Classroom lesson 路 Wildlife馃嚥馃嚬 Malta

Mediterranean chameleon - the colour-changing climber

A slow-moving lizard with eyes that swivel in all directions

Photo 路 Wikimedia Commons

What is it?

The Mediterranean chameleon is a small green-and-brown lizard that lives in Maltese trees, bushes and orchards. It has the famous chameleon skills - eyes that can point in two different directions at the same time, a tongue longer than its body, and the ability to change its skin colour to match its mood.

Tell me more

Chameleons are slow walkers. They have grippy toes that close around twigs like little hands, and they move one careful step at a time, often pausing for ages. That looks lazy - but it is actually clever. Slow movement means insects don't notice them approaching.

Their eyes are the strangest bit. The left eye can look up at a bird while the right eye is watching a beetle on a leaf below. When the chameleon decides which one it wants to catch, both eyes lock onto the target together. Then the tongue does the rest.

The tongue is sticky, fast and very long - up to one and a half times the length of the chameleon's body. It shoots out, grabs the insect, and snaps back in less time than you take to blink. Watching it in slow motion is one of the wildest things in the natural world.

Chameleons can change their skin colour, but not (as people sometimes think) to copy the wallpaper behind them. Mostly they change colour to show how they feel - bright and pale when they are warm and calm, dark and patterned when they are angry or scared. It is a bit like having your mood written on your skin.

In the classroom

Walk your class through this in 15 minutes.

Talk together

Discussion prompts

  1. 01If you could see in two directions at once, what would you watch first?
  2. 02Chameleons change colour with their mood. If your skin changed colour with your mood, what colour would today be?
  3. 03Why might it sometimes help an animal to be slow rather than fast?
Try this

Classroom activity

Make a 'mood chameleon'. Each pupil cuts out a chameleon shape and colours it with two or three different patches - one for each mood (happy, sleepy, focused). At the start of each lesson this week, point to the patch that matches how you feel.