Morpheus and Roux Ankaramy Breeders Mate

[Prism Chameleons]

I'm so excited, I thought I'd share... Today my two Ankaramy's Morpheus and Roux mated!

Here are some pics of the proud daddy:

Watch for a movie of them soon on my site! I'll make it as soon as I have a chance.

Woohoo.... new Ankaramy's!

 

[Prism Chameleons]

By the way, notice the color change from my Avatar.... that is Morpheus as well.

 

[JonathanF]

Wow, this guy looks great! congrats

 

[Brad]

That's great Jenna
Was this their first introduction to each other or have you been trying for a while? Let us know when you get a chance to make your movie, that sounds really cool.

 

[Shelby]

Ankarmay's are so beautiful!! Congrats to the new parents Morpheus and Roux!

Great job Jenna. :^)

 

[Chamgirl]

Wow - how gorgeous is he? Beautiful Jenna, lovely news too

 

[Prism Chameleons]

Thanks for the nice compliments! In all of my mating sessions my females have been gravid the very first copulation. None of my breeders have been difficult to mate, with the exception of my Nosy Be's which I'll talk about later.

I will only talk about panther chameleons, as they are my specialty and many other species have different mating rituals, behaviors, and/or colorations when they are ready to breed.

Roux starting turning her mating colors which were pink. Some females turn a light peach color. I introduced her to Morpheus in his cage and the reason I did this was because she doesn't stress at being handled as much as Morpheus does, so I thought it would be better to take her to him. You can tell if a female is ready to breed by 1) her color and 2) if she stays a pink or peach color when introduced to a male. Morpheus immediately turn a different shade of pink, got dark stripes in his eye turrets and watched her enter his cage. He obviously was very interested. Morpheus took a slow approach in doing his "mating dance." He let her find a place of comfort and then slowly approached her. As he got closer to her, he began to bob his head in a "hey girl, look at me" manner.

I have had some males who were very aggressive in their approach to a female, where they immediately pursued her and grabbed onto to her without any calm introductions. Morpheus on the other hand, was very gentle with his romance to her. Once he approached her, he gently placed himself on top of her and just relaxed with her... with his head resting on hers. They stayed in this position for about 5 minutes before he started to begin to move in order to copulate with Roux. She allowed this easily and they remained in a mating position for about 20 minutes.

Once they were done, she slowly moved away from him and all the while they had their eyes on each other. It was really rather sweet. I then, removed her back to her cage for a rest.

The very next day (this morning) Roux was showing her gravid colorations, which I'll attach a photo below. I'll also attached photos of other females with other types of gravid colorations. Some are black/brown with pink or orange, some are dark black with pink or orange, and some are INTENSE pink and orange in gravid colorations as you can see below.

This is Roux today March 18, 2006

This is Dulcinea, my Diego Suarez who is about to lay eggs any day now:

And this is a wc Ambanja female who was gravid when I recieved her... she shows bright orange colorations:

The Nosy Be's... oh my gosh I wish I could get them to mate. I have 2 females who are ready to breed. And I have a male, Calyx 13 months old, and Triton is a bit younger and may not quite be ready to mate yet. But Calyx! Everytime I put him in Sapphire's cage (my nosy female who has zero red in bloodline and Calyx has zero red too) all he does is eat a stray cricket or two wandering her cage and steals her basking light and takes a nice long sun bathing session!!! It drives me crazy! Gosh, I wish I could get him to mate. They'd make beautiful Nosy's. Sapphire stares at him with her tail lifted all ready to go! I guess I need to teach him the facts of life... Sigh....

Anyway, I will have a movie up soon with Morpheus and Roux and I also got some AWESOME tongue shot movies I am planning to put on too soon. I have some movies up now of some mating sessions on my site at http://www.prismchameleons.com/ComingSoon.html if some of you haven't seen them...

Anyway, tell my Calyx to mate all! We want beautiful Nosy's with no red!!!

 

[Chamgirl]

I enjoyed reading your descriptive post Jenna about the breeding session and other attempts by the others. You do make me laugh, Quote "Sapphire stares at him with her tail lifted ready to go!" while he just steals her basking light!lol hilarious stuff

 

[Brad]

Great post Jenna
Very informative and I enjoyed your humor as well

Good luck with Calyx

 

[2by2]

Hey jenna,
Awsome post. Your so descriptive and informative. Your an awsome addition the the panther world. Congrats on Morpheus. I have lusted after him often and his babies are sure to be top notch animals. Cant wait.
As for calyx. I had a Sambava roughly the same age a while back that was the same kind of pain in the butt your calyx is. I tried multiple times taking him to the female and watching for hours. I'd even leave the room thinking maybe the reason he wasn't responding was because of my presents. Nope.
So after a couple months of trying I took the female to him. It was a totally different story. He started bobbing his head right away and over the period of the next half hour he courted her. The session ended in a successfull mating. Maybe all he wants is it to happen in his own digs.
Either way, good luck with him. It would be great to see some nosy's of that kind of quality hit the market.

 

[Prism Chameleons]

Hey, thanks for the compliments and the tip Noah. I will definitely give that a try. Saphhire is Sub-zero's daughter who is an awesome Sire and Calyx (even though photos don't do him justice) is a beautiful almost neon turquoise blue with no red. I just HAVE to have their babies!!! I'll give it a try by putting her in his cage.

I have heard and read that some Nosy's do go into dormant stages, but sheesh, he should have some hormones by now.

 

[Jamie]

Awesome Jenna, beautiful animals... gotta love the pinks! I hope they give you babies to die for! (Put me on the list!)

