Reptile Fight Club - Chuckless again in RFCville

Episode Date: July 29, 2022

Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comFollow Chuck Poland  on IG @ChuckNorriswinsFollow MPR Network on:FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQMore ways to support the shows.Swag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

Welcome to the episode of Reptile Fight Club. As you can tell if you read the title, I'm Chuckless again. Very sad. I miss you, Chucky. But I talked my beautiful wife into coming on with me again. So I at least have somebody to talk to instead of just talking to myself for a little bit. So we wanted to release something. So I had a couple ideas.

So I thought, why not? Let's get it. And she agreed. she's so great how are you doing sweetie good good yeah really good yeah we had a fun night last night um awesome yeah do you want to tell the story or should i you should probably okay we were hanging out we we'd just done a service project in our neighborhood and we were over um in a parking lot behind our church and there was a little western screech owl that somebody had found that was sitting on the edge and i hadn't seen that species yet so i was pretty pretty excited so that was a new new species for

me and you right you haven't seen a western street so um i was excited to see it and then it just kind of sat there it couldn't fly and it looked like an adult it had like all its feathers and everything and so i'm like that's not good so um um these kids were there and they were like petting it with a stick you know so they wouldn't get and he was kind of clicking his beak like clacking his beak did you hear him do that no it's kind of an interesting like threat display or something. But yeah, it's kind of like back off. So anyway, he ducked under the fence into one of the neighbor's yards. And so I went home and I got a Rubbermaid container.

And I went over to the neighbor's and he was in his garage. And he's like, I'm like, you've got an owl in your backyard? And he's like, no, I've got some an owl in your backyard and he's like no I've got some chickens but I don't have any owls I'm like no I saw an owl go into your backyard I think it's injured I want to you know take it into you know a rescue and so he's like sure so he went out there and helped me kind of um herd it into the rubbermaid it kind of flew a little bit like but it stayed low and it didn't fly very far. And it looked like it had been chewed on by something or was injured in some way.

So we got it into the Rubbermaid and I took it over home and put it in the reptile room for a bit. And there's a vet at the university, Arnaud Van Wettery, uh he's a falconer so he knows lots about birds and especially raptors so i uh i texted him i'm like i've got another bird because i i did i caught a red-tailed hawk that was injured a while back man that thing was kind of that was amazing and it was much bigger bird i mean the screech owls are pretty small this thing was big and powerful like like surprisingly powerful like i i went i kind of used a blanket to kind of throw the blanket over the bird and then grabbed it and like he almost got his talons into my hand and i felt the strength just kind of brushing i'm like holy crap that would not have felt good so

yeah anyway so he helped me through that one and I took it down to a rescue in Ogden, which is about an hour or a little bit more, um, South of us. And so I'm like, oh man, I don't, I was thinking, well, maybe I can take the owl to the, to the rescue in the morning and drop Heidi off at work and then drive down there. But I had a call with the NIH. So I'm like, how am I going to do this? Maybe I can take the call from the road. But anyway, I was talking to another friend, told him, hey, we found an owl. It's kind of cool.

And he's like, hey, there's a rescue in town or close to town. And so it was only a 20-minute drive. And so I thought, oh, that's much better. And then I contacted the lady that was in charge of it. And she's like, Oh, we take a drop offs 24 hours a day. So, and I'm like, okay, we'll drive up there tonight. So Heidi and I, and one of our daughters drove up to, to, uh, Preston, Idaho, which is yeah, about 20, 25 minute drive North of us. And we were about a mile away from the rescue and we got a flat tire.

So we're on the side of the road, changing the tire on the Prius and yeah, loving a night. And the, we were in front of some person's house and they came out. But the, I contacted the rescue and I said, well, we're not going to be there when we said, cause we got a flat tire. And she's like, Oh, we'll come meet you. So they came out and picked up the owl helped me change the tire so it was you know nice something so yeah for some reason the tire wouldn't come off so it was

like stuck and we had to kind of pry it off i think it was just really hot or something the metal was sticking together for some reason but so they we dropped off the owl we got the tire changed then we headed back home and we got home about what 12 15 or something so it was a little bit of a late night yeah so it was so cool but it was amazing that thing was so beautiful such a beautiful bird like a juvenile because it was so small but you think that's full grown oh yeah yeah we've seen really little we saw the one that they had we went to a museum and they had an adult and it was on a guy's arm and yeah it was a pretty small owl so beautiful yellow eyes and i i learned i don't know if this is true i need to verify this but like diurnal more diurnal owls have yellow eyes whereas like the nocturnal owls have the darker eyes so i think it might be partially diurnal, the screech owls. I don't know. But it's just what I heard.

A little tidbit, a little factoid. Just in case you were wondering. Have you ever seen owls with no eyes? Oh, the orange, more orange eyes are like more nocturnal. Anyway, I thought that was interesting. So, yeah, we got to play with an owl yesterday. So that was fun. Because how long would it take you?

You have to be a falconer first. Oh, yeah. Before you can have owls. You have to play with an owl yesterday, so that was fun. How long would it take you? You have to be a falconer first before you can have owls. You have to apprentice with somebody. Do you have to be the falcon thing first and then owls, or can you just do owls? I think you have to start with either a red-tailed hawk or a sparrow hawk, a kestrel. Once you get those down, then you can branch into other things. There are some species that aren't regulated by that so like that eagle owl that that pet store that's what i want you can get an eagle owl without being a falconer i think i think technically it kind of goes outside

as long as it's not a native species i think it's not regulated but i don't know i don't i think it's probably better to to you can build a cool enclosure for it. Oh, yeah. That would be an amazing thing. But I would feel bad keeping such a big bird in a cage. Unless you found one that was a rescue that could have... That's true. If it couldn't fly or something like that.

