Reptile Forum, Reptile Classifieds - CaptiveBred

[RobUKChams]

Very interesting discussion and observations. I think it highlights that chameleons constantly surprise us.

A few observations of my own:

I have kept and researched multi occupant caging for many years and have observed the following:

Yemens seem the most dangerous paring out of all the chams I have kept. If they don't get on, and it might just happen one day, the damage they can inflict on each other is often fatal.
That said I have seem more sibling bonding in yemens than in any other species. ie Some pairs kept together from birth deteriorate when moved apart at an adult age.
I have measured the body temperatures of chams kept together and even in the "bonded" pairs the average body temperature differs between dominant and submissive animals. The dominant animal keeps a more constant temperature consistent with singly kept animals. The more submissive animals have a lower average temperature with spikes of hot and cold. I think this indicates the submissive animals bask when they can and sometimes longer than they may need to try and balance out when they cant bask due to the dominant animal. When I use dominant I don,t mean obvious aggression.
I would stress this is my take on it and the graphs make interesting reading but my research was far from good science and wasn't carried out with big groups either.

Panthers. I had two sister female panthers who went everywhere together and one died 2 months after the other. I have encountered two males (unrelated) who to this day still live together in a conservatory and stay together most of the time.
In both these cases the animals were poor breeders and suffered frequent ill health which worsened when separated. Damned if you do, damned if you dont in the immortal words of Bart Simpson.
I would not ever try and keep Panthers together for any reason.

I have seen carpets kept in groups with no obvious problems although carpets are more lizard like than any other species of cham I have worked with.

Hoehnelli - I have seen these kept in groups although some of them made poor breeders. Keeping them apart from a youngish age helped future clutches. These were in standard mesh cages. They may fair well in bigger cages. I haven't tried so can't comment.

Fischers seem to do OKish in small groups in very well planted enclosures although egg production is effected.

Part 2 to follow - I have to go out now.

regards

Rob

[Rickeezee]

Interesting observations Rob. My group of Yemens dual bask or utilise the various basking sites individually. I must admit I have not taken their body temperatures.

I can not comment on the other groupings as all my other chams live individually apart from my carpets who are a relatively young group, thus far they appear to be doing well.

At what age did you split the baby Panthers up? I would also be interested in any Panther baby growth charts or growth information that you have for the specific locales if possible please or in just panther sin general.

Personally speaking I have found panther baby growth to be relatively slow, whether this be panthers I have bred, obtained from Europe or from other UK breeders. They all seem to grow at similar rates, which when reading one or two others posts about baby panther grow they do not seem to tally with my results. I have found the Panthers to go through growth spurts. When they are a few weeks old I split them into smaller groups by size, then after another few weeks into individual tanks. Gut instinct tells me this may not be the best way as they do not seem to like to many new homes in to short a time.

Recently I aquired a pair of Sambavas and no matter what I did they remained quite small for some considerable time, but within the last month one of them has come on in leaps and bounds, I tend to find this with most of the baby panthers, little growth then spurts of growth, has anyone else found this?

I have a group of baby Ankaramies that I split into individual housing recently, they appeared to feed less so I rehoused them togehter again and they are feeding much better again now and are more active. They were only approx three weeks old when I obtained them. They are at six weeks of age now.

Also I wonder if too much interference with the babies and to much tweaking of conditions actually inhibits them and causes undue stress.
Cheers.
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www.rickslivefood.co.uk

[Scott W]

Hi Rob,
thanks for posting.

Very interesting, never actually thought of checking body temps but certainly makes sense that the dominant animal would be the one to have the higher temp. I would pretty much guess this would go for a lot of species currently kept in groups, even bearded dragons etc.

I can see quite easily how a group situation could end in disaster, i.e. not enough basking spots, food scattered and even not enough visual barriers within the cage.

I think the key to it is perhaps rearing from a young age and then providing optimum conditions. As you probably know I keep a very large colony of Rhacodactylus ciliatus, these are nearly always 100% recommended to be kept with a maximum of only one male per group however I have 2 males in almost every group (20+ groups, totalling somewhere around 200 adults). I have only ever seen male aggression ONCE, that was when I seperated a male from a 3.10 group and set him up with a group of 8 adult males that were awaiting sale. The moment he entered the viv he started to fight with another male, crocodile rolls the lot! I seperated him, checked for injuries etc (none found). Since then I have not witnessed any other signs of fighting etc.

Again, I don't recommend this to anyone but I'm not going to hide it either.

Back to chameleons and in particular yemens, I wonder if there's a balance between cage size and group numbers that when got right it takes away the dominance/aggression (like in some tropical fish kept in shoals in aquariams).

Rob, what would you say is a reasonable average life expectancy of a male breeding yemen and a female breeding yemen? Also, is there any indication of wild yemen life expectancies?
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[penfold]

i have been keeping adult groups of yemens together as well for about two years and pretty much had the same results as rick they all get on very well and the male is not all that interested in mating
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[Scott W]

Ok, so we have a few interesting case's of yemens in groups with similar results regarding the mating.

Anyone else have any theories as to why the difference?

Could it be stress factors that are affecting the males desire to mate? or as I suggested in my first post that the male just doesn't feel the urgency to mate when surrounded by females, perhaps that's part of the natural balance...i.e. in the wild if there is a boom of yemens in certain years then they would be living in higher densities and this shut's down the desire to mate and over populate the area even further???

Any thoughts anyone
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[Rickeezee]

I to wondered if the decrease in desire to mate was an issue related to possible stress factors. What I have found however; is that the male will only mate when the female is showing signs of being receptive, he simply does not bother at other times. But never fails to mate if one of the females is receptive. So the instinctual drive is still there but in a less desperate manner.

So even though this is a limited situation and not a controlled study with various groups, I would suggest that the male has the females readily available to mate with so does not need to become aggressive and mate each time he encounters a female on the random off chance.

The survival imperative perhaps when kept singularly is heightened as the male has to take every opportunity to sow his seed. When kept in a group perhaps this imperative lessens due to the availability of the females. I guess the important point is that if something is not available often it is taken in greedy helpings sometimes by force when available as the male cham does not know when it may be available again. When on tap whats the rush, no need to be greedy or forceful. Perhaps the male cham even learns that the female when receptive will readily mate anyway and not be keen when not receptive. Makes sense otherwise why would the female display receptive colouration?

I would suggest the survival instinct and procreation is still high on the male chams agenda but becomes less of an issue in a group situation.

In terms of commercial mass breeding programmes; I doubt very much whether large scale commercial breeders would take a group housing approach, but would I imagine just supply singularly housed males with a regular supply of females. I wonder how this is achieved, say for example with chams that are captive farmed?

Would be interesting to record how frequently female Yemen's are receptive in groups and how frequently receptive when kept singularly. This may be the actual key in determining why in the group situations cited the mating is less frequent. The receptivity issue may be the influencing factor for the level of mating that takes place, plus the probable decreased desire and urgency shown by the male due to readily available females.

Only a suggestion, but taking this one step further one could suggest that these combined factors may result in the females being less receptive as they to have learnt that the mating imperative is less urgent as there is allways a male on tap? Could such circumstances and factors alter the biological clock?
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[robje29]

Very interesting read
Rob