Cognition...personality...isolation...

Very interesting articles! I would have to say that I would tend to agree with Ballen. Just because we don't understand their social interactions doesn't mean they don't exist, or that they are always a bad thing. Thanks for sharing!
 
Thanks for the articles, all very good reads. Personally I think social interactions in general, even with other species (humans for example) has an impact on the behavior of the chameleon/reptile. But I also think it's situational.

For example I think the more aggressive chameleons are of course the ones housed together because they're fighting for food, sunlight, their own territory, etc. So they're always on so to speak. Where as the one in isolation has no one to compete with so it wouldn't have to eat as fast and such and since it's alone more often than not seeing another chameleon could give it the passive "I'll just submit until I'm back safely in my neck of the woods attitude" because it never had to learn the take what you can get aspect of living.

As far as social behavior being learned from human interactions goes, well we all have chameleons or a reptile so you can clearly see what the results are. Some people have really aggressive chameleons that eventually let them handle them for moments at at time, some never do, and some don't mind being handled at all. Each one is situational to the environment it's put in, what its environment was like beforehand etc. allowing it to form positive or negative social behaviors.

Idk. That's just my opinion. Haha. I guess these articles just got me thinking.
 
İsolation article concludes with "Our results call that into question and suggest that for many reptiles, an environment richin social interaction may provide important benefits for their wellbeing.", but where is the part about the well-being of the reptiles? They state that the chameleons living growing together developed more active behaviors, vibrant colors and faster hunting movements. But these are not about the well-being of the animal, rather competition. For all we know, this more "social" chameleons could have more health issues in the future and shorter life spans due to stress. Or not, we do not know and they do not know either, because they did not actually experiment on the "well-being" of the animals. Just the short term behaviorial effects, which tells nothing about mental or physical health.
 
Bill Strand makes some interesting points about group rearing versus individual rearing. Personally, I believe that they would be better off reared singly as I'm fairly certain that they become dispersed quickly after hatching.
 
@TCMontium said..."But these are not about the well-being of the animal, rather competition. For all we know, this more "social" chameleons could have more health issues in the future and shorter life spans due to stress. Or not, we do not know and they do not know either, because they did not actually experiment on the "well-being" of the animals"...competition is important in their lives because the best competitors are the ones that will pass on their genes. The rest will live out their lives without passing on their genes...so which is more important in the wild? Long healthy lives or passing on your genes? Just my thoughts.
 
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