SUPERWORMS KILLING CHAMELEONS

[cyberlocc]

I'm not criticizing you or doubting the benefit of having natural feeders in a cham's diet. I don't have an issue with anyone putting a focus on this either, I'm sure it wouldn't hurt and maybe has benefit. IMO though, the argument that they should only be fed what is found in their natural habitat is flawed. I know not a great comparison, but humans largely benefit off eating non native foods and foods that were only bred/grown into existence thousands of years later. I bet many other animals do too. It's just about meeting the macro/micro nutrient requirements for the particular person. Unless there is an intolerance of something(example, same diet doesn't work the same for every person), I don't know why it would matter. I would love to see a timeline of chams fed an all natural(or as close to as possible) vs chams fed the more conventional foods gutloaded. Highly doubt it'd make much of a difference in their lifespan, but who knows. I think we have came so far in this hobby that we're trying to make problems out of nothing, just like we see in societies that have gotten too easy. Not that there isn't room to improve, but whether someone is feeding 10 bees or or the equivalent of that in crickets dusted with be pollen, I just can't bring myself to believe it would make a difference... could be wrong of course.

I think what is more important would be to find out what they eat the most in the wild, so bees, beetles, hoppers, whatever... find out the nutrients in those, let's say they're all lean protein, very little fat(just a guess). Then just replicate that through commonly available feeders.

Sorry typed this up in a hurry, hope it makes sense.

I'm not sure that its so much of a nutrient factor alone, as it is an Enrichment/Entertainment/Exercise Value, IMO.

Obviously feeding roaches is fine. We do it, they eat them. so where is the glaring issue? We have to feed them via a cup, that would be the glaring issue right there lol.

Chameleons are not designed to eat roaches. They are mechanically built to eat flying insects, and arboreal ones. Roaches are neither, Crickets sort of are, some of them (there was a couple crickets consumed on that study, btw I forgot, more so Katydids though.)


Just my opinion, and I mean no offense! I currently cup feed too. HOWEVER, honestly I have came to the personal opinion that cup feeding is no better than the reddit guys giving water in shot glasses. Not ever will a chameleon eat a worm of any kind in the wild, nor will they drink standing water. We bash them for their shot glass water, while cup feeding worms, its literally no different.


Obviously we cant match insects to the T, we cant get most of them. What we can do, is use our American counterparts, or legal to ship versions of insects and push into a more naturalistic diet. Not just for micro nutrients, but to get the unnatural cup out of the Viv, and get our chameleons behaving like chameleons, Actively hunting flying prey and arboreal insects. Bees we are not going to get, Beetles we may need to adjust a bit, we cant match species so like I said Mealworm beetles, or like the flower beetles we have. Click beetles are legal and sold, and make a decent size of the beetles consumed, True Weevils are the most of beetles, we have those in the hobby but they are small, maybe try for finding some bigger ones. Smaller feeders and more of them, that they have to actively hunt, may be better anyway.

Like Petr said, alot of folks chams are fat. Thats likely because we are feeding fat riddled unnatural worms in Cups. I know you brought up humans and changing our diets, we do, we did, and now we have a population of overweight by a large margin, on a majority scale (Myself included, not going to lie) humans that are riddled with unnatural issues such as diabetes. Our advancement in food, wasn't really an advancement at all.


We can get and already do feed flies. Look at that graph, first option is Calci Worms, why are we going out of our way to feed Soldier fly larvae, which is not natural at all, when Soldier flies they become are very natural and loved by chams. I throw the calci worms in my viv, and when they become flies my cham chases every one down, for hours he runs around chasing them, thats what he should be doing, not eating the larvae out of a cup.


Its really easy to be more natural in that aspect. Drop crickets (or feed them sometimes) add beetles, as we can, free ranged, stop feeding worms feed the flies, stop feeding supers feed the beetles, let it all run around the cage and the cham chase it. Most of the feeders are right/fine, the issue is we are feeding the wrong life cycle. Chameleons would eat horn worm moths, they will not eat hornworms. We are adapting the lifecycles, to match what we want, not whats best for the animal, or more natural.

 

[Tinytort]

I started out free ranging feeders, but I couldn't keep track of how many he was eating and I made a feeder cup much like the sharp shooter for the crickets. I Just removed it and going back to free range. Once I let the crickets lose Orion immediately went hunting. I honestly feel better about it for his sake and I think he is much happier now that the thing is removed lol

 

[Tinytort]

I also hand feed bsfl and he is becoming more tolerant of me and even came out on my hand on his own for the first time today.