Animal kaleidoscope

The panther chameleon of Madagascar takes visual aids on to a whole different plane. This is the kaleidoscope of the natural world. Its colour vision is even better than ours. Plus, colour is how it expresses itself. An excited chameleon can switch from cool green to angry red in an instant. Beneath the skin is a double layer of simple pigment cells which expand or contract, flushing from yellow, through green, to blue. Contracting both layers reveals the white cells below, turning the skin pale. Groups of branch cells give a red colour, turning darker or lighter as black melanin granules move up and down. All this produces the most complex, dazzling colour coding of any land animal. Imagine if we could communicate in colour: make our intentions known in a split second, express our every move in an instant and even disappear into the background when we felt like it.