Local form Ankarana West

Distribution of the local form:

Ankarana national park is in northwest Madagascar in region Diana. It is separated into two large areas by the Tsingys, an impressive needlestone formation. One side is the east, and the other is the west with its extensive dry forests. In contrast to the eastern area, the western part of the Tsingys is difficult to access via offroad tracks or by boat via the Channel of Mozambique. This is the reason for only very few travelers visiting this part of the national park. In the dry forest of Ankarana west, male panther chameleons are rust red, which is completely different from the local form of the eastern part of the same park.

Appearance of the local form:

The male panther chameleons in Ankarana’s western dry forest have a rust-red to dirty orangeish color that is massively different from the local form of the other side of the Tsingys.

In Madagascar, it is illegal to catch animals in protected areas or even inside national parks. If you find this local form outside Madagascar, you can be sure that the chameleon was either illegally exported or is not from this local form. In most cases, the offered animals are simply sold under the wrong local form name to raise the prices.

Weight table

Gewichtstabelle Furcifer pardalis 2018

Gewicht = weight in grams, Kopf-Rumpf-Länge = snout-vent-length in cm, Weibchen = females, Männchen = males

Since 2015, we have been measuring the weights of chameleons found by us in Madagascar, as far as the animals (and our scales) participate. In the long term, we aim to obtain an average weight in relation to snout-vent-length (measured from the tip of the nose to the cloaca) for each species from as many measurements as possible. It is important to know that all weights were measured towards the end of the rainy season (= best food supply), so these should be maximum weights on Madagascar. Triangular symbols in females mean not pregnant, round symbols mean pregnant. In Furcifer pardalis, contrary to our original assumption, it has so far turned out that there are no serious differences in the ratio of SVL to weight between the individual local forms.

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Average temperature	25	25	24	23	20	19	18	19	20	22	23	24
Minimum temperature	21	20	20	19	16	14	14	14	15	17	19	20
Maximum temperature	30	29	28	27	26	24	23	24	25	27	28	29
Rain days	26	24	21	12	8	7	9	9	7	9	13	20

We have collected the data given above over several years with thermometers and hygrometers at the finding places of the chameleons. "Average temperature" means that values of a whole month have been calculated to one average value per month. For example all measured minimum temperature values of February have been calculated to one average minimum temperature for February. In plain language, this means single peak values of a day may be a little higher or lower than the average minimum and maximum temperatures. It is possible that a location has an average maximum temperature of 29°C, but one day during that month it had 33°C or even 35°C there.

Ankarana is a dry forest divided in two halfs by the famous Tsingys, needle stone rocks. Inside the dry forest, it is very warm during daytime all year long. During rainy season from October to April, temperatures above 30°C are rather usual and it often rains.

During dry season from May to September days are a little cooler, but still very warm. At night, temperatures don't really drop in rainy season, but in dry season temperatures drop to 15°C at night. Dry season, by the way, means really dry in Ankarana: The major part of the trees looses its leaves and there is few precipitation only every couple of days. The rivers that have been torrentially in rainy season, dry up completely only leaving the bare stony river beds.

We have measured UVB data with a Solarmeter 6.5 in spring (beginning of April) at the peak of activity of chameleons in Madagascar. We always measured the values that a chameleon could maximally reach in its habitat.

Unfortunately, we have no ground temperatures for Ankarana available yet.

Since 2022, in addition to other climate data, we have also been measuring air pressure at the locations we visit in Madagascar. The following data is from a day during the rainy season. On the X-axis is the time of day or night. In Madagascar, the day begins around 6 am, and night falls as early as 6 pm. The Y-axis shows the atmospheric pressure in hPa.

Habitat:

The habitat of panther chameleons in Ankarana consists of old dry forest with huge trees and very dense undergrowth. The sandy ground is covered by foliage. Shrubs consist of endless extremely twined plants in which it is really difficult to find the animals. Sometimes the panther chameleons here come close to the edge of the Tsingys. There are several rivers in the forest that become wild rushing waters during the rainy season and completely dry up during the dry season.