 

[Prism Chameleons]

Thanks Jamie! Send me an email at [email protected] and let me know what you want and I'll be sure to put you on a waiting list. It's easier for me to keep track that way!

I'm looking forward to the beauties...

Oh, by the way... Sapphire and Calyx are now shackin up in his condo... Maybe the mood will strike him .

 

[Drake]

Congrats! Their gonna make some nice babies! I'm also waiting for some Nosy Be babies

 

[2by2]

cant wait to come here tomorrow and find out saphire is exhibiting gravid colors......

Keep us posted jenna!

 

[Eric Adrignola]

I've seen somewhat abherrent courtship behavior from CB males. I think some of
their courthship behavior is learned, not just inherent.

Many CB male calyptratus, if left alone, will immediatly and forcebly, mate with
females, receptive or not. All theWC males I've seen were very cool and calm,and
barely produced a scratch on the females. They also put on a better "show".

One of my CB males was raised alone, like you're "supposed to". He woudl force
himself on all females without any courtship, even though his father, a wc male, was
calm, and took his time with the courtship ritual.

Another CB male was put in with a larger female, to see if she was receptive. He
was ready - she was not. She displayed, turned black, andhe ignored her. So she
knocked him off the branch. From that point on, he was very shy and approached
females cautiously, and nevr rushed them.

After moving to NC, I put my veields in a 12'x8'x8' screen cage outside. My
smaller, nicer, nastier male and two females. After a few days, he learned how to
approach them. He stopped being aggressive towards them, and would court them
properly. The females woudl sleep near him, and even after showing gravid colors,
tolerated him very well - they need to, as they have to bask more when gravid.
Basking means the open, higher branches in th emale's territory. They got along well,
and the male knew to NOT try to mate with them when they had their gravid colors.
A male that was not "socialized" will try to mate regardless of the coloration. I thnk
some of the communication, and meanings of color patterns and signals, might be a
learned behavior, not just inhereited.

As for males that don't want to mate - had a big problem with deremensis. Fresh
WC males are always ready to go. But give them a few months in captivity, and they
can care less. They need to be stimulated into breeding. I've had it happen twice, to
two different males In both cases, I couldnt' even get them to display at a rival, let
alone a female. It took a couple weeks of showiing them a smaller male, or a mirror,
and making the "rival" retreat (taking the mirror away slowly) After a few days, the
male began to challenge th emirror/smaller male,and after a little more, he'd get really
nasty and try to stab it. he'd then start courting the females...

Try showing your male Nosey Be another male panther. Bet you'll get a change in
behavior over time.

 

[Prism Chameleons]

Very nice informative post Eric. As a matter of fact, I talked to my vet about Calyx wondering why he wouldn't breed or seem interested in doing so. His question to me was, "Does he know he's a chameleon?" When he said that, I looked at Calyx resting gently on my hand with his eyes looking up at me with very trusting eyes, and said, "You know, I highly doubt it."

Calyx has been spoiled by me very much. He's extremely gentle, loves attention and being handled, will eat and drink out of my hand, and sleeps in a tree next to my bed every night. Yeah, yeah, I know... I'm a sucker . But, he is really a wonderful chameleon... beautiful too. So your advice might be exactly what is needed here. I will try working with him to see if "spicing" him up a bit might induce him to breed.

Here is a picture of Calyx and Sapphire together in his cage

As you can see.... He is an absolutely beautiful Nosy Be. It will be worth the effort to get him breeding.

Thanks for your advice... I'll give it a try.

 

[Eric Adrignola]

In speaking with Josh Mease of th eCRG, I found out that my problem with
deremensis was not uncommon. He said that Joe Beraducci, of MBT farms in
Tanzania, had encountered a similar problem with their male deremensis. They
wouldn't bother to mate without a territorial dispute or two.

I know parsonii are very similar - maybe it's something with cool weather
chameleons? Parsonii are VERY similar in their environments, cool and moist. It's
funny that they both need to be pushed to mate.

Deremensis don'tseem to care - about anything - unless you make them. They are
the most relaxed chameleons normally. When they are un-relaxed, they can become
evil incarnate - big chameleons with nasty colors and sharp horns. You have to
really try hard to even get them to gape normally...

but if you GET them in mating mood, watch out.

This season, after a few weeks of using the mirror (after two months of cohabitating),
I got my male to start courtship. After that, EVERY single time I entered the room,
for several weeks, he'd jump onto the female. I do not know how or why, but when
they saw me, they mated.

The previous year, I had to cohabitate a 2:2 group for a while, AND use the mirror,
to get things going. After asserting his dominance, the big male allowed the little one
to stay - as long as he was lower in the trees. They slept less than a foot apart, every
night, but the dominant one was always above the other. Without the submissive
male present, I couldn't get the big one interested in defending his territory, and if he
wasnt' defending his territory, he wasn't concerned about courting the females.

I really believe a lot of the social interaction of chameleons is learned, or maybe more
accuratly, honed by experience. With zero social interaction, they just have their
instincts, which may or may not be enough to communicate to one another. For
reptiles, they have extraoridinary communication abilities - color, body shape and
posture, infrasound. When raised in a captive environment, with no interaction, they
are deprived of some thigns that might sculpt their social skills and reproductive
behaviors.

Your male very well might not know he's a chameleon, or at least, he might not know
what to do with another chameleon. That territorial display will almost always get
their hormones flowing. Once they get going, you can introduce females. they'll
figure it out from there!

It will be interesting to see if it works for panthers. Try showing him a mirror, or a
rival, in front of females. Then pull a bait and switch. If you can get him flare dupa
nd his head bobbing, in front of a receptive female, he might just jump track and go
from "defend territory" mode to "procreate" mode. Keep me informed!