Ive never seen problem with the horn of hornworms... but they WILL take a big chunk of skin out of you, the inside of your chameleons mouth or possibly its tounge. Maybe I can convince KristinaT to share one of her horrible hornworm experiences where a hornworm was nearly the demise of a special chameleon.
Sure thing.
http://www.chamaeleonidae.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=475
May 20, 2006
This morning, I fed out 1 appropriately-sized (not full-grown) hornworm to each of my largest melleri. I started working in the next room, and a while later, I heard a hiss/cough noise coming from the cham room. My largest cham was repeatedly swallowing and then dry heaving. She had not moved to bask after her meal, she was just sitting where she'd been fed, and occasionally wiping her mouth on a branch. Her hyoid was visible in her profile, which is unusual- something had to be pressing it down. Her color was normal. I moved her out of the cage for a closer look. Luckily, this particular cham is a snot, and promptly gaped at me when I looked in her eyes. There, laying in her throat, hanging onto the back of her tongue by its mandibles, was her meal! She had not killed it before swallowing, and it was hanging on for dear life, causing the cham discomfort.
This is a 17" subadult melleri with a very strong bite and an attitude. My first thought was to "get the worm off her tongue", but the second thought was, "without losing a finger!" I grabbed sterile tweezers and a wooden spoon. The spoon was needed to prevent her from biting down on the tweezers and damaging her teeth. I looked at her, so she gaped, then I lightly laid the spoon handle across her lower jaw, and tried to remove the worm with tweezers. The worm was not letting go. Trying to get the worm's head made it pinch the cham's tongue harder, making the whole scene a moving target. I managed to irritate the worm into flinging its body forward, pulled all my tools and fingers away, and the cham bit it. The chomping made it release its own bite, and the cham swallowed it without further trouble. I have never been so deep in a cham's throat before and hope to never have to be again. Thank goodness, it was a large space to work in, and for all the cham's personality problems, I did not have her restrained in any way. She LET me fish in her throat. More reasons to love the giants. LOL I took another look down her throat, and the worm was way down in the stomach, at last.
From now on, I will stun or kill the hornworms when feeding them out, and advise others to do the same. This is the third dangerous feeding issue I have witnessed with hornworms, and each time, I have been home to notice and correct the situation before the cham choked to death or stressed out. I don't even want to think about what would have happened if I had not been around to hear and see the problems. First, when feeding a juvenile last year, the worm's back foot clamped down on the juvie's inner lip and similarly caused choking/gagging until I broke its suction; second, a hornworm (being chewed) bit a subadult on its eye turret, causing a wound that took weeks to heal up; this tongue episode is the last straw. I love hornworms as WC boosting feeders or as treats for growing chams, and I'll still buy them, but they are too risky as live prey IMO, and I'm feeding BIG chams, at that. I can't feed them live and then walk away without a worry in the back of my head. Freshly killed, no worries.
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I kill hornworms by crushing their heads with a pair of huge needle-nose pliers. The pliers have long grips, so I just offer the worm from the pliers, still twitching. So far, so good. I also had some success with cutting live hornworms into halves for subadults, and offering on a plastic lid. It is messy, but the chams don't seem to mind. The subadult is still with me, almost an adult now. I'm still amazed at how she just perched where I put her, and let me reach in her throat!
I know, it's way more than anyone ever wanted to know about gross bugs...
