how to make my veiled Cham trust/like me?

[JaxyGirl]

I let him out of his cage when I can. He climbs between his plant and his cage under watchful eye. The minute I take my eyes off him he tries to climb to
the top of his cage. His lights are up there and if not turned off we have a problem. When you free range your chameleon do you watch him 24/7.
I know if I didn't he would eventually get hurt. I know they poop in the same place most of the time, but not always. Don't think I would like to
find one on my keyboard or worst. Right now I have him in a 24 x 24 x 6ft cage and he has been outside 24/7 for the last 2 months.
He seems quite happy. The only time he stresses is when I try to handle him, so I don't anymore.

Yes mine free range 24/7 in the house my kitchen/dining room and I don't watch them all the time. I dont have any lights where my chams can reach them.

 

[Virgil1972]

Then they shouldn't be brought over here and stuck in cages.

But we still all do it.

If your Cham is wild caught I would absolutely 100% agree it is a wild animal. now days if we get our chams from a breeder most babies have been born in captivity and are 5 generation plus and have been raised in cages from day one so they aren't quite as wild as one may think.

Are they domesticated?

 

[JaxyGirl]

But we still all do it.

Are they domesticated?

At what point would you consider an animal domesticated?

 

[Virgil1972]

At what point would you consider an animal domesticated?

Im no expert on the matter but I believe its when an animal is considered domesticated when they become different then there wild ancestors and become recognized as a separate species.( thats what wikipedia is saying in more or less words.) Take pet dogs for example. I have a yellow lab. You would not find populations of wild yellow labs in the woods.

 

[jannb]

Cats and chameleons do not mix. I've seen chameleons injured and killed by cats on here many times. I have a senior dog and it took me two years to fully trust him with my chameleons. He was young when we first started out with chameleons. I also have a Cuban Knight Anole, red foot tortoise and a box turtle. My animals are family and treated like family. I interact with them daily. They run errands with me go on vacations and celebrate holidays with the family. You can see pictures of some of them (present and past) enjoying family time in this older thread in post number 45 and 46.

Forgot to attach the link to the older thread. My photos are in post # 45 and 46
https://www.chameleonforums.com/thr...ia-the-mirror-test.151232/page-3#post-1281519

 

[alan marz]

Ok-that sounds crazy-I could see if you have a separate room to roam in, but I don't think I want my reptiles in my kitchen ,or for that matter pooping on my couch.
Sounds unhealthy for both you and your pets-but if it works for you Que Sera Sera.

 

[jannb]

Ok-that sounds crazy-I could see if you have a separate room to roam in, but I don't think I want my reptiles in my kitchen ,or for that matter pooping on my couch.
Sounds unhealthy for both you and your pets-but if it works for you Que Sera Sera.

I've been keeping chameleons free range since 2004 and they are the cleanest pets we have ever had. Most poop in the exact spot every time, on a mat under their tree. Never had one pooped on my sofa. I've only been pooped on myself a couple of times and one of those times it was by Romeo that belongs to Carol5208

 

[alan marz]

Your pictures look cutie and again I am no expert- but in more than half the pictures they looked stressed. Mine is a nice olive green 95% of the time.
I believe they only show their dark colors and puff up when they feel threaten. It makes for a nice picture, but I don't think they are saying I love you.
Again my main complaint is someone who has never owned a chameleon sees these post and thinks this is the way a chameleon acts,
and if they don't then what happens. My neighbor ,who never owned a fish tank before, just got a full saltwater tank stocked with way
to may fish, I am sure the sales person said it would be easy. They will all be dead within two weeks.
,.

 

[jajeanpierre]

Not to beat a dead horse, but is it possibly the way you are raising them that causes this? I am not trying to be mean here, I'm just wondering if your husbandry is geared towards raising them in conditions more like that which they would find in the wild?

Where do I begin? There are so many issues and nuances involved in your last two responses to me.

I know I don't have all the answers, but I do have a pretty extensive background in animal behavior and training having studied under some of the best in the world. The people I've worked under consult with zoos and the like all over the world to set up training programs to do things like get a 200 pound tortoise to willingly offer it's body for painful medical procedures without any restraint or develop strategies to get tigers to race into their holding cages should there be an emergency such as another escaped zoo animal ending up in the tiger enclosure. If you've ever seen the bird show in Disney's Animal Kingdom in Orlando or the fantastic bird show at the Texas State Fair, those are the people I mostly trained under.

