As all keepers know, Chameleon’s don’t recognize still water. A Chameleon could essentially drop dead of thirst right beside a nice, clean bowl of fresh sparkling water and not even know it was there. In the wild they get their water needs met by licking droplets of moving water off of leaves after rain showers or water that condenses on leaves in the form of dew. Because of this fact, water bowls are absolutely useless. The only way you can get a Chameleon to recognize and drink water is if that water is moving, i.e. dripping.
Most Chameleon keepers achieve this by spraying the enclosure with water several times a day. Many use a good old fashion water spray bottle, while others purchase one of the many numerous drip system apparatuses readily available on the market. Both these means work quite well; but I, like a few others, have come up with another way of enticing these exotic arboreal lizards to drink water; that is training them to take it from a rodent water bottle, sold in stores for pets like hamsters, gerbils and guinea pigs.
The advantage of this is that your chameleon can drink whenever he so desires to do so, and they don’t have to wait on being misted.* This is not to say that spraying the enclosure with water is not required, as Chameleons need a certain level of humidity obtained by regular misting. It is just a more convenient means for both parties and guarantees your pet’s water intake needs are being met.
The trick is getting them to identify the rodent bottle as being a source of water. This can be achieved by hanging the bottle in a location whereas the metal tip of the bottle is clearly visible. This is key, as droplets will usually accumulate at the bottles tip, and this will entice your Chameleon to drink from it. Initially your Chameleon will not recognize the bottle as a source of water, and this process takes time, but can be helped along by spraying the area directly around the bottle, along with the outside of the bottle itself, with water. Droplets of water will run down the sides of the glass/plastic receptacle portion of the bottle, enticing the Chameleon to go to it in order to quench it’s thirst. Once this ‘object’ is seen as the place in which it can acquire water, it will not be long until your Chameleon notices the frequent droplets of water that hang from the bottle’s metal tip. Eventually they will learn to lick the droplets, and eventually still, the more they lick the metal tip, the more water comes out of it.
This process takes time and patience but is well worth the effort. Just make sure that you thoroughly wash and change the bottles water supply several times weekly, as sitting water can become infested with bacteria.
