Sugars in a chameleon's diet?

K

kinyonga

Chameleon Queen
It's said that chameleons can't digest fruits and that the sugars in them are not good for the chameleons...is this true? Does anyone know of any studies proving this? Especially about the sugars?

In this site it says..."The most frequent feeders in the wild are bees, wasps, flies and small beetles for most of the species. What are these naturally gut-loaded with? With pollen, nectar from the flowers, that is it"...
https://www.chameleons.info/l/the-sweet-sour-story-of-the-gut-loading/


This site says..."Nectar is mainly a watery solution of the sugars fructose, glucose, and sucrose but also contains traces of proteins, salts, acids, and essential oils. Sugar content varies from 3 to 80 percent"...
"Honeybees gather nectar mainly from the blossoms and rarely gather nectars having less than 15 percent sugar content. At least one plant species, Oenothera drummondii, can increase the sugar content of its nectar within three minutes of the flower being vibrated by buzzing bees"...
https://www.britannica.com/science/nectar

If this is true, then how is it that wild chameleons eat so many pollinators and other insects that drink nectar and yet it's ok?
The sugars don't seem to be a problem even though the bees look for the blossoms with higher content of sugar.

Bee pollen has sugars in it too..."fructose ranged from 10.79% to 23.88%, glucose from 8.92% to 18.70% and sucrose from only 2.62% to 22.04%"...
https://www.mdpi.com/2304-8158/10/9/2103/htm

This thread may be of interest too...
https://www.chameleonforums.com/threads/fructose-insects-fruits.162427/
 
Last edited:
kinyonga said:
If this is true, then how is it that wild chameleons eat so many pollinators and other insects that drink nectar and yet it's ok?
The sugars don't seem to be a problem even though the bees look for the blossoms with higher content of sugar.
Click to expand...
Just a SWAG*... Activity levels. In the wild, they may burn off 10X as much energy hunting, avoiding being eaten by a larger predator, and in search of and fighting for nookie. I would imagine stress plays a role as well. 🤓

Meanwhile, our captive friends can sit around much of the day basking and waiting for their next meal to be hand-delivered/served by people whose only purpose is to wait on them mitten & foot.
Nice work if you can get it. :LOL:
  • Give a marathon runner a candy bar (I know they wouldn't IRL), and they'll likely (figuratively) inhale it and still weigh less at the end of a race.

  • I can put on five pounds just thinking about a candy bar! 😒
    (Mmmmm... Candy Bar! 😋 )

* Sophisticated Wild-Ass Guess
 
Mountain Dragon said:
Wow it’s like clock work seeing you guys research
Click to expand...

It's nothing compared to trying to research before Manbearpig invented the Interweb, ca. 1990 or so.

Long ago in a galaxy far, far away... In the years between 1990-1995, when content began to expand beyond academia, military, and porn, I was on a Listserv (Do they have those anymore? Yes, Virginia, there are still Listservs) of—and for—reference librarians, who are bigger nerds than I'll ever be.

EDIT: I wasn't a reference librarian, but they were receptive to the research I was doing at the time, so they graciously allowed me on the list. And it did help further the research. :)

Ahh, the good ol' days... (heavy sigh) 😌
 
Last edited:
kinyonga said:
It's said that chameleons can't digest fruits and that the sugars in them are not good for the chameleons...is this true? Does anyone know of any studies proving this? Especially about the sugars?

In this site it says..."The most frequent feeders in the wild are bees, wasps, flies and small beetles for most of the species. What are these naturally gut-loaded with? With pollen, nectar from the flowers, that is it"...
https://www.chameleons.info/l/the-sweet-sour-story-of-the-gut-loading/


This site says..."Nectar is mainly a watery solution of the sugars fructose, glucose, and sucrose but also contains traces of proteins, salts, acids, and essential oils. Sugar content varies from 3 to 80 percent"...
"Honeybees gather nectar mainly from the blossoms and rarely gather nectars having less than 15 percent sugar content. At least one plant species, Oenothera drummondii, can increase the sugar content of its nectar within three minutes of the flower being vibrated by buzzing bees"...
https://www.britannica.com/science/nectar

If this is true, then how is it that wild chameleons eat so many pollinators and other insects that drink nectar and yet it's ok?
The sugars don't seem to be a problem even though the bees look for the blossoms with higher content of sugar.

