Panther's mid-life crisis color change?

[ferretinmyshoes]

Oscar is a 3 year old red bar ambilobe. A few months ago he had a bout of pretty bad gular edema. I believe it was due to excess vitamin A in the gutload, which was corrected as soon as edema was noted. At the time he started having edema his resting colors changed pretty dramatically. His edema is almost resolved (there is just a tiny pocket left, as opposed to very obvious saggy man boobs of fluid) but his colors have not gone back to normal. I really don't have an explanation for it! Throughout everything he has been acting totally normally, eating and drinking great and feeling like himself. He's a very friendly cham and has done several school presentations with me, and just this past Wednesday he performed beautifully as always without hardly showing a single sign of stress. I love the squeals of kiddos who get to see him zap a bug!

Anyway, just wanted to show some pics of his change. He seems to have lost almost all of his red, and now he looks more like a blue bar!

This has been normal for him since he reached a year of age:

Lots of red, especially on his head. And always purple turrets with red streaks.

Now his new color scheme:

He's very dull without his red actually. And his turrets are this muddy grey with just a hint of green around his eye and that's it.

And this was his normal fired up colors:

Fired up now:

Very different, and it doesn't look like he's going to change back anytime soon since he's been like this for months. With his personality I wouldn't trade him for anything, it's just unusual! Has anyone else had a chameleon mid-life crisis color change?

 

[Trace]

Has he recently bought a fancy sports car? Hairpiece?

 

[ataraxia]

Feel fortunate you have have four beautiful chameleons in one!

Maybe he is more jing sin.

 

[ferretinmyshoes]

Has he recently bought a fancy sports car? Hairpiece?

Lol, well it's no fancy sports car, that's for sure!

 

[ataraxia]

haha!!!! love it..

 

[DavidBuchan]

Well I never heard of it before, but I never saw a Cham driving any type of car before so it shows what I know...............
Maybe he is feeling a bit insecure about his boobs (maybe best to keep him away from mirrors ) You can tell him from me that he still looks good though.

 

[ataraxia]

well i never heard of it before, but i never saw a cham driving any type of car before so it shows what i know...............
Maybe he is feeling a bit insecure about his boobs (maybe best to keep him away from mirrors ) you can tell him from me that he still looks good though.

lmao!!!!!!!!

 

[Captive Creations]

He is beautiful either way

 

[Robyrango]

Fascinating! He's beautiful.. With every outfit he decides to put on!
My Cham shows the colors displayed in the last pic when he's at rest but he's only 9m, cant wait to see what happen when he'll be fully grown! Amazing creatures!

 

[ferretinmyshoes]

Here's his last outfit since he's showing off anyway.

That was when he got a tad too hot in his outside cage on a day that got a lot warmer than promised! He doesn't even look like the same cham! A few douses of water and he went back to his normal greens and reds.

 

[ferretinmyshoes]

Well I never heard of it before, but I never saw a Cham driving any type of car before so it shows what I know...............
Maybe he is feeling a bit insecure about his boobs (maybe best to keep him away from mirrors ) You can tell him from me that he still looks good though.

lol! He actually gets more stressed being put in a box, or even staying in his cage when we travel. I've tried it and he flipped out. But sitting on my arm (and steering wheel sometimes) he just calmly watches the world go by and chills until we get wherever we're going. He's an odd one for sure.

 

[AZcham new boy]

Maybe he's Jason and that's his technicolored dream coat?

Wicked colour in all ur pics, quite jelous.

 

[Ace]

hey,

just to put out my zulu busted the same thing, lost nearly all his red and orange on hos body and is more of a green body blue bar...all that remains are deep red dots on his barring


it really is amazing and my guy is barely gonna be 2 years old this june

i'll post pics later to show too but yeah can't explain the sudden wardrobe change....and i miss his red

 

[ferretinmyshoes]

Wow Zulu?! He is one of the beautiful chams ever! Sounds like the same thing with my guy. The only red now is just the few bright spots in his bars when he's fired up. One of the kids thought he was bleeding. I don't have any ideas why they would change like this. Thanks for chiming in about it. I want to see Zulu pics!

 

[Ace]

lol i appreciate the kind words. He's been looking drabby though lately lol

here is a before and after pics..the first one is when he was a 1 yr old, the next one is of him now

Wow Zulu?! He is one of the beautiful chams ever! Sounds like the same thing with my guy. The only red now is just the few bright spots in his bars when he's fired up. One of the kids thought he was bleeding. I don't have any ideas why they would change like this. Thanks for chiming in about it. I want to see Zulu pics!

 

[Synapse]

Same thing happened to my oldest panther (ambilobe). He used to have a red head, legs, arms, tail with yellow barring. Now he's almost pure green with bright blue bars with hints of yellow. But like you said, it's their personalities that we bond to and I don't love him any less.

 

[ferretinmyshoes]

PS, my panther is suddenly getting all his red back! No real explanation for why but it's definitely making a comeback!

His gular edema is much improved but still present in a small pocket. From talking with others who have had affected panthers (including a vet or two) it seems like the best treatment is really good hydration, good calcium balance and natural sunlight. Keeping them very well hydrated seems to be the most reliable factor in reducing the edema. Hornworms work wonderfully for this. When he was a good schedule for drinking (he's absurdly stubborn about drinking) his edema pretty much went away completely. This coupled with a good calcium balance makes me very suspicious of a renal (kidney) component strongly linked to gular edema, as these are the same recommendations made for kidney disease/damage. I have no concrete proof of this, but it would make sense to me that kidney problems will have an effect on how certain things are eliminated from the body (vitamins, proteins, etc). So either loss of too much of one thing (albumin comes to mind) or decreased ability to excrete others (such as vitamin A) could potentially cause edema. Too bad there is no published literature on gular edema...

Anyway, just an update for those interested.

 

[BugCatcher]

Well how about a pic or two! You know we love pictures

 

[ferretinmyshoes]

Lol, okay!

This was taken today:

Big change from this, what he looked like just last week:

His purple turrets with red streaks are back! Those are my favorite part

 

[Olimpia]

How bizarre lol I'm lucky that we're coming on two years and Daedalus hasn't had any major changes to his look, I like him a lot the way he is.