Reptile Fight Club - Don't be a poser (or go ahead)! with Matt Tietgen

Episode Date: February 23, 2024

Justin and Rob tackle the most controversial topics in herpetoculture. The co-hosts or guests take one side of the issue and try to hold their own in a no-holds-barred contest of intellect. Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!In this episode, Justin and Chuck tackle, "Don't be a poser (or go ahead)! with Matt Tietgen"        Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comFollow Rob @ https://www.instagram.com/highplainsherp/Follow 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

Hi, welcome to another episode of Reptile Fight Club. Today, we are joined, of course, by Rob Stone, faithful co-host. How are you, Rob? Great. Super excited for the waves of the people. Blow them kisses. All right. And today, yeah, we've got Matt Teejan.

Welcome. Thanks for being here. We're excited to chat with you on a lot of different topics. But I don't know. Do you keep some you keep your mastics now, right? Yeah. I got into your mastics about a year ago. Yeah.

How's that project going for you? Good. I only have one adult pair or two adult pairs, so I'm not breeding too much. I do have eggs from Moroccans that I got. Cool. I'm hoping they're fertile, but they're not looking too promising at the moment. And then I'm going to be trying Yemenensis this year too, which is exciting. They're probably the rarest in the u.s right now yeah

nice that's cool um and you still work with a lot of monitors and geckos as well or you no monitors at the moment i need to get those back in but uh mostly nephorus and pair of saltowaris phallobrosis i I hatched my first baby of those in December. Oh, cool. That's doing great. Yeah. How big are your adults? Oh.

They're pretty good size. They're huge, yeah. They're an impressive gecko. I still remember. They're a cool gecko, yeah. Yeah, I saw one in Rob Porter's collection over in Queensland. And I saw him like, wow, that's a big gecko. Yeah, they're big. They're pretty impressive.

I'd seen cornutus in the wild, the up in the Cairns area. Those are pretty, pretty amazing geckos, but yeah, I like the leaf tails. I've got a pair of amnicola, the riverine leaf tails. They're pretty cool. Yeah. Fun stuff. There's a lot of cool too many cool reptiles. I would say that. I guess you are working with some monitors still at the zoo. You've accomplished a

pretty impressive feat there. Yeah, I work with my favorite animal the parentes. Hey, we share a favorite animal. You can love parentes. They're so cool that's awesome how are the the babies you got how many babies you hatch out hatched eight yep so that's cool much of yeah nine one died partly through incubation and the rest made it that's awesome yep they're all still kicking yep yeah looking for other institutions to take them yeah that's the only downside i guess is when

you produce them you gotta find an outlet for them how many do you have on like exhibit at the zoo uh just one baby now we had two but they got too big for that exhibit. So we only had one baby and then the male on this. Big boy. Old tripod. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So I visited the zoo.

What was that? Maybe 2018, 2019? Just before the pandemic hit, the year before COVID. Yeah, we haven't had him long either. Yeah. Did he have a, a he still have his foot when you saw him no no he had the then he has by 2019 okay yeah that sounds right my sense of time is not great i don't have good time either i i kind of based everything off my last trip to

australia so or or trips to australia so i 2016. So it's, it was somewhere between 2016 and 2023. But yeah, that was a, that was really cool. So Matt showed us around the, the zoo Henry Dorley zoo and that's in Omaha, Omaha, Nebraska. One of the, I think it's probably my favorite zoo in the country. I really like it. Yeah, it's a good one. Yeah. The desert dome is like my dream. Like that's the coolest display ever. So yeah, what's your, what's your role at the zoo? I'm an elite keeper of reptiles.

Okay. Yeah, I'm a reptile keeper of everything in the dome, including the kingdoms of the night. Nice. That's very cool. The other reptiles around the zoo are taken care of by the keepers of those buildings, but we do, we'll quarantine them and then send them off to those other buildings. So we're kind of the go-to reptile keepers. Yeah.

