So how did I end up with a mid-sized, snail-crunching anole that dresses up as another species?
Duckie was a gift.
Not a rescue, not a planned acquisition and not a species I had spent years researching before bringing home. She arrived as an opportunity to work with an animal I’d admired for years but had never actually kept myself.
Duckie is a Cuban False Chameleon (Anolis barbatus), also known as the Western Bearded Anole, and she and her extended family are among the most fascinating anole species alive today.
Naturally - I thought I already understood her. Being a fan, I knew the species and husbandry requirements.
False chameleons occupy western Cuba where they inhabit transitional habitats between dry forest and upland rainforest. They belong to what’s known as the “twig giant” ecomorph; slow moving, deliberate little predators built for navigating narrow branches with remarkable precision.
They’re also specialists.
Unlike most of the insect-hunting lizards we keep, false chameleons are primarily molluscivorous, meaning they’re adapted to eat gastropods like snails and slugs.
On paper, Duckie sounded wonderfully simple.
Slow moving.
Thoughtful.
Methodical.
Essentially a tiny pretend chameleon with an anole disguise.
Penny and I still call her the pretend lizard.
As it turns out—
Duckie had absolutely no interest in behaving like the animal I had imagined.
The Pretend Lizard Ignores Physics
The first twelve months with Duckie sailed by with no real issues.
Well - apart from sourcing enough snails to satisfy a specialist molluscivore.
She started life in a smaller enclosure while she was tiny, with appropriate temperature gradients, UV exposure and a tidy little bioactive setup to round everything off.
Duckie—named after the character from The Land Before Time—grew into the delightful little lady she is today. Nearly eight inches long, a disproportionately large head and a permanently vacant expression that strongly suggests she isn’t listening and has no intention of starting.
Time for an upgrade.
We managed to get hold of a 45 × 45 × 90 cm terrarium and I decided to build the enclosure I’d always wanted for her; Layered, heavily planted, fully bioactive, microclimates running from top to bottom.
UV lighting, LED lighting, basking opportunities and branches arranged to form a low canopy with shaded retreats and sleeping perches.
Now I was cooking with charcoal.
Over the following weeks everything came together. Plants established, clean-up crew settled in and the structure started becoming what I’d imagined. Duckie even got prime position in the lounge so we could admire her from every angle.
Then moving day arrived.
Duckie moved in and—
everything looked perfect, exploration, feeding, drinking, basking, natural behaviours.
I remember sitting there thinking I’d absolutely nailed it.
Then one evening after lights out—
Bang.
Sliding noise.
Me:
“Huh?”
Duckie:
On the bloody floor looking mildly confused and apparently unaware she had just attempted to violate the laws of matter.
I checked the enclosure - Nothing.
Checked her – Thankfully nothing.
Put her back.
Next evening—
Bang.
Again.
The following night—
twice.
And then it continued.
Which left me with one question.
What on earth had convinced this lizard she could jump through glass?
The Wrong Questions
Me being me, my first thought wasn’t particularly scientific.
It was simply—what on earth is causing this?
Why is she trying to throw herself through the glass? What is making her do it? Fear? Being startled? Cold? Hungry?
Then I realised something.
At least initially, none of those questions really mattered.
My immediate priority wasn’t understanding the behaviour. It was stopping the tiny pretend lizard from repeatedly introducing her face to tempered glass.
So, I started changing things.
I rebuilt parts of her enclosure and added vinyl to the outside of the terrarium to make everything feel more enclosed and secure and give her a more sheltered environment.
It didn’t work.
Duckie simply found a nice high spot on a bromeliad and kamikazed herself directly into the glass anyway.
Interestingly, not just the doors - the sides as well.
That ruled out a few ideas in my head. Escape behaviour felt unlikely and association with us became difficult to argue considering she couldn’t actually see outside properly.
My next thought drifted towards company.
Many anole species display surprisingly complex social behaviours. Not all of it is what we would call friendly, but equally not all interaction is aggressive either. Maybe that was the answer.
So, I borrowed a male from a friend and sat back to watch.
She beat him up.
Repeatedly.
After three days I returned him with a genuine thank you followed by a slightly awkward apology.
Back to square one.
Then I noticed something.
Her attempts at chaotic destruction only ever happened after lights out.
With one exception.
Feeding time.
Duckie is technically a specialist molluscivore but, as it turns out, she has a surprisingly broad palate. Snails remain the favourite, but she’ll happily take beetles, larvae, locusts and roaches and every now and again she’ll even take a pinkie and shake it like dog with a rat.
And that was the moment my thinking changed.
What if the answer wasn’t in changing the enclosure?
What if I changed how I interacted with her instead?
Learning to Speak Duckie
I started giving Duckie a treat or two from tongs after lights out.
Don’t worry—I worked these low fat, crunchy treats into her overall diet. The last thing I needed at this point was an obese flying anole.
There was enough ambient light from lamps, TV glow, children existing loudly and the general chaos of home life for her to safely locate food without any issue, but I changed one small thing.
I stopped feeding her immediately.
Instead, I waited for her to climb onto a specific branch before presenting the food.
Nothing complicated. Nothing particularly clever.
She just had to move herself into position.
This tiny challenge to her questionable intelligence produced something I wasn’t expecting.
She started anticipating it.
Lights out stopped meaning chaotic attempts to phase through solid objects and instead became associated with movement, the branch and what we now affectionately refer to as her bedtime snack.
Over time she began climbing there herself.
And slowly, almost without me noticing, the glass launching started happening less.
Not overnight.
Not perfectly.
But enough.
The movement itself seemed to satisfy whatever itch she had previously been directing into trying to headbutt her way into another dimension. She still does the “I can phase through solid objects if I want” occasionally, but the frequency has diminished.
That was the point where my thinking changed.
I’d spent weeks changing the enclosure and trying to remove the behaviour when all along the thing that made the difference was changing how I interacted with her.
Observation suddenly stopped feeling passive.
Watching an animal isn’t enough.
Sometimes observation means making a small adjustment, stepping back and allowing the animal to tell you whether you’re getting warmer or colder.
Duckie never stopped being weird.
She’s still very much a work in progress.
I don’t think she’ll ever not throw herself into glass.
But she taught me something that has followed me into every animal I’ve worked with since.
Sometimes behaviour isn’t something to suppress.
Sometimes it’s communication.
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