Stainless steel dragonfly earrings from the 1990s? Pshaw. Critters have inspired baubles for centuries. At one point, people even skipped the jeweler entirely, and wore live lizards as brooches and hair ornaments.

In 1894, the New York Times reported that a booming trend in living jewelry had animal cruelty organizations concerned. Tiny lizards had been arriving from the South to fuel a fashion frenzy. Mostly women bought them, attached a chain to their necks and pinned them to a cushion or item of clothing. These lizards were marketed as “chameleons” that would change color to match a woman’s jacket or bodice.

“They were fastened to cushions, mantel scarfs, and the like, by means of tiny collars and chains, and they had become quite a plaything with many people,” wrote the report. “Sometimes they were worn in the streets by women, who had attached them to their bodies.”

However, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals soon learned about this practice. At a meeting, leadership determined the purchase and use of fashion lizards to be inhumane. Not only was chaining the creatures unkind, but often owners did not know how to feed or care for their small pets. The society visited stores that sold the animals and demanded they cease their offering. The city posted an ordinance that no more lizards would be sold in New York. At the time of publication, it had “not been decided what is to be done with about 10,000 of the little reptiles” that remained.

People didn’t listen. In 1920, the Atlanta Constitution reported a new crop of critters. Young girls were wearing leashed lizards in their hair to dances. The Humane Society intervened.

“Goodbye to our pretty hair ornaments,” wrote the reporter. “But at least the men will feel safer, for at a recent dance it is stated when the best beau of a Druid Hills girl started to whisper sweet nothings in her ear, the chameleon became loosened from her hair and fell into the man’s mouth.”

By mid century, circuses were selling the little pets, this time advertised to boys. One 1966 issue of Boys’ Life magazine advertised a live chameleon for sale, which would “crawl on your shoulder and change color to match your clothes!” Free with purchase was “a shoulder leash and golden safety pin to keep chameleon safely attached to you.” Some boys kept these reptiles in their shirt pockets.

(Boys’ Life magazine, April 1966)

The tricky trend wasn’t brand new. In the late Iron Age, Romans created bullae (“bubbles,” in Latin), hollow metal amulets to be worn around the neck. They were considered a form of “medicine bag” to protect young children and animals from harm. A bulla might be filled with charms, perfume, and even live lizards. The practice continued through the end of the Etruscan period, roughly the 4th century B.C.

In another part of the world, Mayan women from the Yucatan Peninsula wore Maquech beetles pinned to the clothes over their chests. Mayan folklore suggests the tradition derives from an ancient fable: When a princess was forbidden from marrying her lover, she stopped eating and drinking, preferring to die instead. A local healer with magical powers came to her aid, and transformed the princess into a beetle so she could live disguised as a brooch on the heart of her true love.

Thousands of years later, in the 1980s, beetle pinning grew into an underground fad. Artists and souvenir sellers began painting Maquech beetles gold, gluing jewels to their backs, and fastening chains for the same purpose. As recently as 2010, one American woman was detained crossing the Mexico border back into the US. She had declared her new beetle brooch, but customs officials classified it a pest and confiscated the insect.

Somehow that was different than Paris Hilton, who had her pet chihuahua tucked under her armpit for the majority of the early 2000s. But reptiles and bugs, heaven forbid.