Bee pollen has sugars in it too..."fructose ranged from 10.79% to 23.88%, glucose from 8.92% to 18.70% and sucrose from only 2.62% to 22.04%"...
https://www.mdpi.com/2304-8158/10/9/2103/htm

This thread may be of interest too...
https://www.chameleonforums.com/threads/fructose-insects-fruits.162427/
Click to expand...
What follows is sort of a stream of consciousness about this and sharing of some articles and ideas.

I appreciate you bringing this up, as it's been floating around but has little evidence or studies supporting its application to captive husbandry to my knowledge. I think it has mostly been argued by one particular well-known chameleon enthusiast.

I might be accidentally strawmanning this, but the argument as I know it is that the fruits we eat are so full of sugar (fructose) that they are not a natural food item anymore because they're so far removed from what exists in the wild, especially from the natural habitats calyptratus inhabits. Furthermore, there is an argument that chameleons cannot digest the "sugar" in fruits (although sugars in fruits are variable and the term is broad). I take issue with this, as we are not talking about feeding exclusively these fruits in isolation. Sugars are present in many foods and prey items consumed by chameleons (as you nicely point out) and we are talking about feeding a diet comprised of many things. Further, as someone who has published on the impact of diet on immune system and liver physiology, I can tell you it is not about a single ingredient most of the time, but the overall composition of nutrients in the diet. So I can see not exclusively feeding fruit, or not using it for gutload for every single insect, but completely avoiding the ingredients for the above reasons doesn't stack up to me.

I'm not advocating for people to feed their chameleons fruit constantly, but I don't think the reasons why fruits should be avoided (as food, as gutload) are totally solid. I don't bother with fruits except for gutloading on occasion, but I doubt they do much harm. There's also an argument that citrus should be avoided because it causes "breakdown of homeostasis", I have some concerns about that and I don't think it's accurate nor are there any studies that I'm aware of that look into this.

Here's a couple papers that are worth discussing, but do not really support the whole "chameleons can't digest sugar" thing. I unfortunately don't think this has been tested rigorously in chameleons specifically, but here's some stuff in other reptiles that might be able to be extrapolated to chameleons.

https://journals.physiology.org/doi/epdf/10.1152/ajpgi.1985.249.2.G271
One is demonstrating in turtles, chuckawallas and iguanas, that rates of glucose uptake in the intestines are less than mammalian uptake but this is because of differences in overall anatomy and decreased surface area of intestinal mucosa rather than something intrinsic to the biochemistry of the system. However, there is still plenty of glucose uptake in reptiles. Maybe this was taken out of context to argue that chameleons can't digest sugar. Obviously the study was not done in chameleons but there is some reason to believe the findings are similar.

https://journals.physiology.org/doi/abs/10.1152/ajpregu.1996.271.5.R1447
This one just demonstrates that some lizards have ability to run similar metabolic pathways we do, one of which utilizes a metabolite of fructose (F26BP), suggesting that there might be mechanisms to modulate dietary fructose uptake, conversion etc. in reptiles. This does not necessarily mean reptiles (chameleons) uptake fructose, but it at least suggests that the fructose molecule is not totally foreign to their systems.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene/6518/ortholog/?scope=8504
Using NCBI blast, one can identify that corn snakes express the gene encoding the enzyme that leads to uptake of fructose (so digestion), which is a bit surprising.

Now, here's where things get a bit interesting.

I am not able to find a homologous glut5 (SLC2A5) gene (encoding the main enzyme that uptakes fructose) in the veiled chameleon genome. This doesn't necessarily mean they don't uptake fructose, but if they do, it might be through a different mechanism. So maybe this is the source of the idea that they can't digest sugar-they don't have a similar gene as the typical fructose transporter. Again, this doesn't mean there's no way for them to take up the fructose, just that it might be a different mechanism.

