Igor has gone to sleep early.
I require pictures of lizards being cute.
Discussion
Igor has gone to sleep early.
I require pictures of lizards being cute.
Here's a green anole. He's not really doing anything particularly cute, but LOOK AT THAT FACE!!!!
I can tell he's a he because of the flap of skin under his throat. That's his dewlap, and he can extend it to a large, bright red semicircle. This is the sort of thing that impresses the ladies if you're an anole - that and showing off your pushup routine. Anoles are great at doing pushups; they will often do a demonstration.
Also, they're crazy smart, and they handily outperform rodents and songbirds on several animal cognition tests. They can learn new tricks by watching other animals do them, learn to manipulate objects using their snouts or mouths, and are *extremely* adaptable. It turns out that even if your brain is the size of a peppercorn, living in tree canopies and competing for your main food source with birds that can kill you, you'll end up with an extremely well-optimized peppercorn.
Here's another green anole, sleeping in a rose.
The name "green" anole is a bit silly, because they can change colours. They're usually green if they're in a good mood, and become a dull grey-brown if something's bothering them. Females will often switch to a warm chocolate brown when in the company of a male they're interested in.
Like chameleons, the colour change is completely involuntary; they have no control over it and any camouflage it provides is entirely coincidental. Sorry to say, they're less nature's ninja assassins and more nature's mood rings.
And here's an adorable leopard gecko.
All lizards have rigid facial muscles, so the "smile" isn't actually an expression of emotion. That is not to say that lizards can't express being contented and feeling pleased, they just don't do it using their faces. Lizard body language is often pretty easy to read if you're familiar with them.
Leopard geckos are a bit unusual among geckos, because they don't have the famous adhesive* toepads - but they *do* have movable eyelids. Such is the gecko character point allocation - either you get magic super-climbing, or you get eyelids.
*) They're not actually "sticky". They are covered in billions of tiny recursive hair-like structures which exploit van der Waals forces to hold on using literally atomic-scale interactions. No gunk involved.
I suppose I can deliver some pictures of lizard cuteness myself. My usual provider went to sleep early today, so I must substitute random internet lizards instead.