Reptile & Amphibian Forums

One of my favorite panthers is the ambilobe. I hardly ever hear you guys discussing them or mentioning them. Any reason why? I searched the forums for past posts about ambilobes and there arn't that many. Nose be's seem to be number one.

I keep several morphs but ambilobes are my favorite. However, my favorite panther is a blue bar ambanja. Just cuz he's nice and chills. He stopped using his tongue at 6 months of age. He's almost 2 years old now and pretty much only eats slow moving prey like silkworms. Here's a pic.

Anyone else besides me like ambilobes?

I only have one panther, but it's an ambilobe male about 5 mos. old. He's a beauty. I wanted a panther for a long time, but I held off until I could get an ambilobe. I just got him about a month ago and he's doing great.

Maybe not that many people discuss them as they are one of the rarer (rarest?) morphs and haven't been around as long.

I want to get a female and hopefully breed them.

Last night, I looked at him after he was asleep and he was just brilliant.

BTW, how do you pronounce it? I usually say am*bill*OH*bee, or is it am*bill*OH*bay? Or ahm*bill*OH*bee or ahm*bill*OH*bay? Anyone know for sure?

He's still growing and coloring up. Hopefully, I'll be able to post a pic sometime.

Ambilobe Fan,
Joel Fish

We've been very interested in Ambilobes for a while now. I think they aren't as popular because of the cost. Also for some reason there aren't too many breeders out there that have them. We considered purchasing one but the cost kept us from being able to do so at the time.... of course that just gives us something to save up for in the future
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groups.msn.com/JEChameleons
1.1 Chameleo Calyptratus
1.1 Furcifer Pardalis (Diego Suarez)
1 Chameleo Melleri

I wouldn't save up for too long.... If you think about it, soon enough Ambilobes are going to cost the same as any other panther. They're still a panther, whether or not they're priced as one. And with the recent "rush" for everyone to get them, everyone that has them will breed the hell out of them until the females die and there will be babies flooding the market.... Write this down, wait 2 years and E-Mail me letting me know I'm right LOL! But seriously, long term, the price of all chameleons is going to come down quite a bit. Look at veileds. They went from being $1000 in the late 80's (imported) to now being $20-30. It's only been 15 years. The same thing is going to happen with panthers. I'm a little bitter towards LLL for selling Diegos at 160 or whatever they are since it's just going to drag the price down. If EVERYONE that had panthers raised their price $100 per panther no matter what age or locale, the species would hold it's price longer and only people better able to keep them would buy them in the first place. When Kammers raised their price to $250 and lowered the age they were selling them at to 2 1/2 months, at first I didn't like it, but now I wish everyone would. The only chameleon that will hold it's ground is the Parsons, since it's such a long incubation and takes MUCH more care and attention that these other chameleons. The more people that can get them, obviously, the more people are going to breed them and the more people that breed them the more the price goes down and the more the price goes down, the sooner they become the next best thing. Sorry if I offended anyone in any way. Think about it.
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Tyler Stewart
Las Vegas NV

Tyler,

As you know, Ambilobe/Sirama panthers come from one locale in Madagascar. This particular panther has just recently become more available in the US due to breeders that got them 2 and 3 years ago from the exporter. Many folks thought they were ugly when they first started arriving here - honest!

However... with the recent changes in the exporting quota allotments in Madagascar (due to their new President), we importers think there will be less and less panthers (of any locale) arriving in the US in the future.

In recent years, the annual export amount for panthers (on the CITES list) has been 2,000. Without enough governmental staff to watch shipments, this was usually exceeded regularly. Now, the government has beefed up that process to insure that only 2,000 panthers are distributed to the world market annually.

Also, the President has diluted the quota allotments (allowed for more local exporters), and we importers fear for the integrity of the animals to be shipped (truly of one locale or another) due to the inexperience (etc) of new exporters. We have even heard that some of the original exporters may be so exasperated by this new development, they may get out of exporting chameleons altogether.