This is going to be a long post, and I hope you bear with me on it, keeping an open mind. I don't pretend to have all the answers or know everything about chameleon behavior. What I do know is that there can be incredible damage done to an animal simply by mishandling it and stressing it be it through forcing it to be in close contact with people or keeping it in conditions that are outside of the parameters the animal evolved and thrived in the wild.

I believe that very few on here have honed their observation skills of the behavior of any animal and don't even recognize the subtle physical responses to stress or even fear. Again, that's not a slight--it takes a systematic approach to observing, recording and testing any hypothesis of a behavior. That systematic approach usually needs to be taught before one can support their hypothesis of what an observed behavior actually means. That's not a criticism. It is a real skill to be observant of the very subtle behaviors, the "body language," of any animal especially an animal that lacks feathers, fur and facial muscles. I am not an expert at identifying those behaviors in chameleons and what they mean either, but I also know that I don't know. I learned under professional trainers how to observe the body language of other species and not to apply my human responses to another species. Please believe that I am not being arrogant with that statement. Let me try to explain.

Most of my work has been with parrots. I think you can even buy a book or two written for the lay person on interpreting the body language of parrots. You can learn a lot about the mental state of a parrot by observing them just sitting on a perch. Here are some of the things you can look at in a parrot:

How high are they standing on the perch, in other words is there a lot of space between their body and the perch or are they close to the perch;
How much of the beak is visible, are the feathers on their face fluffed forward covering much of the beak;
Are the pupils of the eyes dilated or contracted or are they "pinning" which means the pupils are rapidly opening and contracting many many times a minute;
Are the wings held loosely at their side or tight to the body;
Are the feathers held tightly, "slicked," to the body or loosely;
Are the feathers on the head slicked down or open and fluffed;
Are the head feathers erect, displaying;
Are the feathers loosely covering the feet;
Are the tail feathers spread.

The list goes on. If you take a photo of a bird on a perch, you can get a lot of information of the inner workings of that parrot at that particular moment in time. It helps greatly that they have feathers that can be raised or clamped to their body, just as mammals have fur that can be raised or slicked. Chameleons do not. Also helpful is the number of people who have worked with parrots, so there is a wealth of documented experience with their behaviors.

The same cannot be said about chameleons. They pose many problems for the astute observer if only just for the fact they have no facial muscles or feathers/fur. There isn't much research on their behavior in the wild. The little research in the field seems to be limited to where they are found, how dense their populations are and their physical attributes such as size, color, scalation, etc. There isn't a lot of research of their behavior in the wild (@Chris Anderson please correct me if I am wrong and direct me to the research). Complicating everything, the "stress" behavior pet people observe and report on internet forums such as this one--and bear in mind, they might not even be observing stressed behavior--is often so far past the very beginning of an observable stress response. (As an example of confusion within the pet community, think of the number of novices who write in about their chameleon doing normal basking behavior of turning dark and flattening out to the light and being told it is a stress response by another novice.)

There are basically two main types of training styles. One style uses force and pain/fear to get an animal (including humans) to comply. It can be subtle and not terribly significant to the animal, even an extension of the natural behavior for that species, such as digging your elbow or knuckles hard into the ribs of a horse to cue it to move away from you. Or, it can be quite painful/terrifying such as using a cattle prod to get the same response. (Electrical shock is by far the most aversive stimuli there is to animals based on research.) This kind of training uses escape/avoidance strategies of the animal to get the behavior. The animal is usually trained what not to do with the use of aversives.

The other school of thought is to set up the environment to get the animal to comply by choice. The animal is cued to behave and chooses to perform or not. The training is set up so that you empower the animal to change (operate within) it's environment. This is known as operant conditioning.

