Recent content by Carlton

Just a couple of thoughts: IMLE, dehydration tends to make the tongue less sticky, not more. The glands on the tip of the tongue may produce less mucous if the cham is dehydrated. OTOH, if he has a history of MBD it's possible the muscle tone/structure of his tongue has been compromised, which...

Can't be certain either, but IME with thermal burns, the part of the cham that's closest to the radiation source tends to be the first to show damage. That would be the crest of his casque and their dorsal spines. They look fine. I agree something seems to be going on with that discolored skin...

Seem to recall either an African or Malagasy folk legend falling chameleons. Gravid females would let themselves fall out of tall trees, burst open when they hit the ground, releasing their babies. It seemed to be associated with the belief that because chameleons couldn't be killed, they made...

Inside a cage? Unless he was really, really unlucky to fall exactly wrong, a 3-4 foot fall is nothing. If he isn't moving around, eating or drinking by tomorrow I'd start to pay closer attention.

How old is he? How far did he fall and on to what? A healthy cham can withstand quite a fall better than we expect. If they have enough time, they will inflate themselves with air that helps cushion the impact. If he did injure himself he would most likely stop moving around, may favor a leg...

How far did she fall? A cham can fall a lot farther than we think and survive unhurt. A fall in the typical captive cham setup usually isn't a problem. Has she ever produced any clutches of infertile eggs? Her abdomen looks very "full", maybe full of eggs she can't expel. That could have led to...

If there's an area of the cage he can't get to but wants to get to he may continue to climb the screen. Maybe he wants to roam a larger area or get higher up than he can now...chams tend to feel more secure the higher they can get. I understand you don't want him getting too close to a heat spot...

Oh, neither event was funny at the time, but they sure were after the fact... A long time after the fact:p

Not sure which feeder escape was worse...the dubia colony or the 500+ nightcrawlers that dispersed out of their bin in the shower when the lightbulb that kept them underground burned out in the middle of the night. I'll give you a hint...there isn't a horror movie titled THEY CRAWL! for nothing...

It could always be so much worse OP! I had a well-established dubia roach colony that lived in a big truck tote on a shelf in my water heater/boiler closet. Periodically, when the colony really got too large and needed a clean-out, I'd cull it by sending boxes of surplus roaches over to the big...

Discord roaches? Hmm, and here I always thought these bugs were peaceable little things 😇 IME juvenile roaches loose in a cham cage can often squeeze through the small gaps around the doors of a screen cage. Your cham isn't seeing or hunting them at night, so there are hours in each 24 hour...

Chams can definitely pick up parasites from their insect prey. You're never going to get rid of every single one. BUT, a healthy insectivore can tolerate some parasites....they need to because they're ubiquitous in the environment. An otherwise healthy host can handle a low parasite burden, but...

Must be a vampire drag queen with all those white "fangs" along the lipline. Seem to recall there is an actual term for toothy grin markings like that. The purpose may be to fool another animal into believing the threatened animal has an arsenal of imposing teeth. Is it scia dentata?

I thought it was, but not everyone agreed. When I landed a new job in bush town AK and needed to sell the house relatively quickly, that jungle room nearly made my realtor bolt for the hills. She took one look, turned quite an odd color herself, and whispered "none of this will be here when we...

I found a pop-up, zipper-close mesh hamper was a simple way to house small cage birds temporarily when I couldn't bring a frame cage along. It would lay flat until needed. A long time biologist friend of mine has set up backyard mist nets and banded songbirds for decades. He untangles the birds...