Heavy Sleepers?


New Member
Are chameleons known to be heavy sleepers?

Lola's perfectly healthy, but she could sleep through a tornado and she probably still wouldn't wake up.

Is this normal?



New Member
My baby veiled (about 3-4 months old) sleeps like a brick. He gets more relaxed the longer he sleeps too. Sometimes at 3 in the morning he's half hanging off the top of his enclosure. I don't think chams have very good hearing either so that probably helps. But I could be wrong about that part.


New Member
I'll have to catch scooter doing the hanging upside down trick one night and post it. First time i seen it i was like I hope he doesnt fall and couple hours later when i woke up he was still like that.


Avid Member
From what I have observed, chameleon's that fall asleep on the screen/roof of the cage or other awkward places, have usually been taken by surprise when the lights have gone off in their cage.

Chameleons (like us) can't see very well in the dark, and so when the lights go off, they stop moving around fairly quickly in order to avoid falling out of whatever tree/bush they are in.

What you should be doing is providing cues of the approaching darkness to the cham.
You can do this by letting the chameleon cage face an outside window, and as the sun goes down outside, the dimished light will inform the cham that darkness is about to occur.
Or you can have the heat lights and UV lights on separate timers. If you ensure that the heat lights go off first, the drop in temperature and light intensity will also cue the chameleon that nighttime is approaching.

My heat bulbs switch off 30 mins before my UV lights turn off, and as soon as the basking light goes off, the chams start making their way to their favourite bed-time perch, where they will wait until the UV lights switch off, then go to sleep.

If you simply switch all the lights off and leave the cham in total darkness immediately, it will be forced to go to sleep more or less where it was when the lights went out.
And although they can sleep on the screen, I don't think they feel particularly secure sleeping there.
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