I’ll admit, when I saw Nic’s latest post about the mating chameleons, I felt a familiar twinge of professional jealousy. Having spent more than nine years seeking out incredible moments to capture out here, you often don’t really know what your “bucket-list” sightings are. Well, I mean, of course, there are the big ones, such as lions fighting, a cub-carry, successful hunts, but smaller, somewhat more inconspicuous sightings only rear their heads in the moment, or when you hear of something that someone else has seen.

A rare encounter that was a first for me. Two Chameleons mating. Another timely reminder that you truly never know what you might come across in this wild space!

So, yay for Nic that he saw these two chameleons mating, but thanks to a great comment on his blog,

“Is the gender of the young affected by the incubation temperature?”

I thought it would be a great opportunity to delve into one of the most incredible “manual overrides” in the reptile world.

This was not from the sighting, but I am sure this is exactly what it would have looked like if we could have got a little closer and under the bush with the tortoise. But we did not want to disturb her or put any pressure on her so we chose to leave her be.

Nature’s Thermostat

In many reptiles, such as crocodiles and various tortoises and turtles, the sex of hatchlings is determined by nest temperature during a critical incubation window. This is known as Temperature-dependent Sex Determination (TSD).

Essentially, if the soil where the female carefully buries her eggs stays within a specific “Goldilocks” range, you get a balanced mix. If things swing too hot or too cold during that wait underground, the brood could skew heavily toward one gender. Take crocodiles, for example, higher temperatures (around 31- 32 °C or 88 °F) speed up development and tend to produce males, while lower temperatures produce females.

An unusual sighting of a baby crocodile and a terrapin lying together on a rock in the Sand River.

Whereas with leopard tortoises, eggs typically take between 8 and 15 months (roughly 240 to 460 days) to hatch, making them one of the longest-incubating tortoise species. Hatching time is heavily influenced by temperature and, in the wild, often requires rain to soften the soil.

However, temperature has the opposite effect to that of crocodiles; warmer temperatures (31–34°C) tend to produce females, while cooler temperatures (26–31°C) produce males.

The smallest Chameleon I have ever seen, less than an inch long.

For the flap-necked chameleons (Chamaeleo dilepis), the science is a bit more nuanced—or perhaps, more rigid. While their reptilian cousins are playing a game of “climate-controlled” gender reveals, chameleons generally stick to Genotypic Sex Determination (GSD).

Essentially, the sex of those tiny, future emerald-green masters of disguise is locked in at the moment of conception. No matter how much the African sun bakes the soil or how many cooling thunderstorms roll through the Sabi Sands during that long 9-to-12-month incubation, the chromosomal blueprint is already set. They aren’t waiting for a thermometer to tell them who they are; they arrive with their identity already hard-coded.

The “Dead” Mother and the Resurrection Myth

This brings me back to a topic I’ve explored before: the heavy superstitions that follow these creatures. There is a persistent belief in many local cultures that chameleons are immortal or, more morbidly, that they are “born from the bones of the dead.”

While I’m usually the first to debunk a myth with a dry “actually…”, the biological reality here is admittedly quite metal.

As Nic’s sighting reminded us, the mating process is just the beginning of a high-stakes gamble. Once the female is ready to lay, she faces a Herculean task. She digs a burrow roughly 20cm deep—a massive undertaking for a creature of her size. She then deposits between 25 and 60 eggs in painstaking layers, a process that can take over 24 hours of sheer physical exertion

Often, this can be where the story ends for her. The sheer exhaustion of the “birthing” process, combined with her vulnerability to predators while on the ground, means the mother frequently doesn’t survive much longer.

By the time those eggs hatch nearly a year later, the mother’s body has often decayed to a skeleton right above the nest. When those 50-odd tiny, perfect replicas finally tunnel out of the earth, they often scramble through the ribcage of their mother to reach the surface. To an observer a thousand years ago, it looked exactly like the bones were transforming into new life.

It’s easy to get caught up in the “Big Five” drama, the lions on a kill or a leopard in a marula tree. But the life cycle of a chameleon is a grit-and-glory story that rivals any apex predator.
Nic’s sighting wasn’t just a “lucky spot.” It was a glimpse into a survival strategy that has remained unchanged for millions of years. It’s a reminder that even the slowest among us are often running the hardest race.

I’m still jealous, Nic. But I’ll keep looking.