Germany: Chameleon stowaway rescued from vegetable box

A German vegetable vendor discovered a chameleon inside a box of cauliflower, local police said on Thursday.

The shopkeeper was unpacking vegetables when he made the discovery in Bilsen, in the far north of Germany, 125 kilometers (80 miles) from the Danish border.

He told police that the cauliflower had been exported from France.

Police said the chameleon seemed healthy at the time.

"When we looked into the cauliflower box, two peeping eyes, moving independent of each other, were staring at us from the vegetation," a police spokesman said in a statement.

"The four-legged creature, which was presumably born in Africa, did not show any signs of the immense strain of the journey and was received by us in good health," he said.

Contrary to the police theory, however, the chameleon is actually a European native, according to Christopher V. Anderson, assistant professor at the University of South Dakota and chameleon specialist group chair for the International Union for Conservation of Nature Species Survival Commission.

Anderson told DW the chameleon pictured is a young Mediterranean chameleon, found in southern Spain, southern Italy, Greece, Malta, and several other areas around the Mediterranean.

"For it to have shown up in a shipment of cauliflower from France, my suspicion would be that either the cauliflower itself was grown elsewhere within the range of the species and simply packaged or shipped from France, or that other produce that was from within the range of the species had gone through the facility and this animal hitch-hiked on one of these shipments," Anderson told DW.

The officers took the chameleon to a wildlife sanctuary in Klein Offenseth-Sparrieshoop.

Threatened reptiles

Chameleons are mostly found in sub-Saharan Africa and on Madagascar. However, like the one found in Bilsen, there are species found in Southern Europe.

According to Anderson, chameleons are heavily threatened across their range due to habitat degradation. 

"While the Mediterranean chameleon is not threatened across its entire range, it is considered threatened in some of its individual range states (countries) due in large part to habitat degradation," he said.

Chameleons are popular pets and have become invasive species in some parts of the world. They are known for changing the color of their skin to blend in with their surroundings.

French farmers grew 218,700 tons of cauliflower in 2021, according to industry publications, slightly down because of cold weather, some heat spikes and heavy rainfall. However, farmers enjoyed higher-than-average prices with the lower supply. Most of the world's cauliflower comes from China and India.