CB chams in the US - a little history please :)

[Psychobunny]

Okay, I got my first chams back in the mid 1970"s, WC, from a "exotic" pet store on Capital Hill in Washington DC.
The only info the guys gave me, that was correct, was their species; a male jack and a flapneck (unknown gender).

That was literaly all they knew, but I bought them anyway.

I spent the next few months visiting libraries, book stores, universities and phone calls to zoos all over the US.
I could find no books except one, writen in German, and only available at Cornell U library (no internet, and only Fed agencies had computers, no such thing as a pc!!).

Needless to say, in spite of all I tried to do for my 2 chams, they were doomed from the start due to ignorance.

Fast forward to the pc/internet age and worldwide info sharing.

Suddenly, I see "designer" panthers selling for only a few hundred $$ and several cham forums!!

What happened??!!
How did these animals become so popular in the USA???

Back in the 70's, you did not just walk into even the best pet stores and see chams for sale.
This place on Capital Hill was the ONLY store that sold them!!

How did all this come about??!!

Anyone out there old enough to answer this question or even know what I am talking about?

 

[Seeco]

Well first a TON more wild chameleons had to die.

Then people realized you could actually acquire them and some books and magazines fueled the demand.

Logging roads making incursions into pristine habitat and chams re-establishing in areas cleared for agriculture made for more access to wild chams.

Finally breeders got the hang of keeping the very hardy veiled chameleon and the knowledge gained was applied to panther chams.

And here we are now with still only 2 species representing over 99% of CB chams.

Just a guess though. I have asked someone more knowledgeable to chime in.

 

[Carlton]

Well first a TON more wild chameleons had to die.

Then people realized you could actually acquire them and some books and magazines fueled the demand.

Logging roads making incursions into pristine habitat and chams re-establishing in areas cleared for agriculture made for more access to wild chams.

Finally breeders got the hang of keeping the very hardy veiled chameleon and the knowledge gained was applied to panther chams.

And here we are now with still only 2 species representing over 99% of CB chams.

Just a guess though. I have asked someone more knowledgeable to chime in.

I think one other "step" was probable...an imported gravid female veiled cham somewhere lived long enough to lay her clutch and some hatched successfully. Some of the babies survived, and went on to be paired up with other wc veileds. Through trial and error an F1, F2 generation started from there.

 

[filups21]

I would largely agree with Seeco - the trade was very small in the 1970's, but grew as chameleons became more and more popular as a result of publicity. It's the same story for a thousand other reptile species. Somewhat unfortunately (for wild populations), chameleons remain fairly difficult to breed, but experience breeding tropical reptiles of all sorts (it's not just the chameleon trade that's ballooned over this time period), has contributed to at least a few species being successfully captive bred. More species could be captive bred if wild caught individuals weren't so darn cheap, but as along as they are, there's little incentive to spend the time and money to iron out the kinks unless you're breeding something particularly easy (like the veiled chameleon) or something that can't be readily captured in the wild (spectacular colored Panthers).

Also of note is that the trade in reptiles is huge in both Europe and the US, so it's not just a 'local' phenomenon. For a bit more detail on the history of the trade in chameleons, I would recommend "The dynamics of the global trade in chameleons" (Carpenter 2004) and "The impacts of international and national governance changes on a traded resource: a case study of Madagascar and its chameleon trade" (Carpenter 2005). If the links below don't work for you, let me know and I can email you a copy. These articles always make me wonder about all the Kenyan and Malagasy chameleon species that occasionally pop up in the trade. If exports are illegal, how do they end up there? Is it accidental miss-identification on the part of the exporters, or are there more concerted efforts to get them out?

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320704000989
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320704004665

 

[Seeco]

Thanks for the links. I am blown away by the absurd cheapness of some WC chams. Yo would think that with their fragility they would cost more to transport.

So the next question is "Why are they so cheap?"

 

[Solid Snake]

So the next question is "Why are they so cheap?"

Same reason drugs are so cheap.

 

[clarkrw3]

It's funny because crested geckos were thought to be extinct and rediscovered in 1994 and now look at them

For many reptile species people didn't know they existed let alone that they wanted one before the internet. Also if they knew about them they had no connections to acquire them. If you didn't have a local pet store that brought them in where were you going to find them?

 

[Seeco]

Same reason drugs are so cheap.

Well I AM high on chameleons but I don't quite understand you.