"Cherepo" - The Casque-Headed Lizard

With all of these reptiles you'd never guess that we specialize in plants! Here is another fine lizard encountered in the Los Charcos forest reserve. It is Corytophanes cristatus, the casque-headed lizard, locally known as "cherepo". An expert at camoflauge and a little on the vicious side, this lizard can - and most likely will - give you a nasty nip! Both sexes of this genus are crested, but only on the head, unlike the closely related Basiliscus lizards (now I'll have to get a shot of one of those posted!), which display developed crests on the head, dorsal and tail regions, but only the males.

A Red Herring... A False Chameleon!

We heard from Chris Anderson at UCBerkely (California) that our recent squamate visitor was not in fact a chameleon but a false one! Polychrus gutturosus . Our friends, Costa Rican expert herpatologists Mamoot Sasa and Frederico Bolaños, tell us that these are essentially arboreal lizards, which pass their time in the tree canopy and are therefore little known. Their distribution ranges from Honduras to Ecuador and Amozonian Peru. Here is another photo, this time showing a darker skin cast.