Modern day chameleons may be concentrated mostly around sub-Saharan Africa but the oldest known fossil specimen is from China some 60 million years ago. They may be even older than that as a species and they were certainly more numerous; fossils have been found all over Eurasia and Africa too. There are still remainders of those populations all over Eurasia and newly found as an introduced species in Hawaii and other places in southern Nort America.
Everyone knows that the cool thing about chameleons is that they can change their colour. What most people don’t know ( myself included until I started research for this piece) is that not all chameleons can change colour. Or that the colour change is mostly used as a communication device, the camouflage effect is only secondary. But coolest of all, some chameleons can change their colour according to the vision of the predator they are trying to escape. One species even uses it for heat control.
Now if I could just get that damn song out of my head.