Chameleon air puff

Little De Death

Little De Death

New Member
So my chameleon sometimes puffs air out of her nose not puffing up or hissing at me just *puff* so does it mean she likes me or taking a deep breath
 
My chams do this. It's similar to a "snalt" for iguanas if I'm not mistaken. Basically it's a sneeze... minerals, dust, feeder poop/debris, etc collect in their "nose holes".

At least that's my opinion. I've never seen any of them dislodge anything that way. However, I notice my females do it more often after they dig in their lay bin, maybe to get any dirt out?
 
Hashtag ChamLife said:
My chams do this. It's similar to a "snalt" for iguanas if I'm not mistaken. Basically it's a sneeze... minerals, dust, feeder poop/debris, etc collect in their "nose holes".

At least that's my opinion. I've never seen any of them dislodge anything that way. However, I notice my females do it more often after they dig in their lay bin, maybe to get any dirt out?
Click to expand...
I think so because I seen nose dust on her nose some times
 
I was just googling the same thing about my male panther. He’s about a year old and this seems to be a relatively new occurrence.
No gape, no aggression, happens inconsequentially of my position relative to him. Obviously it can’t be an emotional response to their caregivers. The dust thing sounds about right biologically and I don’t see any signs of illness either. Still trying to interpret as much of his behavior as possible. I’m a zoologist that has worked with ‘every’ large mammal, with a ‘specialty’ in big cats. Fred is my first reptile so I’m curious about everything. Any other theories or documented research on this?

Is there much documented research on chameleon behavior anywhere? Has there ever been? I can’t seem to find any information other than about husbandry. Anyone know of any good reliable sources?

Thank you so much!
 
Welcome to the forum!

If he's puffing air out his nose with his mouth shut he could be expelling salts from his nose. (We call it snault.) That's just one possible explanation.

You said..."Is there much documented research on chameleon behavior anywhere? Has there ever been? I can’t seem to find any information other than about husbandry. Anyone know of any good reliable sources?"...there is some research out there. The number of studies being done is still not nearly enough. What type of research information are you looking for?

You said..."I’m a zoologist that has worked with ‘every’ large mammal, with a ‘specialty’ in big cats. Fred is my first reptile so I’m curious about everything"...where did you work with so many different animals?
 
Last edited:
You asked… LOL. Longest response ever…
  1. Four years, 3 days a week at the Carnivore Preservation Trust in Pittsburg NC, with endangered rainforest species and every type of big and small wild cats. At 19 years old I started going into cages with tigers! And worked with 2 other prehensile rainforest species - binturongs (from SE Asia) and kinkajous (from the South American rainforests.)
  2. Did an internship at the Duke Primate Center when they only had species from Madagascar!!! Probably every type of lemur, etc.
  3. Greenwood Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Lyons, CO. I worked with native Colorado species.
  4. Rocky Mountain Wildlife Center. I again worked with most species of just big cats and bears.
  5. Internship at the Denver Zoo. There I worked with beers, kangaroos, giraffes, rhinos, hippos, Arctic wolves, way too many animals to list.
  6. Docent at Reid Park Zoo in Tucson, AZ. I mainly served as an educator, including setting up information booths, bringing out supervised small animals for the kid’s center, walking around and talking to visitors about the animals and how important it is to respect wildlife, answering questions…
  7. I am also a vet-tech and most recently worked in a 24/7 emergency center. I also did all the marketing and PR for two veterinary speciality clinics including everything from ophthalmology, dermatology, internal medicine, oncology, anything you can imagine.
  8. I have fostered dogs and cats at two animal shelters and a grate dane rescue. I’ve also raised kittens from birth, sometimes with a surrogate mother.
  9. Studied migratory bird species ‘in the field’ for CU in Boulder, CO.
  10. I’m currently working with “The Purple Lease Project.”
  11. I also spent the best week of my life in the Amazon rainforest in Peru!
  12. I graduated undergrad with a BS in pre-vet, zoology. The only reason I didn’t go to vet school is because I was young and naive and thought I could save all endangered species… so the first half of my career was as a professional volunteer and I became a really good waitress and bartender.

