Chameleon Night Walk — Ranomafana Madagascar

Each night in the rainforests of Ranomafana National Park in southern Madagascar, guided torch walks reveal a concentration of chameleon species unmatched anywhere on Earth — Madagascar harbours over half the world's 220 chameleon species and the Ranomafana forest produces nightly encounters with Parson's chameleon, Oustalet's chameleon, and a dozen smaller species sleeping on branches in their ghostly night-white colouration, their eyes independently mobile and their prehensile tails loosely coiled in motionless sleep. The chameleon's adaptation to sleep on exposed branches — their pale sleeping colour serving as camouflage against the light sky when seen from below by nocturnal predators — creates a forest spectacle of extraordinary photographic accessibility, the sleeping animals completely still and tolerant of torchlight at close range. Ranomafana's night walks also produce encounters with the aye-aye — the world's most unusual primate, whose bat-like ears, elongated middle finger, and rodent-like teeth create an appearance so alarming that Madagascar's Malagasy people consider it an omen of death — creating a night walk of combined chameleon and lemur riches available nowhere outside Madagascar. The surrounding Ranomafana forest's extraordinary biodiversity — discovered to science only in the 1980s when the golden bamboo lemur was found here — adds the frisson of scientific novelty to every encounter. The park's waterfalls and rushing rivers create a backdrop of considerable beauty for the nocturnal forest walks.