My bet would be just keeping the mouth clean. Food debris (think insect guts) drying on and around the mouth would otherwise build up and eating would become an issue, insects like ants would be attracted aswell id think.
My monitors consistantly rub the sides of their jaws on the branches after eating, same purpous i beleive.
Here's a question (or many) for the experts, do chameleons actually have taste apparatus? can they taste food at all? given the nature of the tongue i have my doubts, though there may be some taste apparatus (like tastebuds) elsewhere in the mouth, to tell them something is bad? or do they rely entirely on instinctively recognising edibles? can they actually smell anything? Are pheromones involved in courtship/mating?
why do they prefer one type of feeder over another? Chams are highly visual creatures, is it simply visual appeal, the shape of the bug, movement, color (wavelengths we dont see? Think insects with flowers they pollinate) ?
I want to know!
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Actually another possibility comes to mind concerning being picky with feeders...
Its a leap but then who knows...
Recently we all read of studies that proved chameleons atleast, were somehow aware of their current need for D3 and are able to regulate it by basking for UV specifically rather than just heat.
Could it be possible they can regulate their nutritional intake by similar means?
If you feed mainly crickets as a staple, then offer hornworms and they 'go nuts' for the worms, its natural to assume they are simply excited by the variety.
I wonder if an experiment, or series of experiments might prove enlighting.
For example, cease feeding for a few days, then using several feeder cups, offer a different feeder type in each at different places in the cage.
ensure the cham has a good veiw of all the cups avail and see which type/s it goes for,
in what order and how many.
recording this data daily over several weeks/months (throughout gestation?) should show some prefrence.
the nutritional values for the preferred feeders could be recorded.
Variables could be time of day, condition of the animal (e.g. gravid female, hatchling, senior cham, sick cham, cham kept exclusively indoors with artifical lighting, cham kept outdoors etc etc).
Anybody ever done so? (somebody could apply for a grant
Lol Im sure your farmers appreciate it.
A grant to study food prefrence relative to nutritional intake in chams dosent seem an excessive
ask from a goverment that spends billions shooting a probe into a comet to see what its made of, not to mention trillions on defence.
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