What colour gloves?

[Jonas]

I get you now. Im just a bit cranky when it comes to handling reptiles as if they were social animals.

I must say that my experience is that its almost all about individuality; Ive had chameleons that would bite my head of if given the chance, and some that were just naturally more relaxed. Most of them were never handled more than a handful of times over their lifespan.

Then there is ofcourse a matter of different life stage strategies within the same individual, where young chameleons choose not to fight because they have no mass to back them up. This gives the impression of a calm and non defensive animal, but a few monts later when they get larger, they turn into monsters as they can use force to defend themselves with their larges size. Its fun to see.

 

[jojackson]

Michael Jackson Had a cham In his private zoo, Make sure your gloves are glittery, with sequins!!!

Seriously, observe and learn your lizards behaviours, you can avoid being bitten!
No animal bites without warning, you just need to know what the warning signals are and approach from below and slowly.

........................Gloves!

 

[jheitz]

For having such small, primitive brains, reptiles have a vast array of emotions and personalilty. I've hade chams that loved social interaction, a savannah monitor that thought it was a dog, and a female veiled that would chase you out of the room!!! I do agree with Jonas, the least amount of interaction is ideal to avoid stress and stress related diseases, however, if you animal perfers to interact with you, do so. This helps to establish a report between pet and owner, as well as provides an emotional relief/benefit for the animal.

 

[Jonas]

Mmmm, actually, and I do not want to be pegged as a "know it all" or start a debate, but the thing is that no reptiles are classic social animals. This is not "social" as in mingling with friends, "social animals" is a biological therm.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_animals

It is a common thing to think/say "my dog thinks he is a human", or "my lizard thinks he is a dog" etc etc.
In reallity, humans are priobably the only species on earth that have the ability to think outside its own species.
A dog that meets a pig will not understand it is a pig with its own "pig language", but rather interpret the pigs behaviour with the referense of a dogs behaviour. So, a dog never thinks he is a human, but he will think the humans are dogs, so to speak.

A good example is cats and dogs. A "happy" dog will wag its tail. A cat that is annoyed or "angry" will whip its tail. Imagine how this must be "lost in translation" between the cat and the dog.

Reptiles will never look for interaction with a human. Some species will have the ability to connect their owner with food etc, but this is not a social behaviour.
I know that there are always some people who will be sad to learn this, or even deny modern science and still claim that their lizard likes to inteact. It is and will always be a misinterpred meaning of the situation.

We are no different than the dogs in a way, we humans will always interpret things in human behaviour and terms, its in our genes to do so. We can easilly see a human face in a smiley etc.
But we do have the ability to learn that Anthropomorphism (the attribution of human characteristics to animals) is a false way of looking at things, and thereby understand animals better.