Chameleon Info Sources
People get fascinated by chameleons for thousands and thousands of years...
The knowledge on them was originally baded on natural observations, oral communications, fairy tales and legends.
Beginning at the end of 18th century, chameleon literature started to depict the life history of these fascinating saurians, nowadays, tenths of books are available on the market and thenths of thousands of scientific and popular papers have been published.
Nowadays, most of people rely on two, extremely unreliable sources:
1. Internet (with thousands of pages with information on chameleons) and
2. Social media, mainly Facebook...
The knowledge about chameleons deepens and widens and new information and views on different aspects of their existence are presented: from anatomy, life history, health and physiology to captive husbandry.
There is huge amount of sources on chameleons, unfortunately, vast majority of them with unreliable info...
There are fantastic books there and books that are merely capable of being a layer under a shelf...
There are fantastic papers and papers that present misconceptions and spread nonsense...
There are great social media groups with deep knowledge and experience and fake ones spreading improper information and represented by people with almost no or incidental knowledge making themselves self-appointed fake gurus...
It is beneficial to know which source and which people to believe...
So, how to identify a reliable source? This is a hard task of course...
I am deeply inspired by nature and in the process of defining the standards of the naturalistic aproach in chameleon husbandry.
For this, the understanding of their biology is required and of their biotopes which they inhabit and of the whole natural history...
There are good sources of information, that you can refer to.
INTERNET SITES
The two ultimate sources of info in the cyberspace are:
https://www.reptile-database.org/
Additional great info you can retrieve from (but be careful and do not believe all, there are also fatal mistakes and inaccuracies published on either of them):
https://www.chameleondatabase.com
https://www.tyroneping.co.za/chameleons-south-africa-2/
https://www.chameleonforums.com
PODCASTS
A great source of information on chameleon husbandry issues are the podcasts of Bill Strand:
https://www.chameleonbreeder.com/
In the Facebook space, the biggest groups (in numbers) are usually run (partly) by amateurs and self-appointed pseudo-gurus unfortunately, spreading a mix of good info and total nonsense, trying to infiltrate all other groups and take over control.
There is a small number of great sites, free of the destructive influence of the above mentioned ones, such as:
CDG - Chamaeleonidae (Chameleon) Discussion Group
IUCNSSC - IUCN SSC Chameleon Specialist Group
And some interest groups focused on genera or species like:
Bradypodion species
Calumma parsonii
Trioceros melleri
and others...
The biggest groups dealing with the most common species (Chamaeleo calyptratus and Furcifer pardalis) are unfortunately of rather low quality and the wrong, uncritically parrotted info is causing many sufering and deaths of captive chameleons.
BOOKS
From books, the following citations are considered the best and most reliable ones so far in the following areas: