Deadly Chameleon Myth series

[MissSkittles]

Petr Necas has/is writing some short articles which are most interesting. https://www.chameleons.info/l/deadly-chameleon-myths-series-where-ignorance-ends-and-rigor-begins/ So far, I do find that the general husbandry which we as a whole follow is right in step. Currently, only five are posted, and links to them can be found here, on Petr’s site. https://www.chameleons.info/en/

 

[DocZ]

I think it’s been very good and interesting so far, and I love his passion

 

[LizardLurkin]

I know we have our ways of reducing the ulric acid load of roaches, namely in making their consistent diet not entail the typical gutload diet, but I do wonder what the ultimate takeaway is. Should we not gutload them at all following the typical gutload guide just to be safe?
Roaches are widely available and feeder insect diversity is still quite lacking. They're also less gross to deal with compared to crickets, so it'd be very difficult to omit them completely.

I'm also curious then, does this mean calcium dusting should look like powdered donuts?

The world is being flipped upside down.

 

[nightanole]

Meh. Not really digging the final verdicts. It boils down to "dont bring up a problem if you dont present a solution".

"dont feed your cham commercial insects, one that leads to terrible pain, suffering, and guaranteed death."

Welp guess ill start breeding Madagascar bees or something.

"light dusting is bad". Have you seen the surface area of 1-2 dozen non adult insects that are powdered enough to change color? Are we going back to ghost crickets. Also keep in mind Petr wants use to feed lots of low calorie insects, so thats a huge amount of surface area.

I do agree on alot of his other points. Especially the cages. Im not sure if yall have done "unlimited cage sizes". For me they tend to act like fish, and dont really walk up/down, they kinda stay in one story +-1ft.


Also im results driven. If we do A, and 50%+ chams die around the same age and the same cause, A is bad. But when its "if you dont fog you will get URI and kidney issues" and we have data/chams since the 90's not getting URI and kidney issues and never fogged...

 

[nightanole]

I know we have our ways of reducing the ulric acid load of roaches, namely in making their consistent diet not entail the typical gutload diet, but I do wonder what the ultimate takeaway is. Should we not gutload them at all following the typical gutload guide just to be safe?
Roaches are widely available and feeder insect diversity is still quite lacking. They're also less gross to deal with compared to crickets, so it'd be very difficult to omit them completely.

I'm also curious then, does this mean calcium dusting should look like powdered donuts?

The world is being flipped upside down.

Petr is very black and white on "nuanced" subjects.

I can answer your two questions

"animals" can not store protein. If its got 4 legs, then the only source of protein is the free floating amino acid pool that is "in the organs". Its not much, maybe a months supply during a starvation event. Then the organs start swelling. Insects on the other hand are perfect fine storing excess protein like we store excess fat. They store it as uric acid. But guess what, since us 4 leggers cant produce uric acid, our bodies really dont know what to do with it. So in abundance it just stores it at the joints in a crystalized form of gout. So just dont feed your bugs the high protein diet that the bug farms use, and you will be fine. Bug grow super fast on the fish food/dog diet, but its like 30-60% protein...

As for the powder, if its just calcium powder, yup you can have little donuts running around. Perfectly fine. The issue comes up when you start powdering with non water soluble vitamins/minerals such as D and A. We have all seen what happens if you get the high D powder and have donuts walking around.

 

[LizardLurkin]

Petr is very black and white on "nuanced" subjects.

I can answer your two questions

"animals" can not store protein. If its got 4 legs, then the only source of protein is the free floating amino acid pool that is "in the organs". Its not much, maybe a months supply during a starvation event. Then the organs start swelling. Insects on the other hand are perfect fine storing excess protein like we store excess fat. They store it as uric acid. But guess what, since us 4 leggers cant produce uric acid, our bodies really dont know what to do with it. So in abundance it just stores it at the joints in a crystalized form of gout. So just dont feed your bugs the high protein diet that the bug farms use, and you will be fine. Bug grow super fast on the fish food/dog diet, but its like 30-60% protein...

As for the powder, if its just calcium powder, yup you can have little donuts running around. Perfectly fine. The issue comes up when you start powdering with non water soluble vitamins/minerals such as D and A. We have all seen what happens if you get the high D powder and have donuts walking around.

