Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Has anyone seen that show from Africa on National Geographics were they follow this little dessert chameleon? I can't remember what they called it, but that's one freaking awesome chameleon. It's grey, black and white. It get's into a territorial fight with another chameleon, and it turns almost all black with some yellow on it. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? If so, what's it called?

Namaquensis chameleon, native to desert areas of Africa. See Adcham.com, species profiles for more information.

~Kerry

Yep, that was an awesome show. I just saw it two nights ago. The Namaqua Chameleon is the common name.

I guess they're no where to be found in captivity? Or if they can, what would their requirements be?

Thanks for the info though. I love that Chameleon. Such a beauty.

Yah was a great show cought it on at 12:00am lol after work. But the coolest part of the show was were the female cought her self in a bad area with a cobra snake. i was like wow she is dead. But indeed she took a bite out of that snake and the snake took of scared lol. A cobra scared lol. the Sickest part was when the male came out and ate one of the baby chams that was just born. that was sick as [bleep].

Namaquensis have been one of my favorites for years. They have some very peculiar behaviours for a cham including the ability to literally run on flat ground!

Unfortunately, from everything I've managed to read on them, they do very poorly in captivity. It is extremely rare for any to be collected for export and when they are, they are usually destined for a zoo or lab for research rather than the hobby. Of several reports I've read on attempts to keep them, all perished within a few months.

E
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That's it, screw you guys!
I'm goin' home

-Eric Cartman

Ch. namaquensis are hard to come by. I believe that a few people in Europe work with them, and Ron Tremper had brought some in from Namibia several years ago. The thing is you can apply for a game license to get them, but you have to go field collect them yourself.

As far as their care requirements are concerned. In my personal opinion the best chance with them would be to keep them like the gecko species Palmetogecko, which are from the same region. You'd need a large screen cage, with a container attached at the bottem to hold sand, some branches, maybe some succulants(I would conjecture that Jade plants;i.e. Crassula would work wonderfully, especially when it got bigger) Very high temps during the day, with no humidity, and at night have a fogger set to run for an hour or two, to simulate the natural fog that comes in off of the ocean. They also would need a varied diet, you would want to mix in some small lizards, small snakes, scorpions. In their natural habitat they eat the small viper(B. perengyui?) and scorpions. I hope one day to attmept to work with them, because outside of the big 4 chams(Parsonii, Oustaleti, Verrucosus, and Melleri)these are my favorite. They look like they have so much character and mean.LOL I hope that helps out. I've been trying to read as much about them as possible. The adcham site is good, and there is an article in Reptiles mag. from like 1998-99 that deals with reptiles of Namibia and they are featured prominantly in it. I think the author is either Ron Tremper or Karl Switak.