The horns on a chameleon are made up of ringlike segments of inner bone covered by a hard keratin-like skin.
Pygmy chameleons (Brookesia, Palleon, Rhampholeon and Rieppeleon sp.) often resemble dry leaves, mosses and branches.
The word Brookesia is named after the British naturalist Joshua Brookes.
The word Rhampholeon is taken from the Latinized Greek “rhamphos leon” meaning crawling lion.
The chameleon tongue accelerates towards its target at over 1642m per second. Chameleons rarely miss their intended food item.
The word Kinyongia is from the Swahili word for chameleons: Kinyonga.
The word Chamaeleo is derived via Latin from the Greek word khamaileon. It roughly translates to ground lion. Khamai means on the ground and leon means lion.
Chameleons have laterally compressed bodies. This enables them to warm up quickly by presenting a larger surface area to the sun. It also helps some chameleon species blend in among the similarly shaped leaves in their environment.
Chameleons have a very poor sense of smell.
There are currently 202 recognized chameleon species and 85 of them are found on the island of Madagascar.