It seems as if every time I go to MorphMarket, I see more and more local cross-populations of Panther Chameleons for sale. Often labeled as “Designer Panther Chameleons,” these chameleons are a cross of Panther Chameleons from different locations. For example, you may see Nosy Be chameleons crossed with Amabanja, etc. Some breeders do this in an attempt to bring out certain traits, like colorations, in their offspring. Some breeders unknowingly do this because they’re so eager to breed their chameleons that they’ll just buy a male and a female, not even concerned about the locality of those Panther Chameleons, that they’ll just breed to say they bred them.
Here at my facility, we have a strict rule that we do not cross between the localities of any reptile. Whether we’re talking about Panther Chameleons or Leachianus Geckos, we only work with animals from specific locations and keep them this way. I don’t want to come across as preachy, and I am certainly not judging breeders who do this, but I can’t get on board with the idea of messing up what Mother Nature has done. This is especially true with rare reptiles that we work with – we want to keep our reptiles as nature intended.
There are also possible unforeseen consequences of crossing the localities of reptiles, even Panther Chameleons. Some of these different locals may actually be different subspecies. At this time, I am unaware of any studies that say one way or the other – but why take any chances? In this case, you’d be mixing animals from not only different locations but distinct subspecies. Since conservation in captivity is one of our goals, we would fall short if we started mixing animals that could be different subspecies.
The other problem with the approach of crossing localities is that people are not always honest. While it is good that the breeder who made the crosses made it clear that those Panther Chameleons are indeed crossed, how do we know that the people he/she sells to will be just honest? We all either know or at least have heard of these unscrupulous breeders. I just don’t trust the downstream buyers of these cross-locality Panther Chameleons to all be honest about what they’re breeding and selling. Things could get really muddy in just a few generations unless everyone involved in these projects holds themselves to very high standards of transparency and honesty.
While we love it when people are excited to come into the Hobby (and we understand that ‘morphs’ are what some people are attracted to), the cross-breeding of known locality Panther Chameleons is not something we can’t support. When you purchase reptiles from us, rest assured that if we say a Panther Chameleon is a specific locality, it actually is.
