A Book of Nimble Beasts: Bunny Rabbit, Squirrel, Toad, and "Those Sort of People"

by Douglas English

I am afraid that that story is not altogether true either.

I must try to explain to you how a Chamæleon changes colour. Of course you all know that there are black men, and brown men, and copper-coloured men, and yellow men, and what we call white men; and you know, too, that among white men some have much darker skins than others.

Now the colour of people depends a little on the colour of their blood, for there is a network of tiny veins in the lower part of their skin, but it depends even more on millions of little specks of yellowish and brownish paint which lie in the upper part of their skin. A negro may be as black as your hat outside, but his blood is red all the same, and he looks black because the little specks of paint in the upper part of his skin are very dark and hide the red blood behind them. When people change colour it is because for one cause or another the colour of their blood can be more plainly, or less plainly, seen; and, when this cause is taken away, their old colour returns, for the little specks of paint have not altered in themselves at all.

You can see his Hands and Feet well in this Picture

In Chamæleons, however, and several other creatures, which change colour much more than we do, and keep their changed colour for quite a long time, the specks of paint lie in the lower part of the skin, and often there are numbers of them clustered together as if they had been pressed down tight into little bags. These clusters of paint specks have the power of branching out like sea anemones, and afterwards pulling themselves together again like sea anemones when they are frightened. When they are spread out so as to be as large as possible, the Chamæleon is dark-coloured; and when they are drawn in so as to be as small as possible, the Chamæleon is light coloured; and when, as is really most usual, they are spread out in one part of his body and drawn in in another, the Chamæleon is piebald. I expect you will be curious to know what colour the specks of paint are, and whether they are always the same. They are so small that one needs a powerful microscope to see them; but, as far as we can tell, they are always brownish or reddish, so that the greens and blues which are often to be seen in patches on a Chamæleon have to be accounted for in some other way. It would take too long to explain the blues and greens to you thoroughly, but I think I can give you one little hint about them. You all know what mother-of-pearl looks like. If you hold a piece one way it seems a dull grey all over, but if you hold it another you see all the colours of the rainbow, and you can even make the colours move about it if you handle it properly. Now if the colours were paint they would not move about, though they might not be so bright in some positions as in others, and for the present you must be satisfied to know that a Chamæleon skin, besides holding clusters of paint-specks which change their shape, is so wonderfully made that it can show mother-of-pearl colours as well.

A grown-up Chamæleon is usually greenish in the daytime, with brown patches on his sides. When he goes to sleep at night he turns cream-coloured and his patches become yellowish. A baby Chamæleon is snowy white, and doesn't get spotted even when he is angry or excited, as a grown-up Chamæleon always does.

Now for the Chamæleon pictures. First you must notice his eyes. He has enormous eyeballs, but instead of having two eyelids to each, as we have, he has one eyelid to each (it is really made up of two stuck together), with a tiny round hole in the centre for his eye to look through. This is queer enough, but there is something even queerer about a Chamæleon's eyes. He can move either eyeball up or down or sideways, but he hardly ever moves both the same way, so that he has quite the most wonderful squint in the world, and often keeps one eye looking over his shoulder while the other looks straight in front of him.

Next you must look at his long, skinny arms and legs, and especially at his hands and feet. Like ourselves he has five fingers or toes on each, but they are differently arranged from ours. You must remember, of course, that our thumbs are really fingers. On each hand a Chamæleon has three thumbs and two fingers, and on each foot he has two great toes and three ordinary toes.