Needing a jailbreak in Italy...

[jandie]

Sorry for the poor photo quality - my phone camera is not the greatest....

Finally saw my first cham in Italy today...at an aquarium/reptarium in "central" Italy... seriously considered trying to break him out.... =(

He was in a glass enclosure, with only a screen on top....they did have what looked like a mister in the enclosure...but we could tell it was "dry" in the enclosure and the poor thing, the entire enclosure was no higher than my chest, and the cham had nowhere "up" to go to.... I saw one mealworm in the feeder bowl....and they did at least have him by himself and have fake plants and such in the enclosure, but it still broke my heart. =(

What you can't tell (bc of the pic quality)....he is mostly green, but has some brilliant blues on the bottom/belly area of the bars and quite a bit of red in the main barring area. I'm sure, fired up, he would be amazing! But he hardly even reacted when we tried to somewhat interact with him... and there's a huge "sore" or some sort of buildup on one of his front legs.... =(

 

[ChamomilleCame]

To me, his legs on the front look bent... Don't know if that's just me though

 

[jandie]

just from what it looked like to me, i'm guessing MBD....and not sure what else is going on to cause the lump on his leg. he also seemed to have a burn scar or something on his head....not huge, but still.... his eyes are not sunken in or anything, but unless they JUST cleaned the enclosure, i didn't even see any urates or anything... =(

 

[ataraxia]

Those arms look fine to me..

 

[pssh]

What are you seeing on the leg? Maybe I'm just not seeing it? It looks like the animal is just holding it at a strange angle.

Anywho, chameleons can live and thrive in glass enclosures. For the most part, screen or other well ventilated enclosures are recommended, but glass can be used successfully. They also can live in very small cages. Gary Ferguson found that cages as small as 12x12x18 were satisfactory for males. Bigger is better obviously, but small can work.

 

[jandie]

i couldn't get a good picture of the front of his right leg...you can only kinda see part of the white spot in the picture.....but it was a huge growth/knot/something on his right front leg. and though i know glass enclosures can be used...it was the combination of the glass, the dry climate, the fact that the poor little guy had no way to climb "up" above/away from immediate stressors and the spot on his leg.

might not be easy to see, but he's looking like he's developing that "second joint" look in his legs, which is what made me suspect the MBD....

 

[kaity]

His legs look a little weird to me also, I would guess beginning stages of MBD too but especially the way he is using the branch as support for his body. Sometimes phone pictures can warp the angles a bit...

Otherwise he does not look underfed and his eyes do not look sunken in, and then enclosure sounds adequate just not ideal.

 

[jandie]

His legs look a little weird to me also, I would guess beginning stages of MBD too but especially the way he is using the branch as support for his body. Sometimes phone pictures can warp the angles a bit...

Otherwise he does not look underfed and his eyes do not look sunken in, and then enclosure sounds adequate just not ideal.

yeah...i agree...."adequate", but you know how we cham lovers are...lol..."ideal" is the only "acceptable", right? lol.

the phone camera definitely distorted the colors...haha...i swear everything in there was not just green. hehe...

wish i had been able to get a good picture of his other leg though...

just makes me sad that the first cham i've seen in the country and i wanted to chat with whoever had this poor little guy set up like this. though i'm pretty sure my lack of italian and the normal charades/gesturing that get us by here at the moment probably would not have sufficed for this conversation. lol.

i'm pretty sure there was no alarm...just a camera....and i'm sure my husband wouldn't be at all surprised if i showed up with a captured cham in hand.