colormatcher

[ChileanTaco]

I'm always surprised how well Taco can match the colors of things in his enclosure.
Friends often think I made the enclosure exactly his colors, but no, he was chocolate brown with grey as a baby
It's crazy how well he matches the ochre-orange marbled with white and the almost purple sand I coated the flat parts of his climbing background with

 

[Chris.]

He is looking really stunning!

 

[ChileanTaco]

He's not a morph, was sold to me as a "standard". (The reptile store also sells morphs from time to time.)

 

[AHBD]

He is nice shades of earth tones, he matches his surroundings very nicely ! Looks like he'll be shedding soon.

 

[ChileanTaco]

He is nice shades of earth tones, he matches his surroundings very nicely ! Looks like he'll be shedding soon.

At this time he was shedding often (as he was much younger than now), but according to my photos there was no shedding shortly after.
Also, he still looks like this most of the time. I'm always wondering how much of this is coincidence and how much is really adjusting his colors. Well, yes they of course always have some kind of earth tones, and I automatically get some earth tones when I mimic a natural environment, and he for sure wouldn't be green with blue if his enclosure would have that colors (just joking, I had never done that ). But that close?

 

[AHBD]

His back is in shed there without doubt, I can tell. But they can lighten + darken mostly according to mood and temperature. I see he was developing the slight orange in his beard, very pretty.

 

[ChileanTaco]

His back is in shed there without doubt, I can tell. But they can lighten + darken mostly according to mood and temperature. I see he was developing the slight orange in his beard, very pretty.

Yes, I see this very often. He does this very often. They also do this to adjust how much light they take in, one form of their thermoregulation.
He still has this orange in his beard. He now mostly looks like a more extreme version of what's in this photo.
When shedding soon, he gets much paler/duller.

He can also mimic very well the color of the branch; attached is a photo of him when he was 4 months old.
Now that he is more orange he doesn't get the color of the branch that well anymore, but still almost.

 

[AHBD]

I love natural logs + branches like that.