http://www.sciencenews.org | March 13, 2021 5MARTINA CECCHETTI FROM TOP: C. CHANG; F. GLAW/ZSM/SNSB
Hidden beneath the leaf litter of a
northern Malagasy forest lives a
chameleon so slight that it could tum-
ble off the tip of your finger. Measuring
just under 30 millimeters from snout
to tail, the newly described species,
Brookesia nana, may be the smallest
reptile on Earth, researchers report
January 28 in Scientific Reports.
Just two adult specimens, a male
and female, are known. The female
measures 28.9 millimeters, much
larger than the 21.6-millimeter-long
male. The size difference may have
driven the male’s genitalia to be quite
large — nearly 20 percent of its body
length — to be a better fit to his mate,
herpetologist Frank Glaw of the
Bavarian State Collection of Zoology
in Munich and colleagues suggest.
Dubbed B. nana for its nanosize, theSCIENCE STATS
Child lead testing plummeted in 2020
Close to a half million U.S. children didn’t get tested for lead in
the first half of 2020 — a troubling indicator of the preventive
medical care that kids haven’t received since the p andemic
began. Data from 34 state and local health departments reveal
that 480,172 fewer children were tested for lead from January
through May 2020 compared with that time period in 2019
(see graph above), researchers report in the F eb. 5 M orbidity
and Mortality Weekly Report. Those missed tests left an
estimated 9,603 kids with elevated lead levels in their blood
unidentified. — Aimee CunninghamTEASER
Tiny aircraft that fly by light could
soar beyond airplanes’ reach
Flight isn’t easy at the edge of space. But tiny microfliers
could soar high in Earth’s atmosphere fueled only by
sunlight, experiments suggest.
At heights between about 50 and 80 kilometers above
Earth’s surface, in what’s called the mesosphere, air is
so thin that airplanes and balloons can’t stay aloft. But
mechanical engineer Mohsen Azadi and colleagues at
the University of Pennsylvania saw promise in levitating
objects with light. When heated by light, 6-millimeter-
wide disks of Mylar coated in carbon nanotubes floated
inside a chamber pressurized to mimic the mesosphere.
Such microfliers could run on sunlight or laser light and
could someday carry instruments to explore the meso-
sphere , the team reports February 12 in Science Advances.
Carbon nanotubes are key for the microfliers to achieve
liftoff. The nanotubes absorb light, warming the flier.
When air molecules collide with the warmed flier, they
gain energy and ricochet away from it at high speeds. The
molecules that strike the carbon nanotubes on the air-
craft’s bottom get extra oomph thanks to the material’s
nooks and crannies: Air molecules that collide multiple
times with the nanotubes get even warmer and gain more
energy, ricocheting away faster than the molecules from
the top, generating lift. — Emily ConoverBlood lead level testing of U.S. children under 6 years old,
January–May 2019 and January–May 2020MonthJanuary0100,200,50,300,350,250,150,February March April MayNumber of children testedSOURCE: CDCWatch microfliers take off at bit.ly/SN_MicroflierINTRODUCING
A new chameleon species is extremely compact
species belongs to a genus of at least
13 small chameleons spread out across
the mountainous forests of north-
ern Madagascar. Why B. nana and its
cousins shrank to such minuscule pro-
portions remains a mystery, though
smallness does have its benefits:
There’s some evidence that small
chameleons are especially good shots
with their ballistic tongues.
In daylight, Brookesia chameleons
scour the forest floor, snatching up
mites and other small invertebrates,
Glaw’s team suspects. At night, the liz-
ards retreat upward, gripping blades of
grass or other plants for safety.
Deforestation and habitat degra-
dation threaten B. nana’s future, the
researchers say, though the region
where the compact chameleons were
found was recently designated aprotected area by the Malagasy govern-
ment. The species may soon be listed
as critically endangered, among the
gravest ratings from the International
Union for Conservation of Nature.
— Jonathan LambertMeet Brookesia nana, potentially the world’s
smallest reptile. This chameleon, found in
northern Madagascar, is tiny enough to com-
fortably fit on the tip of a person’s finger.2019
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