What’s really fascinating about this guy is that it lacks the color-changing cells, or chromatophores, found on many cephalopods (the group that includes squid, octopods, cuttlefish and nautilus), so they can’t change their color to blend in the way other cephalopods do.

Did you know? An octopus is better called an octopod. “Octo” means eight, and “pus” means mouth, but “pod” means foot. These eight-legged critters only have a single mouth!

Researchers Katherine and Tim Krynak weren’t looking for shape-shifters. In fact, their discovery was a complete accident. They spotted a tiny, spike-covered frog they hadn’t seen before and took it to the lab to photograph. But when they placed the critter on a smooth surface, the spikes disappeared. When they returned it to a mossy enclosure (thinking they had picked up the wrong frog), the spikes came back. “We simply couldn’t believe our eyes, our frog changed skin texture!” says Katherine Krynak.

The change in skin texture allows the frog to blend in better with its environment. Many animals use some form of camouflage to hide from predators, and some, such as squid and chameleons, even change colors. But this is the first time scientists have found a frog that could change its skin texture to enhance that camouflage. The species is new to science, but the scientists say it has a close relative that shares the shape-shifting ability. However, no one had noticed the changes in skin texture before the discovery of the new frog.

Did you know? Some octopods (a term that means “eight legs”) change not only color, but also their body posture to make themselves look like venomous animals, including lionfish and sea snakes. source

Want to know more? Check out the Exploratorium’s page on camouflage in frogs.

Known for their ability to blend in with the environment, chameleons have been famous for their color-changing abilities since Aristotle first described them over 2,000 years ago. Most of the time, chameleons are shades of green and brown. This helps them blend in with the background. But sometimes they need to communicate with other chameleons. Males fight other males. Females let males know when they’re not available to mate. When they do, drab goes by the wayside.

Swiss scientists studying panther chameleons found they have a layer of super-tiny nanocrystals in the outer layer of skin. Nano mean one-billionth, so these crystals are only about 0.000007 inch across. Talk about tiny!

When a chameleon is relaxed, the nanocrystals are arranged in such a way that they reflect blue light. The layer of skin beneath the crystals is yellowish. As the blue and yellow combine, we see shades of green. But when the chameleon gets excited, the positions of the crystals changes. This, in turn, alters the color of the light reflected by the crystal. And the calm green chameleon turns yellow and orange, sending a clear signal to his competitor.

Want to see the color change in action? Check it out here.

Did you know? A chameleon’s tongue shoots out of its mouth at a whopping 13.4 miles per hour (21.6 km/h)!

Want to know more? Check out the original research paper.