- Six months ago, I saw one of my favorite species
of chameleon in the world on Instagram.
So I reached out to my buddy Craig over at Primo Chameleon
and asked him if he could save me a pair
and he said, "Yes."
But he said he wanted to wait for two reasons.
He wanted it to get a little larger.
And number two,
he wanted to wait till the weather was a little better.
Lori, I wanna get a couple chameleons.
Can you, do you mind?
- Couple chameleons what?
- Yeah they're actually Parson's chameleon, yellow giants.
The largest chameleons in the world.
- You love chameleons?
- Okay, actually I would be okay with that.
- Okay. - They're on my list so,
- They're not the cheapest of chameleons though.
- I know, I'm aware.
- Okay, well this pair costs $4,000.
- Yeah, for captive babies.
- Okay. - That's a good price.
- The bad news, I was saving the $4,000 to buy you a gift,
so now I have to just buy a chameleon instead.
- Yeah, you're a liar, but okay, nice try.
- Chameleons are some of the most unusual lizards
on the planet, there's no doubt about it.
But we have a bunch of other ones that are really cool.
Like these Uroplatus fimbriatus,
of course that tail is what makes them a leaf-tailed gecko.
But just look at those eyes and how incredible.
Again, these guys are from Madagascar as well
just like the Parson's and Panther chameleons.
Do chameleon always have their eyes on you?
- No.
- Chameleons eyes are capable of adjusting individually
with each eye having the rotational capacity of 180 degrees.
This means they can keep an eye straight,
while others look around,
or even have both rotated to get 360 degrees scope
of their surrounding. Let's unbox them.
Oh my God, I am so excited.
Like I said, it's been six months
waiting for this very moment.
I cannot wait to see what these things look like.
Op, I'm throwing the knife, that's all right.
Tell you what, I'm nervous.
This is amazing.
Ooh, I'm gonna be very gentle,
very gentle, very gentle, very gentle.
Oh my gosh, I cannot wait to see it.
Which one? This one, this is the male, okay?
Oh my gosh and again, these came from Primo Chameleons
which is a great chameleon breeder
and one of the very few places
that are captive breeding Parson's chameleon,
the largest species of chameleon on the planet.
And these particular ones are what they call
the yellow giant.
Oh, and they're bigger than I expected too.
Oh my gosh, these things are incredible.
Take a look at that.
Oh,
I literally wanna cry. I'm so excited.
I mean, holy moly, you could see how chubby they are.
They're just a really big kind of beefy chameleon
that are incredible.
Of course, these are the largest species of chameleon
in the entire world.
Sometimes getting over two foot long
with their tail, amazing!
They can weigh sometimes over 1,000 grams.
Absolutely gigantic chameleons
and the yellow giants are some of the largest
of the Parson's chameleon.
There's actually four different color faces of them.
The yellow giant's being one of 'em
and one of the biggest ones too.
Now this is the boy here and the boy actually
will get typically larger than the female.
Unbelievable, these guys are endemic to Madagascar.
Typically like the East Northern part of Madagascar and wow!
They are incredible.
And then this is the female.
Let's take a look at her real quick.
And speaking of large lizards,
before we unbox the female,
I want to show you the largest gecko in the world.
The leachianus from New Caledonia.
This is actually a decent sized female,
but she can actually get much larger.
Some localities like the Yeti
can actually get like twice the size.
I mean, when you put 'em in this enclosure
and they blend in, you can barely see 'em.
And when I first started, we had one or two leachies.
Now we have 1, 2, 3,
and the thing that's interesting about leachie geckos
is their vocalization.
5, 6, 7, there's so many
that I really can't even count that high.
Oh, look at the color.
She's got lots of green on her.
Now, as she gets bigger,
she's gonna turn a little bit more yellow but,
oh, my goodness.
She is a girl.
These guys could actually lay a ton of eggs.
The weirdest thing about 'em
is their eggs take over two years to hatch.
I've been waiting six months
since I first saw that Primo Chameleons hatch these guys.
I reached out to 'em and said,
"I've gotta have some, can I get a pair please?"
And of course he said, "I would hang onto some."
He wanted to make sure that they were a little bit older
which I certainly do appreciate,
but just imagine his wait.
He got eggs two years ago.
They have to wait for these things to hatch after two years.
But oh my gosh, these are incredible, coolest chameleon.
Oh, I am just, I can't even express to you how excited I am.
So it's gonna be amazing to add these
to the animal ambassadors here,
and just get these guys going.
And one day they're gonna be huge.
They'll live up to 14 years.
They are a long living Chameleon,
much longer than Panthers and Bales
that are very short lives for sure,
so we here to hopefully have these guys around
for the next decade or more.
Wow! What do you guys think?
Of course, in the comments these guys need names.
This is Billy the Frilly, the Australian frilled dragon
and it's pretty unusual
that they would have these amazing flaps
that they use as a defense mechanism.
Billy, it's okay buddy.
These guys are arboreal, so they love to climb.
So when they get a little bit antsy,
all you have to do is basically,
oh, what are you doing?
You just opening your mouth at me, Billy?
All you have to do is actually get 'em up
in the air like this, and they actually calm down a lot.
But look at those frills right there,
absolutely amazing animals and certainly unusual.
I'm sure you've seen the movie Jurassic Park.
Well, those are called the Dilophosaurus.
Inspiration for that animal was this animal here.
- I know Mike's terrified of spiders.
Look at that, look at that.
Okay, let's go get Mike.
Mike, smell my finger dude.
You guys smell my finger?
- No. - What?
- Nah dude, - What?
