Not the best hunter

[RedMountainHome]

My 1.5 year old male panther, Toby, just started eating from my hand. Up til now he never ate if I was even in sight so I'm learning a lot more about him.

I've noticed that sometimes (probably less than 1/4 of the time) when he gets a big prey item, like an adult male roach, it will escape from him after he's already gotten it in his mouth. I think it's just cause he stops and glares at me after he catches stuff instead of munching on it like he should. When that happens I just grab the dropped prety and feed it right back to him and all is good the second go round.

Also, sometimes he hits prey with his tongue but it doesn't make it to his mouth. That hasn't happened often enough for me to worry that he's got some vitamin deficiency, I think again it's just that I make him nervous.

Anyone else's Cham have performance anxiety like that?

 

[Andee]

I think he the bigger prey item can just be harder to grab and maneuver well. Often when chameleons are cup fed mostly they don't use their tongues a lot and honestly their tongue muscles will get weak. It's why I always make sure to exercise my chams tongue with a couple free ranged crickets now and then or if I can hand feed make them work for it.

 

[RedMountainHome]

Same thing happened this morning. I think this time he got a wing (it was a male dubia) and it just didn't have much traction.
Now that he's starting to come calling for good I'll start SLOWLY making him work more for it. Thanks!

 

[nightanole]

Mine has been a 100% hand feeder for over 4 years (bad tongue). If it gets an adult dubia, he will walk around with it for minutes before finishing it. Hes either trying to out wait me, or waiting for it to die

 

[broderp]

............... Often when chameleons are cup fed mostly they don't use their tongues a lot and honestly their tongue muscles will get weak. ..............

I'm going to come out and say this is FALSE. Do you think if you cup feed that they pick up the food like bearded dragon or something? Of curse not. They use there tongue. My Cham has been "trough fed" since day one and his aim and targeting is crazy sharp. I have watched and video taped him hit prey in the trough from up to 8 inches or more easily and from all sorts of angles including up side down. My cham is young, about 7-8 months so he's not that big yet. I seriously doubt cup feeding weaken anything. When the occasional feeder does escape, he nails them with the same precision from a leaf or branch as he does from his trough.

 

[Andee]

A lot of chameleons are lazy with cup feeding (not every chameleon is the same remember this, have you had more than two that do this?) I have had perfectly healthy chameleons shoot maybe once or twice, get a prey item and then just walk up to the cup and stick their tongues on them. It's like any other muscle that if it doesn't get worked out it loses the strength to do what it was meant to do. Unless he's not hydrated enough or does actually have a vitamin deficiency which the most likely culprit would be either a vitamin A or D deficiency then I would think he is not working hard enough. When they are dehydrated it can easily make it hard for them to catch prey and get their tongue to stick. Vitamin A or D deficinecies can cause either tongue issues or eye sight issues. I have talked to other keepers about this before.

@kinyonga

I think @jajeanpierre knows what I was talking about, maybe @jpowell86, @jannb

The thing is, it's just like if a chameleon isn't exercising it's legs or feet correctly, stuff happens where it loses strength in those areas, you just see that much less often than you'd expect. It's usually when a chameleon is kept in a hospital cage with no real vines (even low ones) to traverse. People think it's all to blame on a the sickness, but they aren't going to get any stronger by just sitting around and not doing anything. Physical therapy is a thing for a reason. Sadly they just don't have it for reptiles.

 

[kinyonga]

I have always free ranged all the insects for all my reptiles so I have no personal experience with lazy tongues happening from cup feeding.

I do think trying to drag in larger prey items and also the "texture" of the prey's skin could play a part in whether it's successful or not. It could also depend on the stickiness of the chameleon's saliva. Wet worms and slimy slugs won't stick well.

Saliva...
https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/20/11962742/chameleon-saliva-study-sticky-tongue-hunting

The tongue...
http://reptilis.net/lacertilia/chamaeleonidae/tongue.html

 

[broderp]

A lot of chameleons are lazy with cup feeding (not every chameleon is the same remember this, have you had more than two that do this?) I have had perfectly healthy chameleons shoot maybe once or twice, get a prey item and then just walk up to the cup and stick their tongues on them. It's like any other muscle that if it doesn't get worked out it loses the strength to do what it was meant to do. Unless he's not hydrated enough or does actually have a vitamin deficiency which the most likely culprit would be either a vitamin A or D deficiency then I would think he is not working hard enough. When they are dehydrated it can easily make it hard for them to catch prey and get their tongue to stick. Vitamin A or D deficinecies can cause either tongue issues or eye sight issues. I have talked to other keepers about this before.

@kinyonga

I think @jajeanpierre knows what I was talking about, maybe @jpowell86, @jannb

The thing is, it's just like if a chameleon isn't exercising it's legs or feet correctly, stuff happens where it loses strength in those areas, you just see that much less often than you'd expect. It's usually when a chameleon is kept in a hospital cage with no real vines (even low ones) to traverse. People think it's all to blame on a the sickness, but they aren't going to get any stronger by just sitting around and not doing anything. Physical therapy is a thing for a reason. Sadly they just don't have it for reptiles.

The 3 I have had never exhibited the phenomenon you state above (walk up to the bowl and just stick their tongue on the feeder.) That sheds a somewhat different light for me if this actually happens. I'd love to hear if anyone ever had a cham do this. You're making a statement, but didn't come out and say you had a cham that was "lazy". Did you?

 

[jajeanpierre]

@Chris Anderson did some research on this. Perhaps he will weigh in.

My understanding is that the tongue is propelled mostly by elastic recoil, which is passive. Muscles tighten around the hyoid bone which squeezes the tongue and propels it forward. Elasticity is used by many animals to conserve energy. Horses use elasticity in their tendons to propel themselves--the horse's weight stretches the tendon which stores the energy and the tendon recoils giving a boost like a pogo stick.

I think most tongue issues are caused by injury or low blood serum calcium levels, not a lack of exercise. Low calcium levels in the blood are a pretty common cause of tongue issues. Blood serum calcium levels are controlled by the parathyroid gland.

NUTRITIONAL secondary hyperparathyroidism is an over production of the parathyroid hormone in response to low levels of calcium in the blood caused by diet. Calcium is taken from the bones to boost the calcium levels in the blood. This is what most people think of when they think of MBD.

RENAL secondary hyperparathyroidism looks exactly the same as nutritionally caused hyperparathyroidism. Obviously, there are differences but the end result is the same--calcium is pulled from the skeleton to increase the blood serum calcium level and the animal ends up with weak and broken bones. Renal secondary hyperparathyroidism is caused by chronic renal (kidney) failure.

 

[Andee]

@jajeanpierre if you think it's low calcium levels do you think that captive chameleons have a low level compared to most wild species. Because I have rehabbed a lot of chameleons and none have showed symptoms of calcium deficiency afterwards but they still did the cup thing even when they were getting liquid calcium before I was getting ready to ship them out to new homes? I have gotten updates months later too with pictures attached and the chams were doing amazing.

Edit: what I am most worried about is I am doing something fundamentally wrong? But I don't know what it would be since I supplement better than most people likely and I gutload better than most... But I have also changed a lot since I have gotten a new cham so I may never see signs like low calcium levels etc. Again since I plan to use uvb yes... But I will be taking every chameleon I have out for sure at least a collective 3 hours a week if not more. But idk... maybe I am just being paranoid?