So, the last bit is the only thing that supports any inability to digest fructose, but it is far from conclusive.

It's an interesting topic. However, even if we were to determine that chameleons cannot uptake any fructose at all and it's sitting idly in their gut (I think this is very unlikely), nobody has demonstrated that this is a bad thing. Further, other species of chameleons have been documented eating fruits in the wild. A lot of steps are necessary to really get at why feeding/gutloading with fruits is a bad idea. I think it's worth considering all of this though and keeping things in moderation. Probably not worth feeding chameleons fruit regularly regardless, as it doesn't seem like a major part of the diet in the wild, IMO.
 
@javadi said..."What follows is sort of a stream of consciousness about this and sharing of some articles and ideas"...exactly what I was hoping for.

You said..."Sugars are present in many foods and prey items consumed by chameleons (as you nicely point out) and we are talking about feeding a diet comprised of many things. Further, as someone who has published on the impact of diet on immune system and liver physiology, I can tell you it is not about a single ingredient most of the time, but the overall composition of nutrients in the diet. So I can see not exclusively feeding fruit, or not using it for gutload for every single insect, but completely avoiding the ingredients for the above reasons doesn't stack up to me"...I agree that it's not about a single ingredient. I never use it in big amounts in a gutload either...just believe in doing things in moderation.

I also have used pears, for instance, to feed to even a chameleon that is not normally eating any fruit that is constipated....but it's only done for a day or two...so I can't see how the sugar can be a problem...or even the digestibility of the fruit for thatmatter
 
kinyonga said:
@javadi said..."What follows is sort of a stream of consciousness about this and sharing of some articles and ideas"...exactly what I was hoping for.

You said..."Sugars are present in many foods and prey items consumed by chameleons (as you nicely point out) and we are talking about feeding a diet comprised of many things. Further, as someone who has published on the impact of diet on immune system and liver physiology, I can tell you it is not about a single ingredient most of the time, but the overall composition of nutrients in the diet. So I can see not exclusively feeding fruit, or not using it for gutload for every single insect, but completely avoiding the ingredients for the above reasons doesn't stack up to me"...I agree that it's not about a single ingredient. I never use it in big amounts in a gutload either...just believe in doing things in moderation.

I also have used pears, for instance, to feed to even a chameleon that is not normally eating any fruit that is constipated....but it's only done for a day or two...so I can't see how the sugar can be a problem...or even the digestibility of the fruit for thatmatter
Click to expand...

I too, have fed small amounts of fruit and greens. We have seen a panther in the wild eating mango.
 
kinyonga said:
It's said that chameleons can't digest fruits and that the sugars in them are not good for the chameleons...is this true? Does anyone know of any studies proving this? Especially about the sugars?

In this site it says..."The most frequent feeders in the wild are bees, wasps, flies and small beetles for most of the species. What are these naturally gut-loaded with? With pollen, nectar from the flowers, that is it"...
https://www.chameleons.info/l/the-sweet-sour-story-of-the-gut-loading/


This site says..."Nectar is mainly a watery solution of the sugars fructose, glucose, and sucrose but also contains traces of proteins, salts, acids, and essential oils. Sugar content varies from 3 to 80 percent"...
"Honeybees gather nectar mainly from the blossoms and rarely gather nectars having less than 15 percent sugar content. At least one plant species, Oenothera drummondii, can increase the sugar content of its nectar within three minutes of the flower being vibrated by buzzing bees"...
https://www.britannica.com/science/nectar

If this is true, then how is it that wild chameleons eat so many pollinators and other insects that drink nectar and yet it's ok?
The sugars don't seem to be a problem even though the bees look for the blossoms with higher content of sugar.