I hope I’m not missing anything. I was a vegetarian for almost a decade, always an animal rights activist, used to call companies that tested on animals in high school, etc. When I was a newspaper reporter for our local newspaper I used my weekly column often (despite my editor’s random disapproval) to create more awareness about endangered species as well. And when I started writing for “Steamboat Magazine,” my first article was on moose and it made the cover! I saw a bear cub driving home last night. Two weeks ago we had a mother with 2 ‘baby’ moose walk down the bike trail right behind my back porch. We are coexisting with so much amazing wildlife here, it was crucial for me to write that article on moose on moose after talking to every expert at the Division of Wildlife - to teach residents and visitors what to do if they encounter a moose. 1. Don’t take selfies! The only advice our local paper gave was to hide behind a vehicle. WTF? So ignorant.
And one day I am going to start a national nonprofit that raises money for only best practices wild animal rescue centers and raises as much awareness and education as I can get out there! One of my dreams came true when I was gifted with being able to train tigers - after they trained me - and by training, I mean not trying to kill us when we need to enter their enclosures in case of needed medical care, etc. Another dream was to open my own ‘best practices’ endangered species rescue and center, and I even got the OK to start one where I live. The more I thought about it, I realized I could better serve these animals by not competing for the same almost nonexistent funds. You should check out the website of an amazing place one of my ‘tiger cohorts’ established! animalparknc.org

Fred is surprisingly my first reptile and I don’t think I have ever been more fascinated and intrigued by any other species. He’s about a year old now and ever since he was a hatchling, we basically stare at each other all day, everyday. LOL. I gotta throw in there that despite having a ‘lizard brain,’ he is more intelligent than I ever could have imagined.
I currently live in a ski town in Colorado, not so much like Madagascar, and have a local vet as well as established a cham vet specialist in Denver (3 hours away), who I keep in touch with via email with questions to get the most accurate answers - that she knows. I have read almost every book in the CO library system, watched almost every YouTube video and visited any website I could find, and am glad to be a part of this forum now because of my curiosity and the questions will never end.

I was reading an article on Dubia roaches yesterday which brought up a valid point regarding the possible little to absentee of chameleon research. “With profit comes funding for research.”

Oh my god. Is that a thorough enough answer? And thanks for asking.
Next item on agenda, how do we raise money to humanely study chameleon behavior?
 
FredBenettonGuardian said:
You asked… LOL. Longest response ever…
  1. Four years, 3 days a week at the Carnivore Preservation Trust in Pittsburg NC, with endangered rainforest species and every type of big and small wild cats. At 19 years old I started going into cages with tigers! And worked with 2 other prehensile rainforest species - binturongs (from SE Asia) and kinkajous (from the South American rainforests.)
  2. Did an internship at the Duke Primate Center when they only had species from Madagascar!!! Probably every type of lemur, etc.
  3. Greenwood Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Lyons, CO. I worked with native Colorado species.
  4. Rocky Mountain Wildlife Center. I again worked with most species of just big cats and bears.
  5. Internship at the Denver Zoo. There I worked with beers, kangaroos, giraffes, rhinos, hippos, Arctic wolves, way too many animals to list.
  6. Docent at Reid Park Zoo in Tucson, AZ. I mainly served as an educator, including setting up information booths, bringing out supervised small animals for the kid’s center, walking around and talking to visitors about the animals and how important it is to respect wildlife, answering questions…
  7. I am also a vet-tech and most recently worked in a 24/7 emergency center. I also did all the marketing and PR for two veterinary speciality clinics including everything from ophthalmology, dermatology, internal medicine, oncology, anything you can imagine.
  8. I have fostered dogs and cats at two animal shelters and a grate dane rescue. I’ve also raised kittens from birth, sometimes with a surrogate mother.
  9. Studied migratory bird species ‘in the field’ for CU in Boulder, CO.
  10. I’m currently working with “The Purple Lease Project.”
  11. I also spent the best week of my life in the Amazon rainforest in Peru!
  12. I graduated undergrad with a BS in pre-vet, zoology. The only reason I didn’t go to vet school is because I was young and naive and thought I could save all endangered species… so the first half of my career was as a professional volunteer and I became a really good waitress and bartender.

I hope I’m not missing anything. I was a vegetarian for almost a decade, always an animal rights activist, used to call companies that tested on animals in high school, etc. When I was a newspaper reporter for our local newspaper I used my weekly column often (despite my editor’s random disapproval) to create more awareness about endangered species as well. And when I started writing for “Steamboat Magazine,” my first article was on moose and it made the cover! I saw a bear cub driving home last night. Two weeks ago we had a mother with 2 ‘baby’ moose walk down the bike trail right behind my back porch. We are coexisting with so much amazing wildlife here, it was crucial for me to write that article on moose on moose after talking to every expert at the Division of Wildlife - to teach residents and visitors what to do if they encounter a moose. 1. Don’t take selfies! The only advice our local paper gave was to hide behind a vehicle. WTF? So ignorant.
And one day I am going to start a national nonprofit that raises money for only best practices wild animal rescue centers and raises as much awareness and education as I can get out there! One of my dreams came true when I was gifted with being able to train tigers - after they trained me - and by training, I mean not trying to kill us when we need to enter their enclosures in case of needed medical care, etc. Another dream was to open my own ‘best practices’ endangered species rescue and center, and I even got the OK to start one where I live. The more I thought about it, I realized I could better serve these animals by not competing for the same almost nonexistent funds. You should check out the website of an amazing place one of my ‘tiger cohorts’ established! animalparknc.org

