Tongue issue/accident...

[Julirs]

My husband was feeding our female Veiled tonight when she missed the Silkworm and stuck her tongue to his finger. She moved forward to retrieve her tongue and he jerked back a little fearing the evil biter/lunger that she can be. He said her tongue hung out of her mouth for a brief time, but then she got it back in and shot some crickets. Anyone else have something like this happen? Did she sprain her tongue?

 

[AFH]

I've heard of it happening. They call it hyperextension, so probably a sprained tongue. There's an article on Chameleonsonline.com under the "illness" tab.

Sounds like yours made a pretty immediate recovery. According to the article, if it stays like that for a while, you can put her in a small cage with a damp paper towel at the bottom that will keep the tongue from drying out. I suppose it just recovers itself.

 

[Tydis]

My husband was feeding our female Veiled tonight when she missed the Silkworm and stuck her tongue to his finger. She moved forward to retrieve her tongue and he jerked back a little fearing the evil biter/lunger that she can be. He said her tongue hung out of her mouth for a brief time, but then she got it back in and shot some crickets. Anyone else have something like this happen? Did she sprain her tongue?

Well I personally have not dealt with an issue similar to this, but if she got her tongue back in and started shooting some crickets down sounds like she is A-Okay to me.

Keep an eye out for anything unusual and keep us updated!

 

[Nicodemayo]

This just happened to me literally 5 minutes ago. Whenever i feed my female veiled super worms by hand, sometimes she'll shoot at one of my fingers by mistake. Its happened a couple times before and i just bring my finger as close to her mouth as I can and she gnaws on me until she peels it off. Shes never had her tongue just hang out limp before though. Immediately after, she waited on me to offer more insects, which she accurately grabbed and it doesn't seem to bother her one bit.

Edit- but i do avoid it whenever i can. I will watch her closely when feeding her by hand and if i see her looking at my fingers, i pull away and wiggle the worm in my palm and she'll lock on to the worm.

 

[Chameleons Northwest]

You know how sometimes a muscle injury can feel worse the next day- I would watch her tomorrow and see how she does.

 

[kinyonga]

Hopefully the tongue will work properly and heal. If it hangs out of your chameleon's mouth and does not retract, you will need to keep it moist and get her to the vet's right away.

 

[Kevin1873]

Julirs, doesn't sound like too bad of an accident. Worst one I read was from a doctor who posts on a website about how to care for Chameleon's and one patient he had was a Chameleon that tried going for a prey that was too far away and in doing so hyper extended its tongue so bad that it just fell limp after the shoot. It could not get its own tongue back in its mouth and began to bite down on it for a while until the owner was able to place the tongue back in the Cham's mouth. The tongue had to be amputated and the Cham hand fed from then on but adapted very quickly. Maybe try hand feeding for the next couple of days to give your Cham's tongue a little bit of a break in case it might have hurt something a little.

 

[Julirs]

She got her tongue back in by herself and was acting normally. She is asleep now. I hope all is well tomorrow. She is such a cute goofy cham when she is not trying to rip off my arm. Thank goodness I have a good Vet!

 

[Zoey]

My Male did this once. We had a glass container in the cage for him to eat out of, he went to the bottom of the cage, right beside the container and shot his tounge out and it stuck for a few seconds to the glass. He pulled it off within a few seconds and his shots were okay afterward.


But hows your girl doing?

 

[Julirs]

All seems well-she is eating normally!

 

[Zoey]

Glad to hear that!