Both training styles can be stressful for the animal. The first, with the application of pain and fear. The second with the stress of trying to solve the puzzle of a training problem. Or setting the alternatives to the behavior we want as worse than complying. At the extreme end of positive reinforcement-only training is giving the animal the choice to perform the behavior or starve to death. Take my wild caught at the vets--he "chose" to seemingly calmly climb up on my hand rather than stay low on the edge of his little travel tote on the examining table with two giant chameleon-eating predators hovering over top of him. Of course he chose the unknown risk of climbing on my hand over staying exposed to the predators and being eaten.

Why does all this matter? Simply because many people on this forum and other internet forums are advising how to "train" chameleons to be tame and will unwittingly recommend methods that are in fact quite detrimental and stressful to chameleons.

Keep in mind, stress in chameleons means a suppressed immune system which results in poor health down the road. Also note that some stress is not all bad. It is the degree and the cumulative effect of stress one must be aware of.

Stress suppressing the immune system is a fact. Chameleons dying at a very young age in captivity is a fact. Wild caught chameleons come into the country with horrendous but healed injuries yet had gone on to grow and thrive in the wild after the injury. Wild chameleons also have a parasite load that most cope with just fine and appear in perfect health. Those are facts. So, it is obvious that how we are keeping chameleons in captivity is causing poor health and an early demise. We can't lose sight of that--something we are doing is really hard on chameleons. I do not for a moment believe it is one single thing, but a myriad of factors, and stress is a biggie. Stress absolutely suppresses the immune system. I read countless defenders of those that believe they can be family members and handled like a dog yet I also read posts from those same people who are asking for your prayers because their young chameleon is ill and dying even with top-notch veterinary care. We have to be honest about what we are doing to them.

You question my techniques to raising chameleons which is not much different than any other successful breeder would raise them. Perhaps "tame" is too loaded a word to use with chameleons. I have wild caught chameleons come running to the front of the cage when I enter the room. They are not terribly afraid of me. They have learned that I am the bringer of good things, food. But, they most certainly don't trust me.

Others have criticized me by claiming that since I try to minimize handling them, I know nothing of their true nature. Or, how can they learn to be tame when I don't give them that opportunity by forcing interactions with them. Force is the correct term to use simply because no chameleon has a social structure with their own species so they have no drive to establish one with humanity to replace their social relationships with their own kind. I do know that I am doing something right with them because I have so few deaths of wild caughts, regardless of their poor health status at arrival in my care.

I think you and most keepers are confusing a chameleon's lack of observable reaction to stimuli (such as your presence/handling of it) with a it not being stressed. Just because you you do not recognize a response doesn't mean it isn't there. The response might be observable only if you took a blood panel and measured things like stress hormone levels at the time or recorded the heart rate. My wild caught chameleon at the vet did not seem stressed. There was no flight or flight response, his color was normal "happy" colors, he wasn't frozen in fear and he was interacting with his environment. Yet I know he was stressed--he would have been brain dead if he weren't. At some point, I would like to really study chameleon behavior as it relates to stress, especially to fear. What is the very first physical response to stress/fear? What is the chameleon equivalent to a parrot, slicking it's feathers tight to its body and standing tall on a perch? At some point I will.

I believe we do a disservice to chameleons and their owners when we suggest it is possible to have a rich two-way relationship with a chameleon. I am sure there is the a chameleon and owner combination that can, but I think it is extremely rare and very much outside of the normal of what can be expected of chameleons.

 

[alan marz]

Come on people they are REPTILES!!!. Ok , have to sign of now Cliff wants his daily French Kiss.

 

[Virgil1972]

Where do I begin? There are so many issues and nuances involved in your last two responses to me.

I know I don't have all the answers, but I do have a pretty extensive background in animal behavior and training having studied under some of the best in the world. The people I've worked under consult with zoos and the like all over the world to set up training programs to do things like get a 200 pound tortoise to willingly offer it's body for painful medical procedures without any restraint or develop strategies to get tigers to race into their holding cages should there be an emergency such as another escaped zoo animal ending up in the tiger enclosure. If you've ever seen the bird show in Disney's Animal Kingdom in Orlando or the fantastic bird show at the Texas State Fair, those are the people I mostly trained under.

This is going to be a long post, and I hope you bear with me on it, keeping an open mind. I don't pretend to have all the answers or know everything about chameleon behavior. What I do know is that there can be incredible damage done to an animal simply by mishandling it and stressing it be it through forcing it to be in close contact with people or keeping it in conditions that are outside of the parameters the animal evolved and thrived in the wild.

