Do hornworms bite?

Before chams - I raised tomatoes and those hornworms would decimate the leaves on my plants. I cut them in half with scissors. (My grandma made me do it when I was just a small girl.) When I became a Mom, my kids would go into the garden and pick them, put them into a bag and throw rocks at the bag. Ewwwww. They are nasty things. Lots of green guts.
 
StudioCham.....

What experiences you have with hornworms! I just ordered some to give to my chameleons to try and diversify their food. I will keep in mind killing them before they feed. I would hate to have a situation and know I could have made their dinner easier to eat. Thanks for sharing! I would have never known,....unless it happened to me and my chams.
 
i wouldent go so far as to kill them but i would use tweezers to crush there mandibles. i do that to supers just to be safe even tho goonie is a great chewer
 
I've fed both hornworms ( not full sized) and superworms to my cham and she has had no problems with either of them as far as them attempting to bite her. She actually tore a hornworm in half with her tongue! Then she ate the remaining half. Probably the craziest thing I've seen feeding a lizard.
 
Goonie said:
i wouldent go so far as to kill them but i would use tweezers to crush there mandibles. i do that to supers just to be safe even tho goonie is a great chewer
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I like that Idea. They're still alive to entice my lizard to go for it, but no able to bite, just in case! Thanks!:D
 
Ive kept 4 species and Ive never had to crush mandibles or cut off heads to feed anyone. Im a conscientious keeper but at the end of the day its a chameleon they are designed to capture and eat prey. Jmpo....
 
Lol! This thread is super old. My beardie and cham wait till they get a clear shot at the head before striking. Then chomp down. Just like wolves and lions go for the throat to kill their prey. Its natural instinct. But im sure they make mistakes sometimes.
 
studiocham said:
This is an old post of mine from mellerichams:

This morning, I fed out 1 appropriately-sized (not full-grown)
hornworm to each of my largest melleri. I started working in the
next room, and a while later, I heard a hiss/cough noise coming from
the cham room. My largest cham was repeatedly swallowing and then
dry heaving. She had not moved to bask after her meal, she was just
sitting where she'd been fed, and occasionally wiping her mouth on a
branch. Her hyoid was visible in her profile, which is unusual-
something had to be pressing it down. Her color was normal. I moved
her out of the cage for a closer look. Luckily, this particular cham
is a snot, and promptly gaped at me when I looked in her eyes.
There, laying in her throat, hanging onto the back of her tongue by
its mandibles, was her meal! She had not killed it before
swallowing, and it was hanging on for dear life, causing the cham
discomfort.

This is a 17" subadult melleri with a very strong bite and an
attitude. My first thought was to "get the worm off her tongue", but
the second thought was, "without losing a finger!" I grabbed a
sterile tweezers and a wooden spoon. The spoon was needed to prevent
her from biting down on the tweezers and damaging her teeth. I
looked at her, so she gaped, then I lightly laid the spoon handle
across her lower jaw, and tried to remove the worm with tweezers.
The worm was not letting go. Trying to get the worm's head made it
pinch the cham's tongue harder, making the whole scene a moving
target. I managed to irritate the worm into flinging its body
forward, pulled all my tools and fingers away, and the cham bit it.
The chomping made it release its own bite, and the cham swallowed it
without further trouble. I have never been so deep in a cham's
throat before and hope to never have to be again. Thank goodness, it
was a large space to work in, and for all the cham's personality
problems, I did not have her restrained in any way. She LET me fish
in her throat. More reasons to love the giants. LOL I took another
look down her throat, and the worm was way down in the stomach, at
last.

From now on, I will stun or kill the hornworms when feeding them
out, and advise others to do the same. This is the third dangerous
feeding issue I have witnessed with hornworms, and each time, I have
been home to notice and correct the situation before the cham choked
to death or stressed out. I don't even want to think about what
would have happened if I had not been around to hear and see the
problems. First, when feeding a juvenile last year, the worm's last
foot clamped down on its inner lip and similarly caused
choking/gagging until I broke its suction; second, a hornworm (being
chewed) bit a subadult on its eye turret, causing a wound that took
weeks to heal up; this tongue episode is the last straw. I love
hornworms as WC boosting feeders or as treats for growing chams, and
I'll still buy them, but they are too risky as live prey IMO, and
I'm feeding BIG chams, at that. I can't feed them live and then walk
away without a worry in the back of my head. Freshly killed, no
worries.
***********************

Disable the hornworms by cutting them into halves and feeding the halves out fresh OR using fine wire nippers to cut off the mandibles before feeding out a live hornworm (or even a superworm, if you use those feeders). Sloppy, yes, but no one gets hurt except the worms.
Click to expand...

Old thread but this post is very scary.
 
Think they covered this but YES THEY DO BITE. My girl Mona had a nasty encounter with one. -- she snagged it not by the head and it whipped around a bit her a couple times on the neck. She spit it out -- the one time she did not eat what was in her mouth. I picked it up with tongs and you could hear it's freaking pincers on the metal. Buggers.

It didn't appear to break her skin, she was not bleeding, but it was not pleasant for her nor for me to watch, unable to really help her.... She slashed it around in her mouth a few times.. it was the craziest thing I've ever seen her go through.
 
Kat77 said:
I just started feeding out hornworms since all the silk worms seem to have temporarily disappeared. I was wondering whether those big guys bite? I noticed when I gave one to Steve today that the thing whipped around and it looked like it tried to bite him right in the eye turret. I don't think it did, but I'm feeling a little more wary of them now. Anyone had a bad experience?
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Yes, hornworms very much do bite. Press their face into your skin, hold it in between your fingers for a while or just mess with it, it’ll get angry and start nibbling or straight up grasping for dear life with their mandibles onto you, as well as they like to try to stab with their horns, but the horns are fleshy. To bite they do have to be quite angry but my recent batch is a very aggressive bunch and will bite by just holding them for a second. I can imagine a chameleon trying to eat it would make it angry enough to bite as well. Also, because of how squishy they are they can be surprisingly hard to kill, so be careful when feeding them and make sure it’s the right size.
 
Chameleonhavinman said:
Yes, hornworms very much do bite. Press their face into your skin, hold it in between your fingers for a while or just mess with it, it’ll get angry and start nibbling or straight up grasping for dear life with their mandibles onto you, as well as they like to try to stab with their horns, but the horns are fleshy. To bite they do have to be quite angry but my recent batch is a very aggressive bunch and will bite by just holding them for a second. I can imagine a chameleon trying to eat it would make it angry enough to bite as well. Also, because of how squishy they are they can be surprisingly hard to kill, so be careful when feeding them and make sure it’s the right size.
Click to expand...
This thread is 11 years old...
 
Chameleonhavinman said:
Ok, then maybe someone with the same question can read this and see my response. I learned many things from this website from multiple year old posts and new answers.
Click to expand...
Just letting you know in case you did not realize... The only reason why I mentioned it way you replied to the OP... Not just adding a post to the thread.
 
Beman said:
Just letting you know in case you did not realize... The only reason why I mentioned it way you replied to the OP... Not just adding a post to the thread.
Click to expand...
Oh ok, well yes I knew it’s old I was just putting in my input cause I’m not going to read that many comments to find out what information was left out might as well just give my answer haha thank you though
 
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