Hello, I know this is kind of a strange post but I want to get some ideas I have out into the world. I would love if some of you guys would like to discuss the plausibility of my ideas and maybe how I can improve or achieve them. I'm relatively new to chameleon keeping but I'm extremely exited to continue my journey and take things to the next level ASAP, even though I've only had my guy for a couple months I've noticed that I have become very passionate about chameleon husbandry I've already spent hundreds of hours researching, stressing, rambling about them to family members and, working on improving my knowledge. eventually at some point in the future of my journey I want to start doing experiments with husbandry, some examples include: researching the effects of different and exotic feeders, research the effects of different forms of entertainment, and maybe even experimenting if a chameleon can be trained and taught to do puzzles and such like how some dogs and crows can(I know its very unlikely). if and when I eventually decide to start these very ambitious projects I need to know as much as possible about what has already been done and get as much background info as possible. saying that, does anyone know where I can find research papers and stuff like that? In these experiments I plan on using the scientific method (question, research, hypothesis, test, analyze data, and present conclusions). for example in the feeder experiment, I will need a control, dependent variables, and independent variables. with the feeder experiment I will start with three eggs of the same species, once they hatch I will begin using the feeders, one will be raised on the normal diet of insects, one will be raised with a mix of insects and other invertebrates, and the last will be raised with a mix of insects and vertebrates. The insect diet will be the the control (baseline) and the others will be the independent variables (what I'm changing) and finally the dependent variable (the result) will be a multitude of things, including but not limited to; color, mood, energy, apparent taste, health, and observation of comfort in daily life. The feeder experiment is currently the only one I've actually begun to think about and research due to its likely possibility to show varied results. Of course I will immediately discontinue the experiment if harmful or negative effects are observed. I've also considered the difficulty of finding small enough vertebrates to feed to the one that's being fed with insects and vertebrates, due to this I've considered starting each one off with a normal baby diet until they are large enough to consume their respective experimental feeders. I'm extremely interested with your guy's opinions and thoughts and how my ideas can be improved or if there even viable. If you do decide to respond to this, don't be concerned if my feelings will be hurt but please try to keep the criticism constructive (meaning - don't be a dick). also if your interested with helping conduct these experiments it would absolutely be a great help and be much more fun if others are participating as well. replicating experiments and comparing respective findings is a huge part of getting accurate data and help remove any bias that may affect the final results. I look forward to your opinions on the matter!!!!!
also if you do decide to respond I would like to thank you for spending you precious time on my crazy ideas
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also if you do decide to respond I would like to thank you for spending you precious time on my crazy ideas.
. and yes I was thinking things like pinky mice but I've already thrown that idea out as soon as I saw the replies. saying that I'm a little curious about your mention of parasites, with insects you buy at a pet store you can quarantine them and possibly be able to remove any parasites right? would that be any different with vertebrates or am I just completely wrong about why you should quarantine feeders? also with what you said about their ability to remember when and where they get fed is very intriguing, I wonder if that could be applied to other areas. while I know that reptiles lack the part of their brains that allows more complex thoughts and emotions like what humans and such have, I want to believe that their natural drive for food, comfort, etc, could be expanded into gradualy increasing complexity to achieve this. abvously I'm not going to deprive them of their required food and comfort just for my curiousty, but I've noticed with my chameleon that his food drive is greatly increased when he sees me offering the accational mealworm and I do believe that he has learned that they taste much better than other feeders. this is making me think that the possibility of harnessing their natural instincts and slowly turning it into more complex challenges for them to get what they want may be possible. saying that my hypothesis is that eventually their ability to solve problems will plateau, even animals that have been proven to be able to solve problems with ease, example; octopi, dolphins, dogs, etc will eventually not be able to solve problems above a certain threshold, this may even be true for humans. but with humans practicing and studying will slowly increase their ability to problem-solve, I believe I have read somewhere that when humans are young its much easier to learn things because it gets imprinted in their still developing brains. my only consern with applying this to a chameleon is that immediatly after birth they already have the knowledge on how to hunt, hide, etc, which is not the same for humans which have to be thought to do basic tasks including even walking, but as society became more advanced and people were no longer required to spend all their time on just surviving through the day more brain power was wired towards other things like figuring out ways to achieve greater quality of life. so I believe that if we give other creatures a chance to not have to worry about just surviving to see tomorrow something similir could be the result, for example you can already see this happening in domesticated dogs. if you compare the problem solving ability between dogs and wolfs you might notice that dogs have a greater ability to complete more advanced tasks than wolfs do, this supports my theory that when something doesn't have to worry about just survival its brain adapts to the new circumstances and puts more brain power towards other areas of life like, comfort, intelligence, etc. domesticated dogs are abvously better at learning that humans pose no threat to them and some even seek out human companionship, you can see this in the way that some have stuff like separation anxiety. I'm curious to see if there are any papers that compare the brains between dogs and wolfs, I wonder if dog's brains have developed more advanced areas similir to how we have large parts of our brains that are dedicated stictly to things like emotions and other things that give very little effect on surviving outside society. getting back on the topic of chameleons something similir could possibly be achieved, but while I was writing this I realized that most creatures that seem to have a great ability to solve problems are social, meaning that they live together, an example of this would be wolfs or dolphins this may be because they may feel safer when with others and don't have to worry as much about just surviving which further supports my theory that when things have less need to focus only on surviving the brain begins putting more effort into other aspects of their life. I promise now that I'll get back on the topic of chameleons, I'm curious to find out if the reason chameleons are unable to develop deeper thinking proceces may be because as I stated earlier they are born with inate knowledge on everything they need to know to survive, this makes me think that their brain might already be fully developed upon birth and lead to a much harder time with learning complex things. we as humans are born without a fully developed brain and that allows our parents to teach us things, if chameleon did the same then the parents could possibly teach what they have already learned in their life, for example what food tastes the best or that humans pose no threat. over the course of many generations teaching their offspring what their parents taught them and what they learned themselves would expenatually increase their capacity to learn and lead to more and more knowledge passing down through many many generations. now to round up this fucking essay I have a theory that as more generations of captive bred chameleons are created they will eventually learn that humans are no threat and will be able to rewire more brain power towards other areas of life. so sorry about writing so much but I would love to hear your thoughts on this and if you may have any theorys of your own!
