had disappeared completely; none have been seen since 1989.

Atelopus species have been especially hard hit by the decline in amphibians across the world.  Of the 113 species at least 30 have become extinct in recent years, 21 of these from the high Andes.  Most of the remaining species have suffered population declines of at least 50% and scientists estimate that only about 10 species have stable populations. One species, the Panamanian golden toad, Atelopus zeteki, is the subject of a captive breeding programme in its native country because all wild populations are infected with chytrid fungus and are likely to die out.

Causes of amphibian declines – which affect species in most families, not just the Atelopus toads – are varied and include habitat loss, climate change, pollution and infection by a fungal disease, chytridiomycosis.

A full account of these causes and effects is given in “Extinction in Our Times: global amphibian declines” by James P. Collins and Martha Crump (Oxford University Press) the source of much of the information I used for the chapter on conservation in my own recently published book “Frogs and Toads“.