If this happens... chameleons will go UP in price - all the ones from Madagascar, at least.

The CB bred Ambilobe/Sirama panthers available now are indeed high in price - but this has been in response to their popularity and limited availablility.

If you do decide to buy - check out the breeder carefully - (we know breeders that are deliberately crossing the Ambilobe males with other morphs just to get babies, as the Ambilobe females are hard to find). Some breeders don't consider this, and are offering pure locale offspring. Mythical Chameleons (Ivan) is one of those we would recommend.

Hope this info helps,
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Thanks for the info. I really do hope they go up in price. It'll make everyone care for them more and they won't end up like the veileds have. I figured some people would be breeding Ambilobes to other panthers (Sambavas, Tams, etc.) just to get babies. In the back of my mind, I have an idea or two of people that are doing it. If you could, would you please E-Mail me and tell me who it is?
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Tyler Stewart
Las Vegas NV

Hey Tyler good call. Morgana, can you please email who you think might be cross breeding ambilobes. I think I've seen some posts where the cham looked questionable

Hi-

Morgana took the words right out of my mouth. Let me just add a few things.

The last pardalis shipment was early this year and was an ALL Ambilobe shipment. The importer I worked through said there was allot more females then males in the shipment. Everyone who had access to this shipment should have babies around the first of the year. All these babies will be TRUE 100% PURE AMBILOBE. Allot of what you see now ARE NOT TRUE 100% PURE AMBILOBES, they are a cross to look like Ambilobes.

There has been a number of crosses that I have seen being sold as Ambilobe and anyone who has a TRUE 100% PURE AMBILOBE could clearly see the difference between the two. I am in NO way saying crosses are bad, I cross myself, Morgana has, the Krammers have and so on. How ever the difference is WE CLEARLY NOTE THAT THEY ARE A CROSS AND WHAT LOCALES ARE IN THE CROSS AND DON'T PAWN THEM OFF AS SOMETHING THEY ARE NOT. Others are selling "look a likes" as Ambilobes to get top dollar. They are hopping on uninformed buyers will pay the top dollar just because they are being sold as "Ambilobes".

The last shipment of Ambilobes sold fast and I don't think any reached retail, most if not all went right to the big breeders. I was lucky enough to get a pair from one of the importers (do not ask who I will not tell you). With the recent crack down in Madagascar there has been no new pardalis coming in. Top that with the CITES quota of 2000 and the possibility of the number getting even smaller who knows what is going to happen.

So I do not see prices falling anytime soon, they will maintain at what they are or go up. As for the CHEEP pardalis you see, remember there will always be poor quality low priced chameleons and top quality high priced chameleons. As for anyone thinking about breeding any of the Diego babies out there I would think twice. If you think about it they are all the same age or with in a month or so of each other. Most stores buy from breeders and or wholesales who buy in big numbers. So just because you buy from two different sources doesn't mean they are two different bloodlines. I would think twice about it, and it is close to impossible to know pet store chameleon bloodlines. Bottom line stick to the breeders if you want to breed in the feature and keep good bloodline records of your breeders. This will keep the inbreeding down as much as possible and the panthers will not turn out like Veileds breeding to brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and the like.

P.S.-

Morgana yes please email the company/breeder(s) you are talking about. I would love to compare my notes and see if we are on the same path!
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John W. Lucas

CHAMELEON PARADISE

CHAMELEONS ONLINE E-ZINE AUTHOR

Feeding Baby Chameleons
Caging Baby Chameleons

F. pardalis

Ambilobe Locale
Nosy Be Locale
Sambava Locale

Rhampholeon uluguruensis

Eggs Incubating-

F. pardalis - Ambilobe Locale

got SILKWORMS!

