News

Good morning Chameleon Wranglers! Today we are continuing our conversation about chameleon cage type. Today we talk with Dr. Chris Anderson who shares his experiences in a wide range of conditions and why selecting glass sides enclosures was right for him.

Good morning Chameleon Wranglers! Today we are continuing our conversation about chameleon cage type. We chameleon keepers can select between screen and solid sides depending on how much air flow we need for our situation. The more screen sides we have the closer our cage interior will be to the ambient conditions in the room. The more solid sides you have the more you will be able to have control over raising the humidity and/or the temperature inside your enclosure. A combination of screen and solid sides is called a hybrid cage. In the chameleon community we do a subspecies type arrangement here where the PVC sided enclosures are called hybrid cages and cage’s with mostly glass sides are called “glass cages”. Today’s glass terrariums that have screen vents are technically hybrid cages, but we need to treat them differently because of the situation in the chameleon community where glass cages have been specifically stigmatized…inaccurately.

Dr. Chris Anderson is returning to share how he uses glass sides cages to house common chameleon species and breed the rarest.

As we touched on at the end, we, and others in the community, have been having this discussion for literally decades. The obsession with screen cages has proven difficult to shake. Screen cages have their place. Hybrid cages have their place and Glass cages have their place. It should not be an advanced skill to be able to choose which is most appropriate for your situation. That is a basic requirement of proper chameleon husbandry. If you are listening to 45 minutes of chameleon cage theory then you are in the upper levels of dedication. Make it a point to take your care sheet and compare it to your ambient conditions and decide, from that, whether you need more control over the enclosure environment. That is basic chameleon husbandry. That is the core skill and concept that has been so elusive to so many people wanting to be advisors. I encourage you to develop that skill for the sake of your chameleon.