Chameleons Live Only One Year!

Many of us know and love the cute little lizard known as the chameleon. This small animal has been a popular aquarium past four decades especially amongst children. However recent scientific research indicates you may not want to purchase the chameleon as a patch for your small child. That is of course, unless you want to explain the cycle of life and death to your kids as well.

It seems, scientists have finally reached the conclusion that a chameleons lifespan is actually less than one full year. They’re born, they eat, they mate and they die, all before the earth completes one full rotation around the sun. A small pet for your child that makes not.

This research came to light after Oklahoma state university researcher Khris Karsten realized frustratedly that all of the chameleons he been studying in a research project died suddenly. Confused that all of his subjects were dying Karston researched further and with colleagues observed the lifespan of 400 chameleons. All of which died in about a year.

Karsten explains that this short lifespan may have been the impetus for their desire to meet frequently and reproduce quickly. "There's not a lot of room for error…If you're a male chameleon of this species and you can't find a female to convince to mate, you've got no offspring in the next generation."

It was in fact these strange mating habits that attracted Karsten’s attention. So he traveled to Madagascar are in order to study the chameleons. It was during the course of the studies that he noticed the chameleons dying all at once. This piece of information is incredible, considering that chameleons have been known to science from more than 100 years and yet no one realized until now that the lizards lifecycle lasted less than a year.

Source: http://www.hdnews.net/wirestories/k1033-BC-SCI-LizardsLife-07-04-0446