I believe that very few on here have honed their observation skills of the behavior of any animal and don't even recognize the subtle physical responses to stress or even fear. Again, that's not a slight--it takes a systematic approach to observing, recording and testing any hypothesis of a behavior. That systematic approach usually needs to be taught before one can support their hypothesis of what an observed behavior actually means. That's not a criticism. It is a real skill to be observant of the very subtle behaviors, the "body language," of any animal especially an animal that lacks feathers, fur and facial muscles. I am not an expert at identifying those behaviors in chameleons and what they mean either, but I also know that I don't know. I learned under professional trainers how to observe the body language of other species and not to apply my human responses to another species. Please believe that I am not being arrogant with that statement. Let me try to explain.

Most of my work has been with parrots. I think you can even buy a book or two written for the lay person on interpreting the body language of parrots. You can learn a lot about the mental state of a parrot by observing them just sitting on a perch. Here are some of the things you can look at in a parrot:

How high are they standing on the perch, in other words is there a lot of space between their body and the perch or are they close to the perch;
How much of the beak is visible, are the feathers on their face fluffed forward covering much of the beak;
Are the pupils of the eyes dilated or contracted or are they "pinning" which means the pupils are rapidly opening and contracting many many times a minute;
Are the wings held loosely at their side or tight to the body;
Are the feathers held tightly, "slicked," to the body or loosely;
Are the feathers on the head slicked down or open and fluffed;
Are the head feathers erect, displaying;
Are the feathers loosely covering the feet;
Are the tail feathers spread.

The list goes on. If you take a photo of a bird on a perch, you can get a lot of information of the inner workings of that parrot at that particular moment in time. It helps greatly that they have feathers that can be raised or clamped to their body, just as mammals have fur that can be raised or slicked. Chameleons do not. Also helpful is the number of people who have worked with parrots, so there is a wealth of documented experience with their behaviors.

The same cannot be said about chameleons. They pose many problems for the astute observer if only just for the fact they have no facial muscles or feathers/fur. There isn't much research on their behavior in the wild. The little research in the field seems to be limited to where they are found, how dense their populations are and their physical attributes such as size, color, scalation, etc. There isn't a lot of research of their behavior in the wild (@Chris Anderson please correct me if I am wrong and direct me to the research). Complicating everything, the "stress" behavior pet people observe and report on internet forums such as this one--and bear in mind, they might not even be observing stressed behavior--is often so far past the very beginning of an observable stress response. (As an example of confusion within the pet community, think of the number of novices who write in about their chameleon doing normal basking behavior of turning dark and flattening out to the light and being told it is a stress response by another novice.)

There are basically two main types of training styles. One style uses force and pain/fear to get an animal (including humans) to comply. It can be subtle and not terribly significant to the animal, even an extension of the natural behavior for that species, such as digging your elbow or knuckles hard into the ribs of a horse to cue it to move away from you. Or, it can be quite painful/terrifying such as using a cattle prod to get the same response. (Electrical shock is by far the most aversive stimuli there is to animals based on research.) This kind of training uses escape/avoidance strategies of the animal to get the behavior. The animal is usually trained what not to do with the use of aversives.

The other school of thought is to set up the environment to get the animal to comply by choice. The animal is cued to behave and chooses to perform or not. The training is set up so that you empower the animal to change (operate within) it's environment. This is known as operant conditioning.

Both training styles can be stressful for the animal. The first, with the application of pain and fear. The second with the stress of trying to solve the puzzle of a training problem. Or setting the alternatives to the behavior we want as worse than complying. At the extreme end of positive reinforcement-only training is giving the animal the choice to perform the behavior or starve to death. Take my wild caught at the vets--he "chose" to seemingly calmly climb up on my hand rather than stay low on the edge of his little travel tote on the examining table with two giant chameleon-eating predators hovering over top of him. Of course he chose the unknown risk of climbing on my hand over staying exposed to the predators and being eaten.

Why does all this matter? Simply because many people on this forum and other internet forums are advising how to "train" chameleons to be tame and will unwittingly recommend methods that are in fact quite detrimental and stressful to chameleons.

