RAIN THOUGHTS IN THE CONTEXT OF NATURALISTIC CHAMELEONOCULTURE
Rain.
What is the natural story of rain?
The water vapor gets to the air mainly by evaporation from the earth surface.
The water vapor is clean distilled water, contaminated only a little by microscopic particles like dust, microbes etc.
Condensed water that aggregated in the clouds at dew-point and falling down to earth in the form of water drops.
Rain is a blessing as it feeds the vegetation and the animals with water, it penetrates the soil, it builds reserves, it freezes at the tops of the mountains and melts and aggregates to form beautiful streams and mighty rivers to form lakes and seas and oceans…
And then, it evaporates.
When close to ground and at dew-point at the night, it condenses to build a sparkling dew, disappearing with the first sun rays - it evaporates…
And the cycle closes…
And starts again…
Chameleons inhabit regions which are heavy in rain all year around (some lowland forests) but mostly they inhabit regions with seasonal rain: rainy season is heavy in rains and in the dry season, lasting weeks and months, there is sometimes no single drop of rain there. This fits to most chameleon species. Only few of them inhabiting savannah and deserts can live in areas, where the rain is restricted to just few weeks or even single days in a year and it
can happen, that it will not rain even one or two seasons at all…
Can you imagine: the chameleon you keep at home (the Yemen Chameleon, Panther Сhameleon or the Jackson's Chameleon), all they live in areas, where they see no drop of water for many, many months.
I mean NO drop.
No drop at all.
No drop of rain…
…why? because it does not rain at all!
And no drop of dew…
…why? There is dew of course but it evaporates before they can drink it…
And the imagination, they can lick enough water from dew or droplets that hang on the vegetation is realistic only for very small species…
Imagine, a medium sized chameleon around 100g weight needs daily around 1ml of water to compensate water losses through respiratory desiccation. It is about 20big drops or 40 medium sized drops which it would need to lick off the leaves and swallow. Not realistic. And big chameleon species need even more…
Well… hard and not realistic.
I have tried to collect 1ml of water from the dew droplets with a syringe after sunrise. I succeeded after about 20minutes. It was quite hard.
But chameleons do not activate at first light. They begin to be active after some basking, which happens several tens of minutes or even hours after morning twilight, namely after the first sun rays hit their bodies and deliver some IR light and energy into the tissues. At that time, however, when they start to move, the dew is already gone…
I have spent many years researching chameleons in the wild. Day and night and morning… I have seen them being born, I have seen them die, I have seen them fight, get eaten, impose, guard each other, mate, poop, suffer diseases… Everything. The only one thing I have never seen is to see them drinking. And if you look through the web, you will find wild reports and videos on chameleons. Tou will see everything but no videos of drinking. And if you are lucky and find one or two, they will be very likely arranged or from extreme situations. Anyway, they will be in poor minority if compared to all the others life expressions. And despite I nerve researchers and naturalists and chameleon lovers and keepers for months and years, either they agree with me: they have not seen the chameleons drink in the wild or they vigorously protest, that it is impossible. But the only impossible thing is actually to film a chameleon drinking in the wild and prove me wrong…
Chameleons hate water. They hate rain. They hide from it if they can. Of course they can hardly predict it, so sometimes they get hit with raindrops when they sleep. And they can do nothing.
Captivity offers a completely different picture. Many keepers swear chameleons are heavy drinkers. And indeed, they are. `thez often drink vigorously… The question is why…
Most people that started to listen my alarming posts that we desiccate chameleons at night offering them unnaturally dry nights and started to follow my advice to spray the cages after the lights go off and early morning before the lights go on have 4xperienced an evident change… The chameleons reduced drinking even if offered the standard way same as before... And those who followed my fogging advice were surprized often that their buddies stopped drinking at all. Similar experience made people who keep chameleons outside, especially those who live in areas with a significant nighttime temperature drop. Simpl high humidity prevents desiccation and fog of any kind provides intense hydratation….
The reason is simple: chameleons satuate as a rule their water demand through two mechanisms in the wild: feeding (the insect bodies contain from 40 to 80 per cent water) and nighttime fog drinking. And they drink only in extreme cases and so seldomly, that we can hardly provide evidence of it…
So, it is obvious, that rain is a natural appearance for chameleons and that it serves the providing water to the environment in general and for the chameleons in particular…
Recently, I was asked an interesting question: is it necessary to imitate rain for chameleons?
Well, I do not know, I can only speculate…
I am the author and also a heavy proponent of the naturalistic chameleonoculture. The definition of it is not to mimic the natural environment fully. The definition is to mimic wisely, the natural condition s to certain extent possible, while simulating the factors that are beneficial for them, and eliminate the factors which are harmful or even deadly for them. And here we are in the speculation, what is the rain for them?
Do they really need rain or do they not?
Do they have some benefit of the rain or is it in something nice that is either not necessary or even stressful and harmful for them?
As their skin is not penetrable for water, and they don't drink from the rain and they hide vigorously from the rain, I would tend to answer that the rain falls into the second category, it means that we do not necessarily need to mimic it. This is true only in the case if we consider the side effects of rain, it means high humidity, low temperature, hydration, and enough water in the environment. We can facilitate them another way.
So if you ask me about that, I mimic the rain my answer is yes I do frankly. But if you ask me whether I am hundred percent sure it is something we need to do it, my aanswer is no I'm not 100% sure and I even can see the opportunity to say no, it is actually something stressful and unnecessary and we can skip mimicking it.
I leave it upto you…
My humble opinion is: We definitely need to hydrate the chameleons and the artificial environment of their cage. But splashing the chameleon bodies with rain is useless and we can skip doing it.