A few questions about my panther chameleon...

Question

Before I got my panther I did a lot of reading about him, but it seems that the more I read, the more different answers I got about things. I got a Nosby Blue Panther and he is about 5 months old now. He seems to be doing great! He is very very active, which I was really surprised about. He loves to eat! And he is actually getting pretty good about being handled. My question is about his eyes. Twice now I have seen him do this crazy thing with his eyes. It is really hard for me to describe, but he closes his eyes and then it looks like he rolls them around inside and it like sucks in and puffs out on the other and then goes back to normal. I am not sure if it something he does when he gets something in his eye or something. Like I said, he is doing great. He just does this weird thing and I am not sure what it is. So anyone with a Panther, if they have ever seen what I am trying (my best) to describe?

Also, I was under the impression that he was going to be pretty blue, hence his name Nosy Blue Panther. I have read that they don't turn their true colors until they are about a year old. I guess I just thought that at the age of 5 months that I would see some of this blue by now, but he is really just green for the most part (with some black and a white horizontal line). So I was just wanting to hear about others with Panthers about their color changes with age.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

The eye rolling or eye popping is normal although it looks a bit disturbing the first time you see it. They do it as a way of cleaning their eyes and will often do it when they are about to shed. It may help to break apart the skin around the eye turret. My veileds would sometimes do it after they had been sprayed.

The extent of the blue on your Nosy Be really depends on the  parent stock. Although panthers from the Nosy Be island tend to be blue  (bluish),  those incredible blue animals that you see are the product of selectively breeding for colour.  If you acquired him from a breeder, you might ask them for photos of the parent stock, that will give you somewhat of an idea how much colour you can expect.