How to differentiate nosybe and faly

[Ahtee]

So as the title writes how does one differentiate a nosybe for
a faly? I always thought it was the red rain and/or the yellow lips but I've seen some pics that's been giving me conflicting ideas. Would someone enlighten me?

 

[Neonugz]

Pure Nosy be's are all blue and usually have the yellow highlighted lips. Nosy faly's have a white base color with blue and sometimes greenish blue bars and quite a bit of red rain. Hoped this helped!

 

[Ahtee]

That's what I always thought as well but I've seen falys with yellowish highlighted lips as well and nosybes with a bit of red rain. That's what's confusing me, is it a safe assumption that yellow lip = nosybe and red rain = faly? What happens when there's one with both?

 

[Olimpia]

No, they can both have those traits, with the exception of the white barring/background.

Wild/normal Nosy Bes can come in any shade of blue, from a very green-blue to a very sky blue, with or without red speckling, and with or without the yellow lips. It's only in captivity that they've been selectively bred to be that solid royal blue with minimal speckling.

The Falys can sometimes look extremely similar, except that they should have some evidence of white and typically have more dramatic speckling. The two locales can look very similar but when you see enough photos of individuals you can start to tell the differences apart.

The easiest thing might be to google the two locales in photos or find breeders' websites and compare. So you get a feel for what they look like.

 

[bobcochran]

I agree with most of what Olimpia says, except there are quite a few Nose Be
with more red than just spots. I've had (prefer)some with red and blue heads
with the rays of red going into the front legs and front part of the body. It was
selective breeding that brought about all the pure blue Nose Be.

 

[bobcochran]

Opps wasn't done blbbing

The above Nose Be was a wild caught back in the mid 90's. There used to be a lot more Nose's with red on them.

 

[broderp]

I'd like to get a panther, but all the Nosey Be, Amoble (sp?), Faly etc. confuses the living stuffing out of me.

I'm with the OP, pictures seem to show such varying colors I usually feel what I think I knew or thought was wrong, if that makes any sense.

A prime example for me is page from one of our sponcers:
http://panthercompany.weebly.com/nosy-be.html

Here I am thinkinmg Nosy Be's are blue, yet on the same page they show a green one. They all look alike!

 

[Olimpia]

Opps wasn't done blbbing

The above Nose Be was a wild caught back in the mid 90's. There used to be a lot more Nose's with red on them.

Interesting! Had you shown me that photo and asked me to identify I would have said an Ambi X Be cross for sure. I've seen dozens of crosses that look like that, but never a full Be, even WC. That's my favorite look on a panther, with solid red and blue, but I never would have guessed pure Be.

 

[ReptiGeek]

I've actually seen a documentary clip of Nosy Be (might have been David Attenborough) who was looking at the chameleons on Nosy Be island and the panthers looked just like the green/blue/red Nosy Be WC breeder that the panther company has. Ever since that documentary, I have sort of overlooked the "true-blue" Nosy Be's and really desire the green/blue/red coloration of the Nosy Be. I wish they were more popular in captivity, but sadly it seems more people are interested in the true-blues.

 

[ridgebax1]

I'd like to get a panther, but all the Nosey Be, Amoble (sp?), Faly etc. confuses the living stuffing out of me.

I'm with the OP, pictures seem to show such varying colors I usually feel what I think I knew or thought was wrong, if that makes any sense.

A prime example for me is page from one of our sponcers:
http://panthercompany.weebly.com/nosy-be.html

Here I am thinkinmg Nosy Be's are blue, yet on the same page they show a green one. They all look alike!

Vader is my baby daddy and Clouseau looks a lot like his dad. Another member has C's brother (his name is Luke) who also looks a lot like that. My understanding of the names, Faly, Ambilobe etc coorespond with the locale in Madagascar where each of those types of chameleons are found so it is not so much how they look but where they originated.

 

[broderp]

Vader is my baby daddy and Clouseau looks a lot like his dad. Another member has C's brother (his name is Luke) who also looks a lot like that. My understanding of the names, Faly, Ambilobe etc coorespond with the locale in Madagascar where each of those types of chameleons are found so it is not so much how they look but where they originated.

Well that certainly clears things up a bit! We need a "Chameleons for Dummies" section that explains all this stuff!

So if you are going for a particular color chameleon , although it doesn't really matter, but may be somewhat true, any one area or name sake can potentially produce different colors. A blue Faly would be the same animal as a Nosey Be, just from a different area, assuming that blue was any where's near common for a Faly.

 

[Olimpia]

There are differences between the locales that are unique to the panthers that live in that region, panthers don't just look differently for fun. If you look on Google Earth, you'll see that Nosy Be and Nosy Faly are both islands, so they are fairly isolated populations. On the mainland you have Ambilobe, for example, - since there aren't such obvious physical barriers between animals as with islands you don't get such "specialized" color, which is why Ambilobes show so much natural variation (Blue with red, yellow with red, green with red, green with blue, yellow with blue, etc.)

There's a lot on the forum about the different locales in the wild, too much to cover now in one post, but even though they are all the same species, years of isolation or mixing have led to the different color types we have now.

That's why some people frown upon crossing the different locales together, because you'd want to protect the uniqueness of each locale as it exists naturally.