Jake,
Thanks for the post. This always makes for a good discussion, and thanks for volunteering
. First and foremost, you could post a picture of a Tamatave, calling it a Nosy Be, and I could not bet my first born that it was not a Nosy Be. Maybe a grandchild. All we have to go by are what has been pulled out of trees in and around Ambilobe, or photographed through the years likewise, and then the rest of Mada for alternative comparisons. To that mix, those of us with some reasonable breeding experience can also bring a familiarity of what happens when you cross, for instance, a Tamatave with a Nosy Be, which won't be naturally occuring in a tree in Mada, but might be a tad common here, or via Indo, etc. Bottom line, we are limited in what we can say definitively.
One very telltale sign on that chameleon is the banding and background, especially regarding the color blue/turquoise. We have all seen many WC bloodines where the blue bars might be clean, or they might be freckled with red/orange, etc. They might have crisp edges , or not so crisp. What we don't see, using blue on red Ambilobes as an example, is a reverse frecking of the red background in between, where lets suppose the red background has a mirror freckling of blue. In Ambilobes, any significant frequency of blue is in the bars, and very minimal elsewhere. That critter has got a fair amount of blue speckeld into the background red, almost to where it is difficult to say what color is the barring, and what is the background. Blue/turquoise as a background is only trademarked to one locale, Nosy Be. All of this is just based on past observation, and if there's a tree in the Ambilobe region full of critters like this, then flush this post. Its pretty much a given that no true importer is going to produce a picture of a valid WC that resembles this animal.
Conversely, I have produced hybrids that could be the twin brother to this animal. Nosy Be was always an ingredient, but beyond that, you can get some similar stuff with a mix of Ambilobe or Tamatave, depending on whether it a 25% mix or a 50% mix. I am also blessed to know many in the business, and have seen and talked with many about some of the junk coming out of Indo of late. Some of it is good, and some of it is a tad tainted.
If you were to graph the color possibilities of almost any locale, it would be the typical bell curve, with 95% falling within expectations. There are always those fringe critters that stretch the imagination. I have seen WC Nosy Be's that would at least call your animal a close cousin. I have never seen an Ambilobe that would allow Uncle Sam to sit at a family reunion.
BTW, as an ex paratrooper, I think Uncle Sam is a great name ! He is all of that !
ready to breed already!)
... but he does resemble some morph crosses that i was lookin at.
but if it were an ID chellenge and not labeled ambilobe then i would probably not guess ambilobe... if he is then he is a really unique one... but it doesn't really matter what he is, he is still damn awesome 
