5 Red and Green Animals to Spark Your Holiday Spirit

It’s the holiday season, which means it’s time to put on the silly snowman sweatshirts and the ridiculous reindeer antlers that you’ve been saving all year. Your affection for red and green may be seasonal, but many animals are decked in their holiday best year-round. If you’re looking for something more than an ugly sweater for this year’s celebrations, check out these festive faunas for some jolly ideas.

Lantern Bug (Pyrops candelaria)

With a name like lantern bug, you might think these petite planthoppers could stand in for a certain well-known reindeer on a foggy Christmas Eve. But Rudolph’s job is safe for now. While these insects have a shiny nose, they don’t emit any light.

The lantern bug acquired its moniker because early scientists believed their long snouts glowed in the dark. By the time this assumption was disproven, the name had stuck.

Like most members of the planthopper family, the lantern bugs’ wings and coloration resemble the leaves and plants in their environment. Although they can hop like grasshoppers, they often walk slowly to avoid attracting attention. These vividly colored insects live throughout Southeast Asia, including Cambodia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Laos, and Thailand.

Lantern bugs feed on plant sap, and the P. candelaria species is particularly partial to longan and lychee trees. Although their long reddish proboscis is useless for guiding sleighs, it can pierce tree bark and suck up the sap behind it – kind of like a straw in a juice box. Lantern bugs are sure to be home for the holidays since they often stay for generations on the same tree.

Sap contains a lot of sugar but not many other nutrients. That means lantern bugs have to eat a lot of sap to get all the nourishment they need. The excess sugar is expelled from their bodies as droplets of honeydew, which can attract moths and even geckos who lick the syrupy liquid from their rear ends.

Christmas Wrasse (Thalassoma trilobatum)

The aptly named Christmas wrasse sports striking colors that rival the flashiest of holiday ornaments. Although their name suggests a wintery locale, these brightly colored fish inhabit shallow reefs in tropical regions of the Indian and western Pacific Oceans.

With a streamlined body and tapered head, the Christmas wrasse can reach up to 12 inches (30 cm) in length. Like many other wrasses, they swim by flapping their pectoral fins up and down, which makes them look like they are flying underwater. They are most active during the day and hide in crevices at night.

Christmas wrasses feed on crustaceans and other invertebrates such as mollusks, crabs, and brittle stars, which they pluck from the reefs using the canine teeth on their upper and lower jaws. They crush the shells of their prey with tooth-like structures – called pharyngeal teeth – located on their gill arches.

These festive fish are protogynous hermaphrodites, meaning they are capable of changing sex from female to male. While they sometimes live singly, they often form groups, called harems, consisting of a male and several females. If the primary male in a group dies, one of the females may change sexes and take on the male role.

Collared Trogon (Trogon collaris)

The collared trogon sounds more like a medieval beast or D&D character than a stylish bird. However, their brilliant green and red plumage makes them perfectly suited for the holiday season.

Trogons are considered among the most beautiful birds in the world, and it’s easy to see why. They are brilliantly colored in shades of red, green, blue, yellow, black, and white. They have long broad tails and eyes ringed with colorful bare skin.

Like many trogon species, they are sexually dimorphic, meaning males and females have different coloration. Both sexes have red breasts, but the male trogons’ plumage is more vibrant. Only males have bright metallic green feathers on their heads and backs, while females’ feathers are olive brown. Males also have a distinctly black and white barred tail.

The collared trogon lives in the humid lowland forests of Central and South America – southern Mexico to Panama as well as Columbia, Ecuador, and Costa Rica. They feed on fruits and invertebrates such as caterpillars, crickets, cicadas, and beetles. They often lurk near flocks of other bird species, perhaps to catch prey startled by these other birds. Despite their short rounded wings, they can fly fast, although they rarely travel more than a few hundred meters at a time.

Interestingly, trogons are the only animals with a heterodactyl toe arrangement. The third and fourth digits on their feet point forward, while digits one and two point back. This helps them grip onto tree branches and compensates for their relatively weak legs and feet. They can’t really walk along a branch beyond a short shuffle. But when you’re this elegant, walking is so pedestrian.

Marine Iguana (Amblyrhynchus cristatus)

Lizards might not be associated with the holiday season in North America, but in the Galapagos Islands, marine iguanas don their Christmas sweaters every December. The world’s only oceangoing lizard, marine iguanas are endemic to the Galapagos. There are six different subspecies, with each one inhabiting a different island.

These hefty lizards aren’t likely to win any beauty contests. Even Charles Darwin called them hideous-looking and disgusting. They have smooshed snouts, long claws, spiky scales, and razor-like teeth, and they swim through the water like crocodiles. While their size varies depending on the subspecies, some males can reach a length of 33 inches (84 cm) from nose to tail.

Despite their intimidating looks, these gentle giants are herbivores, feeding exclusively on red and green algae. They use their blunt snouts and sharp teeth to scrape algae off of rocks. Larger males can dive up to 65 feet (20 meters) to find food, while females and juveniles wait for low tide to graze on the algae in the intertidal zone.

Since they ingest so much saltwater while grazing underwater, they are at risk of dehydration. To compensate, they have special glands connected to their nasal passages that remove salt from the blood. They essentially sneeze out saline, leaving them with salt-encrusted heads.

While they look raggedy most of the year, the male iguanas save their finest duds for the breeding season. Adults are usually a dull gray or black, but males change color from December to March. The coloration varies depending on the subspecies, but the males on Española turn a bright green and red, earning them the nickname “Christmas Iguana.”

Christmas Tree Worms (Spirobranchus giganteus)

No list of holiday animals would be complete without mentioning the Christmas tree worm. With their bold colors and whimsical shape, these marine worms would look right at home in a Seussian Christmas tale.  

Christmas tree worms are tube-dwelling polychaetes, a type of segmented worm found mainly in the ocean. These tiny worms measure just 1.5 inches (3.8 cm) and come in many colors, including yellow, red, orange, blue, and green. They are found in tropical oceans from the Indo-Pacific regions to the Caribbean.

These sedentary worms bore burrows into live coral and build a calcareous tube to protect their soft bodies. Each worm has two spiral-like plumes, called crowns, that extend from the calcium carbonate tubes. These feathery appendages are used for filter feeding and respiration.

The plumes are composed of several tentacles, or radioles, lined with sticky mucus and hair-like extensions, called cilia, that capture tiny phytoplankton floating in the water. The cilia move the food particles to the mouth in a conveyor-style motion. Any sand that gets trapped by the plumes is used to help build the calcium carbonate tubes. These appendages also collect oxygen from the water much like gills.

Christmas tree worms are easily startled and often retract their plumes into their burrows when they sense danger. They seal themselves in with a modified radiole, called an operculum, that acts as a door. Once the coast is clear, they’ll poke the tips of their crowns out of the burrows before blossoming into their full Whoville glory.

If you want to learn more about holiday themed animals, check out this Halloween post.