I think that would be really cool. Yeah. And those are probably captive bred. I don't know that they're importing eagle owls. I doubt it. But I don't know. I don't know birds. Birds are a little more high I doubt it, but I don't know. I don't know. Birds, birds are a little more high maintenance, but yeah, while it was at the

house, I'm like, Hey, I asked my friend, uh, should I give it a mouse? And he's like, yeah, go for it. He said, maybe open it up so it can see the liver and some of the organs and stuff. So I kind of opened it up for the, and I, I kind of put it in front of it and it grabbed it with its beak. So I just kind of backed away slowly and left. I kind of put it in front of it and it grabbed it with its beak so i just kind of backed away slowly and left i kind of wish i would have watched it because it ended up eating it so it did get a meal so hopefully that helped it along its way to recovery but they said that those birds rehab really well so western screech owls do good so yeah it was a lot of fun um but yeah i was tired I'm tired today but not as

tired as Chuck he's just getting raked over the coals it's pretty miserable for him right now so he said I've got a headache I'm gonna eat some Tylenol and go to bed so he's he's out for the count poor Chuck we miss you buddy yeah well we'll record something to get out so anyway i guess uh let's see what else we got going on we got we got one one or two more clutches in the incubator just one more snake clutch and then a couple gecko eggs so some wheeler eye eggs and then some centralian python brittle uh wow readily brittle I like to say Bredeli. I don't know. I do too. I think Bredeli sounds better.

I mean, it's proper to say Bredeli, but not proper. Just kidding. We like scientific pronunciation, but it's a dead language, so who cares, right? I don't. I don't like that. I just think Bredeli sounds better. Yeah. So anyway, I've got a clutch of hypo

brittle lie in incubator so I'm excited for those that'll be these are the first typos I've hatched out so they probably got another month or so maybe a little less maybe half a month I kind of want them to take their time because I'm running out of room I've got I think I can squeeze them in, but it's going to be a squeeze. It's a good thing I've got a reptile show coming up so I can hopefully move some animals. The jungles are eating. I think I've got all of them except for maybe two.

And, of course, my favorite one out of the clutch is not eating. It's a zebra jungle that is striped, so it's really pinstripey really interesting looking so i'm really curious to see how it grows up and then the inlands i got one inland feeding i i started feeding trials and one took um last week so i've got a little ways to go with the inlands um i'm i'm so torn because i want to see them develop and gain their colors. I was looking at an old picture. An old picture popped up on, I don't know, maybe social media or on my phone or something. And it was of an Inland that I sold.

And I was looking at it going, how did I sell that? It was so gorgeous. I'm like, what am I doing selling these things? So I kind of want to hold on to at least a small group of them cause these are, these are some of my first selectively bred, like my whole backs, the offspring of my whole back. So I kind of want to keep them around. And then I was looking at one of the Inlands that I didn't breed this year and I'm like, man, why didn't I breed this girl? She looks phenomenal.

She just looks so good. So I'm really excited for the Inlands. And I think, you know, there's other people out there maybe that are excited too. I know at least a couple of you guys listening are excited for these. And so, yeah, hopefully we'll get them eating and ready to go soon. I kind of want to hold on to the jungles too to watch them color up. I love watching jungles color up. The blackheads, I'm'm gonna probably just resort to cis feeding though so they're getting a little thin and they didn't hatch out with a lot of

like they didn't like a lot of blackheads hatch out really fat like with a lot of like their yolk or reserves or something these guys didn't i think it my incubation i need to figure something out there yeah talk to a bunch of people. But, um, so I'm still trying to figure that out, how to get a better hatchery and get, get these things going. But I think I'm going to have to assist feed this week. The, the blackheads, um, I tried last week, but I think I was using too large of an item. I thought maybe if I got, you know, got the front part of it in, maybe they'd just finish it but now i spit it right out so do you ever do like a liquid diet or like a yeah something like that just to get the nutrients

it's a lot easier because you can just kind of yeah get them the nutrients the strength i need strength and nutrients um we love nacho in this family um Um, but yeah, so assist feeding, I think that's what most black headed breeders do is they start out with assist feeding. Um, so yeah, then the, the Womas are the pair of Womas that I got were, were solid and they're probably ready to go here soon. I think I've got a buyer for him. I need to check with him and see if he's, if he wants them. I sent him pictures and he said, thanks, but he didn't say I'll take them or, you know, um, I'll send you money. So we'll see how that goes. And then I've got a few other odds and ends. So, yeah. Um,

but yeah, good season. I'm happy. Got a lot of good stuff out there. Oh, man, another clutch of Western Stimson's hatch, some wheat belts. And this is another holdback pair of stripes. And there's one in there that's just crazy striped and really neat patterned. And they're kind of varying degrees of striping. And so I'm excited about that clutch so i don't know man people are missing the boat on the wheat belt stimpsons they're just so cool they're amazing and i've got a few of them so you know i need to slow down i guess they've just done so well here and i feel bad because they're um they're not very you know there's not

many people breeding them i know there's not many people breeding them. I know there's a few people that produced them this year, so that's good. I know Casey Lazik did and William Filipek did and a couple others. So there's some other people out there producing, which is good because I want them to be established in the hobby. We've produced hundreds of them here. They've done really well for us. And speaking of the Westerns, that's kind of the part of the idea that I had for today's discussion. So Chuck and I were going

to record and then he was not feeling up to it. So I had a topic, but I think we'll save that for later. So today's going to be more of just like a discussion rather than a fight we're not gonna flip the coin well maybe we could flip the coin just for fun okay you wanna call it then we'll tell you it's tails you're 100% aren't you haven't you won I honestly don't remember I think you beat me every time on the coin flip you're good you got the luck of the Chuck going to Vegas luck out the check don't go to Vegas so I was listening to the wonderful Podfather and the Mackinwookie discuss, or they were interviewing William Filipeck. I was just going to do a chewy noise.

