Nosy Be Chameleons

The Nosy Be panther chameleon comes from the island of the same name off the north-west coast of Madagascar, and the name is a place of origin. Keepers pick it for blue: males range from seafoam green and turquoise to solid blue, and are often close to a single colour where other locales mix several.

Appearance

Turquoise, blue-green or blue is the body colour of a male, and the face shows the locale's marks including a yellow corner to the mouth and red rays or flecks around the eye turrets. The bars vary. A pale stripe along the flank or blue bars may be carried by some males, while some wild males are almost solid turquoise with no bars at all. Flashes of blue along the flanks show on wild animals, which tend to be greener than those in captivity.

Lines sold as true blue consist of the bluest animals, where the body is solid blue and the red on the face is missing or faint. Captive males also tend to drift bluer as they age. Whether the true blue look is bred in or partly down to captive lighting and diet is still argued by keepers.

A clutch is not uniform from blue parents. Some young males stay greenish, others go solid blue, and some develop red around the eyes. Because adult colour takes months to come in, the final look of a young male is an estimate. Ask to see both parents before buying a juvenile.

Regardless of the locale, females are peach, pink, tan or brown, and you cannot tell a female's locale by eye. A female with blue cheeks is not a Nosy Be. With orange markings, a gravid female turns dark, close to black.

Genetics

A locale is a wild population, so Nosy Be has no super form, no het and no inheritance mode. The lineage of an animal decides how blue it becomes, and a line stays Nosy Be only while every animal in it is Nosy Be. While all panther chameleon locales can interbreed, most breeders keep them separate and the act of crossing locales is contested in the hobby. Ambanja, Nosy Mitsio and Nosy Faly are neighbouring locales with their own looks.