Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1993 19:38:02 CST
From: Ed Dowtort <U10119@uicvm.uic.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.pets.herp
Subject: chameleons

here is something i received in reply to my chameleon question.  sorry that
it took me a while to post it.

also, thanks for all the replies.  if she (susan, my s.o.) decides to get one
i'll post followups (hopefully positive) if there is interest.  i'll also
post if i find out more at the reptile swap coming up in a week (where i'll
be getting my first snake(s)!!  :)  corn snakes, that is)  thanks again!

From: THEIKKINEN@marvin.ag.uidaho.edu
Date:         5 Jan 93 11:00:02 PST
Subject:      Chameleons as pets

Hi, I'm sending you some personal observations on chameleons.  I
can read the internet news, but I cannot post, so I would appreciate
it if you would send it up for me so that everyone can read it.

My SO and I have two African Chameleons, and they are doing great!
A few people have had unanswered questions about chameleons as pets,
so I thought that I would draw together some of our observations:


He bought them as babies for $50 apiece from a breeder/pet store
owner in La Habra, CA (yes, the man IS breeding African Chameleons!).
He picked them up in person, so I don't know if the breeder will ship
or not, I suspect not.  They were only about two inches long when he
bought them, and now, after about 7 months, they are twice the size.
I have no information on this, but I imagine that captive-bred
chameleons will be MUCH better pets (as will any animal) than wild-
caught ones, since they will be less likely to be stressed by a
captive environment, and they will carry less disease.

We have a male and a female.  At first, they were both about the same
size, but after just a few weeks, the male spurted ahead.  He also
tends to be brighter green than the female, who is sometimes even a
brown color.  We thought that she was sick, but it seems that it is
just a sex difference.

We keep them (separated - they are NOT gregarious - they will fight)
in a 10- gallon aquarium with a cardboard divider.  There are twigs
and fake plants for them to climb on.  They are excellent climbers -
they can climb up the cardboard and onto their wire ceiling.  We line
the bottom of the cage with newspaper, but are considering other
linings, which I will explain shortly.  In the morning, we turn an
incandescent bulb on them to warm them up, then a little later, we
turn it off and turn on a Vita-Lite which sits on top of the cage.
We turn off all their lights in the evening, and cover the cage with
a cloth so that we don't keep them awake.

Chameleons don't appear to drink water by slurping from a dish.  Ours
get their water from their food, from misting the sides of the cage,
and from a drip mechanism.  We created this by poking a pin through
the bottom of a plastic cup, which we set on the top of the cage.  A
small dish in the bottom of the cage catches most of the water, but
some splashes onto the fake leaves and the cage sides, where they can
get to it.

Watching them feed is fun.  Their tongues are 1 1/2 times their body
length.  We feed them two bugs apiece every day or every other day.
In the summer, we catch grasshoppers in the backyard to feed them.  A
warning, though, the female got poked in the eye by a vigorously
kicking hopper, and is now blind in that eye (she doesn't have
trouble eating or moving, thank goodness).  We now take the legs
off the large ones before they go in.  In the winter we feed them
crickets, which are disgusting and smelly (very hard to keep alive -
we make weekly trips to the pet store - they also stink up the
chameleons' cage, hence the thoughts of a different lining).  I
imagine caterpillars and mealworms would be yummy, too, but we
haven't had the chance to try.  We supplement their diet by rolling
their prey in reptile vitamins (I don't remember what kind we use),
and with torn pieces of spinach.

They use this neat cryptic movement, at least whenever you are
watching them.  They will move in short, slow, jerky steps, moving
back and forth like a leaf blowing in the wind, but ultimately
getting to where they are going (this is why they need the long
tongue - they can't exactly run down their prey).  If there is more
wind, say when we take them outside, they will reflect this in their
movement.

Oh, yes, and of course I can't ignore the change in coloration for
which they are famous.  At night, when they sleep, they are a pale
green color.  During the day, if they are happy, they are a bright
green.  If they get stressed, they turn black.  They also have
speckled patterns with combinations of green, yellow, black, brown,
and even purple.

We let them roam on our houseplants when we clean the cage and to
give them some play time, but they DO eat them, not to the detriment
of the plants, but we have to be very careful that they don't poison
themselves.  They are also VERY hard to find when you want to put
them back.  This is no joke - we have torn the place apart looking
for them when they were calmly sitting right in front of our faces.

We haven't had any troubles yet with our babies.  I imagine the
difficult part is in the breeding, since they aren't exactly social
creatures.
Newsgroups: rec.pets.herp