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Grasshoppers are a more natural diet for chameleons. They come out during the day and chameleons love them. Most of the food types we have in captivity are nocturnal simply because they are easier to mass produce. Chameleons have done well on this diet, but, in the quest to get closer and closer to their natural condition, we continue to refine the diet we provide them. To that end, Dean Missimer has dug into the research on the contents of wild chameleons’ stomachs and is developing a feeder business around the insect types found. Today he talks about grasshoppers.

They are very much the native natural food of chameleons. You can look through any of the chameleon diet studies of the wild and grasshoppers will be a significant portion of them. There are some cases where it’s not – like especially during the winter season when you know they’re all dead, but for the most part they are a very natural feeder and you’re going to keep them a similar way (as a chameleon) unlike, let’s say, roaches or super worms, which we are nocturnal burrowing insects that a chameleon will never encounter in its entire life.

They need light, it’s a diurnal type of insect… And they need to be able to climb… Branches will work.

…They will climb up and down the walls of a screen cage. You don’t have to add anything on the sides. We’re talking about sort of filling up the middle space. Something like a chicken wire, any sort of fencing, the gutter guard things, just anything like that will be good. it’ll give them somewhere to hang from, something that won’t lock in humidity.