chameleon friendship with its owner ?:)

[animaltycoon]

can a pet chameleon "want their owner". like have a friendship with it. i heard somewhere that one would not eat because it was not its owner that was feeding it? if so , it is the same with all chams?


-------
jacksons female- poppy

 

[arnau666]

well i guess so, mine eats mostly from me and comes only to me !
but when my fiance gives him his fav food - mealworms he cant help it hehe !
he is shy around other people and he gets scared or angry.
i think he associates me or my hand with food and sunlight

 

[iwantone]

Yes, Mia my panther comes to me and only me. She wants me to take her out all the time and you should see her little face when I go to the cage.

 

[juju]

yeah same here my little guy will sit on his branch when he wants out and when i open his cage he reaches for me lol so cute xDD then he goes straight to the top of my head

 

[ferretinmyshoes]

Chameleons do not bond with their owners, but they are smart enough to recognize where the food comes from. If you are the only source of food it has ever known then it will probably wait for you to feed it, but I doubt it would starve to death waiting. For my chams, I just dump crickets in the cage and they go to town over the course of the day. If I hold a worm for them they'll eat it from there, but they will eat from anywhere really. Oscar will let anyone feed him. Buster is more hesitant of people he's not familiar with. George won't eat from anyone's hand if you offered him a million bugs.

 

[Miss Lily]

All mine have been very 'people friendly' but my little Jackson, Monty is the most outgoing and confident of them all. Recently I have had friends visit to see him, the first being a friend and her husband. He came straight to the front of his cage to see them and happily walked right onto their hands. Then today, my other friend came to see Monty and as she was trying to take his photo he reached out for her and climbed on her hand! He has only seen all these people once before when he was very tiny, so I doubt he remembers them. He seems to have a very sociable nature.

 

[skittles1234]

I don't how much reptiles really feel as far as emotions, I've heard they don't usually get emotionally attached. But I don't see why not though. My veiled only likes my boyfriend and eats from his hands all the time. Will Not eat for me though bummer. I do however believe they have huge personality!!

 

[d3s5]

Well, my cham and I certainly don't have the same relationship that I have with my African Grey. I don't think my cham will ever consider me a friend. But he does have a big personality, he is stubborn, he has learned quickly how to get what he wants, and he has no qualms about using me to get what he wants when he wants it!

 

[sandrachameleon]

No, it is not friends with anyone. Chameleons are not people - they dont make friends.

Chameleons do not bond with their owners, but they are smart enough to recognize where the food comes from.

Agreed.

 

[DanSB]

Chameleons do not bond with their owners, but they are smart enough to recognize where the food comes from. If you are the only source of food it has ever known then it will probably wait for you to feed it, but I doubt it would starve to death waiting. For my chams, I just dump crickets in the cage and they go to town over the course of the day. If I hold a worm for them they'll eat it from there, but they will eat from anywhere really. Oscar will let anyone feed him. Buster is more hesitant of people he's not familiar with. George won't eat from anyone's hand if you offered him a million bugs.

No, it is not friends with anyone. Chameleons are not people - they dont make friends.

While it is likely you are both correct you don't really know for sure. They are making some very good progress towards mapping emotions with brainwaves and through comparison have found some interesting correlations between human emotions and other mammals brain functions.

To my knowledge no such study has ever been completed with chameleons and in fact science only assumes reptiles (and often all animals) are not capable of emotions outside meeting their basic needs. The truth be told we really have no benchmark to measure it by and have no way to tell.

You are both experts who I among others admire very much when it comes to chameleon care and will defer to you expertise so please know I'm not trying to knock either of you here. It is not likely that a chameleon will bond with a person nor will it be our friend. But to infer this is 100% certain I think is a mistake.

We just don't know for sure! There are a lot of people here whose experience would tell us they are bonding with people. Maybe it is just for food? Any maybe all animals only bond with other animals for some sort of reward.

I don't know the answer but I do know that none of us know for sure either way!

 

[Trillian]

I think the difference is that all animals which demonstrate affectionate behaviour and emotional attachment are those which require social and familial connections for survival of individuals and their genetic legacy. Very few reptiles have natural social or familial bonds, so the capacity just has not evolved.

