Chameleon has changed in calm condition. The real color of chameleon. Paint chameleon "Aurora". Basic colors: Green neon, blue, purple
Chameleon is a lizard that forms a separate species and has a number of features. Externally resembles other lizards, only possesses more long tail. In a calm state, he wraps into a spiral towards down. Paws are an excellent grabbing tool of an animal, as it mainly leads a woody lifestyle. Five fingers have grown into a group of 3 and 2, respectively, which forms a kind of claw.
The main area is sharply limited and is located on the island of Madagascar and the adjacent small islands. There are also B. tropical forests Africa, on the boastal zone of the Eastern Coast. And also there are chameleons in the dedicated areas of Africa, as a rule in highlands.
REFERENCE! Alpine views are usually crowded lizards. Whereas the rest are laying off eggs to remove the offspring.
Disappointing method of hunting. An animal suggests its prey or slowly moves towards it. The menu includes insects, but large types of chameleons can also eat small birds and reptiles. Catching is carried out using a sticky language that shoots with a lightning speed forward to mining. The suction cup at the end provides reliable capture. After that, the insect pulls the caught in his mouth.
Eyes with a special design are used to detect. Each of them rotates arbitrarily and regardless of the second. It provides chameleon a rather wide range of review. The eyeball is closed with a dense burner, only the pupil is open.
The presence of natural enemies, threatening the life of chameleon, led to the fact that the lizard adapted to mimicry. So she is protected . This is the so-called change in the color of the body in accordance with the external conditions and mood of the animal is the answer to the question, why and why chameleons change the color.
Color change - the main feature of chameleons
The skin of chameleon is a kind of armor. Like many reptiles, it has a scaly and a tuberculous structure. Each scaway or tuberculosis adjacent to each other, which provides a certain defense lizard. But at the same time, there is also another way with which you can disguise. Such mimicry or camouflage help chameleon together with immobility to stay unnoticed for their enemy.
Chromatographs - Special Cells for Color Shift
One of the main distinctive properties of chameleon is the ability to change the color of the body. She is provided by special cells in the skin, which are called chromatophores.
These cells have a sufficiently branched structure. The part is located in the depths of the skin and is associated with nervous endings. While another process is closer to the outer layers of the skins. In it and are capsules with pigments containing black, yellow and red paint.
Reference! If the animal is tightened, then due to the muscular spasm and spasm of nerve endings, chromatophores are fixed inside certain zones, without spreading over the entire surface.
This leads to the fact that the skin becomes the most bright or even white. When the animal is in a calm state, the pigments will be distributed over all the fibers, ensuring the presence of paint, which changes the shade of the lizard to the darker and bright.
Guanin for reflection and overflow
In addition, there are more components in the skin of the animal as Guanin. Features of the chemical composition of Guanin provide its reflective properties. Thanks to such a game of light, the skin of the lizard acquires additional color overflows. Blue, green, bluish and rich purple shades appear.
It is important to remember that the final color of the animal depends on such factors:
- his kind;
- physical condition;
- feelings of hunger or, on the contrary, satiety;
- pairing readiness;
- the presence of a stress situation.
Reference! To a certain extent, the skin of chameleon is transparent, and the presence of pigments makes it capable of receiving different shades.
Depending on how the coloring substance is common in a cell, a lizard becomes either bright in its coloristic color or colorless, almost white, if chromatophores are assembled in the center of the coder of the cell.
What colors can have chameleon
Color chameleon in calm condition Depends primarily on the view to which the animal belongs.
The second factor affecting the color of the skin in a particular situation is external conditions.
- If the animal is frightened or is in an aggressive stateand, it becomes the most dark, sometimes taking practically black color.
- In the calm condition, the color is most natural and corresponds to a certain type of reptile.
- During the marriage period, males become more saturated color, What in vivo, signaling about their readiness to mate.
Important! All the colors of the rainbow can take this lizard - from black and unbroken dust-gray to bright shades of purple, green and orange.
How is the color change
Changing color in chameleon can occur differently. Under the influence of external conditions the process takes only a few seconds.. Whereas internal processes can cause more slow changes in the tone.
As already mentioned, chromophores provide a change in skin color. Due to the intensity of compression of muscle structures and nerve fibers, a different amount of pigments occurs. Mixing together in different proportions, they give one or another shade. It is important when the animal is masked. The color scheme is limited only by the view of the lizard.
Interesting! Not only color changes, but also drawing. So stains that were at the beginning may disappear or, on the contrary, will appear new. Moreover, the eyes are able to change, or rather, the solid annular eyelid.
Causes of color change
Earlier it was believed that chameleon changes color due to disguise. But recent research Scientists revealed a different dependence of this process.
On the color of reptiles more affects the external environment. So, for example, African lizards change the color, acquiring darker shades in the morning clock. This allows them to quickly warm up, absorbing the maximum solar energy. Whereas in the afternoon, avoiding overheating, they brought out their color to the extremely light tones.
Females during pregnancy darken, Signing the males that they are busy with hatching offspring and are not ready for mating. Thus, the color becomes a kind of scaring factor.
Also, when there are two male, they become much brighter. This is due to the spirit of rivalry, which they feel in relation to each other. In addition to color, the body shape changes. Males can bloom, increasing in size.
Change not only color, but also the skin
As the animal grows, it periodically lines. The replacement mechanism is next. Periodicity can be 1 month for a young reptile, whereas the senior skin reset occurs less frequently. The same with the duration of the reset period. In young people, she slides in a few hours, while adults can be sewed for 1 week.
Important! For those who contain this reptile at home, it is necessary to pay attention to the appearance of possible pathologies when skin discharge.
In this case, you need to turn to the vet, as the lizard may just miss necessary vitamins and microelements so that the body function normally.