Fred is surprisingly my first reptile and I don’t think I have ever been more fascinated and intrigued by any other species. He’s about a year old now and ever since he was a hatchling, we basically stare at each other all day, everyday. LOL. I gotta throw in there that despite having a ‘lizard brain,’ he is more intelligent than I ever could have imagined.
I currently live in a ski town in Colorado, not so much like Madagascar, and have a local vet as well as established a cham vet specialist in Denver (3 hours away), who I keep in touch with via email with questions to get the most accurate answers - that she knows. I have read almost every book in the CO library system, watched almost every YouTube video and visited any website I could find, and am glad to be a part of this forum now because of my curiosity and the questions will never end.

I was reading an article on Dubia roaches yesterday which brought up a valid point regarding the possible little to absentee of chameleon research. “With profit comes funding for research.”

Oh my god. Is that a thorough enough answer? And thanks for asking.
Next item on agenda, how do we raise money to humanely study chameleon behavior?
Click to expand...

Wow! That's quite the list! I think I need to read it all over a few more times before commenting more on it! Couple of comments for now...I'll be back after I read it all again!

You said..."by training, I mean not trying to kill us when we need to enter their enclosures in case of needed medical care"...so they weren't "target trained"?
 
As for studies on chameleon behaviour...there have been a few...but I'm not sure this is what you're looking for...so here are just a few.

"Camouflage and escape decisions in the common chameleon Chamaeleo chamaeleon"...
"Our results suggest that size and vegetation greatly influence the risk of detection by predators and this variation influences an individual's decision about when and how to escape"...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0024406600905157

"lizards reared in isolation were not only more submissive, but they also adopted darker and less green colours than did conspecifics that had been reared in groups"...
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/237588449.pdf

"Chameleons with high Vitamin D3 levels (achieved through a diet of vitamin-supplemented crickets) limited their exposure to the sun, while those maintained on a vitamin-poor diet maximized basking time....
http://blogs.thatpetplace.com/thatr...-is-affected-by-vitamin-d-needs/#.Y0Itteus-K0
 
Last edited:
kinyonga said:
Sorry it’s taken me months to respond. To answer your question, we didn’t do target training. Thank god even though some of our rescues did come from roadside circuses, they are not circus animals or pets.

We did some small group “drills” for training in the cages with the tigers (mainly young tigers). For example, we would all sit on the ground and only use our legs and feet to defend ourselves. Or we would play “keep away” with a long branch. They always immediately figured out your hand was holding the stick though. Haha.
They taught me karate and ways to stand so a tiger couldn’t push me over, as well how to walk side by side with them at their shoulders so you can “control their head…” We purposely never used our hands to “reprimand” them because we didn’t want them to associate the two. By “reprimand,” I mean if they charge you in the cage, you have to charge them and they taught me how to say the loudest, deepest, “No,” as possible. Or if they come at you just on their hind legs, we would have to either flip them over or “slam” them into the fence. We only used our knees, feet and elbows if need be and would kick them in the pressure point of their jaw if they tried to attack us, which was almost everyday while they are growing up and learning how to use their instincts. That’s the only place that you can do anything that would make a difference - because that’s where they are the most sensitive (?).
We also always carried radios/walkie-talkies and an asp just in case. I can go on forever and ever and ever talking about tigers and big cats, and will be happy to give you more info if you’d like. I should be talking about my chameleon though. Haha.
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

F
Smells and holding?
Replies
10
Views
586
MissSkittles
MissSkittles
Milch
New panther went from chilled out to frightened
Replies
2
Views
156
elizaann2
elizaann2
PrincessSpaz
Please share your funniest/goofiest pictures of your babies ...
Replies
12
Views
241
Nal0114
Nal0114
Q
Unusual chameleon behavior? Looking for input :)
Replies
13
Views
655
qRxei
Q
L
Tongue issue and eyes slightly sunk
Replies
6
Views
420
Gloriawood
Gloriawood
Back
Top Bottom