Yeah. That's awesome awesome you guys have a great collection too really uh i mean you kind of cover different deserts right the desert dome is is how many four different regions three different regions so you guys namib in africa and supposed to be the red center of australia but yeah we kind of fudged that a little bit and then uh venora okay yeah yeah really really cool displays everything's kind of some things are just walking freely among the people yeah it's a fully immersive building yeah so we have a giant sand dune is what you walk into because the nib is where you walk in and the nib has the largest largest you know sand dudes in the world so you gotta showcase that you have a massive mountain to your left you walk out

a rock trail through a canyon and then you go into the reptile caves where most of our the MIB and Australia exhibits are and they walk out to a fake ularoo and wave rock and into Sonora. Pretty cool. Incredible building. 13-story geodesic dome. Yeah. Pretty cool. You took us up on top of the rocks, too.

There were some off-exhibit animals up there. Yep. So, yeah, the main, the huge mountain is actually a three-story building, which we have holding in. So it's hiding a three-story building, which we have holding in. So it's hiding a three-story building. It's so cool. Pretty cool. Seriously, the stuff dreams are made of for any reptile enthusiast, for sure.

Now, so why are you guys fudging? There's so many cool animals from the Red Center. You've got some frills, I guess. You can't get them. You've got to get what you can get you know yeah that's true it is a pain to bring anything out of anything from the red center in the u.s yeah yeah even if you're a zoo huh i know uh yeah that can be a big headache for sure yeah not even not just on our end but trying to find somebody on the other end to deal with the headaches is probably the hardest part. It is. Sometimes they'll, they'll be eager to trade for things like rattlesnakes and stuff like that.

So, yeah, there's, I think there's a couple of zoos that have import exports for Australia, but, but I mean the cost of that. And then there's few and far between when we actually make those trades and stuff. Yeah. Oh, that's cool. And you've done a few trips over there too. That's exciting. Yeah. Yeah. The WA in 2019 and then just got back from the Northern Territory just in November. Yeah. Yeah. That's Thanksgiving. I guess I came back. Did a couple of Justin trips. Yep. Rob and I kind of have different views on setting up a trip. I like to cover as much ground as possible, and Rob focuses a little bit better. Yeah.

Yeah, we did the entire Northern Territory, north to south, basically. Darwin all the way to Uluru. That's cool. So how many years worth of pto did you use that's my question uh yeah we do get they probably give us too much pto but it was three week trip we're pretty well off on pto i think we're pretty lucky and then i have a an awesome crew willing to take my place when I'm gone. So take care of my animals and everything. I do feel bad though, but I don't take a lot of days off besides that.

So in another three years, I'll do it again. Where's your next trip? Do you think? I think we're thinking South Australia. Okay. Because Vera wants to dive with sharks we have to do that and then go we just like sherry thinks i was talking to her we just did whale sharks down in baja that was pretty awesome yeah that's nice yeah it was a great experience that's that was on my bucket list for a long time, but very fun.

Is that like Great Whites and stuff down in South Australia? Yeah. So it'd be a case drive with Great Whites. Oh, nice. Pretty cool. Yeah, it would. Yep. As long as they don't jump in the cage with you or something.

Yeah. They're impressive animals. Did you see that giant one that they found recently the um big blue or whatever she's this huge i think she's the longest recorded or um filmed great white in the wild that's i think size of a school bus or something twice as heavy and she was pregnant or gravid so pretty uh amazing i just got the first photo ever of a newborn great yeah yeah that's pretty interesting yeah the article that yeah that guy wrote yeah pretty crazy it's amazing how much we don't know especially when

it comes to the ocean we don't know know anything about it other than we're killing it. Yeah, true. You know that. Overfishing it. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. And just, I mean, seeing, you know, the whale sharks and the humpback whales and

just thinking how much krill that takes to feed, you know, those things and it's an insane, like just crazy yeah cool stuff what what else are you looking to see in south australia you have any big targets down there no huge targets that i can think of uh but bill and i would be cool yeah we're there maybe yeah i don't know. I haven't thought about it yet. She said she wants to do that for great whites and then I'll figure that out. I've got a couple of years.

