Adult Male Veiled Interested in Baby Females?

[Irfin]

1) I was lucky enough to hatch 72 out of a clutch of 75 that IMO eventually killed her.

2) After 5 escapees and 1 dehydration death, I'm left with a kick butt group of growing healthy baby veileds. Hatch was Thanksgiving. San Jose CA area. Lots of interesting partial translucent phenotypes thanks to dad.

3) I was feeding the group and my male became very interested even across the room about 10ft away. I experimented and left his cage open to see what he would do.

4) He actively made his way down to the floor to the rim of the baby bin and began displaying mating behavior. I was worried he was going to hunt / eat the babies so I intercepted.

5) Babies started dropping to the bottom of the bin as if with an innate retreat response. Won't try this again.

Has anyone else every experienced this before?

How does a male cham see baby chams 10-15 ft away with plenty of foliage and even a screen or did I not search deep enough in the forums?

Thanks

 

[JoeG]

1) I was lucky enough to hatch 72 out of a clutch of 75 that IMO eventually killed her.

2) After 5 escapees and 1 dehydration death, I'm left with a kick butt group of growing healthy baby veileds. Hatch was Thanksgiving. San Jose CA area. Lots of interesting partial translucent phenotypes thanks to dad.

3) I was feeding the group and my male became very interested even across the room about 10ft away. I experimented and left his cage open to see what he would do.

4) He actively made his way down to the floor to the rim of the baby bin and began displaying mating behavior. I was worried he was going to hunt / eat the babies so I intercepted.

5) Babies started dropping to the bottom of the bin as if with an innate retreat response. Won't try this again.

Has anyone else every experienced this before?

How does a male cham see baby chams 10-15 ft away with plenty of foliage and even a screen or did I not search deep enough in the forums?

Thanks

Good thing you intervened. I'm no expert on veileds but from the picture you painted, he was going to eat them for sure.

 

[okiroo]

omgsh. im glad he didnt eat those darlings

 

[carol5208]

My chameleon will eat a little anole every chance he gets. They are wild down here. I don't feed them but he will hunt them down if they get in his cage.

 

[JaxKiwiTiger]

Wow, that's a seriously huge clutch! Hope they're all getting along...wouldn't mind a few pics either!

 

[JonRich]

My Adult Veiled shows interest in my baby Chams also. But for LUNCH! lol

He licks his chops every time he sees them.

 

[K9Luvn]

Yikes so glad you were watching!!

 

[BeBoSON]

Lol, that would have sucked.

But I've seen videos of grown chams eating anything small enough they can eat, such as : Anoles, baby mice, small live fish....I don't know why people feed them these things....

 

[alexyboo909]

Lol, that would have sucked.

But I've seen videos of grown chams eating anything small enough they can eat, such as : Anoles, baby mice, small live fish....I don't know why people feed them these things....

yeah uhh.. that's pretty gross.

 

[fluxlizard]

How does a male cham see baby chams 10-15 ft away with plenty of foliage and even a screen

"The eyes of chameleons are very peculiar indeed, not only because they can move independently. Their lens is capable of considerable changes in shape - when accommodating, it has positive power, but when resting, its power becomes negative. This remarkable feature distinguishes chameleon lenses from those of all other vertebrates. The positioning of a negative lens behind a positive one (the cornea) provides a telephoto system, rendering the eye's focal length longer than its physical length. For its eye size, the chameleon has the largest known retinal image of any vertebrate. Chameleons use fine detail in prey capture, and their accommodation needs to be fast and precise. Furthermore, they judge distance by means of their focussing mechanism (rather than by binocular triangulation as in humans). All this demands a high visual acuity, so it is easy to see how these reptiles benefit from telephoto eyes. The negative lens could have other advantages, too. It gives the eye a greater accommodative range and pushes its nodal point forward, close to the rather weird iris, which is formed by the eyelids and moves with the eye. This means that when the eye is rotated, objects at different distances move relative to each other. This differential motion parallax might help the animal to detect prey hidden amongst leaves without conspicuous movements of the head or body."

source:

http://www.mapoflife.org/topics/topic_280_Telephoto-eyes-in-animals/