do they bite

[katepalmer]

hi

i have just got a 5 month yemen male chameleon, he hisses alot and when i go to pick him up he goes to bite me !!!!!! do they bite, but then if i have mealworm in my hand he will eat from my hand no problems .... any advise

 

[Julirs]

Yes-they do bite. Also-mealworms are a BAD feeder.

Many chameleons are fine with hand feeding but do not want to be grabbed or handled.

 

[Brad Ramsey]

They can bite, but mostly it's just a threat.
At this age male veiled chameleons can be particularly aggressive.
Not an animal you should be handling very much anyway.
Meal worms are a very poor choice of food for this animal.
Check out the info here:

http://raisingkittytheveiledchameleon.blogspot.com/

-Brad

 

[PardalisGirl]

Stick to feeding treats.....

Ditto on the mealworms. Roaches, Hornworms, silkworms and Superworms are better treats. Don't handle him if it stresses him out. Let him learn to trust you. Just offer him the treats by hand. Let him be your guide. Handling him when he hisses like that is just causing him stress and making him distrust you when you open the cage door.

Instead develop his trust. Someday he may surprise you by coming to the cage door to greet you. And further down the road he may decide to come out of the cage onto your hand for a treat. Some chams do not like to be handled no matter how nice you are to them or how ever long you have had them. It would be better to have this type of cham look forward to hand fed treats when the cage door is opened instead of being stressed with the fear of possible handling every time the cage door is opened.

 

[katepalmer]

ok no to mealworms now ....... thanks for letting me know lol x

 

[katepalmer]

ok thats great will let him come to me , hes lovely and likes eating out my hand so i will contine to do that and lets hope he would like me to hold him one day, would hate to stress him out really would x

 

[Yessabub]

hi

i have just got a 5 month yemen male chameleon, he hisses alot and when i go to pick him up he goes to bite me !!!!!! do they bite, but then if i have mealworm in my hand he will eat from my hand no problems .... any advise

Yeh they will bite but they have to kind of build up to it usually there just warning strikes. If you really want to hold him you got to just go for it and try to remain calm. Make sure you dont grab him though SLOWLY slide your hand under his body and usually they just grab right on to you then pick him right up. I gotta pull spike out kinda quickly or he will try to grab onto something on the way out lol

 

[Mr Wilson]

Why are mealworms bad??

 

[Julirs]

I just posted on your other thread, but mealworms have harder exoskeletons that can potentially lead to impaction. Superworms are a much better feeder all around, and look and feel very similar to mealworms to us humans.

 

[Lizardboy76]

Take it slowly keep hand feeding him till you gain his trust and if you have to slowly pick him up from under his body because they feel uneasy when you try to grab them from on top of him they feel you are going to harm them. I got blood taken out of me one time but that was my fault and after all this time I now have his trust and he eats from my hand as well as jumps on my hand when I open the cage.

 

[AReptile]

I was trying to get my baby cham to drink from the syringe today and one of the times he opened his mouth he bit it and i felt the force of the bite on the syringe lol!

 

[katepalmer]

feed him today by hand and to my suprise he walked on to my hand and up my arm then back on his branch ..... very happy indeed bless him x x