Glad I didn't do that. Give us your best chewy noise. No, no, no. Go on. He was upset that you kind of took a dig at him last time. I don't remember you taking a dig. We'll have to go back and listen to the tapes. It doesn't sound like me.

I know, man. I just sure it wasn't me yeah so he said he's always listening sometimes so i thought that was pretty funny standing in olive branch well we love you owen let's be friends he's getting married. He's getting married soon. It's getting close. Yeah. And one of our Aussie friends, Luke, his wife's having a baby. Aw. So congrats to you if the baby's on the ground. If you've got a little hatchling or newborn. I still want to go see.

We need grandkids. Or Chris's kids. Yeah yeah cuppers we miss our Aussie friends we need to get back there don't we yeah a couple years that's right we're coming in a couple years so prepare yourselves Aussies not sooner for the invasion of the youngest Jew lander children and their parents should be fun so you won the coin toss okay do you wanna what do you want to do what do you want to win oh wait no never mind the mixer holy cow I thought you're gonna get it it's like a neutral you got didn't you get some money or something? I got clothes.

Oh, you got clothes instead. Hey, you had your chance. But clothes are technically like a budget item, so we could... I'm talking like $5 and under here. Not a mixer. Come on. I'll take a 12-pack of Diet Coke. Okay. And...

No, I'm not done. I'm not done. Oh, okay. Then I want a thing of red red vines the ropes in the pack and then yeah don't don't lose the coin toss folks this is what happens that's part one okay you can tell me part two later the show is only a short one today. So, yeah. What was I saying?

Oh, we do love the Mack and Wookie. He's a good man. And best of luck to you in your ventures, in your wedding ventures. In your ventures. Yep. Wish we could be there, but we weren't invited, so he doesn't care about us that much he's mad at us that's why oh that's right

we're talking smack on him in the reptile fight club hey if you can't handle the fight bad feelings don't be the mackin wookie no Owen's a great guy that's about the funnest time in life

yep yeah we we reflect on those days fondly good times good times we're excited for you buddy good luck to you um so anyway uh i was listening to the podfather and the mac and wookie talk interview uh william philippek of t w j j don't know I'm sorry I can't remember your

work your business name William Filipec, cool guy I met him at Tinley a couple years ago, really cool guy but he was talking to Eric and Owen talking about western Stimpsons

and his ratios in his like gender ratios. So he gets clutches of like mostly males. Oh. And he was looking at the... Consistently? Yeah, like several clutches have been mostly males of anteresia. And like I've had a couple of Western Stim clutches that were fairly male high, but overall it's kind of all balanced out and I have a pretty even sex ratio. So even, you know, measured some of his egg box container temperatures, and they were like up in the 90s.

And typically we incubate our python eggs usually around 89, 88. And so I think my incubator is actually a little low, 80, 87 in the egg boxes, at least on some of the shelves so i haven't sexed my um hatchlings this year but in previous years and especially with the uh pygmy pythons i'm usually way female heavy in those clutches so yeah i don't know but i i do have some data from i i inserted a temp probe into a clutch while the female was laying the eggs. So the temperature probe just got kind of incorporated into the clutch with pygmy python. And while she was incubating, the clutch routinely got up above 90, like up to 92 degrees. We put this graph in the Complete Children's Python book, shameless plug.

But yeah, the temperatures spiked pretty higher than I expected them to. And so she had a wide range of choices in her enclosure of where she could have incubated the eggs. But yeah, she chose a spot where they got pretty hot. And they never move once they coiled. No, they can move them. Yeah, they can kind of inch over and move the clutch with them yeah there's been some people that have i think nick was telling a story once where he thought they should have been in a nest box and so he moved didn't moved them over towards the nest box and then they moved back or no something like that maybe i'm misreming, but kind of a cool thing.

So, so many, it could be anywhere between like 10 degrees higher than where you're at. Yeah. And you're incubating. Let's crack open the book. Let's refresh our memories there. It's the greenish one next to the first edition of the complete carpet. Yeah.

I, uh, speaking of the complete carpet, I, I emailed, uh uh bob asking about the the new book and i haven't heard back from him so i'm hoping uh that uh we'll be able to get some advanced copies soon and then the rest of the copies will follow shortly after that but it might we we might still be a month out or something well you know i was gonna ask you is don't isn't something yeah temperature sex determination he liked it so yeah they their sex is determined by their temperature that they incubate it's just random because don't they just leave the eggs well there I think I saw a page so I think one of the things that got me thinking about this topic or this idea was I I'm

reading dr. Richard shines new book too many so many snakes so little time really just a fun book it's basically him talking about all his early career and starting out in the research and things like that so it was really it's really been a great book telling stories of like near misses with snakes and things like that so it's

really an exciting book but I'm thoroughly enjoying it I'm about 100 pages in. So hopefully the Morelia Python radio folks invite me to be on that book club review or whatever. Oh, that's fun. Is that why you're reading it? Because it's a book club? No, I just bought it and I'm reading it. So it's a really cool book.