Keep in mind, stress in chameleons means a suppressed immune system which results in poor health down the road. Also note that some stress is not all bad. It is the degree and the cumulative effect of stress one must be aware of.

Stress suppressing the immune system is a fact. Chameleons dying at a very young age in captivity is a fact. Wild caught chameleons come into the country with horrendous but healed injuries yet had gone on to grow and thrive in the wild after the injury. Wild chameleons also have a parasite load that most cope with just fine and appear in perfect health. Those are facts. So, it is obvious that how we are keeping chameleons in captivity is causing poor health and an early demise. We can't lose sight of that--something we are doing is really hard on chameleons. I do not for a moment believe it is one single thing, but a myriad of factors, and stress is a biggie. Stress absolutely suppresses the immune system. I read countless defenders of those that believe they can be family members and handled like a dog yet I also read posts from those same people who are asking for your prayers because their young chameleon is ill and dying even with top-notch veterinary care. We have to be honest about what we are doing to them.

You question my techniques to raising chameleons which is not much different than any other successful breeder would raise them. Perhaps "tame" is too loaded a word to use with chameleons. I have wild caught chameleons come running to the front of the cage when I enter the room. They are not terribly afraid of me. They have learned that I am the bringer of good things, food. But, they most certainly don't trust me.

Others have criticized me by claiming that since I try to minimize handling them, I know nothing of their true nature. Or, how can they learn to be tame when I don't give them that opportunity by forcing interactions with them. Force is the correct term to use simply because no chameleon has a social structure with their own species so they have no drive to establish one with humanity to replace their social relationships with their own kind. I do know that I am doing something right with them because I have so few deaths of wild caughts, regardless of their poor health status at arrival in my care.

I think you and most keepers are confusing a chameleon's lack of observable reaction to stimuli (such as your presence/handling of it) with a it not being stressed. Just because you you do not recognize a response doesn't mean it isn't there. The response might be observable only if you took a blood panel and measured things like stress hormone levels at the time or recorded the heart rate. My wild caught chameleon at the vet did not seem stressed. There was no flight or flight response, his color was normal "happy" colors, he wasn't frozen in fear and he was interacting with his environment. Yet I know he was stressed--he would have been brain dead if he weren't. At some point, I would like to really study chameleon behavior as it relates to stress, especially to fear. What is the very first physical response to stress/fear? What is the chameleon equivalent to a parrot, slicking it's feathers tight to its body and standing tall on a perch? At some point I will.

I believe we do a disservice to chameleons and their owners when we suggest it is possible to have a rich two-way relationship with a chameleon. I am sure there is the a chameleon and owner combination that can, but I think it is extremely rare and very much outside of the normal of what can be expected of chameleons.

You should of hired a publisher for that one.

 

[alan marz]

Long winded, but again well said jajeanpierre. Thanks for the thoughtful and I believe the correct response..

 

[alan marz]

Now really--I owe him two kisses.

 

[jajeanpierre]

If your Cham is wild caught I would absolutely 100% agree it is a wild animal. now days if we get our chams from a breeder most babies have been born in captivity and are 5 generation plus and have been raised in cages from day one so they aren't quite as wild as one may think.

That's a fallacy on many fronts. First, very few species of chameleons are captive bred. Of the ones that are captive bred, few are more than one or two generations removed from the wild and often breeders need wild caught stock because they are unable to continue to get breedings past a few generations of captive bred stock.

There is a difference in genetics between a domesticated animal and the animal they are derived from. Domesticated animals were chosen specifically for the traits desired and the corollary of that is other traits are culled for. Domesticated animals are changed at a genetic level by the process of domestication. Chameleons are not being changed by captivity although color traits are being bred for and culled for. I haven't heard of breeders choosing breeding animals for their adaptability to captivity although I am sure many do. It certainly isn't something a buyer is asking about. Panthers aside, two or three generations in captivity create a creature that is the same as its brethren in the wild.

I have quite a few wild caughts and their behavior really is no different than my captive bred babies. Some, both captive bred and wild caughts, seem calm and are quite bold in their interactions with me. Others will fling themselves into space in a suicidal defense strategy, again both captive bred and wild caughts. I have several wild caughts that were imported as fully mature animals, some calm, some not. It is individual temperaments, not being used to a captivity which has its own stress associated with it.

