Karoo dwarf chameleon no means closely related. Rather, the Karoo dwarf chameleon belongs to a group of mostly short-tailed drab "Bradypodion" species which mostly inhabit semiarid to arid habitats. Its closest living relatives among these appear to be the peculiar and nearly extinct Smith's dwarf chameleon from mountainous habitat, and especially the southern dwarf chameleon. The Karoo dwarf chameleon may actually be a subspecies of the latter; there appears to be significant gene flow between the two. Karoo dwarf chameleon The Karoo dwarf chameleon ("Bradypodion karrooicum") is a chameleon native to South Africa. It is about 14 cm (6 in) long, mostly colored
Karoo which is Afrikaans for Little Karoo. The Great Karoo straddles the 30° S parallel on the west of the continent, in a similar position to other semidesert areas on earth, north and south of the equator. It is furthermore in the rainfall shadow of the Cape Fold Mountains along the western coastline. The western "Lower Karoo" (the Tankwa Karoo and Moordenaarskaroo) contain remnants of the Cape Fold Mountains (e.g. the Witteberg and Anysberg Mountains) which give it a moderate hilly appearance, but further east, the Lower Karoo becomes a monotonously flat plain. The "Upper Karoo" has been intruded by dolerite