That's true. Yeah. That's a ample time to plan. Yeah. Let me know. I can maybe share some notes with you. I had a pretty fun trip down there, despite not seeing my three main targets,

but we got some cool stuff otherwise, but really cool spot, really neat place to be. So I probably wasn't over there at the best time of year, but you got to give it a shot. Yeah. Well, most, I'm almost, I'll be up there. Haven't seen a woman yet. Yeah. Need to see one of those. We went and looked up in, in one spot. Um, it looked like a good habitat. I mean,

drive a little bit North still. Yeah. Yeah. It was a bit of a drive. We were worried we weren't able to drive back to the room. Yeah. That's yeah. That would be a little bit more of a drive. We were thinking about that. Like, should we just go up to Alice Springs? Yeah. It's going to be a little warmer up there too, but it is a long, long way from where we were, but yeah, cool, cool. Too many cool places over there for sure. It's too big, too many things to see. Yep. Oh, I'm, I'm waiting on eggs.

I haven't gotten any eggs this year yet, other than some crested geckos in my office that won't stop laying eggs. They're just very prolific. I don't know how somebody does those full time and just sells crested geckos. It's crazy, but they're fun. But yeah, I stopped collecting eggs for a little while, but I've got some really nice red ones. So I picked up a few of their eggs the other week.

Just something like that. They're there. So I might as well grab them their eggs the other week. Just something like, ah, they're, they're there. So I might as well grab them. They're, they're fun little geckos for sure. Um, and then, uh, waiting on it, eggs from blackheads, womas, uh, some carpets. Looks like one of the Inlands is going to lay soon. It'd be a decent year. So yeah, fun stuff. Um, yeah. So I guess, uh,

let's maybe have you talk a little bit more about, you know, your role in herpetoculture and, and, uh, where you fit in and kind of where you came from, where you're headed. Uh, yeah. So I'm a zookeeper in a reptile keeper for 15 years now so started did you start at henry dorley oh okay started omaha then i went to phoenix for a few years and i came back oh yeah phoenix is where i met steve and friends yeah that's cool and then he followed you to omaha right yep yep followed me to omaha love story bailed on you there he let me get but yeah yeah steve's a cool guy he'd be fun to work with for sure yeah he was fun

but other than that yeah i started I started keeping seriously, reptiles seriously, probably in 2009 after I became a zookeeper. But when I was a kid, I kept a leopard gecko and a bearded dragon. After watching one episode of Steve Irwin, Croc Hunter, I got a leopard gecko and immediately started running around my town catching garter snakes and everything. So it was a huge inspiration in getting me into this. But then, yeah, after I started keeping or became a zookeeper, I got into breeding stuff. Started with blue tongues. The Uringia and northern blue tongues, bred those. And I got into blood pythons and bred those for a couple of years.

And then I got into, got some monitor lizards uh i did ackeys and gill and i and tristis that's cool and then i moved i sold most everything for when i went to phoenix just for money and space i kept nephorus and gill and i though when i moved i did just for money and space. I kept Nephras and Gil and I though when I moved. I did those for a few more years. And now Nephras has been a staple for many years, over 10 years.

And yeah, now I'm getting into your mastics too. See where that goes. I need more monitors in my life though. I'm missing them at home, even though I get a fill at work, but they're my favorite. Yeah. It's hard to beat a monitor.

They're just so cool. Although they do take a lot more energy and attention than a lot of stuff. Yeah. They're high octane. Yeah. I'm working on an enclosure now, hoping to get some pilbarencis maybe this year yeah those are probably my second favorite monitor they're so cool rob differs a little bit in that uh what viewpoint no they just hide at least i mean maybe if you

have a very expressive male that'll be great but uh yeah uh gloward Eye dominate Pilbarenthus every day and twice on Sunday. So I mean Gloward Eye are essentially at least – so the only Perenties I've seen beyond the one that – the one I saw at Pateri's place, the only ones that I've seen was over at Scott and Ty's on the last trip to Australia. They had a whole handful that are probably four foot or so. And my instant reaction was, wow, that's just a really overgrown glower dye. That'll definitely take a finger, you know, no doubt about that. So Pilbarense is, I don't know, that just was my experience with six or seven of them. Just that they weren't very, they were very reclusive and wouldn't kind of put themselves out there as opposed to a Gloward Eye that will sit like it's sitting in a recliner and just say, hey, what's up, dude? I don't know. From a personality standpoint, I found Gloward Eye to be the superior monitor lizard.

