Red blood cells only live for four months or so, and when they die, our bodies recycle the iron within them. That process inadvertently creates a green pigment called biliverdin, which is then converted into a yellow one called bilirubin. Both of these are toxic, and our livers quickly filter them out of our blood. When you get a bruise, the unsightly green and yellow colors come from the biliverdin and bilirubin unleashed by dying red blood cells. When infants get jaundice, that’s the result of bilirubin building up before their newborn livers kick into action.

Greer and Raizes guessed that the New Guinean lizards have green innards because of biliverdin, and Austin confirmed their hunch much later. The lizards’ blood contains so much of the green pigment that it completely overshadows the normal red of their hemoglobin.

They should be dead. Biliverdin can damage DNA, kill cells, and destroy neurons. And yet, the lizards have the highest levels of biliverdin ever seen in an animal. Their blood contains up to 20 times more of it than the highest concentration ever recorded in a human—an amount that proved to be fatal. And yet, not only are the lizards still alive, they’re not even jaundiced. How do they tolerate the chemical? Why did they evolve such high levels of biliverdin in the first place? And why, as Austin’s colleague Zachary Rodriguez has just discovered, did they do so on several occasions?

“It’s an unusual physiological trait that’s only found in New Guinean lizards, so it probably evolved once,” says Austin. “That’s the obvious expectation,” and it’s why all the green-blooded species are classified as Prasinohaema, from the Greek for “green blood.” It’s also completely wrong. By comparing the genes of the five green-blooded species to those of other Australasian lizards, Rodriguez built a family tree that shows their evolutionary relationships. And to his huge surprise, the tree suggests that the green-blooded species evolved from red-blooded ancestors on four separate occasions. They all independently showed up to life’s party with green in their veins.

The team can’t rule out the possibility that the lizards evolved green blood once and then reverted to red on several occasions, or that there’s an even more complicated history of color-switching. But whatever the case, the pattern is more intricate than he suspected. At the very least, it means the lizards need to be reclassified.

“Even if the trait only evolved once, the fact that it has been retained across several species indicates that it confers a tremendous advantage,” says Adriana Briscoe, an evolutionary biologist from the University of California at Irvine. It’s hard to think what that might be, especially because the five species are so different. Some live at sea level, others at 8,000 feet. Some lay eggs, others give birth to live young. Some are green on the outside, others are brown or black.