1 week old with tongue hanging

[jaglon53]

I have a baby with its tongue completely hanging out and he has no control over it. Should i cut the tongue off, cull the baby because he looks miserable and is too young to recover, or should i leave it be? I have never had something like this happen before and I have seen many posts on here about chameleons unable to use there tongues. Can someone with a lot of experience please chime in?
Thanks

 

[flowapowagirl]

Just wanted to give u and the little one a massive good luck. Sorry to not be helpful but i really hope someone can help u n him!

 

[laurie]

I can text hoj, if you want, he had one with no tongue. But every one I have known of was an adult. I don't think there is anything you can do for one that small. Really sorry.

 

[Ulrich]

So sorry. Good luck with the little one. But this doesn't look too good. If at that early age they don't have control over their tongue muscle, there is something fundamentally wrong with them. However I hope a miracle will happen.

 

[Olimpia]

I'm sorry to say, but he looks awful. I doubt he will live much longer and at that size there's really nothing to be done. It's a shame, poor baby.

 

[jaglon53]

Thank you everyone who responded I appreciate that you care. I went into starting this thread with pretty much knowing there was nothing that could be done. I did hope that by some miracle that someone who has bred alot of chams would know if there was any type of way to cut off the tongue so that he could live and just have to catch his food and eat without it. I knew it was a long shot but i am not one to give up on any living creature. I do think that while he was catching fruit flies he shot his tongue and it went through one of the tiny holes in the screen. If you look at the end of a chameleons tongue its fatter on the tip than gets thinner. So i think it went through the hole and then he must of been trying to pull it out which unfortunately didnt work and destroyed his tongue. Im sure the chances of this happening are 1in1million. I have been keeping chams for more than a decade and breeding them on a very small scale for 5yrs. The past 2 years I started breeding on a larger scale and I definitely have seen some rare unfortunate ailments happen to babies. This was one of them and the other weird one was I had a clutch of about 18 2 months old in one enclosure. When I came home from work I realized all but 1 of the 18 babies had one or both of there eyes mutilated. As I was looking into the enclosure to figure out what had happened the 1 cham shot his tongue at another chams good eye like it was a bug and was trying to eat it. I know this story has no relevance to my baby chams tongue but when I was thinking of how random it is for a chams tongue to get stuck in the screen it made me think of it and also how fragile and unique these reptiles truly are. Again thanks everyone.

 

[carol5208]

Sorry to see your little one in this condition. Did he pass away? Their tongues make me a nervous wreck and it causes you to wonder in nature how many of them damage or lose them. I think all of us have had scary moments(myself included) with them shooting their tongues and getting stuck on something. It is good to know that they can live without, but probably more so in captivity with the ability of us being able to handfeed.In the natural world they might not be so fortunate. Good luck to you with the rest of your bunch and hopefully you will never have to experience this again.

 

[kinyonga]

If the tongue cannot retract into the mouth the chameleon will not be able to eat. A vet can amputated the tongue and the chameleon can be trained to eat without a tongue. It would likely be put on a course of antibiotics to make sure it wouldn't be infected.

 

[jaglon53]

Sorry to see your little one in this condition. Did he pass away? Their tongues make me a nervous wreck and it causes you to wonder in nature how many of them damage or lose them. I think all of us have had scary moments(myself included) with them shooting their tongues and getting stuck on something. It is good to know that they can live without, but probably more so in captivity with the ability of us being able to handfeed.In the natural world they might not be so fortunate. Good luck to you with the rest of your bunch and hopefully you will never have to experience this again.

Yes he did pass away and I think that was best for him because he looked miserable. I couldn't bring myself to help him pass yesterday and maybe I had hope for some type of miracle but when I woke up this morning he was gone. I don't even think the vet visit and giving antibiotics would've helped. When chams are younger than a month there is pretty much nothing you can do and giving them antibiotics can actually cause more harm than good. I really threw this post on here knowing nothing could be done but in hopes of a member with a similar experience seeing it so I could try what they did. I didnt expect to get so many people who cared so much about his well being and that is what I love about this forum. Thanks Everyone
RIP (didnt have a name but he deserves one) Albert 9-23 to 9-30