Above: The image sent by a reader who was curious to know what this strange-looking lizard was. Photo by Rebecca Reeder-Hunt

One of the reasons I started this blog was  to share some of the experiences I have dealing with National Geographic-funded scientists in my daily work, but also to let you have some access to them as well. I'm glad that some of you are taking advantage of that.

Today we have a photo taken by Rebecca Reeder-Hunt in the Hawaiian Islands. Here is her query: 

"In June 2006 I was wandering around the island of Lanai early one morning.  A rustling in the bushes caught my attention in the total silence of early a.m., and I shot a couple of pictures of two what-I-called geckos fighting.  However, when I cropped and enlarged the photos on my computer, I realized that the dark creature looked different than any lizard or gecko I'd seen before: the light eyes, the extremely long middle toes, the ridge on its back, and even the visible rib cage...  I have searched the web for hours trying to fins anything that looked like this guy, but to no avail...."

Well, Rebecca, it did not take long to get an answer. First of all, I asked Dr. Tim Watkins, a program officer and herpetologist at National Geographic's Committee for Research and Exploration what your creature was. He replied that there are no native lizards on the Hawaiian Islands, so we know that it is an introduced lizard. To find out what kind, he referred me to Dr. Jonathan Losos at Harvard Univerisity, who is an expert in island lizards. His reply:

It's Anolis carolinensis, an introduced species to Hawaii native to the southeastern United States.

Turns out this is the kind of "chameleon," properly called an anole, is available in many pet stores and is  hard not to step on in Florida and other southeastern states. I remember having these as pets when I was a kid. I thought it looked familiar! Thanks for the question and thanks to Dr. Watkins and Dr. Losos for the identification.

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