This is a copy/paste from Dave Weldon. Read this, it is good stuff.
Some of my rambling thoughts about chameleon hydration…
Being somewhat of an ARPA (Anal Retentive Painfully Analytic), I often think, re-think and re-re-think about the decisions and choices I’ve made regarding chameleon husbandry (and everything else in life). Chameleon hydration is, of course, one of those topics that I have re-hashed over and over in my mind. Am I supplying too much water leading to an unforeseen detriment to the chameleon or is “excessive” misting merely insuring maximum hydration? Most often, keepers are able to supply water via some mechanism that allows their chameleon to not only survive but to thrive. Those whose chameleons merely survived or worse yet, died of suboptimal hydration or dehydration, may have been sadly misinformed that either a couple of quick squirts a day of water on a plastic plant was enough or that only a water bowl or a waterfall was needed as an effective means of supplying water. There will always be the odd chameleon reported here and there that did learn to survive just using a water bowl as a sole source for water but those occurrences are not the norm. For every chameleon that figured out drinking from a bowl, hundreds of others didn’t and died.
Working it backwards (or is this really forwards?), a chameleon needs a source of drinking water to maintain proper hydration. The water needs to be supplied in such a way and for long enough as to be identifiable by the chameleon as drinkable water to potentially trigger a drinking response. Automated misting, hand misting, drippers, humidifiers, etc. all have their pluses and minuses towards fulfilling a chameleon’s hydration requirements. All chameleon species’ hydration requirements are not the same, so for my purposes here let’s talk about a generalized grouping of Panthers and Veileds. Environmental/body temperature along with humidity levels and water intake are probably the most dominate variables (not to let juicy hornworms and silkworms go unacknowledged) in the hydration equation. Simply put, hotter and drier means more water intake is required to balance the equation. If we fill-in the variables with, for example, 90F basking, 70F ambient, 40% humidity and daily consumption of water, this will result in a hydrated chameleon thus balancing the equation. This probably isn’t the best way of describing hydration but it does bring into the equation the issue of humidity. Even though many panther locales have high humidity it isn’t necessary to duplicate that high humidity (>70%). In Dr. Ferguson’s panther book he comments that:
“Despite the high humidity of their habitat, panther chameleons do not seem to require this in captive environments as long as they have opportunity to drink daily. We have observed no low-humidity problems, such as shedding difficulties, with indoor humidity of 40 to 50%. At that humidity, transfer of airborne diseases to inhabitants of adjacent cages and skin infections have been minimal in our laboratory over the last decade.”Opposite of overly humid conditions is what many keepers face in dry winter and desert conditions where the humidity may drop to single digit levels if not artificially boosted. A chameleon’s water intake may increase in low humidity environments in an attempt to compensate for higher water losses. At some point the equation can’t be balanced by the chameleon alone and we need to intercede by artificially increasing the humidity using, most often, a humidifier or through misting.
Simple cup/bottle drippers, as a means of supplying drinking water, have been successfully used probably as long as chameleons have been kept in captivity. Most chameleons eventually recognize a dripper’s water as a drinkable source especially if the drops are cascading down nearby leaves. The movement of the leaves and the drops themselves are usually enough to trigger a drinking response. The combination of a dripper and simple hand misting (5-10-15-20 minutes) can have a greater effect than either alone at triggering a drinking response. The presence of large water droplets “misted” combined with a dripper not only more effectively triggers a drinking response but then follows it up with the longer term availability of the dripper’s water. The addition of misting has the benefit of increasing the humidity in low humidity conditions. The downside of this method is that someone needs to be there to do the hand-misting and dripper refilling. Excess water will need to be dealt with by some means of collection and disposal.
An automated misting system offers the added benefit of a long term (many days), unattended supply of drinking water and an increase in humidity levels. If a nozzle and pump are selected that create a misty-drippy effect then it can be used as effectively as the dripper/hand mister in the previous example. An ultra-fine mist alone is not as effective at chameleon hydration as a “mist” that combines larger droplets with the some lesser amount of fine mist. Also, a long-term, automated, single source dripper alone may not be as effective as a combination of automated dripping and fine misting.
In summary, although there are other effective methods for maintaining chameleon hydration, many keepers have found that using an automated misting system for 5-15-20 minutes twice a day has provided their chameleon with a source of clean, inviting drinking water thus maintaining a peak hydration level has effectively eliminated most concerns of sub-optimal hydration. Note also that it is not necessary to have an automated system that mists the entire enclosure. A dry zone may be preferred by the chameleon especially if there is little interest/need in hydration at that point in time. Also, there is room for improvement. Better methods of providing heated water as well as nozzles and pumps that do a better job of creating a combination of some mist and mostly raindrops may be appreciated by our kept chameleons.
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I'll add that it is certainly not mandatory to have an automated system to keep a chameleon fully hydrated (but it sure seems to be if you are not around during the day
). I think that the typical hand, pump-up misting bottle loaded with 100-110F warmed water and the nozzle adjusted to make a misty-splattery-drippy-rainy delivery of water for many minutes, off and on, will usually eventually work to trigger a chameleon's drinking response. It may not work the very first day or even the 2nd, 3rd or 4th but it usually eventually triggers drinking. He may try to run away from the misting. Don't overly stress him. Give it a minute between trying different approaches. I suggest wetting things down, wait a minute to see what happens. Then sneak-up on the chameleon with a little wetting of the tail, back-off, wet some more farther up the tail and so-on until you are basically giving the chameleon a light shower almost continuously for many minutes. He may begin drinking during this process or not. Experiment with various methods and see if you can find something that works for your chameleon.