Okay, so the max temperature they got was about 91 degrees sorry and they went down to like 87 so but they spent most of their time probably above 90 like for the most part and this is over 100 uh 1200 hours of incubation it'd be interesting to see too like when those periods where it dips down, like maybe they were moving or maybe did they ever get up and get a drink of water or something? Yeah, sometimes the females can leave the clutch. Some kind of self-care and then come back. Yeah, because there's only like three dips. But it could also be the ambient temperature of the room dropped too because our old room was a little less thermal.

It was pretty thermally stable, but it would get cold in the winter. Yeah. But these would be more in the spring. Although, they laid them pretty early in the year. So anyway, I was reading the book and thinking about science and thinking about how, you know, maybe to run a study. And so, and then when I heard William talking about, you know, the sex ratios of the enteresia clutches and how he noticed maybe they were at higher temperatures. And I seem to remember that higher temperatures usually correspond with female sex.

But I know that there is differing. So how do I put this? or chromosomes that bear the sex genes are different between different reptile groups. So like some are like us, where the female is the homo, what's the name? Zygus. Homozygous for the Y, right? Or X. X. Double X. And then males are XY.

And so we're called the heterogametic, and you guys are the homogametic. So women are homogametic, males are heterogametic. Gametic. Gametes. Gametic. Betes. Gametic. Bredelai. So anyway, that could be different with like turtles.

And so in turtles and crocodilians, if it's higher temperatures, I believe they turn female. And maybe it's like there's like two phases. Maybe it's the high temperature and the very low temp. No, it's the high temperature that are males. And the, and I think low temperatures are also males. And then the kind of intermediate are females. I should have looked this up, I guess, before we start recording. But anyway, I'm pretty sure that's how it goes because they're worried with rising temperatures

that it's going to be all male sea turtles out there you know like trying to find a female so there'll be fewer females but there was some indication that the embryos had a certain amount of control over whether they become males or females i was reading a rick shine paper on his website that had some discussion of how the embryo can maybe influence that i i don't know i need to again i should have done a little research for this topic because i mean the yeah that's interesting so so yeah and so like we know that certain species have t sd temperature sex, and others don't like, you know, and, and as far as we know, pythons don't have that. So if this is the case that, you know,

higher temperature means that you're getting a higher ratio of males in the clutch, then that could be a, an interesting scientific breakthrough. So, you know, hearing, um, William talk about that made me think, okay, so I know he got at least some of his Westerns from me. I think he got all of his Westerns from me. As far as I know, I know he, he bought both, uh, lines of Westerns. And, uh, so, you know, why are his heavy male and mine aren't, you know, mine are kind of more equal. Maybe I'm incubating in a lower temperature or in his are getting hotter in the nest boxes that he's using the, the incubation boxes that he's using. So it got me thinking like, how would you demonstrate that?

How would you prove that? And so I thought, well, maybe let's talk about how to design, uh, prove, you know, have a hypothesis and prove the hypothesis with an experiment because if one i i think dr shine talks about this in his book as well is that the importance of um you know natural or what's the hobbyist scientists or yeah or citizen science, citizen science is kind of what they refer to that as and how important citizen science can be to science in general, because we've got, uh, and, and he would talk to different keepers. I, I just started the chapter that he, where he starts talking about pythons. And he was talking about how he would, if he had a question about pythons,

he'd go to people who he knew kept pythons because, um, there were a lot of reptile keepers in Sydney because they would find a diamond python and, oh, it's a beautiful snake. It's really easy going. And so he, they'd put it in there, a cage in their living room or something. And so a lot of people were keeping diamond pythons until the Australian government said, no, they're rare. We're going to make this illegal. And so he stopped allowing people to collect. So sometime between the seventies and eighties or something like that, or maybe the nineties. And so, um, but he would go to his friends that were more hobbyists that just kind of kept reptiles as a hobby. So, um, it's, I, I like that, um, idea of working you know working scientists working with hobbyists because

all too commonly there's this division between hobbyists and zookeepers or hobbyists and scientists or scientists and zookeepers you know I've heard of a few kind of riffs there as well and so you know if we we do a lot better overall I think if we work together yeah I mean collaboration is always better right and also to like to realize that just because you see something with your animals doesn't mean that you that that's necessarily like the rule yeah about something you have to be able to look at it subjectively and say, okay, like, am I, am I like, I can't just come and make a claim that this is how it is for the species all the time, because this is what I observed because you don't know if you don't know what

you're doing. Exactly. And I think that to, to William's credit, when he was, when he was on the podcast, he was saying that, uh, he's like, you know, I need to talk to Justin about this because this is just what I'm observing. And he didn't say, I think, you know, when you keep Antaresia, they're all going to be males, you know, like that's, it's because we inbreed them or it's because this or that, you know, he didn't give a reason. He maybe gave some possibilities, but he, he never said this is why, you know, which is really admirable because a lot of times in hermitic culture, we get these myths or like these long-standing traditions of this is how it is because and and it

happens in science too I know that part of that again going back to shine book he was saying that they didn't know certain species laid eggs they just assumed they were live bears because other members of the genus also you know had live babies and so they just assumed they were and they and then they wrote that into the books like this species is most probably a live bear and then it became this species of the live bear and then um dr shine went back and looked at all these preserved specimens across all different groups. And he said there's probably not a species that he hasn't looked at in a jar, you know, in the various Australian museums. And found out that, yeah, certain species weren't live bears like it was thought. And they did lay eggs.

