“Can you see it?” My son and I were sat crouched under a tree in the sticky jungle of northern Madagascar’s Lokobe National Park, scrutinizing a patch of dirt and fallen leaves. His nose was almost pressed to the ground when Juliano, our barefoot guide, lifted his hand. Perched on his palm, a chameleon no bigger than a clipped toenail jerked forward on pin-thin legs. One blink, and it was gone again, just another fleck in the mulch.

Madagascar is full of these wild surprises. Torn off from the Indian subcontinent some 88 million years ago, it’s a Petri dish of endemic evolution: the Texas-sized island is home to half of the world’s chameleon species (including this tiny number, the minute leaf chameleon), more than 300 types of Crayola-colored frogs, and ape-like lemurs you won’t find els

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