Recently Imported Female Calumma Malthe

[jajeanpierre]

She still remains nameless....

It took me forever to find her in her cage. I had to get a stool and look down from the top and found her nestled inside the birds nest fern. She's a horrible yellow color but she has gained almost 3g (more than 15% weight gain) since I bought her Christmas Eve so she can't be doing that badly. I hope it is just dirt on top of a shed waiting to happen. The pictures don't show it well but she has an interesting double row of conical scales along her jaw line. @jpowell86

 

[JacksJill]

Lovely!

 

[jpowell86]

She is looking great Janet. I have a gut feeling you are going to do well with these!

 

[GCash]

How about Minnie Malthe?

 

[jajeanpierre]

She is looking great Janet. I have a gut feeling you are going to do well with these!

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Joel, but I'm not so sure. People haven't been very successful hatching out the eggs laid by gravid imports.... I just found out from the person who bought the few I didn't buy that one new import female laid 13 eggs. I didn't think they could possibly be big enough to lay eggs. I'm going to have to look at my tiny girls a little more closely. It's a complication I wasn't expecting so soon. It changes my idea of when "breeding season" is.

 

[jajeanpierre]

How about Minnie Malthe?

Where have you been??? Craig said you took the females that were mislabeled. What exactly were they? How are the graciliors?

I named her Snaggle Tooth for her two conical scales on her chin. Most malthe have only one.

Maybe this little girl deserves the name Minnie Malthe. I have been referring to her as Red Eye, not a very nice name. She's the one that looks the roughest. She has bite marks and rubs and just gives me the impression she might be old, or she's just had a hard life. She's been quite dark much of the time and her colors are just different than the other three girls. I wonder if she is gravid. She weighed 11.6g on Dec. 25 the day after I bought her. The other day she was 15.0g.

 

[GCash]

Where have you been??? Craig said you took the females that were mislabeled. What exactly were they? How are the graciliors?

I named her Snaggle Tooth for her two conical scales on her chin. Most malthe have only one.

Maybe this little girl deserves the name Minnie Malthe. I have been referring to her as Red Eye, not a very nice name. She's the one that looks the roughest. She has bite marks and rubs and just gives me the impression she might be old, or she's just had a hard life. She's been quite dark much of the time and her colors are just different than the other three girls. I wonder if she is gravid. She weighed 11.6g on Dec. 25 the day after I bought her. The other day she was 15.0g.

View attachment 173427

Been getting ground down like an unwanted stump, but still fighting 'til the end.

Yeah, I ordered 2.2 C. malthes but one female came in as what I believe to be C. crypticum based on size, but may be a C. brevicorne. I'm guessing Craig would be able to ID a brev.

I'll pm you the rest of the story too long and off topic.

Your malthes look great! Not as familiar with the Calummas yet but keep an eye out. From what I've seen it seems like they can hide their gravidity as well as quadricornis can at times. Here's to you having as much success with them as you've had with your quads and graciliors!

 

[Spyro]

Still importing wild caughts? I thought we were passed those days.

 

[GCash]

Still importing wild caughts? I thought we were passed those days.

You thought? How do you think your panther got established and as common as they are?

 

[GCash]

Spyro88, I sincerely apologize to you and the rest of the community. I was half asleep and responded without looking at what angle you may have been coming from. The extreme stress I've been under for the past couple days have me on edge and I jumped to the conclusion that you were frowning on the people working with wild-caughts trying to establish them and knowing the hard work, money, heartbreak, up and downs and emotional conflicts first hand, I reacted defensively, responded rudely and short and for that I'm very very sorry. After a nights sleep I realize you could have been coming from a point of just realizing the state of the chameleon hobby. There are truly less than a handful of established chameleons and the few people working to establish the hidden jewels seem to get little support compared to their panther counterparts and it's really frustrating, especially with time ticking and the all the possibilities of us never seeing them available ever again. No one is quite sure what the future holds for the rest of the amazing species in our wonderful world of chameleons, but importation is integral and its there that improvements that could be made but haven't that saddens me as well.

 

[jajeanpierre]

Still importing wild caughts? I thought we were passed those days.

@Spyro88 Like Gene, I wonder if you and many other pet chameleon keepers have any real understanding of where we are with different species of chameleons being established in captivity. I say that as a real question and, honestly, I am not being patronizing. I am really interested to know if the average pet chameleon keeper has any understanding of what species are established.

The only species I know that are truly established in captivity are panthers and veileds. Jacksons and Oustalets are established in the wild in the US. Any other species are dependent on the wild caught trade.

A few other species have a few breeders who are successful with them but should they stop breeding them, they are gone from captivity in the US. @Dooley1 (I believe that is Kevin's name here on CF) has been very successful with F. lateralis (carpet chameleons) for many generations yet only two other breeders seem to share his success. If those three people decide not to breed, the species is likely gone from the US.

I once had someone who should know better tell me he wanted to cancel his purchase of one of my captive born and bred graciliors because he could always get one "later" since they were pretty common. I was dumbfounded. Since I believe I am the only person who has managed to produce any T.q.graciliors, I can assure you and this collector they are definitely NOT common. Should I decide to no longer breed my animals--and if I can't sell them I will have stop producing babies and start culling eggs. I could very easily decide to just let them age out and not produce because raising and housing a clutch of babies is very expensive. If I can't sell them, why produce them? This, in a nutshell, is @GCash's complaint that the chameleon fancy is not supporting us breeders working with species other than panthers.

People are under the false impression that T.q.quadricornis are common in captivity. Again, wrong. I know only two breeders (me being one of them) who have gotten breedings from the wild caught pairs that were imported recently. I know a few breeders working with stock descending from imports back in 2006 or so and some of those breeders are using new wild caught males that have been imported in the last two years. I know some have clutches of babies hatched from wc females imported gravid. That's it. I think the breeders producing T.q.quadricornis can be counted on one hand, two at most.

There will be no more imports of quads or graciliors. If the few people who are working with the species stop producing, they are gone from the US. These are wonderful species and actually very easy to keep. They are not very demanding other than humidity which an automatic mister takes care of and slightly lower temps which is in the range that people keep their houses. But, if the few breeders that are working with them can't sell them, they will stop and they will be gone forever.

One other aspect about the wild caught trade that no one ever mentions is that with rising incomes in Africa, fewer collectors will be willing to collect. Average per capita income in Madagascar is $260 a year. Other African countries have per capita incomes that although higher than Madagascar aren't all that much higher. Selling a chameleon for $10 is a huge amount of money, but as incomes rise in these countries--and some are--there will be fewer and fewer collectors willing to put in the tremendous effort to make a few dollars that collecting chameleons takes.

So, yes, the wild caught trade is shrinking.

However, the species this thread is dedicated to, Calumma malthe, has rarely been imported or produced in captivity. I have heard of two people in the world who have bred them. I have heard of a handful of clutches of eggs produced by females imported gravid actually hatching. So, if you want to see a C. malthe in captivity in the future, you had better hope that @GCash, another keeper in Tennessee and I are successful. I think that's it--only three people working with C. malthe in the US.

Then, there is the added complication of Madagascar and other countries being shut down again......

I don't think many in the chameleon fancy really understand how few chameleon species there really are established in captivity or how tenuous their existence in captivity really is.