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Munich (dpa) - An international team of researchers has discovered a new tiny species of chameleon in Madagascar.
The mini-male has a body length of only 13.5 millimeters, announced the Zoological State Collection in Munich for publication in the journal "Scientific Reports".
It is the smallest known male among almost 11,500 reptile species, explained the Munich first author of the study, Frank Glaw from the State Collection.
At the same time, the smaller chameleon species tend to have the largest genitals relative to body size - the so-called hemipenes - as a comparison with 51 other chameleon species showed.
The female is 19 millimeters taller than the male.
Despite great effort, it was not possible to find more specimens of the new species.
One explanation for the genitals of the male chameleon, which are very large at 18.5 percent of body length, could be the size difference between the sexes, it said.
In the largest chameleon species, the males are usually significantly larger than the females, in the smallest species it is exactly the opposite.
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"Accordingly, the extremely miniaturized males would need relatively larger genitals to enable successful mating with their significantly larger females," explained Miguel Vences from the Technical University of Braunschweig.
In another very small species, the genitals even made up almost a third of the body length.
The new species was discovered during a German-Malagasy expedition in the north of the island and is called Brookesia nana.
The distribution areas of most dwarf chameleons are very small and sometimes only cover an area of a few square kilometers.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210128-99-210800 / 2
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Study on the Internet
Video of the animal