- I'ma hit you with this.
- Why? Don't it's a live animal.
- [Cameraman] What's in this shaking the animals dude.
- Dude, those are live.
Those are the new rhino iguanas.
- [Cameraman] Unfortunate.
- Now it's in the box.
- G!
- Are chameleon's tongue their secret weapon?
- Yeah.
- A chameleon's tongue is an incredibly fast,
catching prey within a fraction of a second
and exceeding the speed of 14Gs worth of force
making it nearly impossible for their next meal to escape.
- We have Skittles taped all over the Reptarium.
And it's Mike and I's job to eat 'em.
- What? - But the challenge is
we have to use our tongue like a chameleon.
- You know you've got that.
Excuse me.
- Don't kiss me dude.
- I got two.
Oh wait there.
- These are actually Centralian blue-tongued skinks
and it is definitely an interesting animal.
Blue-tongued skinks in itself are pretty unusual
but the Centralians or the multifasciata
are really interesting 'cause they're even shorter
and more kind of fat.
That's why this guy's named Potato
'cause we always say he looks like a sweet potato,
and actually, he acts like a sweet potato too.
He doesn't hardly move around a lot.
What an absolutely amazing animal.
And again, not many of 'em in the country,
so we're really blessed to have Potato.
He is absolutely incredible.
Can chameleons regrow their tail?
- False. - Most lizards
have the ability to regenerate a severed tail,
but not chameleon.
Their tail essentially acts as another leg.
It is not designed and able to be broken off
and will not regrow.
Let's go ahead and show Mike and see what he thinks.
Look at this little monkey right here.
- Dude, look at him,
- I know, isn't it amazing?
- We got a pair?
- We've got a pair and it's amazing
how she changes color so quickly.
Like green, to kind of the whitest color,
a little yellow, I mean, wow!
- So pretty.
This is like the bulldogs of chameleons.
- Cute man.
I just, I can't think of it.
I've only seen adults,
I've never seen this young.
It literally looks like a triceratops without the horns.
I like, I'm mind blowing
- Surprise. - Oh look,
it's a little baby.
Yeah, I mean it's not so little.
- It's almost the size of an adult Panther chameleon
and it's only about six months old.
- Scratch your booty.
- The heck are they doing?
(upbeat music)
- No.
(upbeat music)
- Milton the Uromastyx lizard.
There's a whole bunch of different localities of Uromastyx.
This guy is really cool.
This is about full grown for them.
Some of 'em like our Egyptian Uromastyx
can get up to three foot in length.
They all have this really spiky interesting tail.
Of course they use that to stick in crevices
where you can't actually get 'em out.
They love hot weather.
I mean, you need to have these guys like 130, 140 degrees
when it comes to hot spot and they actually eat bird seed,
believe it or not, really weird right?
Like where are they finding bird seed in the wild?
I have no idea,
but they will also eat a bunch of other veggies as well.
Absolutely cute animals
and as unusual as you're ever gonna see.
Is chameleon's spit incredibly sticky?
- True.
- Like a spider using a sticky web for prey,
chameleon use their spit to coat the prey
that they catch with their tongues
and pull them inwards towards their mouth.
Their spit is actually 400 times stickier than a humans.
We're just retrofiting this enclosure,
so we could put one of the Parson's in here.
But the thing that Primo Chameleons told us that
that as babies, you don't wanna have anything
with dirt in it 'cause they can actually eat the dirt
and potentially get impacted.
So we're taking the plant out
and we're gonna redo this enclosure a little bit,
so this can be where one of them is.
- Oops, I broke it.
- Mike's always breaking stuff, I swear.
(grunting) (jungle music)
- Laurie, check this out.
Dun dun dun, aren't they amazing?
- Oh, that is so cool.
- They're like so different than any other chameleon, right?
They have like more skin on 'em, they're fatter,
they're just kind of beefy, you know?
They're amazing.
- They're very cool.
- I know, I'm so happy that you said that we could get 'em.
These are gonna be awesome.
- So cute.
- Is there color change just a survival instinct?
- False. - Most people
are under the impression that chameleons
only change colors to blend in with their environment,
but that's not entirely the case.
The truth is they actually change their color
with the mood and sometimes even temperatures.
All monitor lizards are absolutely incredible
because they're so smart
and they're such interesting animals to work with.
This happens to be an Argus monitor.
What makes the Argus even more interesting
is they do what they call tripoding,
which means that they stand up on their back legs
and use their tail to kind of tripod,
so they can look over things,
which is a really kind of unique thing
mainly to the Argus monitors.
Now other monitors can do it
but these guys are really known for it
and they're definitely unusual,
but none of these guys are as unusual as Parson's chameleon.
- Hey Mike,
Mike,
where's Mike at?
- We're actually gonna put the male
in this enclosure right here.
There you go buddy.
Got lots of room, lots of foliage in here
for him to kind of feel safe.
The thing with Parson's is you wanna kind of flood
'em with water, lots and lots of water.
'cause these guys come from like a real humid area,
so they need more water than most chameleons.
So we got the misting system here,
we got a fogger in here for nighttime.
We usually wanna do all of the misting and fogging at night
where it cools off a little bit and gets more humid,
so wow!
Look at that little monkey.
He looks awesome.
Hope you guys enjoyed today's video.
If you did, there's a playlist
that you can watch all kinds of videos.
You can also hit that subscription button,
it would mean a lot to me.
Also hit that like button while you're down there,
have a wonderful day reptile army.
Remember be kind to someone
and I promise I'll see you in the next one.
- We got, We got the sour ones.