I do appreciate your answers.
I went through a bout where shipping nonsense happened so I only had my dubia roaches for over a week (and they accidentally sent mealworms on top of that, so more waiting.) Me, already being aware of the anxiety around dubia roaches and their potential to cause gout, was already worried and the article has such drastic wording (like they will die a painful death sort of phrases) that I felt dread...
The roaches I have only eat repashy bug burger or proper roach chow, and the proper gutload the day before they get fed off.

It is pretty unavoidable to not get some donut looking fellows when using reptocal. It is more clumpy, sticky than repashy supplements for sure.

 

[jamest0o0]

I’m with @nightanole. To add, Uric acid should not be dangerous with normal kidney function and hydration, especially with cutting down on high protein diets. Excess bee pollen on the other hand is linked to kidney issues with people. I think bee pollen is a great supplement, but not in the quantities people would think to use it for chameleons.

Natural isn’t always better, animals evolve to survive their environments, not necessarily thrive in them. Blowing fog from a machine is not the same as a natural fog. It’s suspicious that so many RIs seem to pop up with this new advice to fog, yet I don’t remember it being a common issue when people were spraying the hell out of their cages all day. I’ll admit though maybe I’m just imagining that things were better.

Anyway, I fed my Cham’s roach heavy diets that probably had more protein than they needed and I misted a ton and I never saw gout or respiratory issues. No parasites either. Maybe I was lucky idk… I did change to and like the idea of early morning and evening misting sessions though just because it seemed to make more sense. Do I think it matters all that much… Not at all.

 

[MissSkittles]

I did hesitate and thought about posting these links as I know and remember too well some past controversies with Petr. For the most part, he has stayed away from here, except to occasionally dredge up very old posts and tell us how wrong we are, before then leaving us on our own and in peace again. (I’m trying very hard to be tactful)
I think Petr has contributed a great deal to general knowledge about chameleons and husbandry practices, and being human, he also doesn’t know everything. I definitely respect his passion and love for chameleons as well as his intellectual curiosity to research, investigate and hypothesize/theorize. (deep breath - stay tactful) I do think that the more correct info is put out into the aether of the internet, perhaps the more the incorrect will be buried under it. Also, if by linking to his articles promotes open discussion about it here, I see it as worth making the post.

I do have to mention my take about the roaches. There have been some new keepers who mention only or primarily dubia in terms of their chameleon’s diet. I find this single feeder idea upsetting and it’s my feeling that it’s unhealthy, regardless of which feeder it is. I’m all for offering a variety of well kept healthy feeder insects. I do understand it can be more challenging to keep several different types of insect feeders when you have only one insectivore, which is why I often bring up on line vendors offering variety packs.
I want to think many of the more reputable on line vendors aren’t terribly cavalier about the diets of their roaches and other bugs and take care to provide the best feeders they can. If you are buying your feeders from Shady’s Bug O’ Rama, I think it’s safe to be suspicious about the breeding and diets of those bugs.
Like everyone else, I have definite opinions about some of the other articles, but I talk too much as it is, so will shut up now.

 

[jamest0o0]

I did hesitate and thought about posting these links as I know and remember too well some past controversies with Petr. For the most part, he has stayed away from here, except to occasionally dredge up very old posts and tell us how wrong we are, before then leaving us on our own and in peace again. (I’m trying very hard to be tactful)
I think Petr has contributed a great deal to general knowledge about chameleons and husbandry practices, and being human, he also doesn’t know everything. I definitely respect his passion and love for chameleons as well as his intellectual curiosity to research, investigate and hypothesize/theorize. (deep breath - stay tactful) I do think that the more correct info is put out into the aether of the internet, perhaps the more the incorrect will be buried under it. Also, if by linking to his articles promotes open discussion about it here, I see it as worth making the post.

I do have to mention my take about the roaches. There have been some new keepers who mention only or primarily dubia in terms of their chameleon’s diet. I find this single feeder idea upsetting and it’s my feeling that it’s unhealthy, regardless of which feeder it is. I’m all for offering a variety of well kept healthy feeder insects. I do understand it can be more challenging to keep several different types of insect feeders when you have only one insectivore, which is why I often bring up on line vendors offering variety packs.
I want to think many of the more reputable on line vendors aren’t terribly cavalier about the diets of their roaches and other bugs and take care to provide the best feeders they can. If you are buying your feeders from Shady’s Bug O’ Rama, I think it’s safe to be suspicious about the breeding and diets of those bugs.
Like everyone else, I have definite opinions about some of the other articles, but I talk too much as it is, so will shut up now.