So, you know, he could show that through these preserved specimens. And he learned a lot of interesting natural history just by looking at preserved specimens that was one thing that kind of kept me away from herpetology is thinking i don't want to pick all these things but i guess there's a lot of value and he even got good at identifying different things inside of animals that had been hit by cars and sat on a hot road and were partially decomposed when they were fixed in formalin so even those had some value but yeah we can i guess we can learn stuff even in bad situations like road kills but so anyway um i thought i'd talk about

like what you need to demonstrate something. Cause like, you know, like we just discussed there, uh, you can't just say, I observed this. So this is fact because, you know, there's variables that go into that. And one of the variables that William mentioned was temperature. And so if you wanted to prove this, you could say, okay, I have the hypothesis that there is temperature, sex determination in pythons. And so how do you determine that? And so I guess i would

suggest and you know this is something that we could all work together to to test to prove oh yeah that'd be awesome and it wouldn't require too too much of an investment you know so what you would need is probably a very um stable uh incubator that you could set the temperature to and you need some temperature probes to to monitor the temperature of your incubation chamber that has the eggs in it as well as your incubator and then just set your temperatures to to different you know thermal regimens and see what happens you know and did the thermometers keep track over time like how do they some can yeah some can like keep the maximum and minimum temperatures that they've experienced over a long period of time um or you

could just measure you know come down at certain times of the day and monitor the temperature or have one of those on. I mean, you can get... You can get a grill temperature thermometer set that will, like a wireless thermometer, that will graph for you. Yeah, there's these little devices called Govee. I've got a couple out in some of my cages out in the reptile room.

I just thought of those. Those would be easy too because they're like 15 bucks they're like the size of an egg you just put them in the incubation the incubation chamber and then um it will track the temperature over time in order to have the experiment be like more pure would you would everyone who did it have to have the same equipment um i mean that would help but I don't think it's necessary. At least the same temperature. So as long as you can have something that's fairly stable and you can show that your temperatures were within a certain range

and then show that you had two separate thermal regimes, then you could kind of gather evidence. And so that's part of this, right? What we need is a high, what's called an N, or the number of animals or test subjects or whatever is your N. And the more test subjects you have, the more confident you can be in your data. And so if you get 70 know if you get a you know 70 80 eggs in a season and you take half of each clutch because there could be some variability between clutches and so you need

to say okay i'm going to compare from the same clutch eggs at one temperature versus another temperature you know because if you have like one clutch in in one temperature and another clutch in an at another temperature then you you're somewhat comparing apples to oranges whereas if you take eggs from the same clutch and then you'd also need to very carefully have the same sized containers the same ratio of water to vermiculite or whatever you're using as your substrate and so everything is kept the same so that's that kind of standard or or across the board and so if you had 80 eggs divided between you know two different temperatures 40 is a pretty good n is that pretty reliable like because i mean wouldn't you want to have more as many yeah test subjects or ends, whatever, as possible?

Yeah, that's right. And so, I mean, yeah, if you had 300, then that would make a stronger case than 80 would. And, you know, of course... And also, the more people you have that can reproduce the same results, that strengthens your... Exactly. Reproducibility is very critical in this regard and so like i guess we could use my case and william's case where he sees a high male ratio and i don't um you know then we can say okay what's the difference between us two or or if but

if we both conduct conducted the same experiment and got completely different results then that would maybe be a little harder to explain you know but if we had a pretty well controlled experiment where we used the same size containers and same thermal regimen you know settings then you know that would help to have those two different data sets you have to monitor that do you have like a yeah i mean because there could be some other things exactly he's out like I think he's Ohio or somewhere out in the you know where it's more humid and you know different out here it's really dry it could be not a temperature thing but a but a moisture thing you know it's hard to say there's nothing wrong with starting the

experiment saying we think it's because temperature come to find out it's because of hydration yeah and so that's it I mean that's a good point is you know you you want to have a hypothesis that you can say yes there's evidence to support this or no there's not evidence to support this so if you say my hypothesis is that temperature different temperatures higher temperatures influence a different sex ratio than a different you know lower temperature then you can test that and and do a higher versus lower temperature and see if you have differences in your sex ratio in the end um now anteresia are good because you can, you know, they breed fairly

early. You can get quite a few, uh, eggs from them. I mean, I've seen clutches up to 10, 15, 20 eggs, you know, in some instances and they're smaller, you know, so you can probably fit more clutches in an incubator and even get a smaller incubator to test it sometimes so you know it could be done just to have an experiment then are you like irresponsibly breathing more snakes you can take care yeah that's a good question I mean obviously you need and in science like yeah of you boosting up your numbers, it's like, okay, who, who has this animal and who would care to be in the, that's another great reason to crowdsource, right?

