Agama agama lives in colonies on rock faces, buildings and compound walls, typically with one dominant male, several females and a number of subordinate males. The dominant male's colouration, an orange or red head over an indigo body with a banded tail, is the visible marker of that rank, intensified during head-bobbing display and dulled by cold, stress or darkness.
Subordinate males remain in the brown, mottled pattern shared with females and juveniles. This is not fixed for life: the colour state tracks social position, and if the dominant is displaced a subordinate assumes both the territory and, over a short period, the colouration. The change is hormonally mediated and reversible.
A colour shift in the other direction is often misread. A bright male that has gone dull is usually cold, sleeping, or under stress rather than demoted; agamas darken overnight and at low temperatures. How the social hierarchy is established and maintained, and how much of a subordinate's restraint is avoidance rather than physiological suppression, has not been closely studied for this species.