Weird Tail Color - Only on half.

[TRI0N]

Sure its nothing to worry about here.. Victoria had a near miss fall from her highpoint the other day and caught herself with her tail. Now the odd thing about her tail at this time is if you take her and cut her from nose to tail for this description she has black like webbing thru her skin on only 1 side. I mean right down the middle 1 half. The other side matces her body colors. While the black webbing side had her colors but the black webbing is consistant. She uses her tail daily as usual. Wraps it around branches in the day and curls it up at night. I'm thinking she bruised it perhaps with the near fall. I came in to see her dangleling from her perch under the lamp and have placed a vine under that now to avoid that from happening.

What do you all thing this would be? Bruised? She uses it just like always and and wraps it around branches just as fast as always. She curls her tail all the way up at night in her sleep so she has obvious full use of it.

 

[ChameleonsTree]

That description makes no sense to me...post a pic.

 

[TRI0N]

Soon as I get home from work I will. But I guess you don't know what webbing means.. Like a repured blood vessel humans get. There is no better way to describe it.. I'm sure others will key in and you can wait for a pic if needed.

 

[TRI0N]

Photos:

Normal Right Side-

Weird Left Side-

 

[ChameleonsTree]

Ok what was going on with her section nose to tail??

 

[Chameleons Northwest]

I'm not an expert but here's a theory: from what I understand, their color control is related to their nervous system. Something like this perhaps (?)- the chameleon will respond to a stimulus, which will cause a hormone to be secreted, which tells the brain to send a signal to various parts of the skin (through the nervous system), which initiates a complex chemical reaction within the scales, which causes the scales to change color. And, if I remember correctly (in humans anyway) parts of the nervous system do work in hemishperes (more or less), with a median line down the center of the body. If chameleons are like that, and she is using her tail like normal, then perhaps there is just slight damage to that one area of her nervous system, or perhaps there is slight inflammation somewhere that is interfering with that portion of her nervous system. And so the proper signals are not getting through. If so, one would expect it to return to normal once the body has repaired the damage. Just a thought. If you touch that side of her tail, does she appear to feel it? If so, then I would expect the damage to be very slight.

The other theory is this: She is feeling some pain or sensitivy in the tail, because of yesterday's event. The dark coloration is her body's expression of that pain or sensitivity. However, in that case I would not expect the coloration to be so precisely one sided.

 

[Calavera]

Hey Trion, i had a similar experience about a mont ago with my Jackson's. Although his tail color was not as speckled as the pattern that your chameleon is demonstrating, it was oddly discolored in only one section. Usually when chameleons manipulate their coloration, you tend to see consistent and similar patterns. My Jackson's pattern was not like any he had demonstrated before. I took some pictures and was going to make a thread with concerns similar to yours; but it cleared up in about an hour. He was fine and didn't seem to be affected in any way by this strange coloration, so i just chalked it up to another strange phenomena that i am now familiar with. Hopefully someone can provide some further information.

-Cala-

 

[herpluva]

That is really odd??? I hope all works out for her. I absolutely love her toes.