So you can have, you don't have to produce 300 eggs. You can produce 40 eggs and still get, you know, add your end to somebody else's end that has, you know, the same temperature. So it does require a little bit of cooperation and a little bit of planning and a little bit of you know coordination between different people but it can be done and it's pretty easy I mean I think how many I think I've hatched out 39 entry this year year and I had kind of I didn't hit on the spotted pythons

or the pygmy pythons or children's pythons I think it's all western and eastern Stimson's pythons which are now children's pythons apparently not that I agree with that all children's complete children's

exactly so yeah that's kind of the what i wanted to talk about that's a great idea so yeah keep in mind keep you know keep it uh something you can test keep it simple so like have two very variable two things that are different but everything else try to keep exactly the same yeah and if you do that, and I mean, if you, if you found out, okay, so say we did this study and William and I both had the same thermal regimens in our home, you know, the two, two separate variables and kept everything else the same. And then we saw, okay, the ones that are higher temperature, they were mostly males and the ones at a lower temperature were even

matched or more females or something okay that suggests that the higher temperatures influence sex and that may be the enter Asia or TSD so temperature sex determinant and so after that then you can get into more you know that's when you probably collaborate with an actual PhD herpetologist you know because they can look at the genetics or whatever and figure out maybe like that could be a fundable project potentially yeah yeah yeah and then you're then you're looking at genetics you're looking into like common because I'm pretty sure they've worked out what how how TSD works in turtles or crocodilians and so you could use those same ideas to see if it's the same in pythons and it could be complete like they like

I said earlier they could have a complete different heterogeneity comedic sex I think in pythons at least in ball pythons I think the male is the homo comedic sex and the female is the heterogeneity sex so it's opposite of what we have and I think it's ZW instead of XY and females are ZW and males are ZZ or WW one of the two I think that's how it works Ben Ben moral come on save me here we knew help us Ben you're our only hope help us Ben Kenobi yeah Ben Ben Benson did some really cool, had some great ideas on that. And he's, I mean, he's doing some wonderful work in regards to reptilian genetics and figuring out how to identify males and females using genetic tests.

And you would think it would be pretty simple, but it's very difficult. It's almost like looking for a needle in a haystack. So we need to have him come back on and talk about that more and get into some debates about genetic yeah you know i was thinking about um in species in the wild if temp if temperature is a thing that can determine is there anything to say like okay we know as a species that we don't have enough males so we're gonna hatch this clutch out you know like when I have my next clutch of babies I'm gonna incubate him higher because we need more males in the population I mean is that anamorphic animals too much or I mean I don't know I think do they have any

control I'm gonna have to look into that because I'm pretty sure that paper kind of discussed that idea that maybe the female nests in a different area or like in a cove where it's shady and it's much they're cognizant of that. Like if they're like, man, this is a sausage fest. We need to have more females. I need to lay my eggs deeper in the ground where they're not as hot or something like that. Yeah, maybe if the temperatures don't allow, like for like the turtles, if they don't allow for like a sustainable female population, then they go, like you said, in the ground or they adapt yeah or they find other ways i mean animals have done that sure i mean the earth has changed i mean not as maybe

at the rate that it's changing now but the earth has changed over the and and i mean the sad matter of it is a lot of things go extinct when things change too rapidly and so we could be facing a major extinction event if things get too warm um but you know i we we have seen adaptations difference or uh altered uh migration routes or or or extent of migration like they're migrating further north or south where it's cooler um where before they would never be seen you know that far north or south but now they're going further north and south where it's colder year they go back to the same place yeah because sometimes like the adults will die but then their offspring will do that same migration even though let's not like like

mom and dad are flying and with them and showing them this is where you go right yeah somehow they know we're seeing certain populations getting stranded like almost like on islands where the lower deserts are too hot and so they're you know further and further up the mountains they're more stable there because they're not being affected by the rising temperatures and so you know you know, we're seeing changes in, you know, we're seeing localized extinctions based on too hot temperatures in those areas. And it's pushing them into more cooler areas where they aren't historically known to be. And so, yeah, I mean, either you adapt or you perish.

And so that's kind of the sad thing of this. And hopefully we see more adaptations rather than perishing, but who knows? So, yeah. So anyway, I mean, that was kind of the thought I had about, you know, like, I really enjoyed William's interview. That was a lot of fun. He keeps a really cool array of species and he's you know also excited about the anteresia like me and so it's always fun to hear a fellow anteresia nut i mean

they are a little bit more difficult but i think overall they're very rewarding and and easy enough to breed that you know it makes it a little more fulfilling even though they're challenging. I like a challenge. I don't know. I think everybody kind of wimps out. Like, I'll just breed ball pythons because they're easy. I don't want to breed anteresia. They're too scary.

So, come on. Yeah. Well, I think it's refreshing, too, where he's looking at the species that he appreciates. And, well, why is that? Let's kind of look into it like it's kind of like doing your own detective work you know like your own mystery that you're gonna solve yeah and i think too as you get more domestication or more generations in captivity you see these things get easier and easier to start like my eastern stimpsons pretty much ate first try

like no no real difficulties the westerns are still a little more tricky but not not they're getting better too like i've uh i've had better luck with with successive generations getting them to feed without trickery and things like that the ones that like to eat lizards in the wild yeah yeah that's the that's the downside i've done that when you're out of town once oh yeah that's right you know tails and cutting off parts like tails and feet and legs yeah legs yeah that was fun you are a saint I think somebody said that maybe it was Lisa Farina or somebody said that like you're married to a saint yeah I don't deserve you and then one time i was taking care of your stuff and then i swear

your um green tree pythons they just gave me these puppy die puppy dog eyes and they wanted food and i was feeding something else so i of course obliged and fed them but i fed them mice or i fed the opposite i fed them rats instead of and you had been working to get him on the other and then or something like that I had a green tree that died because I fed it an obese mouse and it was like a giant mouse and I don't know why it died because those snakes they made it though they did the ones I took care of yeah okay but uh i was like oh man i don't want yeah i don't want that on your you know i don't want you and i and i i fed them knowing that that thing is it's gonna spring at me and i'll probably get bit but they looked so

hungry oh yeah they always they're the best of the puppy dog eyes little yeah what i listen are centralians burtley uh-huh Those are my favorites. Oh, yeah. I'm excited for these guys. Hands down, those are the most beautiful snake. I love those. Oh, I don't know. Like, there's some others that I'm really excited about right now. No, I really like those. Yeah.

