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[DeremensisBlue]

Very Good read, and you bring some very good points, I thought similar when reading the study, about the feeding response.

So when you say large caging what are we talking? Do you think it would be better to have 4 babies in Medium Atrium Size vs that broken down into 4 7.5"s? Densely planted, either way of course. Or was even bigger Space per cham in Mind?

I am working with jackson’s Chameleon babies in groups of eight and four in standard 2’x2’x4’ cages and larger. Any greater population density than that and they start showing posturing. No surprise, doing this with males requires more space. Of course, Jackson’s are more subtle in their posturing than panthers or veiled, but they tend to be much more affected by it. It will be slow going putting this into any sort of form that would have enough solid experience to become advice. Just the fact that to make this work the cage needs to be densely planted totally messes up being able to observe subtle stress. If I do it right, finding them is not something that can be consistently done.

 

[cyberlocc]

I am working with jackson’s Chameleon babies in groups of eight and four in standard 2’x2’x4’ cages and larger. Any greater population density than that and they start showing posturing. No surprise, doing this with males requires more space. Of course, Jackson’s are more subtle in their posturing than panthers or veiled, but they tend to be much more affected by it. It will be slow going putting this into any sort of form that would have enough solid experience to become advice. Just the fact that to make this work the cage needs to be densely planted totally messes up being able to observe subtle stress. If I do it right, finding them is not something that can be consistently done.

Very interesting cant wait to see your findings in a few years. Hopefully the dense planting, works to the same effect you cant see them, but they cant see each other either , at least when they dont want to.

Are you Free Ranging feeders? to allow them to come to the babes? Or just a bunch of separate cups?

 

[DeremensisBlue]

Very interesting cant wait to see your findings in a few years. Hopefully the dense planting, works to the same effect you cant see them, but they cant see each other either , at least when they dont want to.

Are you Free Ranging feeders? to allow them to come to the babes? Or just a bunch of separate cups?

Another thought: The “secret” to cohabitation is that chameleon social communication requires physical departure to a certain distance to signal “you won”. Different species and ages will have different distances. You can cohabitation chameleons if they are given this amount of distance so they can go through their social communication.
We have horrible luck with cohabitation because that amount of space is inconvenient and expensive for us humans. And, of course, we don’t know what that radius is and how to measure it as it changes.
This is why we can give chameleons a huge amount of space and they will hang out next to each other contently. It is because on that off day when things aren’t working out, one of them can leave the space and not come back until everything has blown over.

Keeping two chameleons together in not enough space is like having two people in an argument and restricting one person to only saying “is that all you got?” Without the ability to resolve the issue even a small disagreement becomes huge.

Now, full disclosure, this is ALL from my personal observation, experimentation, and interpretation. There is no study that will directly back any of this up. Take it all as one guy, with only a human perspective to work with, doing his best to understand chameleons. Consider it, test it, and keep whatever is useful.

Feeding: I do free range and cup feeding and feeding platforms where I have fruit that attracts wild fruit flies so there is always ample food available.

Considering the challenges in doing it right, I do not see me supporting cohabitation as a standard advice point anytime soon. I think it will stay in the realm of advanced keepers cracking the code for a while. But it is important to figure out so we can understand these guys better.

 

[cyberlocc]

Another thought: The “secret” to cohabitation is that chameleon social communication requires physical departure to a certain distance to signal “you won”. Different species and ages will have different distances. You can cohabitation chameleons if they are given this amount of distance so they can go through their social communication.
We have horrible luck with cohabitation because that amount of space is inconvenient and expensive for us humans. And, of course, we don’t know what that radius is and how to measure it as it changes.
This is why we can give chameleons a huge amount of space and they will hang out next to each other contently. It is because on that off day when things aren’t working out, one of them can leave the space and not come back until everything has blown over.

Keeping two chameleons together in not enough space is like having two people in an argument and restricting one person to only saying “is that all you got?” Without the ability to resolve the issue even a small disagreement becomes huge.

Now, full disclosure, this is ALL from my personal observation, experimentation, and interpretation. There is no study that will directly back any of this up. Take it all as one guy, with only a human perspective to work with, doing his best to understand chameleons. Consider it, test it, and keep whatever is useful.

Feeding: I do free range and cup feeding and feeding platforms where I have fruit that attracts wild fruit flies so there is always ample food available.

Considering the challenges in doing it right, I do not see me supporting cohabitation as a standard advice point anytime soon. I think it will stay in the realm of advanced keepers cracking the code for a while. But it is important to figure out so we can understand these guys better.

I like the Wild Fly idea . I recently starting keeping Fruit Beetles, and they like rotting fruit and its been attracting alot of FFs, and I am like where are they coming from lol, they seemingly just appear out of no where lol, and are everywhere. I thought about that for babies as well, in a Bioactive bin, you could get natural FFs and Fungus gnats as extra food source.

We just tried it with my wifes mantis, put a piece of Watermelon rind in its critter keeper and it was insanely covered in FFs in a few days, the Mantid has been getting fat and happy lol. However now we need More CPs around the house .

 

[kinyonga]

Deremensisblue...I agree with everything you've said above...very well written and thought out!!! Thanks!