Photo © Chameleon Paradise 2003

John and Morgana could not have hit the nail right on the head. If more animals are not coming in from Madagascar the value of well bred local specific panthers will always be high, not to mention colorful healthy ones. An example are Nosey Be's. Easily the most market flooded panther, you can find them everywhere and for cheap. But these are the poor looking, or crossed animals. A baby from true blue Nosey Be parents will fectch $225-250 a piece easily. This is because no matter how much the market gets flooded with crosses and sub par animals there will ALWAYS be value in quality. An example are my Ambilobes. 2, 5, 10 whatever many years in the future market they will always be able to fetch top dollar and that is because they are beautiful. Add how scarse Ambilobes are in general then factor in the next to nothing quantitiy of true blue bar ones, and I am not talking lime green or aqua blue. I am talking sunny day sky blue and it is easy to see that these guys are not only going to retain the value but get more expensive as time goes on.
The only person that has hatched out true blue bar Ambilobes from what I have seen is Ivan Alfonso. I got lucky when I got my blue bars from him because he was not sure if they were pure because they were from wc parents, but the ones I have appear to be. Alot of people backed out because they were not positive pures only to get crossed animals from the people who were breeding Ambiolbes at the time.I would dare say these are the best cb Ambilobes in the States, but please if you think yours is better I would love to see pics of animals that nice, but I have not seen any cb blue bars with as nice blue as these guys.

-Matt Jillson

Here is the link to the pics:
http://gallery.pethobbyist.com/index.pl?user=19193&cat=500&thumb=1

Link

So there are blue bar ambilobes and red bar ones? Or are the red bars crosses?

thanks,
Joel Fish

Red Bars are also pure ambilobes. This morph is very diverse.

They are like Ambanjas in the sense that there are red and blue bar varieties. Heck there are ones whose background pattern fires up more yellow and some that fire up more red for that matter. Check out the link to some of my photos I have posted on my previous message. Or you can also go to:

www.myhticalchameleons.com

You will undoubtable find screaming pics of both the blue and red bar variety.

Good luck in your search,
Matt Jillson

If you had a red bar male, would you try to breed it to a red bar female? Or is that personal preference?

thanks,
Joel Fish

Hi Joel,

We prefer the blue barred ambilobe/sirama panthers. I have seen quite a few red bars, and something about them just isn't to our liking.

However... since it is so difficult to reliably determine the female's exact morph in any event - some of the blues could be easily crossed with the reds.

If they were captive bred and we trusted the source - we would stick to blue with blue.

Just our $.02
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Well, here goes my opinion. It is very hard to determine what a pure Ambilobe will look like in any reliable manner. There are many distinctive traits that you can look for in a CB male that will be rather standard but you can't go by colors alone. Why? Well let's look at the possibilities, I know of at least 5 different color varieties of Ambilobes that I have seen in person and have in my collection. I have seen in pictures or in other collections a few other animals that look also different, not too much but different. If you buy a few WC animals and one is just yellow and red bars, another is yellow and blue bars, another is yellow, orange/red, and blue bars, another is yellow, orange/red, and red bars, another is yellow, orange/red and red bars with blue speckling in them and another is solid red with blue bars and a little bit of white in the throat (like my Anubis) then you can also have the same possibilities in the WC females that came with them.

If you breed a male of one color variety with a female of another color variety the resulting animals is still going to be a pure Ambilobe but could either look like the father or the mother or could look like something in between. So who's to say that the different varieties we see coming from the wild are the result of the breeding between whatever the original varieties from Ambilobe were. Or even more complicated, what if Ambilobe is the melting pot of Madagascar where the panthers from the other localities met and bred causing the broad spectrum of colors we see. Too many questions and little to no answers. So far it is still pretty reliable to tell an Ambilobe that is pure from another yet the various color varieties that might appear after all the breeders and hobbyists start producing their animals (assuming they are pure) are for anyone to guess. With known CB lines it is easier to maintain the same color animals but that will be happening with the F2's.

