Saturday, February 17, 2024

Chameleons everywhere

I wasn't looking for chameleons today, but the sync fairies had their own plans.

First I saw this on one of those Mormon videos YouTube keeps recommending these days:


Apparently it's a comic book about the story of Joseph Smith and the golden plates as told by an old man in Madagascar -- because, well, why not Madagascar? (In fact, if you believe the Mormon folklore about the ships of Hagoth, I guess the Malagasy people should be, like their Polynesian relatives, Nephites.) And, I learned today, about half of all chameleon species live only in Madagascar.

(Judging by the presence of red ruffed lemurs, this is apparently the Sava region of Madagascar.)

Then about an hour later, when I was (for complex psychological reasons) searching for a photoshopped "hybrid" of a zebra and a hippopotamus, I found this:


That's a chameleon head shopped onto the body of a gray tabby cat. My January 25 post "An old pre-dator, chameleons, and le Demiurge," opens with this image of a gray tabby cat blending in with its surroundings as if it were a color-changing "chameleon" like the title character in the movie Predator:

4 comments:

WanderingGondola said...

A friend just pointed me to a trailer for the upcoming Kung Fu Panda 4, in which the villain is (drumroll) a chameleon.

Malagasy Lassie said...

Are the Madagasques (Madalasy) the relatives of the the Monégasques (Monégasy)?

William Wright (WW) said...

There is a giraffe connection with camouflaged cats that might be interesting.

Giraffes were known as Camelelopard in older vernacular. The word was a combination of Camel and Leopard.

Leopard itself is a combination of Leo (Lion) and Pard (panther - for the spots). A spotted lion.

Using the French form of Leo (Leon), and moving the 'pard' form of the word to the front, we can have this earlier form of the name of Giraffe sound exactly like Chameleon, strangely: Camel-leon. A spotted Camel-Leon.

I might put a short post up on that in conjunction with exploring the topic of Thomas Marsh.

William Wright (WW) said...

Just noticed my typo above. "Camelopard" is how the archaic Giraffe name is supposed to be written, rather than with that extra "el" I threw in there accidentally.

Sabbatical notice

I'm taking a break from blogging for a bit, exact timetable undetermined. In the meantime, feel free to contact me by email.