Igor has gone to sleep early.
I require pictures of lizards being cute.
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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.
And here's a handful of little baby blue-tongue skinks! I can tell they're less than a week old because they aren't trying to kill each other. Newborn blue-tongues sometimes stick around their siblings for a short while, but part ways early and live an entirely solitary life afterwards.
You can see the little outie bellybutton on the one in the front! Blue-tongue skinks have an almost mammal-like reproductive system with placenta and umbilical cord and everything. After their first shed the bellybutton almost entirely heals over; it is almost invisible in adults. (I can't find Igor's.)
A fun fact about baby blue-tongues specifically is that they are exactly as intelligent as the adults. If faced with an entirely novel problem, there is zero difference in either puzzle solving or learning ability between a 1-week-old baby and a 15-year-old adult. This is extreme, even by reptile standards. Adults do have the advantage of experience and memories, so if faced with a not-entirely-novel problem, they will outperform babies because they can draw on things they've learned in the past.
(Igor has solved a cat puzzle feeder, and I've taught him to wipe his mouth in a kitchen towel. Blueys are generally considered among the smarter reptiles; they can also be clicker and target trained.)
And here's a brave chameleon warrior, ready to go to a LARP or perhaps a HEMA tournament. She's a Jackson's horned chameleon - the reason she isn't actually horned is that she's a she (the males have large triceratops-like horns).
Chameleons are very curious and will usually reach out for pretty much any object that comes within their field of view. They grab anything their hands, tail or feet come into contact with, and they have a *very* strong grip.
Speaking of cute chameleons, here's a Brookesia micra, the second-smallest amniote vertebrate in the world. (Another chameleon, B. nana, is even smaller - and there are a few amphibians smaller still).
This one is a juvenile - and yes, that's a match it's sitting on, for scale. They can grow to a majestic 1.5 cm snout to vent for a full-grown adult male.
They only live on Madagascar, weren't discovered by humans until well into the 2000s, and unlike most chameleons they generally roam the ground rather than climbing trees. They eat fruit flies, mites, ants and other tiny invertebrates.
Also, they can't change colour at all! None of the truly tiny chameleons can, it appears that this ability requires a minimum absolute size to work.
This lovely cuddly couple is a pair of shingleback skinks. And yes, these two are in fact a couple, and they are in fact cuddling.
Closely related to the blue-tongue skink, shinglebacks form lifelong monogamous pairs. They don't live together all year, but in the spring a bonded couple will track each other down (sometimes over very long distances), mate and raise a young or two, and then part ways until the next year. After they meet up and before they start mating, they usually have a 6-8 week long period of the most absurdly cute behaviour - they nuzzle and nudge each other, lick each other's faces, and snuggle up next to each other.
Their newborn are *enormous* (roughly equivalent to giving birth to a four-year-old), and the father is on guard duty while the mother recovers. While he doesn't help his young forage (no reptile does), he does watch over them and will defend them against predators. In the period where he's guarding first his mate and then his kids, he doesn't usually eat anything himself ... for about 2-3 months.
The mother is unable to eat near the end of the pregnancy (due to the enormous embryos), and has to focus on recovering and feeding afterwards.
They live for 50+ years, and if a shingleback dies, its mate will often sit vigil over the dead body for up to a week, and will often refuse to eat for months afterwards.
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.