Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Moved to south Florida last year and recently got a male Veiled Chameleon, I guess several months old and is now about seven inches or so. He lives in my screened in porch which is ten by twenty feet, covered with the screen sides facing south and west. There are five five foot hibiscus trees, a large ficus, palm etc. Chameleons seem to have a much wider range of behavior in a large area, than in smaller caged enviroment. One odd thing I noticed is that this Veil defecates in the same site which is on a two foot high table that has on it orchids and a one gallon fish bowl which has aquatic plants in it, in which he has defecated directly into serveral times. Has anyone ever heard of this type of behavior with a Chameleon. By the way the table on which he does this is the farest area away from the ficus on which he spends the most time.

I have heard that some chams tend to sleep in the same place, but never heard about poohing in the same place. Maybe they are creatures of habit just like us. I think this is to your advantage when it come cleaning up ... you already know where it is. That porch setup sounds way cool.

-roo

I've seen my cham do this many times. lol I used to have his water drip into a container and he would always poo it in, no where else. Now that I've removed it (better drainage system), he poos in his feeder cup. Silly chams hehe

Welcome to cham world! Your cham is very lucky to have such a terrific playground!

As for being toilet trained (LOL!), yes, this seems to be a common occurence. there have been a few threads on this subject. Luna (veiled) tends to always go while on her basking branch and it is almost always caught in the center of the schefflera leaves below. this makes it easy for me to clean it up and also to look at the urates to see if her hydration is good.

My theory on why they might do this is that in the wild if they keep it all in one place (especially far from their usual hangout as you mentioned) will tend to keep predators from finding them quite as easily due to the scent or visual clues if they just left it scattered everywhere. Just my theory
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0.1 veiled - Luna
0.2 house geckos - Gaia & Tia (MIA
0.2 felines - Kyndra and Líta

It could be preference or a simple "side effect" of their normal basking routine. In the morning after their warm up many chams run a patrol around their territory to display and check up on anything new. I wonder if their system has simply reached operating temp and when the moment is right they tend to be in the same spot. Chams like routine, so maybe a particular branch is just the right size, location, temp, etc. for perching at the right angle to let fly.

My blue bar ambilobes both the male and female always go to the same spot to deficate (different cages just incase you thought they were not) so I have started to put a piece of paper towel right in that spot before the lights go out and then mid day when they deficate it makes for easy cleaning.