I also loved reptiles when I was a child and was always out somewhere catching snakes and lizards, and keeping them for pets. Madagascar has two of my favourite reptiles, chameleons, and the extraordinary Uroplatus or leaf-tailed geckos. It is home to more than 300 species of reptiles of which more than 90 % are endemic (36 of the 64 genera are also found nowhere else). Madagascar’s reptile fauna includes lizards, snakes, turtles and tortoises, and crocodiles. The island has boas instead of pythons, which are found in nearby Africa and throughout Asia, along with front-fanged venomous snakes. It is a strange anomaly that Madagascar’s iguanid lizards and boas have their closest relatives in South America; evidence of the island’s prehistoric connection to the supercontinent, Gondwanaland.
The uniqueness of the island’s reptiles has resulted in widespread collecting for the exotic-pet trade. Some species of chameleons, geckos, and tortoises are threatened due to unsustainable collection.
I will be adding the locations for the majority of the photos in due course and identifying the individual species wherever possible. It’s always possible when photographing the smaller fauna in a country with so much biodiversity as Madagascar that I may have photographed something previously unrecorded by science, which always adds to the tremendous excitement and incentive that I feel when I’m exploring somewhere as amazing as Madagascar.