‘Smallest reptile on earth’ discovered in Madagascar | Hacker News Reader

‘Smallest reptile on earth’ discovered in Madagascar

bbc.com

244 pointspseudolus63 comments

Must be some fundamental limit on the size of organs and tissues, to still function. Or, there are smaller reptiles and we just haven't 'seen' them yet! Who's looking behind every blade of grass for an iguana after all.

Insects win the 'smallest' title - the Fairy Wasp is 0.13mm

Maybe the limit is not function, but being competitive. Insects don’t have lungs and an open instead of closed circulatory system, with a tubular “heart” sloshing around hemolymph instead of blood. At this small size this should have advantages?

Yes, and I was thinking about its eyes.

The human eyeball has diameter roughly equal to the entire length of this lizard, making its volume 10,000X larger than the lizard's eyeball.

OTOH, with a pupil that small, visual depth of field must be large. So perhaps the nano-chameleon doesn't need to do much in the way of focussing.

Small wonder they took so long to discover :-p

> OTOH, with a pupil that small, visual depth of field must be large.

But the pupil is also small enough that diffraction is a major issue so their visual acuity is probably quite poor

Good point. So it can also 'get away with' having tiny retinas, since there's less information available to resolve.

I was wondering the same thing. But as pointed out here[1]. There are some interesting points:

Cell size is actually affected to genome size and cell size has a more complex relation to Physical Shapes and sizes:

" As a result, species that are the same physical size but have different genome and cell sizes likely also differ in ways that significantly affect morphogenesis, growth, and adult morphology. Analysis of organismal size and size change thus becomes a consideration not simply of physical size, but also of a more elusive concept-biological size."

Even within a species the variation is tremendous:

"In some groups, miniaturization may have been achieved by cell size decrease (65). In others, extensive genome and cell size variation complicates tremendously even basic comparisons of body size among taxa."

I remember seeing attenborough on TV how a species of frogs living in the cold areas just allow themselves to be frozen for long periods of time and then thaw back to life!

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/James_Hanken/publicatio...

> Insects win the 'smallest' title - the Fairy Wasp is 0.13mm

I find this photo mesmerizing. It's almost as if it was digitally rendered, or sculptured with metal:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Mymarill...

Plenty of reptiles hatch from an egg smaller than this and can fend for themselves. The only thing special is that the growth of these and other miniature chameleons ends at an abnormally small size.

Citation?

Reptiles tend to have pretty large babies in comparison to their body size, actually.

Babies are smaller, but not nearly THIS small. Most typical lizards are already several inches straight out of the egg.

It occurs to me, that the eggs of this reptile are by necessity much smaller than the adult. Thus, the young are likely born somewhat smaller than the given record-breaking size.

But read the post I'm replying to. Most reptiles are FAR larger the adults of this species even right out of the egg.

This comes up from time to time, but it's pertinent to the discussion (more so on larger scales, but the reverse holds true], so in case you haven't had the delight of reading [1].

1. PDF download link: https://www.phys.ufl.edu/courses/phy3221/spring10/HaldaneRig...

B. nana, brought to us by the guy who named some pygmy frogs 'Mini scule', 'Mini ature' and 'Mini mum'. I'm looking forward to the next few things they're working on going public :)

Brought to you by Dr. Scherz [0]. Scherz meaning "Joke" in German.

0 - http://www.markscherz.com/archives/4055

Whenever I see the word minuscule, I’m reminded of a time in my childhood when my brother’s teacher spelled it wrong on a spelling test (that week was to have a collection of words starting mini-, though looking now it seems that miniscule is such a common variant that it is often accepted)

Here's to hoping its some kind of newt. It would basically name itself!

Was it discovered, meaning that the indigenous population didn't know about it, doesn't have a name for it, cannot tell you anything about it, or meaning that it will now be introduced in a formal taxonomy?

There are several similar small chameleons around the island, which have been long known by locals and tourists. But this new one is 'micro-endemic' to a very small, remote region. Probably been seen before, but I think 'discovered' is fair in this case when talking about discovering that this is a separate, undescribed species and not one of the more widespread ones.

A second issue is that, at lower levels, taxonomy isn’t a very well defined thing. (Perhaps one way to think of it is that phylogeny maps onto taxonomy and this mapping isn’t injective.) So if two groups of animals are reclassified as two species, it is hard to say whether or not a new species was discovered. Especially if the two variants were known before—should one backdate the species discovery to the time the variants were identified? Similarly, a species doesn’t really go extinct if the taxonomy changes so two species are merged into one.

The vernacular names for some group of animals (or plants) needn’t correspond to some clade that gets a taxonomical name. Eg broccoli and cabbage are considered the same species, whereas ‘crab’ may refer to all sorts of largely unrelated animals.

> The vernacular names for some group of animals (or plants) needn’t correspond to some clade that gets a taxonomical name. Eg broccoli and cabbage are considered the same species, whereas ‘crab’ may refer to all sorts of largely unrelated animals.

Broccoli (Brassica oleracea var. botrytis) and cabbage (var. costata/italica) are bad examples [1], since subspecies and varieties are well defined as ranks in botanical taxonomy and there are regulatory structures based on them. I think a better example would be hybrids like plumcots which are crosses of multiple species. Fitting them cleanly into natural taxonomy is a huge mess - over evolutionary timescales hybrids usually outcompete, converge with, or diverge from their parents enough to clean up their taxa for us.

[1] https://plants.usda.gov/core/profile?symbol=brol - Subordinate Taxa tab

Why is this semantic definition relevant?