 

[jajeanpierre]

You should of hired a publisher for that one.

Sorry.

 

[Virgil1972]

Sorry.

I guess I can accept it. Jk

 

[alan marz]

How can you put a Santa hat on him, they a probable Muslim since they come from that part of the world.

 

[jannb]

How can you put a Santa hat on him, they a probable Muslim since they come from that part of the world.

They will all wear a hat but my one male will run around with it on all day until he knocks it off on a branch.

They all get kisses too.

 

[alan marz]

What no tongues???

 

[JaxyGirl]

Where do I begin? There are so many issues and nuances involved in your last two responses to me.

I know I don't have all the answers, but I do have a pretty extensive background in animal behavior and training having studied under some of the best in the world. The people I've worked under consult with zoos and the like all over the world to set up training programs to do things like get a 200 pound tortoise to willingly offer it's body for painful medical procedures without any restraint or develop strategies to get tigers to race into their holding cages should there be an emergency such as another escaped zoo animal ending up in the tiger enclosure. If you've ever seen the bird show in Disney's Animal Kingdom in Orlando or the fantastic bird show at the Texas State Fair, those are the people I mostly trained under.

This is going to be a long post, and I hope you bear with me on it, keeping an open mind. I don't pretend to have all the answers or know everything about chameleon behavior. What I do know is that there can be incredible damage done to an animal simply by mishandling it and stressing it be it through forcing it to be in close contact with people or keeping it in conditions that are outside of the parameters the animal evolved and thrived in the wild.

I believe that very few on here have honed their observation skills of the behavior of any animal and don't even recognize the subtle physical responses to stress or even fear. Again, that's not a slight--it takes a systematic approach to observing, recording and testing any hypothesis of a behavior. That systematic approach usually needs to be taught before one can support their hypothesis of what an observed behavior actually means. That's not a criticism. It is a real skill to be observant of the very subtle behaviors, the "body language," of any animal especially an animal that lacks feathers, fur and facial muscles. I am not an expert at identifying those behaviors in chameleons and what they mean either, but I also know that I don't know. I learned under professional trainers how to observe the body language of other species and not to apply my human responses to another species. Please believe that I am not being arrogant with that statement. Let me try to explain.

Most of my work has been with parrots. I think you can even buy a book or two written for the lay person on interpreting the body language of parrots. You can learn a lot about the mental state of a parrot by observing them just sitting on a perch. Here are some of the things you can look at in a parrot:

How high are they standing on the perch, in other words is there a lot of space between their body and the perch or are they close to the perch;
How much of the beak is visible, are the feathers on their face fluffed forward covering much of the beak;
Are the pupils of the eyes dilated or contracted or are they "pinning" which means the pupils are rapidly opening and contracting many many times a minute;
Are the wings held loosely at their side or tight to the body;
Are the feathers held tightly, "slicked," to the body or loosely;
Are the feathers on the head slicked down or open and fluffed;
Are the head feathers erect, displaying;
Are the feathers loosely covering the feet;
Are the tail feathers spread.

The list goes on. If you take a photo of a bird on a perch, you can get a lot of information of the inner workings of that parrot at that particular moment in time. It helps greatly that they have feathers that can be raised or clamped to their body, just as mammals have fur that can be raised or slicked. Chameleons do not. Also helpful is the number of people who have worked with parrots, so there is a wealth of documented experience with their behaviors.

The same cannot be said about chameleons. They pose many problems for the astute observer if only just for the fact they have no facial muscles or feathers/fur. There isn't much research on their behavior in the wild. The little research in the field seems to be limited to where they are found, how dense their populations are and their physical attributes such as size, color, scalation, etc. There isn't a lot of research of their behavior in the wild (@Chris Anderson please correct me if I am wrong and direct me to the research). Complicating everything, the "stress" behavior pet people observe and report on internet forums such as this one--and bear in mind, they might not even be observing stressed behavior--is often so far past the very beginning of an observable stress response. (As an example of confusion within the pet community, think of the number of novices who write in about their chameleon doing normal basking behavior of turning dark and flattening out to the light and being told it is a stress response by another novice.)

