Four months ago, we reported on a new species of the Chamaeleolis clade. The FB page above shows that it’s already for sale in Europe!
Professor of Biology and Director of the Living Earth Collaborative at Washington University in Saint Louis. I've spent my entire professional career studying anoles and have discovered that the more I learn about anoles, the more I realize I don't know.
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Sven Vogler
What astonished me even more is that the offered animals already were bred in captivity.
But it’s a fact that many educated hobbyists keeplocale strains cleans, a famous thing was the description of Atheris mathildae a few years ago. In the description the type locality was not mentioned “to prevent paching” – actually the species has been in the hobby through the legal trade for long time, known as “the big from of Atheris ceratophora”.
Same with many Caribbean anoles, split up species and make keepers happy (I got a new species!) and wiser (now I know why mine don’t mate – they’re diff. species!).
🙂
Levi Gray
It may not be the case here, but it is quite common for sellers to claim animals are captive bred when they are not.
Rick Wallach
This was the only European thread I could find so I figure I’ll post here.
I just returned to Miami from a week in Alcala de Henares near Madrid, Spain. On Tuesday night, July 9th, a colleague and I were walking through the Plaza de Cervantes at about eight PM (Spanish time) when I noticed an A. sagrei sitting on the rim of a cement planter displaying its dewlap. This is such a common sight to me, it took a second for it to sink in that I was not at home but in the middle of Spain. As I approached for a closer look the lizard darted into the shrubs and disappeared, but there’s no doubt about what I saw.
The question, of course, is whether the little feller was an escaped pet or indicative of yet another feral population of this ubiquitous species. I suspect the former, since during Madrid area winters the nighttime termperature drops into the mid-thirties F. Even so, I’d be curious if anyone else knows of reported sightings of brown anoles on the Iberian penninsula.
Rick Wallach
PS – I should add that even if central Spain is too cold from late October – April to support a feral population of sagrei, southern coastal Spain from Isla Cristina, around the coast past Cadiz to Gibraltar and then back northward maybe halfway to Barcelona, is much warmer and would support them handily.
Just a thought.
Rick Wallach
Back to the western bearded chameleon (“false anole”) – I’ve seen them for sale locally in two reptile shops, and available online from a third. They’ve become pretty popular, and why not? They’re such striking creatures.