Ideas about desynchronized hatching

[TCMontium]

Hello,

I have bred panther chameleons before, around 10 years ago, and for some reason both times I had eggs from my female, the babies hatched desynchronized.
By that I mean, some eggs of a batch hatched after 7 months, while some eggs of the same batch in the same tiny box took 9 months, or anywhere inbetween. And some eggs were twice the size of others.

What could be the reason for this desynchronized hatching timing of the eggs from the same batch, and the significant egg size differences?

Sorry this was 10 years ago, so I do not remember most of the details of the parents and the incubation, but if you suspect some certain things, I might be able to find some details from my old posts and notes.
However as far as I remember it was the same "box in a closet with a thermometer to check it from time to time" method most people used. If I recall correctly I even put half of a batch in an incubator with cooling and heating regulation, and even those did not hatch synchronized amongs eachother.

 

[nightanole]

One hypothesis was captive bred has very spaced out eggs. When one hatches, it just grabs a branch or whatever and is gone.
In the wild it is a ball of eggs. When one hatches it disturbs all the other eggs, and the digging disturbs further.
So it could be that all your eggs were ready to go at 7 months, and the 9 monthers just slept/waited longer.

In tegu land this is a problem. Baby tegus need woken up. So its either just let all the babies run all over the other eggs for a day or two. Or you gotta hand tickle each egg to get them to pop out.

 

[kinyonga]

Regarding desynchronized hatching…I have a few thoughts on it..but not much.

In the wild, all the eggs are laid in a “pile” in a hole in the ground…so they are touching and able to communicate with each other. In captivity, we lay them in rows, spread apart somewhat…so they don’t have the opportunity to communicate in the same way…so IMHO, there’s less chance of them all hatching at the same time.

(BTW, there might be one advantage to eggs being separated by a bit of space…it might allow them to hatch when they are most ready…so maybe slightly more developed or stronger than some might be if they were all hatching together.)

I do know that different species, eggs seem to need to be with the others during hatching. With green water dragons and cone heads, if you remove the babies, one at a time as they hatched, no further eggs would hatch and the babies would die in the eggs.

I also found that a batch of chameleon eggs, when hatching were somehow affected by babies walking over other eggs as they hatched and moved around in the container…which I assumed was due to the movement or some type of communication between the hatchlings and the eggs still not hatching yet.

Also, position in the incubation container had a slight effect…which I’m sure was to slight differences in incubation temperature in different areas of the container.

You might like to read these…
https://www.chameleons.info/l/the-purpose-of-life-and-the-mystery-of-chameleon-eggs/
https://www.chameleons.info/l/chameleon-eggs-sweating-prior-to-hatch/

Hopefully, others with more knowledge than me will have better insight about this all.

 

[TCMontium]

I have thought the temperature difference and the eggs not being in a clump all touching eachother could not be the reason because I see people put eggs in neat lines, apart from eachother, all the time for chameleons and all other reptiles. And they pretty much always are reported to hatch together within a way shorter amount of time than 2 months apart.

In my case though, I did remove the babies pretty much the hour they hatched everytime, except nighttime babies, and the very late babies. I kept a very close eye on the eggs everyday from the moment I saw a sweating egg that reduced in size.
So maybe if I let the first few babies stay longer and move around for a day or two, or maybe even more days, all of them would hatch within a week or less? Though, I have no clue how long a baby should be left in the incubation bin. I'd assume they try to dig up ASAP in the wild, but how fast they accomplish to reach the surface from the moment of hatching is difficult to know.

 

[kinyonga]

You said…”I have thought the temperature difference and the eggs not being in a clump all touching eachother could not be the reason because I see people put eggs in neat lines, apart from eachother, all the time for chameleons and all other reptiles. And they pretty much always are reported to hatch together within a way shorter amount of time than 2 months apart.”…my first experience hatching chameleon eggs was with chamaeleo chamaeleon eggs. They were placed in my homemade version of an incubator in containers in rows about an inch apart in all directions. They hatched over a period of about a month with most of them hatching in the first week or so. (It’s been many years since that and I don’t have time to look for my records to give you more exact dates.)

I didn’t worry about getting the hatchlings out of the cage the same day they hatched. They were in a safe place there.