How to Light Veiled Chameleon Habitats

Video Transcript

"NICOLE BRAGG: On behalf of Expert Village, I'm Nicole, and I'm here to tell you about Veiled Chameleons. Chameleons are tropical animals and they do require pretty high temperatures. Now, they like their temperatures to hang around 85 to 90 degrees during the daytime, and their temperatures can drop to about mid to low 70s during the evening. Now, as far as lighting goes, I provided the strip light here in back, which provides a UVA and a UVB rays, and UVB is very important. A UVB is what allows the chameleon to produce vitamin D, it mimics the natural sunlight. So, what she doesn't get from being out on the sun, she gets from this light. She's able to produce the vitamin D, which allows her to absorb calcium. So, this is a very important instrument for keeping my chameleon alive in her environment here. I've also provided this light here as a basking light. This provides more heat. The strip lights back here don't really provide heat. They're made only to provide sunlight. This basking light here is kept on this far side of her cage, so, she has an area where she can come if she's cool. If she's too cold, she can come over here and stay underneath the light. If she's a little warm, then, she can just go over to the other side of the cage. It's not as nearly as hot over here. These lights--you can purchase these lights at your local pet store. They are a tight beam basking light, so, what that means is that beam--the heat is mainly going to radiate straight down. So it allows for even in small environments such as this one, you can still provide heat on one side and cool on the other side. Now, this other dome light up here is her night light. I keep my reptiles on a timer so what will happen when it hits around 7 or 7:30, these lights here will shut off, and this light here comes on. And what this is, it's called a moonlight lamp. It mimics natural light from the moon, it's a very low-light bulb, but it provides the night time temperature that she needs to be able to live comfortably in her home."