Urates

[Flick boy]

Hi just curious, we say white urates = hydration, yellow,orange = dehydration. But from what I've read ( iam sure I will be corrected) chams will hold and can hold onto their stomach contents for longer to extract as much moisture/ water from their last meal as possible. So would it be safe to say in a dry season in Madagascar without a meal for a day or too that a cham could/ would produce urates of a yellow/ orange colour that may lead thought towards dehydration but just be that the cham has extracted the water from it ? . Other than cham urate colour what would other indicators be other lethargic?

 

[Beman]

So people that say pure white urates are what your looking for are actually not correct. You can have a perfectly hydrated chameleon when the urate is 50% yellow/orange. And yes when they hold them in longer say when they are not eating as much the urate will have more orange. When a urate is all orange with no white you have dehydration issues... You can visibly see dehydration from eye turrets as well. Sunken in eyes can be a sign of dehydration.

 

[JadeTheChameleon]

I’m gonna drop a couple pictures of my chameleons urates. Tell me if you think these look good

 

[Snuits]

They look good

 

[Chameleoking]

Just stunning

 

[kinyonga]

@Flick boy said..."chams will hold and can hold onto their stomach contents for longer to extract as much moisture/ water from their last meal as possible"...
Chameleons lack the loop of henle. The loop of henle in the kidneys. The main purpose of the loop of henle is to era sorb water...so I don't think they do that....but I could be wrong.

 

[kinyonga]

Just found this....maybe it will help...
https://www.chameleonforums.com/threads/what-does-orange-urate-really-mean.89658/

And this...
https://www.madcham.de/en/anatomie/

 

[Snuits]

Just stunning

Lmao