Wild Chameleons

[NicoDemo]

Just out of curiosity i was wondering how chameleons get all this needed nutrients, vitamins, and calcium in the wild when we have to give them crickets dusted with calcium supplements and multivitamins.

 

[dom1959]

they have a much greater variety of food to choose from and natural exposure to sunlight. from what i have read anyway.

 

[Sinfulintent]

a wild guess is they know what to eat/when to eat and not set to any captive diets. While we do feed them a variety it more than likely is not what they eat in the wild. They know what their bodies need when they need it and look for that food, we give them crickets, roaches, and small amounts of flies and worms and maybe some green stuff, but think about all that they can eat out in the wild ^_^

 

[ferretinmyshoes]

We are limiting our captive chams to one or two types of feeders that may not even be part of their natural diet and they are limited to only what we feed them, whereas in a jungle there are hundreds of types of bugs feeding on even more diverse plant life. We are trying to recreate what they would normally eat, which is obviously working well for them since they are so abundant in the wild. So what they would get naturally is incredible diversity in food and gutloading that we just can't replicate. Excess calcium is easily excreted whereas a deficiency can be very detrimental so in my eyes supplementing should not be stopped even with great gutloading.

 

[Sinfulintent]

^_^ I was right yay lol. Reading this forum is great

 

[ibdragons]

Also most of us keep chameleons inside so without the sun we need to give them the best nutrition because what ive learned is the sun helps them with their digestion .I hope I made sense .