There are basically two main types of training styles. One style uses force and pain/fear to get an animal (including humans) to comply. It can be subtle and not terribly significant to the animal, even an extension of the natural behavior for that species, such as digging your elbow or knuckles hard into the ribs of a horse to cue it to move away from you. Or, it can be quite painful/terrifying such as using a cattle prod to get the same response. (Electrical shock is by far the most aversive stimuli there is to animals based on research.) This kind of training uses escape/avoidance strategies of the animal to get the behavior. The animal is usually trained what not to do with the use of aversives.

The other school of thought is to set up the environment to get the animal to comply by choice. The animal is cued to behave and chooses to perform or not. The training is set up so that you empower the animal to change (operate within) it's environment. This is known as operant conditioning.

Both training styles can be stressful for the animal. The first, with the application of pain and fear. The second with the stress of trying to solve the puzzle of a training problem. Or setting the alternatives to the behavior we want as worse than complying. At the extreme end of positive reinforcement-only training is giving the animal the choice to perform the behavior or starve to death. Take my wild caught at the vets--he "chose" to seemingly calmly climb up on my hand rather than stay low on the edge of his little travel tote on the examining table with two giant chameleon-eating predators hovering over top of him. Of course he chose the unknown risk of climbing on my hand over staying exposed to the predators and being eaten.

Why does all this matter? Simply because many people on this forum and other internet forums are advising how to "train" chameleons to be tame and will unwittingly recommend methods that are in fact quite detrimental and stressful to chameleons.

Keep in mind, stress in chameleons means a suppressed immune system which results in poor health down the road. Also note that some stress is not all bad. It is the degree and the cumulative effect of stress one must be aware of.

Stress suppressing the immune system is a fact. Chameleons dying at a very young age in captivity is a fact. Wild caught chameleons come into the country with horrendous but healed injuries yet had gone on to grow and thrive in the wild after the injury. Wild chameleons also have a parasite load that most cope with just fine and appear in perfect health. Those are facts. So, it is obvious that how we are keeping chameleons in captivity is causing poor health and an early demise. We can't lose sight of that--something we are doing is really hard on chameleons. I do not for a moment believe it is one single thing, but a myriad of factors, and stress is a biggie. Stress absolutely suppresses the immune system. I read countless defenders of those that believe they can be family members and handled like a dog yet I also read posts from those same people who are asking for your prayers because their young chameleon is ill and dying even with top-notch veterinary care. We have to be honest about what we are doing to them.

You question my techniques to raising chameleons which is not much different than any other successful breeder would raise them. Perhaps "tame" is too loaded a word to use with chameleons. I have wild caught chameleons come running to the front of the cage when I enter the room. They are not terribly afraid of me. They have learned that I am the bringer of good things, food. But, they most certainly don't trust me.

Others have criticized me by claiming that since I try to minimize handling them, I know nothing of their true nature. Or, how can they learn to be tame when I don't give them that opportunity by forcing interactions with them. Force is the correct term to use simply because no chameleon has a social structure with their own species so they have no drive to establish one with humanity to replace their social relationships with their own kind. I do know that I am doing something right with them because I have so few deaths of wild caughts, regardless of their poor health status at arrival in my care.

I think you and most keepers are confusing a chameleon's lack of observable reaction to stimuli (such as your presence/handling of it) with a it not being stressed. Just because you you do not recognize a response doesn't mean it isn't there. The response might be observable only if you took a blood panel and measured things like stress hormone levels at the time or recorded the heart rate. My wild caught chameleon at the vet did not seem stressed. There was no flight or flight response, his color was normal "happy" colors, he wasn't frozen in fear and he was interacting with his environment. Yet I know he was stressed--he would have been brain dead if he weren't. At some point, I would like to really study chameleon behavior as it relates to stress, especially to fear. What is the very first physical response to stress/fear? What is the chameleon equivalent to a parrot, slicking it's feathers tight to its body and standing tall on a perch? At some point I will.

I believe we do a disservice to chameleons and their owners when we suggest it is possible to have a rich two-way relationship with a chameleon. I am sure there is the a chameleon and owner combination that can, but I think it is extremely rare and very much outside of the normal of what can be expected of chameleons.

