Jackson's allowed to fight?!

[Jdean300]

I just recently rescued a young jackson chameleon and so became interested in seeing other peoples jacksons. A quick youtube search brought up a video that, to my knowledge, is kind of cruel and disgusting. Someone was letting two jackson chameleons have a "shoving" match with their horns, defending it as being a natural part of their life. The comments were filled with self-proclaimed experts, some stating it as an acceptable thing to do as long as it was properly supervised, and some condemning it as cruel (as i would).

While I am pretty sure this was a horrible example of chameleon husbandry, is this at all acceptable for jacksons? Has anyone heard of similar things? Considering how sensitive chameleons can be to stress, I don't see this being at all proper.

 

[kplatvoet]

Some people think fighting dogs is good too- idiots - while they do fight in the wild - why would anyone do that with one they are trying to keep healthy and happy?

 

[ferretinmyshoes]

I don't think it's appropriate to pair the males and make them fight because the sole purpose of that kind of endeavor is to watch them fight for fun. It's not necessary to trigger breeding and doesn't have any health benefits or anything like that. However I wouldn't go so far as to say it's cruel. They do fight in the wild when they want to, and they can't physically hurt each other (okay probably in rare cases they can) despite how cool their horns look. It would be cruel if they were fighting to injure or to kill and people still knowingly forced them into that situation, like dogs or roosters. But that's not the case. I don't think it should be done because it's purely for human amusement and it is definitely stressful for the chams but that doesn't qualify it as cruel. Most breeders show panther makes to each other to get them to show off their prettiest colors for pictures. Even that is stressful for them but they don't allow them to physically interact with each. Some people throw around the term animal cruelty for the wrong situations and then when there is actual cruelty involved the phrase has been overused so it doesn't get the real attention it deserves so it's important to know the difference and label it correctly.

 

[Jdean300]

Yeah I guess I might of exaggerated things with saying it's cruel, but a large part of that to me is that it was done for someone's amusement. I'm sure there are cases where they assert their dominance in the wild through these fights, but in the video I had seen the guy purposely put them together for fighting. If they were both free range chameleons and they got into a little fight, I wouldn't see very much wrong with this as long as they were otherwise well cared for.