I don't know if anyone noticed but the very first picture of an Ambilobe posted by Bill Love in Reptiles magazine showed an animal with green bars (or at least the bars looked green in the pic) so that's yet another possible color variety from Ambilobe that has not surfaced in the USA market yet.

Sorry for the extensive post and I hope nobody got too bored as to contemplate suicide.

Best wishes,
Ivan

Ivan,

We consider you more of an expert than us, of course. But I am a bit surprised... as I have heard that KK can identify almost any morph female. I have hear of folks sending her pics, etc. Shape of the body, head and other features were considered.

There may not be a sure-fire way to determine the morph of females - but some girls do show hints. I think the easiest ones for us to tell are the nosy; sambava; tamatave. We have several of each, and they share similar patterns and color traits.

True, the ambilobe are a melting pot of colors - but we were told that the females were generally a different hue/color (by CP), and this aided in identification. Not true?

Gads... with the turn of events in Madagascar - and every one scrambling to be "new collectors" and exporters - will any of us KNOW what he/she is getting when it comes to imported panthers???
This is our biggest nightmare......

Yes, we saw that pic of an Ambilobe posted by Bill Love in Reptiles magazine. More surprises to come, indeed. Have you seen the bright green panther with the red eyes? I was told that Olaf has another trick up his sleeve. *LOL* There is a picture of one in the Photo Gallery here.

No boredom here... you make such good sense!
Talk soon... and take good care,
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Hi Morgana:

I have to say that I don't think anyone can tell female panthers apart (except Ankaramy females). I would like to see anyone going to an importer and picking out females and saying that it is definitely a tamatave because they can see the "typical" traits. It is simply impossible and I will try to post as many pics of my females to show what I mean.

There is a possibility that CB females have certain looks to them but I have not seen this as true either (personal experience on this). If anyone can tell the difference between females then it is indeed a gift and I would like to see the accuracy with which they can predict the locale. I am in no way aiming this at the kammers since you mentioned them but I am aiming it at anyone out there that claims to be able to tell panther females from each other because they are more robust, or have a little more red, or have a slightly pointed snout, etc.

John (Chameleon Paradise) and I had an email conversation where he expressed me his findings on his Ambilobe female and what he thought to be typical of them. I find this interesting and told him that my females (the ones that are proven) were all different from each other or at least different in several groups.

I will make it my priority to try and post some pics of the WC females we have or had and you guys can try and tell me what you think they are. I will not cheat at all as I have nothing to lose. On the contrary, if anyone guesses correctly all of them, I will be happy to learn the secret of identifying them.

Later,
Ivan

I wasn't bored a bit.

This is the kind of thing I spend my time thinking about lately (jeesh, I need to get a life... LOL) and you've verified/clarified what I've seen in person and in pictures.

So if you take two wc ambilobes, you really don't know what color potential/genes the female is carrying that might be expressed in male offspring.

Seems like if you wanted to even attempt to control/predict the colors of the offspring, you'd need a cb female.

We really appreciate your expertise.

thanks for your time,
Joel Fish

I was fortunate enough to pick my pairs from captive hatched babies that had colored up. The breeder had several clutches all from WC females. The clutches I picked out of were around 4-5 months of age and were showing good color.

Whoa... hey, I am not the "cham cops" **LOL**
Just suffice it to say that if we were to buy ambilobe/sirama panthers - it would be from Ivan Alfonso or one other breeder.

Not that I am saying ALL breeders deliberately crossed their ambilobe panthers just to get offspring... nope, this isn't what I was inferring at all. But I do know there are a couple out there that have done exactly that. One admits it - and will most likely sell them as crosses.... not so sure about the others.

The main trouble is identifying the females - not everyone knows exactly how to determine the identifying traits of a female ambilobe/sirama! And there are plenty of cham sellers out there that will tell you stories..... this has happened to us more than once!

Now that there are some true CB ambilobe/sirama females out there, maybe breeders can learn to identify them easier.