But as you say, we do not know what is going on in their heads, and just because certain traits haven't developed because they don't confer survival advantages, doesn't mean that a rare few individuals wouldn't have a capacity for bonding.

 

[ph34r]

all i know is that if i get to close to mine im losing a finger >.> and im bringer of food cleaner and all around attentive owner, but he seems to tolerate my girlfriend a whloe lot better then me. So as for being friends i wouldnt see that happening but i do feel that u can come to some sort of a mutual standing at one point, IE you feed me and take me out side and i wont eat you fingers

 

[OldChamKeeper]

Chameleons do not bond with their owners, but they are smart enough to recognize where the food comes from. If you are the only source of food it has ever known then it will probably wait for you to feed it, but I doubt it would starve to death waiting. For my chams, I just dump crickets in the cage and they go to town over the course of the day. If I hold a worm for them they'll eat it from there, but they will eat from anywhere really. Oscar will let anyone feed him. Buster is more hesitant of people he's not familiar with. George won't eat from anyone's hand if you offered him a million bugs.

I tend to agree with this. I have kept hundreds of herps over my lifetime and am keen to observe them. However there have been two times where the animals displayed behaviour not easily explained or even attributed to "owner bias" which I have seen too often.

In one case, we are talking about my Male Parsonii. This animal displayed clear recognition of his primary care giver (me) and reacted in such ways that it was clear to others this animal was very comfortable with me and not others. While yes he would expect food from me, there were plenty of times where he would come down to about my waist height and wait for me to offer my arm. He'd climb up it (ow ow ow ow ) and perch on my shoulder. Rarely would he go to the top of my head. He'd just hang on and not move for the most part. The real test came one day when my father had taken him outside for some sunlight and thought the place I put him was in a small (15') tree in the backyard. I went outside to find him near the top of the tree and me not having a ladder. I stood under the tree and just tried to get his attention. After some minutes he climbed down and on to my arm. I knew I had something different when that happened. No other chams ever did anything close to that, not even the female Parson's I had.

The second time something out of the norm with herps happened was about 4 years ago with my Blue Tree Monitors. They have a truely huge habitat. Near the top is a screen that separates the ceiling from the cage. There used to be a small opening for the mister hose......

One day I came in the herp room to find the small female sitting on my Amazon cages. After a rather spirited chase ( a nice way of saying my Herp room looked like WWIII) she was palced back in with the male who had never escaped. I checked everywhere and could not figure out how she got out. So I kept trying to watch her to see how she got out. A few days later, I came in and again found her out. This time enjoying herself on a hanging ornament attatched to the ceiling . After again catching her (WW IV) she was palced back...again the male was still in the cage. The next day I got lucky. I entered the room like I had been doing off and on and saw the weirdest damn thing.

Neither animal could reach the screen at the top of the cage, the branches were placed in such a way they could not do this. However I caught the male with his hind legs and tail holding on to a branch while pushing his front legs out and against the far wall. While he couldn't go anywhere but down I saw the female standing on her hind legs on his back while her head and front legs were in the process of squezzing out the hole where the mister hoses were. They were problem solving... and making it work.

I never shared that with the dumbshits over in the montior forums but however this made me re think the common perception that "lizards" are just dumb animals. And this after me keeping animals for 3+ decades.


I'd not say a Cham will bond with an owner... but Parrots do. And we know that reptiles and birds share some traits.....

 

[dragongoddess]

They do have personalities but mine would rather I never enter the room he's in. I try to take peeks around the corner but he always spots me

 

[lilbug]

I think that they can bond in a way, not the same a dogs, cats, or parrots but I believe they do bond. My girl has a really bad attitude, she never trys biting me but opens her mouth and puffs up at me when I open the cage. I put my hand in front of her and she climbs on, keeping the attitude of course. She will not allow anyone else to hold her, if i give her to someone else she will fall off them if thats what it takes to get back to me. The male I had yrs ago loved everyone and would come out of his cage on his own and climb up on my should and just sit with me.
I know people say reptiles don't bond but my brother had a iguana that slept with him, and guarded his room at night. He would whip anyone who came near my brother and he always wanted to be out with him.
I believe all creatures bond in one way or another.

