funny - I picked a name that would work for either sex as well. He's actually named (ironically) after the former head of the CIN, who told me many times, over and over, that melleri were not suitable for captivity, and that C.B. melleri were impossible to keep long term. They were too nervous, stressed out, and would just go off food for days if they even saw a person...
I have been using Ardi as a show chameleon for years now - in fact, he was eating from my had at a reptile show at just over 3 months of age. Now, he will eat from strangers' hands in front of a crowd of about a hundred people - many of whom are kids getting in his face.
The lack of sexual dimorphisim amongst melleri is a pain when it comes to breeding, but it's actually an aspect of them that makes them so superior (in my mind) to other chameleons.
Males and females are EQUALLY desirable as pets or individual specimens. You have 30 healthy animals, and each and every one of them is just as good as a pet - and just as easy to sell, from the breeder's perspective. With panthers and veileds, it's often harder to sell off those females - because people who want them as a pet do not want females!
