baby veiled murdering crickets to claim territory

[jackschamnewbie]

I just tried to feed a slightly larger supplemented cricket to my baby veiled. His reaction was the strangest thing.

He began stalking it and doing the whole rocking back and forth like a leaf in the wind thing. But when he went in and shot for the kill, he caught the cricket only to bite down harder and more dramatically than I have ever seen while he threw his head back and forth bouncing it between two perches. He was hitting it hard enough to make an audible sound louder than my stereo. Poor little guy is gonna give himself a headache...

Can chameleons get braindamage from this?
Does any one else have a cham that has temper tantrums on crickets?
He is wasting perfectly good crickets

 

[LLLReptile]

No, that sounds like normal eating, to be honest. Did he swallow at least part of them? He was probably stoked on the larger food items.

-Jen

 

[melble68]

Sounds to me like he got excited w/ your "super sized" meal. He wasn't going to let that one get away.

 

[Carlton]

Can chameleons get braindamage from this?
Does any one else have a cham that has temper tantrums on crickets?
He is wasting perfectly good crickets

No, No, and No. You can't interpret a cham's behavior using human terms. Killing a cricket because it was an intruder, because he lost his temper, or that he's wasting crickets just doesn't make sense.

 

[junglefries]

excitement

The aggressive bite I have seen a couple times. But usually only upon them seeing a new prey item. I think they are unsure of what it takes to kill the new item. Overkill rather than being killed or maybe just excited to get something new. Kinda like a human tearing into a snickers or baby back rib. I usually see it when the young ones see their first silkworm. I still have the vivid memory in my head of my nosy be female a couple months ago demolishing her first silkworm.

 

[zlee]

When Orion was like 2 months old he used to totally punish his crickets and seemed to enjoy it.

 

[Milgro12]

Charles is 5 months old and he does the same thing with the bigger crickets I feed him.