:)
I am so very excited to share this story with you as it was one of those rare treats in life where I realize how lucky I was to witness this animal in the wild.
This is a male pinocchio anole, Anolis proboscis. Until recently it was thought to be extinct until some people found it near the small town of Mindo, Ecuador. While we were in the rainforest near Mindo, we decided to look for it just for shits and giggles. We did not expect to find it. One, it’s one of the rarest lizards in the world, and two, it hangs out in the top of the canopy.
We were just poking around in a yard type area near a road when my herpetologist friend, Leah, started screaming “I found one!” - he was just sitting there near the side of a road in a bush. Just right there within reach, an animal thought to be completely wiped off the planet! We had a little photo shoot with the rare animal then returned him to the leaf he was lazily resting on. It was quite an experience. After returning to camp, one of the biologists contacted her friend who wrote the book “Reptiles of Mindo” and he told her we were of only a few hundred people in the world who have encountered this animal! What a treat!
Nootosauraus
