Last night I found a female frilly over a kilometer away from any other dragon that I had sampled. Though she is small, she is undoubtedly among the most fierce and almost never folds down her frill. She happened to be in shed (possible contributing to the excessive defensive behavior), so I took the opportunity to take macro shots of her scales. Look closely to see the cloudy margins where the old skin layer is separating from the new one. Although colors are generally confined to certain frill regions, frilly colorations are highly variable in brightness, saturation, hue, and boundaries of the color hotspots — to such an extent that I’m able to identify individuals by their color pattern. Even so, frillies transition from a lighter nocturnal coloration with a slight red hue to a darker diurnal coloration, possibly to enhance their deimatic display by contrasting a dark cryptic body coloration with a sudden explosion of frill color.
Handled with appropriate permits for scientific study; photographed after capture [5]
