Beautiful lizard discovery in Vietnamese city

This is a 2018 Calotes bachae video.

From Wildlife Extra:

Bright blue lizard discovered in the rainforests of Vietnam

Lizard can be seen in Ho Chi Minh [City]

January 2013. Reptile specialists from the Alexander Koenig Museum in Bonn, together with colleagues from the Lomonosov Moscow State University discovered a magnificent new lizard in the south of Vietnam which has been named Calotes bachae.

Like all males of the family Agamidae, these lizards like to impress the ladies with their brilliant colours. During courtship the heads of lizards become a startling azure colour.

Unusually, like a Chameleon, they can also change their colours. For example, at night they are rather dark and brownish, almost inconspicuous. When courting they are bright blue, but after a turf war inferior males lose their colours, paling in just a few minutes.

The animals have been known to the Vietnamese and to scientists for a long time. However, they assumed that this lizard was the same species of blue lizard known from Myanmar and Thailand. However, the German-Russian research team determined, by using a genetic test, that this lizard belongs to a different species.

It is relatively easy to spot the new species as it seems quite happy to live in urban areas, and even in a metropolis like Ho Chi Minh City, where you can find the beautiful animals in parks and flower beds.

The finding was described in the scientific journal Zootaxa.

See also here.

Agamids are a widespread, diverse iguanian lizard group that I have a special fondness for and consequently have featured several times on Tet Zoo (see links below). Of course, I’ve never featured them enough, nor discussed or even mentioned whole groups of species that really should get adequate coverage here. In a recent article I discussed several taxa within the Australian earless dragon clade Tympanocryptis. Today, I want to expand the discussion somewhat by looking at Australian agamids more generally: here.

Related articles

• Australia, land of dragons (part II)
• Grassland earless dragons
• Blue-Eyed Agamids
• Garden Lizard
• New Vietnamese lizard discovery
• Lizard Families – Scincidae