About the diego suarez... after discussing this with some knowledgable folks - I wonder if they are 100% diego. There have been very few of that morph brought in in recent years. Since we never get to see pics of the parents of the advertised babies... it makes you wonder. And, breeding brother to sister is inevitable - as they have been sold at the herp shows in pairs (we saw this in WA and OR).

Say John... don't you have a true turq/blue ambanja male?
We have a lonely female. She lost her w/c mate and she is looking for a new man in her life - we got the pair from Brian and you surely know where he got them.
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I realize that the diegos may or may not be 100% pure, I have had a conversation with Ivan about this. I also realize that the two that i have are brother and sister and do NOT intend to breed them. If I am to breed them, the first thing to decide is whether they are diego or not. If they are, then I would try to find at least one more that is unrelated to mine. If not, then an attempt at figuring our which locale/locales they are would be made, to see if it would be wise to breed them.
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groups.msn.com/JEChameleons
1.1 Chameleo Calyptratus
1.1 Furcifer Pardalis (Diego Suarez)
1 Chameleo Melleri

I remember when you got yours....
I know that you never intended to breed them, however the folks in WA that bought up the ones offered at the herp show - well, I seriously doubt if they will hesitate.

It angers me to see clutchmates offered as "pairs"
Unfortunately, it is done all the time.

We have spoken to Ivan about Diegos too... at one time we thought perhaps we had a female. Too bad there isn't more Diego bloodlines in the US - but then that morph fell out of favor several years back - as the electric blue Nosy's scramble took over. Now it is the Ambilobe/Sirama scramble.

Hopefully, you will find more Diegos down the road - we ordered some with our Mad order - but we may never get them now. The exporter has had our funds for a year - and has never shipped any chams. Major bummer!

Take good care,
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So what are you doing to keep the price up?

Becasue you have said to have many panthers and to be breeding them. What are you going to do with the babies?
pinciples of economics, the more babies you produce and sell the lower the price (off course you can keep a high price but what are you giong to do when they do not sell?? hint: reduce price)!

Exactly.... Even if Madagascar lowers the amount exported, more and more people are breeding them and they'll get cheaper and cheaper. Veileds have gotten cheaper and cheaper and they're rarely (if ever) imported. Why wouldn't panthers do the same thing? They're just as hardy, and everything about them is so similar, there's nothing to stop it. I know that raising the price would stop them from selling but when everyone and ther mom has baby panthers then it's gonna be a bidding war to get the sales. Eventually (next 5 years) I still think the price will drop quite a bit. And I agree on the Diego thing. Whoever is supplying all these Diegos is providing the source for imbred panthers.
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Tyler Stewart
Las Vegas NV

i just purchased an ambilobe myself, although it was sold as a picasso. i just love watching this guy grow and gain color every day. pictures to come soon!

Glad to hear there are ambi fans. I think its pronouced "am bil oh bay". Maybe they will become a little more popular once they are more accessible. I agree with Tyler that LLL dropping their prices like that is wrong. I think it leaves a higher possibility of unqualified keepers purchasing a relatively delicate pet. Thanks for the response guys.

I have a male Picasso(Ambilobe) I think they are the same thing. He is just amazing and is always showing me amazing colors. I have some pics on the link at the bottom, feel free to check em out. They were taken when he was a yound one so his colors are much more brilliant today. I will get updated ones as soon as possible. I am really thinking of getting a female and maybe breed them one day
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http://f2.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/dubaliscous/lst?.dir=/Pablo(Picasso panther chameleon)&.src=ph&.order=&.view=t&.done=http://f2.pg.photos.yahoo.com/
1.0 Picasso panther chameleon (Pablo)
0.2 Bearder Dragons (Mic Dundee and Red)
0.1 Leopard gecko (Leo)
2.2 Red-eyed tree frogs
1.0 African side-necked mud turtle (Wrinkles)
1.1 Fire bellied toads
Emperor Scorpion (not sexed)