Chameleon is the inhabitant of sultry Africa, which acquired fame due to the unique ability to change skin color. This small lizard of just 30 cm is able to transform, becoming black, pink, green, blue, red, yellow. Many scientists conducted various researchTo find out how chameleon changes color, and with what it is connected with. It was assumed that he thus masked under the background surrounding it. But it turned out to be an incorrect assumption.
This lizard itself is unique. She looks like a dragon, often changes the skin of the skin, sits on the branches of trees in waiting for the victim, which is captured by a long tongue. Her eyes live in a separate life, turning into different sides. Chameleon changes color thanks to special cells - chromatophoras. Its skin is transparent, so the cells containing pigment are so well visible. different color.
For a long time, researchers could not understand how Chameleon changes color, and why it happens. It was assumed that it was necessary for disguise. After all, painting, for example, in a lizard can be masked in foliage, hiding from predators and waiting for their victims. After all, during the evolution, many chameleons learned to acquire the color and drawing of their enemy - for example, birds or snakes.
Modern studies have shown that the process of how chameleon changes color, completely depends on its state. The skin color varies from mood changes - such reactions as fear or joy. It may depend even on air temperature. In Africa, many chameleons are acquired in the morning to attract, but in the afternoon they will be blossomed so that it is not so hot. Motion colors they use in marriage gamesIn order to attract a representative of the opposite flight.
Chromatophores in chameleons are located in deep layers of the skin and directly depend on the nervous system. In the upper layer are containing red and yellow cell pigments. Next is a guanine, which very accurately reproduces blue. Under it - melanophores responsible for pigments of black and yellow colors and containing melanin. The way in the cell is the pigment granules, completely affects the color. Chameleon is a very interesting animal. After all, pigments in its cells move very quickly, changing the color. If they are focused in the center of the cell, then it will remain transparent, and if it is uniformly distributed, it will turn into an intense color.
Nervous endings connect chromatophores with the brain, from where the commands come from. The way chameleon changes the color, can be compared with the palette, in which paints, stirring, create completely new shades. Due to its ability to change the color of the skin, this lizard has gained tremendous popularity. Today, other things that iridescent of different shades or changing them are called chameleons.
Although it seems that changing the color, lizard wishes to disguise, it is not. She does not pay attention to the background. The skin is affected by the mood, experienced emotions, air temperature, but not surrounding the environment. Therefore, the view is that when chameleon turns out to appear black and white cells on it, in the root incorrectly.
Most people have the word "chameleon" from associated with the ability to change body color. Actually, this is the ability and allocated it among other lizards and made so popular.
Contrary to universal opinion, chameleon changes painting not only for disguising under environment. A number of other factors can also be distinguished: physiological (humidity and air temperature, lighting) and emotional (aggression, wedding fear).
Many centuries passed until scientists managed to solve the riddle of chameleon, find out and examine the nature of his ability.
Considering under the microscope, the lizard's skin, biologists allocated special pigment cells - chromatophores. They are located on the surface of the skin in two layers, can stretch, shrink and have a complex mechanism of work, closely associated with the nervous system.
In chromatophoras contain grains of pigments of different colors (dark brown, reddish, yellow and black). When the cells cut the skin becomes blue, and when stretching, first green, and then yellow. If both layers of chromatorm are reduced simultaneously, the lower layer of white cells without pigments and the lizard leather seems pale.
The red color gives the skin a separate group of cells that can become lighter or darker, depending on the location in them, melanin's granules, the most pigment that people are responsible for the skin color, hair and iris.
Some believe that, masking, chameleons are able to take any color or ornament, but this is not entirely true. Chameleon will not be black and white into the cage, if the chessboard is flying. Possible color combinations and brightness of the skins in each individual view are different, but always varies in a limited range.
People watching chameleons may seem that these reptiles change the color consciously, "customizing" themselves under the color of the environment. In this case, it would have to assume that chameleons have self-consciousness and abstract, which is not expected from.
Mechanism change coloring
In the upper layer of the skin there are special cells - chromatophores ("bearing color"). These cells contain pigment grains. Chameleon has three chromatophores: Iridocytes, xanthophores and melanocytes. Iridocites contain a guanine that gives golden or silver color, xanthoforas - carotene, associated with the gamut of shades from yellow to red, and the color of melanocytes containing melanin varies from yellow to black.
All three types of chromatophores are equipped with processes that are able to shrink. When reducing the process, the pigment focuses in the middle of the chromatofor, which makes the color lighter. If the process is not reduced, the pigment turns out to be in it, and the color becomes darker.
Chromatophores are capable of moving. When they are immersed in the deep layers of the skin, the color is pale, and when they are at the surface - more saturated.
All this can occur in different combinations: some cells deepened, others remained at the surface, in some processed processes, and others are reduced. Thanks to this, the color "palette" chameleon turns out to be very rich.
Causes of color change
Without possessing a developed central nervous system, chameleon, of course, can not think: "I am now among the green leaves, it means that you need to paint the skin into green." Contrary to common misconception, disguise under the environment is not the only one and not even the main purpose of the ability of chameleon to change color.
Change coloring is associated with emotions that have an animal. In a state of excitation or fear, the chameleon becomes yellow, and with an aggressive emotional setting - black.
It affects the color of chameleons and lighting: in the dark they become cream with yellow spots.
Especially bright and unpredictable becomes changing the color of males in the married period. This is not only a way to attract the attention of females, but also a threat addressed to rivals.
Such patterns of change in the color of chameleons say that the nervous system is controlled by the color variations. The mechanisms of nervous regulation of chromatophores are not studied to the end, but a certain role in them is played by vision: if you remove the chameleon one eye, the corresponding half of the body loses the ability to change the color.