Not to sound rude or anything but you're not the only one here that has had experience with the behavior of animals. I have a degree in Wildlife Biology. I also worked at a zoo for two years in Massachusetts where I took care of 36 species of Primates including spider monkeys, squirrel monkeys, chimps, baboons, lemurs, Gibbons and more. I also took care of all the Reptiles including, Aldabra tortoises, Pythons, iguanas etc. and Birds mainly parrots such as Macaws, (including Hyacinth macaws) Amazons, And African Greys to name a few. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which birds could and couldn't be handled. And birds are subjective. They like some people and hate others. Some like just like one person or hate men or hate women etc.

If you know about birds I'm also sure that you know about the stress and illnesses birds exhibit such as feather plucking and depression from being kept in a cage all their lives. Among other parrots that I've owned, I had an African Grey when I was 14 years old. At that time there wasn't much known about the husbandry, diet and nutrition of parrots and there wasn't a lot of books about it and no internet to research it. But eventually through knowledge and an exchange of ideas it was finally recognized that it was unhealthy to keep a bird in a cage continually their whole life because they are just too smart and they need outside stimulation for their health and wellbeing.

I believe that Chameleons are very similar to birds when it comes to keeping them full time in a cage. Chams are smarter then we think. Because they are intelligent, they are also subject to boredom and depression that can eventually lead to health issues. I believe that the unanimous thinking of keeping a Cham like a fish stuck in a cage all their lives with no outside stimulation is just plain "Old School' I've had chams for the past 10 years and have been on Cham Forums since 2010 and during that time period there has been no or very little advances in the husbandry of Chameleons. Everybody touts the same formula of how to take care of a Cham over and over again and unfortunately it doesn't seem to work long term. Look how many chams die after the first or second year of captivity. Chameleons have an age span of 5-8 years but most dont live that long. Obviously it's due to poor husbandry and possibly living continuously in a cage all their lives without outside stimulation.

My Jacksons Chameleons Triton, that lived for almost eight years and I believe this is because he was free ranged all his life along with lots of activity and stimulation. He got to watch what was going on around him and he interacted with his humans in our environment. He recognized me when I came into the room. He would climb down the branches in his free range which hangs from the ceiling and is about 9-10 feet long. He was always excited to see me. I would feed him and then if he felt like it he would willingly climb on my shoulder on his own and then cruise around with me. This was completely his choice.

You can't possibly tell me that my Jackson Cham, Triton, was stressed out because he liked to climb on me by himself or that he wasn't smart enough to have the thought processes to know that he liked the interaction with me, It certainly wasn't fight or flight because he could come and go from his free range as much as he pleased. Yes, at the time I was living by myself and he would roam around the house at will and would always go back to his free range on his own to sit under his heat and UVB lamps and be fed and watered. That's how smart he was. I would never have known that if he was kept in a cage. He was given the chance to live a different life then most chams outside of a cage and he adapted perfectly to his surroundings and even thrived.

Currently I have a male and female panthers that are over a year old.and they live in the same free range that my Jacksons did. It takes time, but they are becoming more social and interactive with me everyday. Every Cham goes at their own pace. Triton, my Jacksons started becoming super social at around two years old and he interacted more and more as he got older because as I found out that he was capable of learning.
Just maybe other chams would behave in a similar way if given the chance but many people are narrow minded and will never find out because they insist Chameleons shouldn't be touched and handled. I think that's a shame,

So what if new forums members get the idea of handling their Chams more often and interacting with them more. Hopefully most people will be smart enough to know their limit and not over do it and handle them to death, it's bad to over handle any animal not just chameleons. From my experience letting a Cham roam outside their cage with supervision or safely free ranging them is healthy. Over time the Cham will become more comfortable with their surroundings and their humans. But it does take time and patience. That's not teaching new members the "wrong idea" Most Chams are tougher then people think especially Veileds and Panthers. I believe that it's better to socialize them to their human environment then leaving them to cower in a cage their whole life. I think it's wrong that people are taught that their Cham will stress out, get sick and possibly die if they are handled. As far as I'm concerned that is just fallacy. Maybe it is time for a change in the common consensus about raising Chameleons and its time to stop treating these intelligent animals like delicate fish.