Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i think hes a little too blue blue for a pure ambilobe?
i thought he might be part ambilobe and slightly nosey be? any idea?...

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4x Veiled Chameleon
1x Panther
Hollie/Willow > female veileds
Carling/Houdini > Male Veileds
Louey > Panther

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How exactly does one tell different morphs apart? What are the criteria? When I was looking at Ambanja pics, trying to guess what Diesel would look like when he grows up, I didn't see two alike.
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~Melissa
1.0 Ambanja Panther (Diesel)
0.1 African Hegdehog (Kaimah)

When they are young it's really hard to tell as adult coloration takes months (and effects of hormones) to show. There is a LOT of individual variation and I don't think we know exactly which colors or patterns are inherited versus results of incubation conditions and nurition. Panther morphs are just that...not all are reproductively distinct and there may be a lot of natural variation within any one morph or locale anyway. Also, cb chams are fairly inbred (the available breeding gene pool is small compared to a wild population) so you may be seeing unintentional results from better captive survival, picking for size or personality. I've hardly ever seen two panthers that look much alike. There are careful breeders and not-so careful breeders so unless your cham's breeder kept really careful records and the breeder HE got his stock from did too, it might be hard to guarantee identify every animal's future coloration. On top of all this there is personality...some chams just don't show extremes of coloration very often or right when you most need to see it. They are all beautiful and unique to me, so unless you are trying to breed true to a very specific trait the morph may not matter to the cham or its keeper.

it matters to me
im not planning on breeding him now, just want to know what morph to class him as so i know for future referance
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4x Veiled Chameleon
1x Panther
Hollie/Willow > female veileds
Carling/Houdini > Male Veileds
Louey > Panther
Tolkien > Fischer Chameleon

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That's fine! I just meant that you may not ever know exactly and in the larger scheme of keeping "pet" chams it may not matter. Of course if you are breeding, may sell offspring someday, want to stay informed about morph-specific issues, etc. you certainly would care. I think as breeders get more sophisticated in their understanding of cham morphs and genetics we'll be able to classify them more accurately, but compared to some other herpetoculture we aren't there yet. Go to a boid or colubrid forum-wow, they are really into very minute traits and genetic probability these days. Chams will always be harder as their coloration from one moment to the next isn't constant and it is affected very directly by temp, light, nutrition, social stress, mood, hormone status, age, and a lot of other potential things.

thanks for the info bud
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4x Veiled Chameleon
1x Panther
Hollie/Willow > female veileds
Carling/Houdini > Male Veileds
Louey > Panther
Tolkien > Fischer Chameleon

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Edited signature file to remove unacceptable advertising. [phw 8/7/04]