Bee pollen has sugars in it too..."fructose ranged from 10.79% to 23.88%, glucose from 8.92% to 18.70% and sucrose from only 2.62% to 22.04%"...
https://www.mdpi.com/2304-8158/10/9/2103/htm

This thread may be of interest too...
https://www.chameleonforums.com/threads/fructose-insects-fruits.162427/
Click to expand...
As usual, your knack for bringing empirical data to bear on conceptual muddles is prodigious! There are definitely some data points that stand in need of reconciliation. I admit to having been swayed by arguments suggesting that vegetable matter is poorly digested. However, I feel like I don’t know enough to form an opinion on whether this is related to sugar content, or cellulose, or something else. Thanks for the prompt, K! I’ll have to bone up on my data. 😉
 
you said..."As usual, your knack for bringing empirical data to bear on conceptual muddles is prodigious! There are definitely some data points that stand in need of reconciliation"... For sure things things still need more consideration.

You said... "I admit to having been swayed by arguments suggesting that vegetable matter is poorly digested. However, I feel like I don’t know enough to form an opinion on whether this is related to sugar content, or cellulose, or something else. Thanks for the prompt, K! I’ll have to bone up on my data. 😉"...I don't think the sugar has a lot to do with he digestion of the veggies and greens...maybe the fruits.

I still feel that the way the leaves seem to be wrapped around the fecal matter and the fact that some parasites are sometimes at least found wrapped inside that leaves that don't digest well could also be selected as a way to eliminate parasites from the chameleon's system. That not saying that the leaves aren't also helping to move food along the digestive tract too.

I'd still like to know how/why the chameleons would eat insects like bees and other pollinators that have a fairly high sugar content if the sugars are harmful to them.

There are still lots of questions out there about diet to be answered IMHO.
 
Beman said:
@kinyonga one reference... Under Eating Leaves and Plant Matter https://chameleonacademy.com/basics-feeding-chameleons/

There was a podcast as well where he speaks about the sugars but I do not remember which one. Basically Veileds are dump trucks that will eat anything. So just because they eat it that does not mean it is good for them.
Click to expand...


If you could figure out where the sugars were talked about, I'd aporeciate it. I though it might have been in this forum...but I can't find it either.
 
javadi said:
Sugars are present in many foods and prey items consumed by chameleons
Click to expand...
kinyonga said:
Sugars are not only found in fruits but insects as well...
Click to expand...
TMK, sugars are found in all living things—animal and vegetable. This is basic biology.
https://basicbiology.net/micro/biochemistry/carbohydrates.

So sugars are—to some extent—in everything any chameleon eats.

javadi said:
I am not able to find a homologous glut5 (SLC2A5) gene (encoding the main enzyme that uptakes fructose) in the veiled chameleon genome. This doesn't necessarily mean they don't uptake fructose, but if they do, it might be through a different mechanism. So maybe this is the source of the idea that they can't digest sugar-they don't have a similar gene as the typical fructose transporter. Again, this doesn't mean there's no way for them to take up the fructose, just that it might be a different mechanism.
Click to expand...
One such mechanism might be gut microbes. If I remember high school biology correctly, it doesn't take a lot to break complex sugars down into simple ones via hydrolysis.
 
Klyde O'Scope said:
TMK, sugars are found in all living things—animal and vegetable. This is basic biology.
https://basicbiology.net/micro/biochemistry/carbohydrates.

So sugars are—to some extent—in everything any chameleon eats.


One such mechanism might be gut microbes. If I remember high school biology correctly, it doesn't take a lot to break complex sugars down into simple ones via hydrolysis.
Click to expand...
Yes, sugar is present in all living things. Didn’t mean to imply that wasn’t the case. The bacterial metabolism angle is an interesting one, but if we are talking about fructose, it’s a simple sugar not a complex one. So there’s not too much more to breakdown compared to the well-described breakdown of complex carbs by microbes that you indicate. but maybe the microbes in chameleons do so with fructose and we just aren’t aware of it. And this still leaves us with the interesting issue that it seems veiled chameleons don’t have the fructose transporter homologous to humans and snakes itself. So if this were the case it might mean fructose breakdown is more reliant on microbes in chameleons than other organisms, which would be interesting. Perhaps sucrose is another sugar worth considering in addition to fructose.
 
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