Seeking research based sources!

[Xeikeness]

I work at a veterinary clinic, and my doctor and I are butting heads regularly about appropriate veiled chameleon care.

For example, my dr thinks they need to have substrate to maintain humidity, and should never be in a set up without it. My dr also believes they need to have water dishes at all times in addition to drippers and misting.

My dr also believes that even baby chameleons signs only ever be fed a couple times a week.

Could anyone provide me research based articles (bonus points for veterinary research) that I can show my dr so I can help her help the chams we see without arguing about it all the time?

Thank you all!!

 

[MissSkittles]

https://chameleonacademy.com/ Is full of the husbandry standards and many of the podcasts include interviews with specialists in various fields. Bill Strand, who has created the site and so much more has accumulated the husbandry standards that we follow thru information from all of these specialists and years of experience of himself and others.
@DeremensisBlue do you have anything to add?

 

[kinyonga]

As @MissSkittles has indicated Chameleon Academy is an excellent source of great information on every aspect of chameleon keeping. This might help. Bill has been studying them and working on husbandry, etc for many years!
You said…”My dr also believes that even baby chameleons signs only ever be fed a couple times a week.”…this might help…


You said…”my dr thinks they need to have substrate to maintain humidity, and should never be in a set up without it. My dr also believes they need to have water dishes at all times in addition to drippers and misting”…I kept chameleons, bred and hatched and raised hatchlings for over 30 years and never used water dishes as a rule…they drink from beads of water on the leaves, cage walls, etc…and even get moisture from proper fogging at night.
These might help…

 

[kinyonga]

I forgot to mention…the cage floors were left bare so the chameleons didn’t accidentally ingest soil or other things that might be used in a substrate on the floor of the cage. Misting the cages, using real plants, etc. kept the humidity in the right range. (Back then, fogging was not used to help with humidity or hydration.)

For example, my veiled females usually lived to be 6 or 7 years of age and the males even older.

 

[GrannyK]

Look up Dr Michael Nash he has worked with bill strand on many things. He may even be on the forum here but I don’t know his name on it. He is very intelligent and extremely knowledgeable on chams. I’m sure he has articles out there somewhere.
Found something
https://chameleonacademy.com/s7-ep27-intro-to-chameleon-bioactive-with-michael-nash/

 

[MissSkittles]

We also have Petr Necas, who has done quite a bit of field work and study. https://www.chameleons.info/en/ and https://www.archaius.eu/
Dr Douglas Mader, Dr Chris Anderson, and I believe Dr Tom Greek have all been leading voices in chameleon care and written papers.
There are quite a lot of research and other scholarly papers about chameleons, and links to them are in the archives and often in new posts by our Queen, @kinyonga

 

[ehdee6]

Sorry, I don't have any scientific articles to add to this. But, throughout my observations... I ask that, YOU as a future care taker of our beloved pets; please stand up against old policies that your Dr. might practice. I wish there were a way to mandate, and update, the knowledge of husbandry for our chams. But, unfortunately; the knowledge of care for our furry friends far outweighs by the ones of our herp pets. Knowledge is power, no matter the circumstances. Also, sometimes it takes a drop in a lake to make an ocean. Be the drop...

 

[kinyonga]

Michael Nash is aka @javadi on the forum.

Chameleons hatching in the wild…

 

[DocZ]

It may be difficult to find hydration care related peer reviewed studies specifically about chameleons. With so many species of animals much of that research can never get funding to perform the research. There’s not enough “benefit” from doing research on such a small niche of the animal kingdom to justify the cost unfortunately, but some are still getting great projects completed

I think that others’ recommendations of Bill Strand and the chameleon academy, Petr Necas, Dr Chris Anderson, and Dr Michael Nash are some of the most reliable experts and have some of the most detailed and complete care recommendations and research anywhere. And they all occasionally haunt the halls of this site sometimes too, so you can gain direct access to some of the foremost experts in the world around here

 

[DeremensisBlue]

https://chameleonacademy.com/ Is full of the husbandry standards and many of the podcasts include interviews with specialists in various fields. Bill Strand, who has created the site and so much more has accumulated the husbandry standards that we follow thru information from all of these specialists and years of experience of himself and others.
@DeremensisBlue do you have anything to add?

The challenge with getting new information to vets is that they do not know who to listen to in the hobbyist community. Here, we all have a sense for what is out there. We know who is reputable and who is, well, less so. But, unless a vet has inserted themselves into the community, because of personal interest, we all sound the same with a whole wide range of opinions stated at the same confidence level. So, the safest thing for a professional to do it only go by peer reviewed papers. Of course, we are way beyond peer reviewed papers in chameleon husbandry so the challenge is - how to get up to date information to a vet who is not embedded in the community?

And, for that, it just depends on your vet's level of trust in sources. The best I can do with the Chameleon Academy is that I have interviewed veterinarians and biology PhDs which, she can see, have published papers so they have a certain level of perspective she will respect. (Dr. Rob Coke DVM, Dr. Chris Anderson, Dr. Mark Scherz, Dr. Michael Nash MD/PhD, Dr. Rachel Siu (Ellerd) DVM, and Dr. Raul Diaz). I am not aware of papers that Dr. Tom Greek DVM has published, but his presence will carry weight in the world of exotic vets. Now, this doesn't mean she will respect my work just because I interviewed those people, but it might be enough that I use them as repeated sources of information that my work might carry a little more weight than the standard internet opinion.

Of course, I would hope that decades working with chameleons and breeding Veiled Chameleons to multiple generations would carry some weight too