Veiled Chameleon Habitat Tips

Video Transcript

"NICOLE BRAGG: On behalf of Expert Village, I'm Nicole, and I'm here to tell you about Veiled Chameleons. Chameleons require a fresh air habitat. This means that the entire cage should be made out of a screen material. This is something that's very important. Do not ever use aquariums or enclosed cages at all, with your chameleons. It definitely needs to be made out of some kind of wire or screen. Now, inside your chameleon's home, it needs to have plenty of climbing space. Now, they don't require a very large enclosure, but they do need--big enough to be able to fit a branch that has several different areas for her or him to climb. You also can provide fake plants. Now, in nature, chameleons will eat plants so make sure that you don't put live plants in there, unless you know they're not toxic. Now, also, inside your chameleon's home you need to provide some sort of water source. Chameleons do not recognize still sitting water. They only recognize water if it's moving. In nature, they collect the dew drops off of leaves as they fall down. This inside of--this cage, in particular, I have the fountain. This is something that is consistently making the water run so she is able to recognize that as a source of water. If you are unable to provide running water for your chameleon, spraying her down with a spray bottle two or three times a day will be sufficient for watering. It's good to have some fake plants in there to have wide, broad leaves so that they collect, somewhat, on the leaves. This will mimic a lot of what the chameleon looks for in nature. You also want to use, as far as substrate goes, I have the moss down here. Now, this is not generally recommended. I do feed her out of a dish--the worms, her meal worms. She does like insects so I feed her worms out of a dish. But if I were to give her crickets in this cage, and the crickets were to climb on this substrate, they are a sticky tongued lizards, so, when they do catch the cricket, they could catch anything that's lying--surrounding the cricket as well, and we don't want to hurt or ingest any of the food, or any of the bedding that's on the bottom of this cage. It is recommended that you use something like cage carpet, or even Astroturf, or absolutely nothing on the bottom of your terrarium, but if you want it to look appealing, then cage carpet is a good way of providing that bottom floor to please the eye, but still keeping your chameleon safe."