Note: This is a repost of the post in the Health forum to kick off this new blog. This blog will be updated every week with the new Chameleon Show topic.
In this week's show, I interviewed Dr. Rachel Siu, the author of the study "Endoparasites of pet reptiles and amphibians from exotic pet shows in Texas, United States". She took fecal samples from 243 healthy looking reptiles being sold at reptile shows (including chameleons) and published her findings as to how many parasites she found. Now, it wasn't surprising that the chameleons had parasites because they could all be wild caught. The species tested were Brookesia minima (!?), Chamaeleo calyptratus, Trioceros hoehnelii, Trioceros jacksonii, Chamaeleo senegalensis, Furcifer lateralis, and Furcifer pardalis. She did not collect data on whether they were captive bred or not, but I think only pardalis and calyptratus were possible captive breds. But, of course, they could have been wild caught Panthers from Madagascar or veileds from Florida. But only one of the seven panther chameleons was parasite free and only one of the 8 veiled chameleons was parasite free. All the other chameleons had parasites except the single Jackson's Chameleon tested. 23 chameleons in all were tested and 20 had worms and/or coccidia. Now this isn't terribly surprising. because we know chameleons and parasites often come together if they come from the wild.
The most surprising thing to me personally was the crested geckos. 57% of the 90 samples were positive for parasites! There are no wild caught crested geckos floating around. They are, as far as I know, 100% captive hatched because New Caledonia doesn't allow them to be exported. So this means there is a healthy transfer of parasites between species.
This affects us in the chameleon world because we do not have a good answer to how many North American or European parasites can infect our chameleons. And this has a direct affect on what we do when we take items from the wild and put them in with our chameleons. So anything that relates to this I watch with extreme interest. I have never experienced a branch from the wild resulting in a parasite infection in one of my chameleons, but I am acutely aware that a branch from my Southern California trees having no parasites transmissible to chameleons does not mean it is the same for a branch in Florida or Spain. Something I always have to keep in mind when speaking with people from around the world.
Of course, I think it would be obvious that the biggest transfer of parasites in captive situations is us keepers. Parasites are designed to stick to things and travel and so our hands are key conduits between cages.
So, I think this is a great place to have a conversation about parasites and how we can take greater care not to spread them ourselves.
You can take a look at the study itself. Dr Rachel made it accessible for free in her Link.tree account here: https://linktr.ee/exotic.pet.vet
Dr. Rachel (Ellerd) Siu is well known on the various social medias as @exotic.pet.vet and shares what she does for work as an exotic pet vet. She has an excellent Instagram (or TikTok under the same name).
You can then watch the interview I had with her in the latest episode of The Youtube Chameleon Hour here
After the Chameleon Hour I was joined by Sean McNeeley( @mczoo ) for an interactive discussion about what it means to us as keepers so you are welcome to watch what we have already discussed. We were even joined by Jonathan Hill ( @Dridrop12 ) for the last part as he discussed what happened when he found coccidia in his breeding collection. Which was exceptional because he had yet to include a wild caught into his breeding project at all! It is an excellent watch.
So, this is a lot to process, but it is a subject that is of high importance to us as chameleon keepers. Do you have any thoughts, questions, or experiences to add to the discussion?
If you would like to start the weekend full of chameleons then join me Fridays at 5PM Pacific on the Chameleon Channel on Youtube! We take it to a YouTube live discussion the next Saturday morning at 8AM Pacific, and then continue the discussion here on the Chameleon Forums!
In this week's show, I interviewed Dr. Rachel Siu, the author of the study "Endoparasites of pet reptiles and amphibians from exotic pet shows in Texas, United States". She took fecal samples from 243 healthy looking reptiles being sold at reptile shows (including chameleons) and published her findings as to how many parasites she found. Now, it wasn't surprising that the chameleons had parasites because they could all be wild caught. The species tested were Brookesia minima (!?), Chamaeleo calyptratus, Trioceros hoehnelii, Trioceros jacksonii, Chamaeleo senegalensis, Furcifer lateralis, and Furcifer pardalis. She did not collect data on whether they were captive bred or not, but I think only pardalis and calyptratus were possible captive breds. But, of course, they could have been wild caught Panthers from Madagascar or veileds from Florida. But only one of the seven panther chameleons was parasite free and only one of the 8 veiled chameleons was parasite free. All the other chameleons had parasites except the single Jackson's Chameleon tested. 23 chameleons in all were tested and 20 had worms and/or coccidia. Now this isn't terribly surprising. because we know chameleons and parasites often come together if they come from the wild.
The most surprising thing to me personally was the crested geckos. 57% of the 90 samples were positive for parasites! There are no wild caught crested geckos floating around. They are, as far as I know, 100% captive hatched because New Caledonia doesn't allow them to be exported. So this means there is a healthy transfer of parasites between species.
This affects us in the chameleon world because we do not have a good answer to how many North American or European parasites can infect our chameleons. And this has a direct affect on what we do when we take items from the wild and put them in with our chameleons. So anything that relates to this I watch with extreme interest. I have never experienced a branch from the wild resulting in a parasite infection in one of my chameleons, but I am acutely aware that a branch from my Southern California trees having no parasites transmissible to chameleons does not mean it is the same for a branch in Florida or Spain. Something I always have to keep in mind when speaking with people from around the world.
Of course, I think it would be obvious that the biggest transfer of parasites in captive situations is us keepers. Parasites are designed to stick to things and travel and so our hands are key conduits between cages.
So, I think this is a great place to have a conversation about parasites and how we can take greater care not to spread them ourselves.
You can take a look at the study itself. Dr Rachel made it accessible for free in her Link.tree account here: https://linktr.ee/exotic.pet.vet
Dr. Rachel (Ellerd) Siu is well known on the various social medias as @exotic.pet.vet and shares what she does for work as an exotic pet vet. She has an excellent Instagram (or TikTok under the same name).
You can then watch the interview I had with her in the latest episode of The Youtube Chameleon Hour here
After the Chameleon Hour I was joined by Sean McNeeley( @mczoo ) for an interactive discussion about what it means to us as keepers so you are welcome to watch what we have already discussed. We were even joined by Jonathan Hill ( @Dridrop12 ) for the last part as he discussed what happened when he found coccidia in his breeding collection. Which was exceptional because he had yet to include a wild caught into his breeding project at all! It is an excellent watch.
So, this is a lot to process, but it is a subject that is of high importance to us as chameleon keepers. Do you have any thoughts, questions, or experiences to add to the discussion?
If you would like to start the weekend full of chameleons then join me Fridays at 5PM Pacific on the Chameleon Channel on Youtube! We take it to a YouTube live discussion the next Saturday morning at 8AM Pacific, and then continue the discussion here on the Chameleon Forums!
