Swallowed Tongue???

[carensdo]

When it rains it pours...

Cami's eye is looking better after just 2 doses of steroid eye drops, but not this morning she is unable to shoot her tongue out. She wants to eat, but can't. The only portion that protrudes out is the rear of her tongue, what I assume to be the part that connects it to her mouth. This has happened before, but she seems to be able to regurgitate it and use it fine. she attempted eating 20-25 times before she simply gave up... Is this a dehydration issue, or something more sinister? Anyone else have issues with this? What I'm wondering is if she can't get it out on her own should I attempt to pull it back out....

Aside: I have not looking into her mouth to see the position of the tongue, simply speculating that it has been swallowed...

 

[Olimpia]

You're going to have to open the mouth and see what is going on, otherwise we don't know what you're facing. A swallowed tongue will look like this:

You will see the hyoid bone and then the rest of the tongue disappearing down the throat.

It definitely is serious if she has swallowed it and is just sitting in her stomach, after a time it will become swollen, damaged, and perhaps beyond repair. If she has swallowed it I would either attempt to pull it out extremely carefully or if you do not feel up for it go to a vet immediately. At any rate, I would see a vet about this because it's definitely not normal for a chameleon to keep swallowing its tongue!

If this is happening a lot she may need the tongue amputated, at which point she'd have to learn how to eat like a normal lizard (which is totally possible.)

 

[carensdo]

After reading your reply, I ran home at lunch to check on Cami and see how her tongue was doing. I was fully prepared to manually pull her tongue out of her stomach (Your picture is exactly what I saw when attempting to feed this morning), but after enticing her with a cricket I found that her tongue is back to its normal self and fully active and precise! She ate 5 crickets and 3 meal worms with no problem at all!!!

Do you or anyone have any knowledge about why this could happen? Could it be a supplement issue or dehydration. I'm hoping that this will not happen again, and am hoping that I can modify my routine to ensure it doesn't!

 

[Olimpia]

I'm not sure why it happens! When it happened to one of mine I sought answers from others and no one could tell me either, whether they were vets or not. It seems to be a freak accident sometimes. I don't know if Ferret or Dr. O will pop in and add new info they may have, but at least 3 years ago not even very chameleon-experienced vets could offer a whole lot.

I'm glad it's taken care of, though! I wish I could offer more help. In my case we had to have the tongue amputated because it had been in her stomach too long, so I've never had to make sure it didn't happen again to the same animal!

 

[pssh]

My veiled has swallowed his tongue, but it was because it was infected and ended up having to be amputated. Be sure to check over her tongue carefully to be sure it is normal. If there is anything wrong with it (like infection or injury) you want to get it seen and taken care of by a vet ASAP so you don't end up having to have it amputated. It's not normal for her to swallow it, and especially more than once. They generally do alright with amputated tongues, but you really want to avoid it if at all possible.