Sometimes, it’s not easy to get live food, so you’d consider getting freeze-dried crickets for your chameleon to eat instead. Or maybe you hate the fact that you need to be touching live bugs, so you would rather get the freeze-dried ones to keep your mind at peace. Will chameleons eat freeze-dried crickets though?
Chameleons will not eat freeze-dried crickets. They don’t recognize dead food as food, therefore live food should be the only option when feeding chameleons. Not to mention the advantages live crickets have over freeze-dried crickets.
Chameleons have a hard time recognizing freeze-dried crickets as a source of food. They won’t eat them unless forced to because they don’t acknowledge it as food, being a complete stranger to modern preservation. What are some of the reasons why chameleons won’t eat freeze-dried crickets?
Why Won’t Chameleons Eat Freeze Dried Crickets?
Chameleons aren’t smart animals but they know what is food and what isn’t. This knowledge is passed down through generations of evolution.
Their ancestors have eaten many things with only the surviving one passing down information of what’s good and what’s not. It is said that a wild animal’s main diet is always the baseline when it comes to feeding it after domestication.
This is why chameleons will eat live crickets but freeze-dried crickets become a total mystery to them. In the wild, crickets are bountiful with them jumping around from branch to branch just like a chameleon would.
They have been doing so for many years and chameleons have acknowledged them as one of their staples food in the diet. Freeze-dried crickets don’t exist in the wild.
Sure, it’s the same thing to you but your chameleon doesn’t know that since it has never seen such a thing before. It would be like giving a baby a fried chicken and expecting it to eat it cleanly for the first time.
Not to mention the fact that freeze-dried crickets smell and taste differently as well. Your chameleon will likely want no part of it in its mouth even if it’s for the sake of survival since it will smell or taste as if it was harmful to them.
They would eat them if forced to but there are reasons why you shouldn’t do that though.
Why Shouldn’t I Feed Freeze-Dried Crickets To My Chameleon?
Live food will always have an advantage over dead, dried, frozen, or even freeze-dried food. They retain the most nutrition possible as they are eaten completely alive without a moment to decay.
Lost of Nutritional Value
Dried foods will lose their moisture content which is vital for a chameleon’s survival. Chameleons are very bad at drinking water and every little bit helps them even if it is but minuscule.
Live foods retain water the most when compared to the obvious dried ones. Not only that, but the process of drying can cause some nutritional values to drop off as well.
Add freezing into the mix and the nutritional value just keeps dropping and dropping. Freezing comes with its own set of problems as well.
Risk of Pathogens
Some pathogens, though rare, are known to be able to survive extreme temperatures. Usually, this won’t be a problem for dried foods because the lack of water doesn’t allow pathogens to thrive, but frozen foods are different.
Freeze-dried crickets will be reprocessed to be frozen and stored, this opens an opportunity for pathogens to infect them through external means. Since some of these pathogens can survive extreme weather, they will likely pass on to your chameleon as well.
These pathogens will likely infect and attack your chameleon’s immune system, causing them to develop illnesses. You don’t want to be the reason why your pet chameleon dies a premature death now, do you?
Causing Unnecessary Stress
Since you’ll need to force them to eat freeze-dried crickets, I imagine that wouldn’t be pleasant for them. Chameleons are very bad at handling stress and will have shorter lifespans due to that.
Never try to force your pet chameleon to eat anything it doesn’t want to, stick to the ones they are comfortable with so that it can live a happy life.
Conclusion
Chameleons will not eat freeze-dried crickets because they don’t recognize them as a food in their diet. Since chameleons have only seen live crickets in the wild, they can tell the difference if they are being fed freeze-dried ones as opposed to living ones.
Moreover, freeze-dried crickets smell and taste different as well. Your chameleon would likely ignore it simply because it smells harmful to them.
Even if they don’t, it’s likely harmful to them due to the risks associated with freezing foods. Pathogens can contaminate them and some can even survive the harsh temperatures of freezing which will then transfer to your chameleon.
I know crickets can be yucky at times but for the sake of your chameleon, only ever consider feeding them lives ones.