I suspect there is a social justice narrative being advocated in it.

Science is about cataloguing and documenting nature. It's not particularly relevant if a tribe of indigenous people knew about it.

The blog post the article refers to (couldn't find it in the article itself): http://www.markscherz.com/archives/4800

Thanks.

Interesting discussion about “smallest” depend on how size is measured: “ As a result, whether or not the new species is considered the smallest amniote in the world depends on whether we define that based on the male or female body size, or the midpoint of the two. It turns out this is quite a common problem in other species with size dimorphism as well, such as frogs.”

Yeah, I wasn't even aware that such size dimorphism existed to such extent in some species.

The anglerfish and Trichonephila clavipes are nice examples of size dimorphism.

Did no one else notice the gem in here that BBC failed to mention, that this lizard has one of if not the largest dicks relative to body size of any vertebrate? Due to gender size dysmorphism and internal fertilization.

Here is an article that does mention testicle size: https://newslanded.com/2021/02/06/a-new-chameleon-species-mi...

(which I guess might tie into the other thread about minimum organ sizes!)

> a chameleon subspecies that is the size of a seed

"seed" is needlessly vague term here... mustard seed or coconut?

The article provides a length of 13.5mm which is only 10mm shorter than the distance between the seed comparison and the reported length of the species.

> 10mm shorter than the distance between the seed comparison

This doesn't parse for me. You mean the difference between the two lengths of seeds I gave? Thats 150mm - 3mm, which is more than 10mm longer than 13.5mm.

I was going to make the exact same comparison with the mustard seed and coconut, but looking at the numbers, it more or less tracks as being the center of the log scale between the two seeds. Palm seeds in general are exceptionally large compared to anything else, while we're at it.

When somebody says "seed", do you think mustard seed or coconut seed?

I think of a broad category of items including strawberry seeds, mustard seeds, sunflower seeds, mango seeds and other "pit"s, up to coconut seeds. I think "sunflower seed" would have been a better comparison, as its something a person can actually visualize, not a 3 order of magnitude spanning category.

It’s just meant to give a rough visual. The article provides the exact length.

It fails to give a rough visual, though. The picture of it on a fingertip is much better for that.

Fingertips vary in size as well if you want to be maximally pedantic.

Yeah, but not through nearly as many orders of magnitude as "seeds".

If you leave out massive outliers like coconuts (which I highly suspect are not what 99.9% of people think of when they think of "seeds"—I realize that's not the case for you), I think the variation would actually be quite similar.

Poppy seed to mango seed are all "reasonable" seeds IMO. And that's a pretty darn large range, I'd expect almost all chameleons to fall within it.

The average person thinks of a mustard seed or some other small seed. I also think you know this and are being pedantic.

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

I came here to say the exact same thing. Who even goes around comparing things to seeds anyway? The writer was trying to be cute but just ended up saying something bizarre and stupid.

Awesome. Hope these little guys survive.

These little creatures would be a good candidate for pets. Small, cute, could use a boost to their numbers.

House cats love them.

I think all business savy people think the same thing.

I would love to bring these cameleons on my travels on the plane.

Not all animals make good pets.

I'm guessing it probably needs a very specific diet and climate to survive. If this is like other chameleons, they are prone to all sorts of health issues and in general very hard to keep alive.

Nonsense, a shrewd capitalist can easily sell these in kits with everything you need to keep them alive. They are so small, and if they die well they are tiny you can probably just get a new one and most people will probably keep like 4 or 5 of them at a time anyway, probably breeding their own replacements. These are fantastic can’t wait to have a terrarium filled with them.

Except for the part where the article mentions these little critters might be facing possible extinction already if it weren’t for protection laws for its native biodome.

Be a lot cooler if we didn’t hasten that just to put them in little glass boxes in our domiciles, forced breeding of domesticated canine and felines have already enough caused genetic problems with breathing and bone density among certain breeds-for example.

Let’s let these little fellas thrive unmolested, does anyone know where I (as a westerner) could learn more about the conservation efforts mentioned in the article?

In the aquarium hobby there is a niche of experienced fishkeepers who keep and breed species of fish that are endangered in nature through the CARES program[1]. (Note 'experienced', these are not the same people who walk into PetSmart on a whim and come out with six goldfish and a bowl.) With careful breeding and mixing of bloodlines, genetic inbreeding issues can largely be avoided.

That said, any species will thrive better in its natural habitat if that habitat can be protected. Continuation of the species in captivity, if it is even possible, should be seen as a last resort and not an equal substitute.

[1] https://caresforfish.org/

Skinks can be fairly small, like a few inches. Used to like watching them as a kid.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skink

When did the BBC start fucking with the back button? Every time I click a link from here I have to rapidly press back to come back. So annoying.

The back button went down the memory hole along with their integrity.

Title should read: ‘Smallest known reptile on earth’ discovered in Madagascar.

That's implicit. One could add "as far as it is known" to any headline, but to what purpose?

I don't find it implicit and feel it has a tinge of hubris. Too much is reported as fact, and taken as such, when it's just a best guess.

I disagree entirely. Some sets are completely known and others are not.

For example, the youngest American president is accurate as we know all of the American presidents.

While, we are discovering thousands of new species every year.

It is important to remind people of this fact of species being an unknown set size.

> we know all of the American presidents

So far.

> we know all of the American presidents.

But not their birth certificates!

The quotes clue us in, its a title. The title is won again each time a smaller reptile is discovered. That was my immediate understanding on seeing the article. No extra words needed!

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