I like the head shape. I think they're my favorite. Yeah, and that red coloration is so beautiful. Yeah. Diamond Jungle Cross. Diamond Carpet Cross. Diamond Jungle or Diamond Carpet Diamond Cross. That's what I like to see. There's some interesting diamond diamond crosses like they really add oh and I think it's because I don't know diamonds are they

seem to have diverged a little bit before some of the others that they're a little they're not a just a round-of-the-mill carpet python you know even though they're closely related and listed as the same species they're probably different enough they could even be classified as a different species i might be angering people scott eiper but uh saying that but you know there's there's some evidence to suggest that so we'll we'll leave it to the scientists but as far as I'm concerned, there's some interesting things there. Yeah. Oh, I also ran some, the idea of the, so in the forthcoming second edition,

the more complete carpet python, I've talked about just kind of an epiphany I had about water drainage basins and carpet pythons, like some of the genetic work that had been done, and there's a really nice overlap. And so you'll see a couple figures in the book about the overlap between drainage basins and genetic differences or uniqueness and how they line up really well with the drainage basins in Australia, which makes a lot of sense.

And so I ran that idea by Dr dr shine and he said oh yeah it sounds like a good idea in the book until we go there and and really map it out in person okay i think we need to go there done deal I like you. So, I don't know. There's a lot of fun. I would like to get back there and see. I'm kind of jealous. Rob and Eric and some others are going over. I think Keith's going with them. And Matt Minitola is going.

You've got to make that work. Well, it's too late, I i think i don't know if i could get a reasonably priced plane ticket oh and i'm going to mexico with shane so i can't ditch out on him so yeah but yeah we'll get over there soon i'll probably be over there next year maybe i don't know we'll see you and i are going to fr. To France. I know. I was looking where Joan of Arc is from. It's like almost two and a half hours away. Oh. Like north from where we'll be.

So, I mean. Yeah. Let's hit the Alps. Let's go up in the Alps. Yeah, that's true. I think that'll be cool. I mean, Joan of Arc is cool. But I'd rather see the Alps rather than a dead girl's church or something.

Hey. I know. She was burned alive, honey. I know. She deserves some homage. Okay, so I don't want to see some dead girl's ashes. Homage. They don't have the acid.

The ashes. Apparently it's been a long day. Did they use acid to burn her? They used acid to burn her ass. Oh. Language, young lady. Hey, that stuff was brutal i know yeah she was a brave woman she was awesome so anyway yeah i i uh i agree i want to get back I also do agree with that statement. I as well. Oh, boy. So if you're interested in doing a cool scientific study, let's get together.

Let's get our brain power working together. Yeah, I mean, what better, more positive thing for the reptile community? Instead of being like, well, this guy's an idiot. He doesn't know. He says this. You know, hey, let's test it. Let's test it. Let's figure it out. Let's test your idea first.

Like, how's that for a nice way to handle things? Like, I think you're a little cuckoo, but let's test your idea first. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Thanks for being so scientific-minded, William. That was a great interview, and you had some really good insights. So I enjoyed that and, um, got, got my wheels turning. And I mean, you know, I think we've, we've

discussed like as a group kind of carpet Python keepers have discussed these kinds of things, these ideas or these ways of working together to test a hypothesis back in the days of the Morelia Pythons forum days, you know, like, so, um, but I, I don't know, I don't know if we ever got our ducks in a row to do it right and to have kind of a cohesive plan. So, you know, the time may be now let's, uh, let's try it out, see what we can find. And then, um, you know, once you get some data and you, even publish that data and be a co-author on a journal, you know, a journal article for a herpetological journal. So how cool would that be? Yeah, let's work together, people.

And I mean, it comes down a little bit to like laziness on my part like i have started a study where i was gonna compare feeding tails with feeding hind legs to different anteresia and so i had two different groups of hatchlings and i started and i was like recording their weights and stuff and then i just it just got too much and i got busy and i stopped doing it so you know i've started a few of those kind of studies and kind of uh wimped out so i think it would help too to have other people that are vested and you know that like hey man how's your data collection yeah like you yeah like you work together and and that's kind of how you know yeah if someone's waiting you know you got chuck waiting for you to say okay like you know if you don't continue to collect data on it then you're letting somebody else down not just you're you know petering out

on the project but you're yeah you're letting your friend down so yeah yeah so i i don't know i thought instead of skipping a week i'd throw this out there and bring on my beautiful wife to chat with me a little bit so hopefully it was uh helpful and hopefully we can get some fun projects going together find somebody with a like interest and you know look at some ideas i'm gonna go plan a study right now there we go that's where we go just joking i'm not no i'm gonna you've got like your garden stuff you could yeah look at different soil components or good yeah you plant plant half your tomatoes in one type and try a different

fertilizer yeah there's a ton of again yeah ton of data on soil and crop science you know and right now it's a big field i really think what well what i've kind of started doing is like i'm going to rotate like where i did tomatoes this year i'm going to switch over and do something yeah yeah but i uh my we just did ginger mint and oh yeah so i'm going to make mint jelly and then i have apple mint and then regular some kind of like a more standard mint so That's what I'll be doing this weekend. You made that pepper jelly last year. That's so good That reminds us. Let's go get some yeah reminds me. I guess it reminds us Let's go get some cream cheese and eat some