Listen, it was Jamesy’s bug o’Rama and I swear I never gave those roaches that horse meat.

On a serious note I think Petr offers some cool information, he just likes to pop off sometimes and occasionally needs some push back .

Agreed about the feeders, I didn’t mean to say I think it’s okay to only feed roaches. I’ve always felt variety was most important. It’s just that the roaches/staple make the bulk of the calories, like even if you feed hornworms, bsfl, flies, etc a roach or even crickets will be denser in calories.

Oh and you can bet any bug dealers are feeding them heavy protein as that’s what’s going to help reproduction and growth. Can’t blame them either, just hope that it’s quality. Most are probably using dog food. I gave mine whole ingredient horse chow for protein once every couple weeks personally(for breeding purposes, not gutload).

 

[kinyonga]

@nightanole said…”Welp guess ill start breeding Madagascar bees or something”…bet importing bees from Madagascar isn’t allowed….so you will need to substitute something biologically inappropriate. We’re off to a good start.

Petr said…”In captivity, chameleons are often fed what is available, not what is biologically appropriate. Wild diets are diverse, seasonal, and behaviorally integrated—yet we offer waxworms, mealworms, or oversized roaches devoid of micronutrient balance. Worse, we omit critical prey types they evolved to consume”…we cannot feed them the exact species of insects that they eat in the wild because we cannot buy them here or import them…so it seems the only alternative at the moment is to use the insects that are available and try to balance the micronutrients, etc through supplements and gut loading and feeding the insects what is needed to give the chameleons the balance. We can’t import many of the types of vegetation and grow them here…so again, we have to come up with a good solution.

So…what can we do to make it a natural diet/habitat when there are so many obstacles? Petr?

 

[DocZ]

@nightanole said…”Welp guess ill start breeding Madagascar bees or something”…bet importing bees from Madagascar isn’t allowed….so you will need to substitute something biologically inappropriate. We’re off to a good start.

Petr said…”In captivity, chameleons are often fed what is available, not what is biologically appropriate. Wild diets are diverse, seasonal, and behaviorally integrated—yet we offer waxworms, mealworms, or oversized roaches devoid of micronutrient balance. Worse, we omit critical prey types they evolved to consume”…we cannot feed them the exact species of insects that they eat in the wild because we cannot buy them here or import them…so it seems the only alternative at the moment is to use the insects that are available and try to balance the micronutrients, etc through supplements and gut loading and feeding the insects what is needed to give the chameleons the balance. We can’t import many of the types of vegetation and grow them here…so again, we have to come up with a good solution.

So…what can we do to make it a natural diet/habitat when there are so many obstacles? Petr?

Flies are easily available. Green and blue bottle flies are easily available, and if you’ve never seen your Cham in a room full of flies you’ll enjoy it. BSF pupate a bit slower and are a great size for most. Add a small wine fridge and they pupate fairly slowly for weeks making them useful even with small or single collections
I think that enhancing their nutrition through feeder nutrition and gutloading are much more difficult and supplemental dusting is also more difficult than with terrestrial bugs.
This makes all of the terrestrial bugs much more attractive to propagate and feed because it is fairly simple to enhance their nutrition and it would seem there is a huge advantage to properly feeding roaches to achieve lower protein content with their diet
Petr Necas will acknowledge that you can affect the protein content (and uric acid storage) through diet in roaches. He just doesn’t think most people will do it (and he’s probably right)

When it comes to his tone, he has spent most of his life devoted to the increase in knowledge about Chams and promoting optimal care of them, and he’s not a young man. He’s been fighting (and he does fight) for their health and safety for a very long time, and all he has seen especially as breeders proliferated and made Chams more available to the general public has made him very passionate about the suffering keepers cause

I like what he does. I’ve been on both ends of spirited discussion with him. I do not think that the enemy of good is better when it comes to health no matter what species we speak of. Human medicine and health would have never changed. Petr is punk rock chameleon care. Always pushing boundaries and questioning your sensibilities. I think it’s essential to growth in any topic

Other “close by” bugs to what they may eat include grasshoppers, katydids, crickets (maybe not due to nocturnal activity).

Don’t dismiss him outright. He cares as much or more about this than you do. His approach remains impactful and I think important, but…..
Unapologetic

 

[DocZ]

Meh. Not really digging the final verdicts. It boils down to "dont bring up a problem if you dont present a solution".

