Tuesday, August 22, 2006

He's a She

My chameleon, that is. Elliot turns out to be Ellie... Now I'll just how to call her by her Kiswahili name: Barra Barra.

She had 13 babies while I was gone last week! They're all dead, though. I'm really confused since I've had her in captivity since February...

I tried doing some research and found that:
a) Chameleons can lay infertile eggs if they are overfed or see a male! Since the kids were taking care of her, they will have fed her a lot. And they kept her cage outside, where there's another chameleon of the same species in the bottlebrush tree. Maybe these were sort of like infertile eggs, chameleon-shaped larvae that would never be able to grow...
b) Chameleon eggs can take up to 9 months to hatch. I couldn't find any information on the gestation period of live-bearing chameleons, though. So it really could be that she had been pregnant all along, but that the little ones died from being out in the hot sun! Yikes.

Whatever the explanation, it's just really strange to me.

No comments:

Post a Comment