The last moments of this Madagascar chameleon offer an exceptional sequence that a documentary was able to capture.
Stunning images. It is an extremely rare species that it is possible to see on the island of Madagascar, the chameleon Furcifer labordi. It is known to have one of the shortest lifespans of all four-legged vertebrates. He only lives four to five months. It actually spends more time developing inside the egg, around eight to nine months. But its main characteristic is even more astonishing. Both fantastic and terrible.
Females of this species die after laying and then covering their eggs with soil. The males die before the arrival of the dry season, after having spent all their energy to have a chance to reproduce. The females’ last minutes on Earth are simply mind-boggling. And this is what we discover in the documentary Big Little Journeys which was broadcast on PBS. Leaving little by little, and forever, the animal begins to change color with indescribable hues and effects to offer a grandiose spectacle never before observed. An eruption of sublime colors begins to parade over the body of the chameleon until its last breath, as it is possible to observe in this video.
For the sake and interest of the film, the production team hoped to film the complete life cycle of this still little-known species around the world. However, staff noticed that a female who had just laid eggs “had slowed down and appeared to be weakening.” Although the team was gone for two short hours, when they returned, the chameleon was unfortunately dead. In this misfortune, a timelapse camera had been installed to follow the animal’s every move. “Upon viewing the footage, we were amazed and moved by the colorful spectacle that had been filmed – something scientists had never observed in nature before,” recalls Valeria Fabbri-Kennedy, the series’ producer and Chris Raxworthy, herpetologist at the American Museum of Natural History at Live Science.
Indeed, the spectacle is grandiose despite the difficulty of the sequence and the death of the animal. We see the female in the last moments of life. The colors that take over his body explode like real fireworks in the darkness. But then, how is this possible? In fact, “chameleons’ skin changes color by expanding and contracting special cells containing nanocrystals, a process that changes the way they reflect light. During death, nerve signals continue to transmit and change shape skin cells, thus creating the chaotic technicolor patterns that were captured” conclude the producer and the specialist. Which offers a unique spectacle and a death that has no equivalent in the animal world.