I totally agree that stirring the pot and predicting the death of peoples’ animals when your readers are looking for help has some serious deficiencies to helping people that want to do the best or right thing for their animals. Especially when you don’t offer good alternatives
However it does make people ask questions
Keep asking questions and digging at the edges to find a better alternative

 

[kinyonga]

Flies are easily available. Green and blue bottle flies are easily available, and if you’ve never seen your Cham in a room full of flies you’ll enjoy it. BSF pupate a bit slower and are a great size for most. Add a small wine fridge and they pupate fairly slowly for weeks making them useful even with small or single collections
I think that enhancing their nutrition through feeder nutrition and gutloading are much more difficult and supplemental dusting is also more difficult than with terrestrial bugs.
This makes all of the terrestrial bugs much more attractive to propagate and feed because it is fairly simple to enhance their nutrition and it would seem there is a huge advantage to properly feeding roaches to achieve lower protein content with their diet
Petr Necas will acknowledge that you can affect the protein content (and uric acid storage) through diet in roaches. He just doesn’t think most people will do it (and he’s probably right)

When it comes to his tone, he has spent most of his life devoted to the increase in knowledge about Chams and promoting optimal care of them, and he’s not a young man. He’s been fighting (and he does fight) for their health and safety for a very long time, and all he has seen especially as breeders proliferated and made Chams more available to the general public has made him very passionate about the suffering keepers cause

I like what he does. I’ve been on both ends of spirited discussion with him. I do not think that the enemy of good is better when it comes to health no matter what species we speak of. Human medicine and health would have never changed. Petr is punk rock chameleon care. Always pushing boundaries and questioning your sensibilities. I think it’s essential to growth in any topic

Other “close by” bugs to what they may eat include grasshoppers, katydids, crickets (maybe not due to nocturnal activity).

Don’t dismiss him outright. He cares as much or more about this than you do. His approach remains impactful and I think important, but…..
Unapologetic

Assuming that this isn’t completely directed at me since I did not comment on things like protein in roaches, etc.

 

[DocZ]

Assuming that this isn’t completely directed at me since I did not comment on things like protein in roaches, etc.

No. A lot of things going on in that post
I just think stopping because something is good when talking about “healthcare” (because that is what we are discussing is chameleon “healthcare”) and not looking for better is not the most productive approach

I apologize if you felt I was singling you out somehow

 

[kinyonga]

I just wanted it to be clear that it wasn’t a reply to only what I said…I don’t think I’ve ever dismissed him although we may have had differences of opinion once in a while!

 

[jannb]

Petr is Petr! I met him back in 2010 and we have been friends since. He’s been to my house twice and I am not the traditional keeper but he’s always been respectable to me. He is extremely knowledgable about chameleons because he’s spent his entire life studying them. Petr funds his own expeditions and he’s studying chameleons all the time since he doesn’t have to wait for grants and such.

 

[DocZ]

Petr is Petr! I met him back in 2010 and we have been friends since. He’s been to my house twice and I am not the traditional keeper but he’s always been respectable to me. He is extremely knowledgable about chameleons because he’s spent his entire life studying them.

This ^^^
Thank you @jannb
I don’t have this great experience like either of you have, but passion is important. And it should not be discouraged. Petr is one of the most knowledgeable resources of chameleon knowledge that is alive and available to interact with in this hobby
There are other amazing resources available right here on this site (a few that already responded or started this thread)

My suggestion is since this is truly a health and medical care discussion when you boil it down, don’t ignore it because it doesn’t fit. If it is challenging your opinion, figure out why from their perspective they might feel this way. Can you imagine human healthcare if at some point we stopped looking for better ways to help people and said, well $#!+, that works pretty good, stop trying to make it better
I get the practical implications of some of the suggestions, but that might be the point. What is practical might not be ideal conditions. Right?
But what is ideal conditions will always be ideal conditions

 

[DocZ]

I just wanted it to be clear that it wasn’t a reply to only what I said…I don’t think I’ve ever dismissed him although we may have had differences of opinion once in a while!

Speaking of incredible resources being available to discuss with @kinyonga

I’ll give my best advice if you really want to dig into the nature and science of these animals, set you feed to follow @kinyonga and read the articles she posts
If you don’t understand something about the articles have a question, ask.

