Chameleon, 16th Century

Woodcut of a chameleon from Des Monstres et prodiges by Ambroise Parce, 1573. Des Monstres is filled with unsubstantiated accounts of sea devils, marine sows, and monstrous animals with human faces. With its extensive discussion of reproduction and illustrations of birth defects, the book invited accusations of pornography. Chameleons (family Chamaeleonidae) are a distinctive and highly specialized clade of lizards. They come in a range of colors, including pink, blue, red, orange, turquoise, yellow, and green. They are distinguished by their zygodactylous feet their separately mobile, stereoscopic eyes their very long, highly modified, rapidly extrudable tongues their swaying gait and crests or horns on their distinctively shaped heads. Some species can change color, and many have a prehensile tail

Picture No

12696747

Media ID

47674097

Size

4200px x 2333px (2.4MB)

Credit

Science Source/Mary Evans