Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was reading Linda Davidson's book, and she suggests not feeding pinkies to Chameleons.

She says not only do Chameleons not possess the enzymes to break them down properly, but that the pinkies can carry bacteria in their stomachs which can be passed to Chams and cause problems.

She makes a good point - Chameleons were'nt designed to digest small mammals and would probably never eat one in the wild. Baby birds maybe, but not mice she says.

If anyone doesn't have her book, I highly recommend it. It's great - very in depth with a ton of great photos.

Just wanted to pass along the info.

There is some debate about pinkies. I would say it is not an absolute no or yes answer. Some people feed an OCCASIONAL (like once a month) pinkie to larger species with no problems. But, it is not a good regular feeder. I only had one big old veiled who would even eat them.

In books that I have read, larger species such as Meller's will ocasionally eat small birds and rodents. I can't imagine a large chameleon like that could live soley off insects, they would ahve to constantly hunt.

Well, they do constantly hunt. They don't have the daily chance to eat a few larger fat insects such as keepers give them. They probably eat anything that comes along. As for eating birds, parsoni housed in greenhouses have been known to shoot hummingbirds right out of the air. Melleri have been observed shooting at small nestling birds. A melleri keeper I know offers hers an occasional zebra finch nestling. The cham ignored the chick if it was out of the nest, but as soon as she put one in a fake nest the cham zeroed right in on it. A good source of zinc. I don't think I could do it...but this keeper took culls from a friend who bred finches.

Although I find the nutritional value of feeding finch nestlings to your chameleon fascinating, the really interesting topic is the feeding of one 'pet' to another.
Is it really that bad to offer 'culls' to your pet? It's a question of ethics, I suppose. If your answer is no, then what would be the correct thing to do with genetically imperfect birds? Can't very well neuter them.
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Victor Gomez
gomezvi.tripod.com/sdchamkeepers/
gomezvi@yahoo.com