Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello all,

I have a healthy adult male veiled that I do not handle very often at all. Since I have had him I have read in some sources you want to avoid handling chameleons. However, as time has gone by I have seen more and more people who handle their veileds. When I was at the East Bay Vivarium in Berkeley, CA they were handling their veileds and they were not getting stressed out at all. I told them I have one as well (I have had him since he was 2 months old - he is now a little bit over 2 years old) and when I have to handle him (to get him out of his cage, a trip to the vet, etc.) he gets mad and even tries to bite. However, I have been able to handle him on a few occasions where he stops trying to bite and just puffs up as big as he can with really bright colors - and it is usually when I put him outside on the weekend days for some sun (I live in CA, actually just had a small earthquake as I was typing above).

I have tried the feeding-from-hand trick and it has him used to eating from my hand now (before he would never taker anything from my hand) but it has not had the results where he would climb out onto my hand to get at anything. I read on here of someone who would feed them a cricket and then grab them while they were eating and then feed them a few more to get them to associate me with food. Is this a good idea? I was also told by the guy at EBV that I could take him out and put him up on my hat for a while to get used to be out on me - plus he would not see my face and not be as stressed out... Any opinions on these? Any other suggestions? Thank you.

well, handling your veiled is not necessarily a bad thing. If u had started from when he was a youngsters, carrying on your hand or whatever to an outdoor cage, he would rarely bite u. I have a 4month veiled and i have trained him to eat from my hand, not to bite me, and to eat hibscus leaves,.....

all u need to do is not stress him out by handling him once a WEEK, u should handle him every day, but minimaly

sorry this is hard to explain...... hope this helps

I think the key here is to respect your individual cham. If he gets really stressed (quickly and often showing stress color) by handling don't handle him unless you have to. If he is tolerant of handling in some situations go ahead. There is no one answer to this. I think generally the rule is NOT to handle (because it is not a natural thing for a cham to be social), but this is aimed primarily at folks who are expecting and hoping for a friendly pet for kids. Some of my chams tolerate handling just fine (and it didn't have much to do with whether they were hand raised or not) and some don't. Hand raising isn't a guarrantee of a tame cham. One of my most tolerant chams is a big wc melleri. One of my pissiest ones is a cbb deremensis. Be aware though, that carrying him around on your hat can be dangerous for him. If he sees something that scares him as you move around he could throw himself off your hat, fall and hurt himself. Sometimes chams let themselves drop off a branch when frightened. It is the "falling leaf" imitation.