 

[sandrachameleon]

While it is likely you are both correct you don't really know for sure. They are making some very good progress towards mapping emotions with brainwaves and through comparison have found some interesting correlations between human emotions and other mammals brain functions.
To my knowledge no such study has ever been completed with chameleons and in fact science only assumes reptiles (and often all animals) are not capable of emotions outside meeting their basic needs. The truth be told we really have no benchmark to measure it by and have no way to tell. ...

Well sure, we dont know anything for certain.

But I'm quite confident in my answer. Perhaps to some degree this confidence and ease of answering so firmly in the negative is connected to my definition of what a friend is. To me its very much a human / mammal cultural/social structure thing.

Im not saying chameleons are stupid or necessarily emotionless - and certainly they each have different personalities and some capacity for recognizing their owners/the familiar, perhaps even developing some kind of bond.
I like to think I have a good "relationship" with my animals. A better word would be "connection"

But friendship in a human sense, no.

I strongly advise people to be careful of tendencies towards Anthropomorphism. The danger of anthropomorphizing non-human animals is that we may accidentally unintentionally ignore or misinterpret some of their true signals by exerting and believing in their “humanity" (for example, the statement: he crawled up my arm onto my head, so he must really like me (maybe it just desires to be higher up than he was previously); he went bright pretty colours, he must like me (maybe you are totally missing the intent of territorial/fear/stress signals )

There is no reason they cant be awesome creatures with their own unique natures - they are not improved or helped by assigning human social/cultural personifications. Indeed, I like the honest reality of most animals more than I like a heck of a lot of people.

Previous threads on a similar topic that you may find interesting https://www.chameleonforums.com/do-...show-affection-their-owners-52609/#post493209

 

[AllFallDown]

I don't how much reptiles really feel as far as emotions, I've heard they don't usually get emotionally attached. But I don't see why not though. My veiled only likes my boyfriend and eats from his hands all the time. Will Not eat for me though bummer. I do however believe they have huge personality!!

True that!

 

[Sericinda]

I, like many other, assign human qualities to my pets. It's a natural thing to do and a way to express our love for them. I see nothing wrong with this, and I do get a bit exasperated with the naysayers simply because it's rude. Someone shares a great story about bonding with their pet and then you come in with your chest-thumping "animals don't bond" thing and sorry...but you just look like a jerk. (general "you" here, not talking about or to any one person!)

However, I do realize that the emotions I say my pets have are very likely my imagination. I know the reason my snakes perk up when I open the top of their tanks is because they associate that with food, even if I awww and say "they love me!". I write blog stories about my pets that are quite popular, simply because people are drawn towards the idea that their pets love them back, recognize them, and want to be with them. They are silly posts that give everything down to the hermit crabs and corals in my reef tank a personality. It makes me happy. It makes others happy. What's the beef? If you read my blog and seriously think that *I* think my tuxedo urchin is a tiny ocean human with mood swings who likes to do things to annoy me like I suggest in the stories...then I'm glad I gave you a laugh, although I'm not entirely sure the laugh should be at MY expense. I realize there are plenty of people out there that really DO think to these extremes, but somehow it just simply doesn't strike me as that big of a dang deal.

That being said...I DO have reptiles that show signs of those very same personalities I give them. The juvenile bearded dragon in my reptile shop really seems drawn to one particular employee. She never feeds him, she just holds him and handles him for a for minutes every day. She says his name and he perks right up, tilts his head, and runs to the top of his tank waiting for her. Im the one that feeds him....but I don't handle him that often or talk to him as much. He runs from me when I approach the tank. He obviously prefers her voice and her company over mine, even though I am the one that give him insects, greens and water.

I also have a tokay gecko with a fan club. Everyone that meets her loves her, because her personality is so un-tokay-like. She loves to be held. She never bites or gapes. She rolls over in my hand for belly rubs. She nudges under my hand persistently when hanging out with me, for me to rub her head and chin. If I give her worms instead of roaches, she will throw her bowl around and refuse to eat for a day (she seems to prefer dubia). She loves to roam around my living room and explore, but will come back to me when I talk to her. She's a puppy dog in a tokay body. She eats fine, but she's not a food motivated gecko, so I'm not overly convinced she sees me just as a giant food dispenser.

my two cents.

