Chameleons do have taste buds on their tongue but overall they have a poor sense of taste.
The horns on a chameleon are made up of ringlike segments of inner bone covered by a hard keratin-like skin.
Pygmy chameleons have bicuspid claws where each claw has two points like a crescent moon.
The word Rhampholeon is taken from the Latinized Greek “rhamphos leon” meaning crawling lion.
There are currently 202 recognized chameleon species and 85 of them are found on the island of Madagascar.
The word Bradypodion comes from the latin “bradus podos” or slow foot.
The smallest chameleon species is Brookesia micra with an adult length just over 1 inch (29mm). It hatches from an egg no bigger than a grain of rice!
The oldest known chameleon fossil is from the extinct species Chamaeleo caroliquarti. It was found in Europe and is 26 million years old.
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.
The word Calumma comes from the Latin word for covering. This genus consists of chameleons from Madagascar with occipital lobes.