Let me tell you about a small creature whose body seems to glow as it nears death.
The Labord’s chameleon, native to Madagascar, is named after an explorer. It inhabits the dry forests of western Madagascar, and its adult life lasts only four to five months. With the onset of the rainy season in November, they hatch all at once. In less than two months, they reach maturity, mate, and lay eggs between January and February. Soon after reproduction, they rapidly age, and by March, all adults have died.
In a sense, their lives are entrusted not to age, but to the rhythm of the rainy season. This fleeting and beautiful phenomenon—often described as a “glow of death”—is not bioluminescence, but rather the result of multilayered chromatophores in their skin.
Beneath their transparent outer layer lie stacked pigment cells—black, blue/silver, yellow, red—arranged in layers. These cells expand and contract under neural control, typically used for thermoregulation and communication. However, at the moment of death, as the nervous system begins to lose control yet residual signals remain, these chromatophores are thought to undergo unexpected contractions and expansions.
This death-associated glow has only recently been observed, and similar dramatic color changes at the moment of death are almost unknown in other species. To display such a vivid final chapter just before life ends is extraordinarily rare—a fleeting burst of light before disappearance.
And yet, not everything that shines is rare.
“We don’t tolerate brilliant jerks. The cost to teamwork is too high.”
— We do not tolerate brilliant jerks. The cost to teamwork is simply too high.