Get some Triscuits and some pepper jelly what were you gonna say we ate the other day um i don't know i was uh we ate tonight your some of your green tomato uh yeah salsa or sauce with well i canned green tomatoes just you know yeah we have a short growing season i think we talked about that so so i uh use that in the chili verde um chili so yeah i mean it's just a great flavor it has a really good texture too and i think you can tell there's some tomatillos in there too and and heidi always includes a lot of meat so yeah it's good stuff i was a turkey or was it beef i think i don't i honestly don't know because i made so many freezer meals that day i don't remember if it was knocked it out of the park with the freezer but my brother had uh some really good hamburger meat the other day for a barbecue hi guys thanks for uh being so loud out there summer

is your movie over we're recording sweetie don't be too loud oh Oh, my goodness. Okay. Yeah. Okay, but. Sorry about that. I was like, oh, yeah, when Cody had that Wagyu beef or something. Oh, yeah. Wagyu. And they, how do you say it? I don't know. Wagyu? Wagyu? Wagyu?

I don't know. Probably however I don't say it is how I say it, but they had that at Sam's Club, so. Yeah. Got you some Wagyu. So now I'm going to. It was just a little bit more, huh? It was ground beef? Okay. It was like now I'm going to. It's just a little bit more. It was ground beef. Yeah.

Okay. It was like a dollar more per pound. So I figured. Yeah. You know, you're spending 18 bucks anyways for three pounds of meat. Yeah, beef prices are high. Or meat prices in general. Well. The struggle is real out there.

I know. Thank you so much for just being willing to get roped in at the last minute. It's fun to have somebody at least to bounce ideas off of or to have some back and forth, you know? Yeah. So thank you for coming on. I should have said that's a really bad idea. Next time I do that, just like out of nowhere, just be like, Justin, that's a terrible idea. Just to see what you say.

Darn it. No, I'd feel bad if I did i did that yeah you're not one for pranks are you i really don't like the prank i'm not i'm not a fan of the prank no yeah i wish i was that good i'm a serious i love a good pranks i don't yeah and i don't like watching people fall on videos either or like when they get hurt my greatest choice as long as they're not too hurt oh as long as they can get up yeah anyway anyways that's tangent yeah okay thank you we'll carry on with your week all right hopefully chuck is out of this work hole like ah they're just killing him out there yeah and he's like yeah yeah he's he's just doing it you know i i feel for a guy mean, my work right now is going into the time where I've worked eight hours over time this week.

Oh, yeah, you've been working a lot, too. I'm working again Friday, extra hours. You're going in for a little surgery, so you've got to build up your compounds. Yeah, I'm going to get my, what is it called? Your septum. My deviated septum undeviated. You won't be a deviant anymore? I'll be non-deviant.iant anymore I'll be non deviant okay that's good lacking of poor wildebeest what did they ever do to anybody well they look pretty funny anyways

anyhow alright well thanks to Eric and Owen NPR group what a great group check them out listen to their latest episode well might not be their latest when you hear this but listen to the episode

with William Filipeck what a cool guy give it a listen yeah it looks like uh there's a lot of good content out there oh yeah can we say something about movies yeah oh yeah we saw go see nope it was really good no our kids didn't like it kids didn't like it they were kind of it wasn't what we thought no the acting was the acting was great yeah it was fun yeah yeah and it was beautifully shot yeah you know it's a fun idea it's hard when it's not what you want it to be but yeah what you're expecting but and it wasn't that scary i didn't think it was too terribly scary but it was a lot more scary yeah but it was a fun movie i enjoyed it so at least the old folks like the folks were appreciative.

The younger kids were like, that was dumb. That wasn't scary. That wasn't scary at all. I think they wanted to be scared more than anything. Yeah, they did. They craved that. Let's go scare them. It's been a while since there's been a good scary movie.

Yeah. Let's scare them with the cost of house prices. Whoa. You'll never be able to afford a house. And you lived in your parents' basement. And you lived in our basement. All right. Well.

Okay. Thank you. So now, are you representing Chuck, or is that just too big of a shoes to fill? What do I need to do? Because you've got to come up with a clever outro. An outro? Yeah. Like, you have the last word, and you say some clever thing about how

we're out or you know like those kind of things like reptile fight club is i think last time you had me say like reptile fight club is ground chuck or ground chucked chuck grounded i can't remember what does that mean yeah i was not i didn't like didn't deliver well. I like to say like, okay. But that's Eric's favorite part, so. There's an old show called Reality Bites. And then when they do that fake like VH1 or like MTV thing. The real world. I'm out of 5,000.

Like that one, remember? Yeah. Is that your? I'm out of 5,000, babe. Is that your outro? No. Dude, it's the pressure, man. I know, I should have warned you about this.

You don't have to, because, I mean, Chuck's the king. I mean, that's like Eric's favorite part of our podcast. I'm not going to try to beat you, Chuck, but... All right, well, so you get a few seconds. I'll say check out Morelli Python Radio, their website, all their socials, all that good stuff. And yeah, we'll have another episode of Reptile Fight Club for you next week. I think we're bringing on some guests. Yeah, we've got some guests coming on.

Yeah, that'll be fun. And the chuckles just keep on coming. There you go. Is that a good one? Oh, that's a good one. Was that your outro? That was my outro. You're supposed to wait until I say, thank you for listening to Reptile Fight Club.

We'll catch you next week. When the chuckles will just keep on coming. so We'll see you next time. Bye.