 

[AllFallDown]

I guess the way I look at it, when we talk about animals "bonding" implicitly we are talking about a human like thing. Kind of like talking about whether an animal "loves" you. I suspect that while a dog may "love" you, the love is fundamentally different than that of a human. My suspicion is that their "love" is a very different thing altogether.
Can a chameleon "bond" to a human? I can't say for sure as I have not had mine very long, but I have noticed that he tolerates me more than he did the day I brought him home. Some days he's a little jerk and threatens to bite my hand off if I stick my hand in his cage. Other days, I barely have to have my hand in there and he crawls out onto it. Seems kinda random. I do get a sense that he "trusts" me a little more than he used to. He does not display stress colors when I hold him any longer (rarely at least). I do not think he has bonded with me in the sense that he thinks about me or misses me when I am gone, I think it is more along the lines of he has been around me long enough to know I am not a big scary bird that is going to eat him and I am the one that brings him good stuff like silkworms. Sad to say, but if I died tomorrow I doubt he would notice. I think from his perspective I am basically an ATM machine that spits out crickets.

The thing is though, this is (I think) the nature of chameleons. Like it or love it, it is part of the package. As pet people, we like to feel appreciated and valued by our animal companions but I think there is an intrinsic beauty to who they are- even if who they are is a cold, calculating lizard. To attempt to humanize them by attributing human traits to them does help us relate to them and recognize what is common between us, but I think it can also take away from the intrinsic beauty that is the nature of the animal itself- at least if we lose perspective.

That said, I ain't gonna go out and buy a tiger! Intrinsic beauty or not! Animal planet is good enough for me!

 

[DanSB]

Well sure, we dont know anything for certain.

But I'm quite confident in my answer. Perhaps to some degree this confidence and ease of answering so firmly in the negative is connected to my definition of what a friend is. To me its very much a human / mammal cultural/social structure thing.

Im not saying chameleons are stupid or necessarily emotionless - and certainly they each have different personalities and some capacity for recognizing their owners/the familiar, perhaps even developing some kind of bond.
I like to think I have a good "relationship" with my animals. A better word would be "connection"

But friendship in a human sense, no.

I strongly advise people to be careful of tendencies towards Anthropomorphism. The danger of anthropomorphizing non-human animals is that we may accidentally unintentionally ignore or misinterpret some of their true signals by exerting and believing in their “humanity" (for example, the statement: he crawled up my arm onto my head, so he must really like me (maybe it just desires to be higher up than he was previously); he went bright pretty colours, he must like me (maybe you are totally missing the intent of territorial/fear/stress signals )

There is no reason they cant be awesome creatures with their own unique natures - they are not improved or helped by assigning human social/cultural personifications. Indeed, I like the honest reality of most animals more than I like a heck of a lot of people.

Previous threads on a similar topic that you may find interesting https://www.chameleonforums.com/do-...show-affection-their-owners-52609/#post493209

I tend to look at friendship as the handy online dictionary says: "A Person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard". Granted the term "person" rules out any non-human, but ignoring that part of the definition I'm really not sure we can say if a chameleon feels affection or has personal regard, I suspect they do in some instances. It is also fair to note I have met my fair share of people who don't feel affection or personal regard! But using your definition I will agree with everything you said as a chameleon is definitely not a social creature and will often eat there own babies given a chance.

I also think it is important to re-emphasize and add my thoughts to your point about anthropomorphism.

It can be very dangerous for the reasons you outlined and I sincerely hope everyone who reads that takes it to heart. But for the sake of completeness I also want to point out that the more similar an animal is to human in their biological function the more it makes sense to apply anthropomorphic thinking to determining what reactions mean. I've heard real people who pretend to be biologists with PhD's and all say we can't we can't use anthropomorphic thinking to determine what chimpanzees are doing.

I just get very sensitive as I have been reamed many times for my stance on animal emotions and I smelled the blind "Tow the line" thinking that says animals have no emotions in the responses. I now know better and apologize.

It is typical of human thinking to take away an animal's ability to feel. If most people thought for a minute a cow was frightened and had a genuine sadness at being slaughtered they couldn't eat meat ever again. Because of this a lot of modern biology continues to turn a blind eye towards any research that shows animals might have emotions beyond simple survival instincts.

The world becomes a whole lot more complicated when all those dogs and cats being killed in shelters every day have a capacity to love and feel not to mention all the habitat destruction etc etc...