Oustalet’s Chameleon

Oustalet’s Chameleon care will require you to consider their large size and environmental needs. This species in particular will require a lot of space and food. You must be ready to be attentive to all your chameleon’s needs, which means you want to do proper research before even considering getting one. Oustalet’s Chameleon are not simple creatures to care for and have many requirements that will require quite a bit of your attention.

We don’t recommend letting a child care for a chameleon, as they are not child-friendly pets with all of their needs. An adult should be the one caring for this kind of pet and if a child is going to handle it, they should be supervised by an adult. Many people find chameleons interesting due to their ability to change color, but not many people understand the concept or know why or how they can do so.

It’s a common misconception that they do it to blend in with their surroundings in order to hide from predators, but that is actually not the case. In reality, chameleons will change their color to regulate their body temperature or communicate.

To maintain a favorable body temperature, chameleons will grow darker in color to absorb more heat in cold temperatures and will turn paler to reflect the sun’s heat in hotter temperatures. This is called thermoregulation.

They might be changing color to woo a possible mate, males might do it to signal at other males to stay away, and females might use their color change to show interest in mating.

How do chameleons change color?

Under most chameleon’s transparent outer layer of skin sits two laters of specialized cells. The layer beneath the outermost layer contains chromatophores and the layer below that are guanophores, the second cell layer.