And when you read one that makes you curious, dig further. Read the articles referenced by the paper. She brings true gold here. It seems like there’s a lot of chameleon research when you read her posts, but it’s a drop in the bucket of the questions we are asking concrete answers for
There will likely never be impactful large scale research done because it’s too small of subject matter and has too little global significance

That’s where Petr comes in. Scientific approach, great knowledge base and experience, but little class A evidence. This is how evidence is classed in my world
Evidence here is almost entirely anecdotal or case series at best. Poor evidence to die on a hill for, BUT it is what we have except the natural world they live in. IMO that is class A evidence of what they have evolved to be in, so it’s a great first place to start, or also a great place to point at our captive “deficiencies” compared to the wild to improve them

 

[Sticktongue]

I’m with @nightanole. To add, Uric acid should not be dangerous with normal kidney function and hydration, especially with cutting down on high protein diets. Excess bee pollen on the other hand is linked to kidney issues with people. I think bee pollen is a great supplement, but not in the quantities people would think to use it for chameleons.

Natural isn’t always better, animals evolve to survive their environments, not necessarily thrive in them. Blowing fog from a machine is not the same as a natural fog. It’s suspicious that so many RIs seem to pop up with this new advice to fog, yet I don’t remember it being a common issue when people were spraying the hell out of their cages all day. I’ll admit though maybe I’m just imagining that things were better.

Anyway, I fed my Cham’s roach heavy diets that probably had more protein than they needed and I misted a ton and I never saw gout or respiratory issues. No parasites either. Maybe I was lucky idk… I did change to and like the idea of early morning and evening misting sessions though just because it seemed to make more sense. Do I think it matters all that much… Not at all.

I disagree. There were a lot of RI issues before fog. My first panther back in 2009 actually, I had RI issues. I took a 10 year hiatus, and got back 2 years ago. I jumped on the fog bandwagon and have had fantastic results. I feel my chams are hydrated better, and honestly I go though less water, too. Especially on the drainage part. I used to burn through water and empty buckets like there was no tomorrow. My plants seem to do better as well these days. Part of that is likely to better lighting, though. Anyhow point being. I think you can do it well by fogger or misting. BUT! You can get RIs in either situation if doing it improperly. RIs are rarely seen when you know what to do and what not to do. It’s little subtle things that cause the RIs.id venture to say vast majority of RIs are new chameleon keepers.

Petr has great posts, but someone else mentioned he’s black and white which is 100% right. He’s going to tell you what he thinks and it’s sometimes harsh. Harsh and true, and sometimes harsh and incorrect. It’s up to us to pull from his mega load of knowledge and try and not take it to take it personal with “certain death” comments that are clearly, not true. However I do think he makes us think about things a bit more rather than staying complacent. What I enjoy about the hobby now VS 10 years ago is theirs more known, proven ways to keep chams healthy! We can kinda of pick what we like and what works best for us and our environment. For my dry dry dry air in Idaho… solid sided cages with fog works WAY better than screen, or even 3 sided and screen fronts.. it simply isn’t ideal and IMO not cutting the mustard unless they are 4 solid sides. If I said that 15 years ago on here I would been crucified by everyone beside Dr. Anderson and maybe a couple others. It was just barely getting talked about. But now with people trying new things and experimenting, and strong willed people like Petr bringing things up… we’re all thinking through what we’re doing. We may not change anything, but we think about what we’re doing and have a reason for it now.

 

[kinyonga]

Speaking of incredible resources being available to discuss with @kinyonga

I’ll give my best advice if you really want to dig into the nature and science of these animals, set you feed to follow @kinyonga and read the articles she posts
If you don’t understand something about the articles have a question, ask.

And when you read one that makes you curious, dig further. Read the articles referenced by the paper. She brings true gold here. It seems like there’s a lot of chameleon research when you read her posts, but it’s a drop in the bucket of the questions we are asking concrete answers for
There will likely never be impactful large scale research done because it’s too small of subject matter and has too little global significance

That’s where Petr comes in. Scientific approach, great knowledge base and experience, but little class A evidence. This is how evidence is classed in my world
Evidence here is almost entirely anecdotal or case series at best. Poor evidence to die on a hill for, BUT it is what we have except the natural world they live in. IMO that is class A evidence of what they have evolved to be in, so it’s a great first place to start, or also a great place to point at our captive “deficiencies” compared to the wild to improve them

You flatter me and give me too much credit! But thank you for your compliments. I wish I could do better…there’s still too much to learn.
How I wish I could have done what Petr has done and observed them in the wild! He’s had experiences and opportunities few have had by observing them in the wild.