Chameleon Lives Fast, Dies Young

June 30, 2008 -- "Live fast and die young" takes on new meaning in light of a recently discovered chameleon that spends over half its life in an egg before living hard for a handful of months and then dropping dead of "old" age.

With an existence akin to that of an annual plant, the chameleon, Furcifer labordi, breaks the world record as the four-legged animal with the shortest known lifespan.

Kristopher Karsten, an Oklahoma State University zoologist, made the discovery with his colleagues after several months of work at Madagascar's Ranobe Forest in the southwestern part of the country. The scientists first observed that, during the region's dry season, developing eggs that incubated for eight or nine months represented the chameleon's entire population.

He and his colleagues published a paper on the lizard in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Otther chameleons spend large portions of their time in their eggs, but this particular species "has an astonishingly nearly 3 to 1 ratio of incubation to post-hatch life," Karsten told Discovery News.

For the first two months in the egg, the chameleon exists in a state of "physiological arrest" and does not utilize much, if any, of its egg yolk nutrients.

"The chameleons commence developing and growing (inside the egg) only when the wet season approaches," Karsten said.

Since many forest plants and animals slow down during the dry season, he believes the unguarded eggs have "a bit of a built-in safety net." Snakes, however, may eat them on occasion.

The colorful reptiles then hatch en masse and start to eat -- a lot.