p. Emerald Sea hybrid and friend

[Potterychef]

Hi all. was taking a few photos in the GH yesterday and noticed this little guy sitting on one of my Emerald Sea crosses trying to open. Pretty funny. D

 

[Candace]

Awww.....

 

[goldenrose]

I'm so jealous, I would love chameleons visiting my GH!:smitten:

 

[mormodes]

Send that to Greg Allikas for the 'Parting Shots' page of 'Orchids'

 

[Shiva]

Not a chameleon I think, but cute all the same.

 

[luvsorchids]

Not a chameleon I think, but cute all the same.

Correct. These guys are anoles, not chameleons.

Susan

 

[Clark]

kind of hard to tell from angle, but i think it is a female

 

[Shiva]

kind of hard to tell from angle, but i think it is a female

Damn! I thought this little guy was gay! oke:

 

[Clark]

Gay or not, it is a desirable form of intergrated pest management(IPM).
A friend indeed!

 

[Shiva]

Gay or not, it is a desirable form of intergrated pest management(IPM).
A friend indeed!

That's for sure! We only have frogs here. And you won't see any this time of year.

 

[slipperscout]

Great photo! Can we see the front of the flower?
Thanks

 

[Ernie]

Yep, anole. My son is for hire to capture these for anyone that needs them. They've been in hiding the past week or so due to cold temps, but they should start to come out again soon. They're pretty slow this time of year, but lightning fast in summer. The brown ones are very common. Green, not so much.

I like them around because they eat bugs and they poop on the plants. Eat up, guys!

 

[John M]

The brown ones are very common. Green, not so much.

I think that they're all the same, Ernie. These guys change their skin colour back and forth between brown and green, depending on their surroundings. Although, not capable of the vast rainbow of colour changes, like a real Chameleon, this ability to shift between brown and green is why they are commonly called Chameleons. I once bought 20 of these guys and let them loose in my greenhouse. When I got them, they were all green; but, in the greenhouse, what colour they displayed depended on where they were resting. Mostly I saw green because most of the plants were green; but, there were some woody, tropical plants too the the Anoles that sunned themselves on the branches would turn brown to match the background.

 

[Shiva]

Thanks John. I never heard of anole before or that they could change color. Interesting.

 

[Ernie]

I think that they're all the same, Ernie. These guys change their skin colour back and forth between brown and green, depending on their surroundings. Although, not capable of the vast rainbow of colour changes, like a real Chameleon, this ability to shift between brown and green is why they are commonly called Chameleons.

Nope they aren't the same- I was just too vague in my original post. This one is a green anole, Anolis carolinensis, and yes, they certainly do go from brown to green and sometimes yellow and very rarely powder blue. The "brown ones" are Anolis sagrei and usually have darker brown diamond patterns along their back and have less color range. A. sagrei are more numerous and aggressive than the greens. A. sagrei make excellent living ear or nose decoration- always willing to bite. It sort of tickles and hurts at the same time. They are imports from the Caribbean and are outcompeting the greens. We see maybe 500 brown A. sagrei to one green (or brown) A. carolinensis. Most of what you see scurrying across the sidewalks down here are A. sagrei. A. carolinensis are pretty shy. On a good day in summer, we could even see a blue tail skink.

 

[SlipperFan]

I want one in my greenhouse....

 

[Clark]

I'm just a parrot.
Bottom of page- Relationship with Humans
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polychrotidae

Some of my professors frowned on wiki.

 

[Erythrone]

I heard of Anolis for IPM.

What bugs do they eat?

 

[Eric Muehlbauer]

Cute! I always felt that if I ever got a greenhouse I would buy a couple of geckoes and anoles to release in there.

 

[Ernie]

When we were digging our pond, once in a while a juicy roach or beetle would scurry out from under a rock (sow/pill bugs too, but they don't exactly scurry). An anole would almost invariably run out and snatch it up and run back under cover. The bugs were sometimes 3-4 times the width of the lizard! I have witnessed them snag ants one by one from an ant trail and they love easy pickin' love bugs! Our Nepenthes, venus ft's, and anoles were never as fat and happy as during love bug season. When watering, anoles jump from the pots left and right.