I don't know. I chased them around in Western Australia. They were pretty bold. They were out there. I sat and followed one for good long while. Well, maybe all the U S captive Pilbarentus aren't really right there. These weird mutants from the, off the highway or whatever. Which you would think the gold ones would be the ones more likely to get

caught, but I don't know. But they, they were fun. I, did you see any while you're over there, Matt? Uh, Hammersley Ancest. Okay. Yeah. Awesomeley answers. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We got both, both the hammers, the answers and the Pilbara answers,

and they were both really cool. Yeah. The hammers, the answers like just sat there and entertain me for a good hour or so, and just walking around sat and bassed right out in the open and yeah, they're really fun. We saw a few of those, uh, on two separate trips and then a handful of Pilbarences. Although when I was with Steve on the second trip, we only saw one. And I was clear up on the hillside when I saw it.

And so Steve and Mike didn't get to see it. But they did get to see the Hammersleyensis up close pretty well. They sat and behaved for us. I'd get to see it, but they did get to see the Hammersley Ancest up close pretty well. They sat and behaved for us. I'd love to see them. I mean, don't get me wrong. We'll have to integrate that into a trip to go see them, but just as a captive animal. Yeah. Hopefully we'll see Gloward Eye and Kakadu.

That'd be cool. See the NT Gloward Eye. Big goal for me. And after Rob and these guys leave, I'm going to head over to Western Australia and go over to Lake Argyle, that area, and try to find a glowered eye over in that spot too. So let's see if I can get lucky, see both types. I imagine they're probably different species, the two glowered eye types. I think probably so. Kakadu type is crazy. Yeah. Yeah. I think probably so. stuff i don't that group man they just rub me the wrong way they're doing all sorts of weird stuff with taxonomy so hopefully somebody comes along that knows things a little better or knows these things out in the wild and can change that back or i don't know do it a little more or as ever as

you know right i mean taxonomy talk about something where you make a case and i can buy it or not you know and i understand the whole world can move on but that doesn't mean that I have to accept that. And papers that are properly written will explicitly say that, right? Retrophics for life. It's – we can disagree. They're not ganyosoma. They're just not. The paper says that you can choose A, B, or C.

You've chosen A, and I've chosen C, And that's a, like, we can all learn to be okay with that. We don't have to be pedants who just insist, no, this person somewhere said this, and this is what we're going to do. That's not how it works. I'm not persuaded. Well, it seems like most people adopt it once it's, you know, in a paper. I think just because they find it easy, though, not because it's actually compelling. Maybe they haven't even read the paper. Because if they did read the paper, they would acknowledge that the paper says, oh, it could be A, B, or C. And our approach, our sort of politic that we're bringing to this is to take – to choose option A. So it fundamentally says that.

So I would just say that most people that are strongly, vehemently presenting, oh, no, it has to be this because the paper said did you actually read the paper did you understand what the paper said i'm going to guess the answer to either one or both is no yeah yeah ready to go tonight yeah rob's coming in hot yeah it's uh i mean it can be it can be a challenging thing i just i get frustrated because it seems to have no rhyme or reason. And sometimes, you know, you can take, take it however you want. It seems, you know, and just say, ah, I think this should be this way and make it. So here's enough supporting data to do it. So I don't know. You can sink a, you know,

whole subspecies and species into another. Create some more. Simpsoni. Which really doesn't make sense. Yeah. And then you can add a subspecies and create a new species just from a couple specimens out of New Guinea. I just think it's crazy, but that's my opinion and I'm sticking to it.

The beauty of science, the beauty of taxonomy, I guess. Well, do you find it kind of challenging to keep privately as well as work at the zoo? Do you get additional scrutiny being a keeper as well as a private keeper? I don't think so. No?

It's more work. I mean, you're literally bringing your work home with you. Right. Yeah. I think I've trimmed down my collection a lot because of that. But I also wake up early, so I get most of my husband's work done at home before I go to work. So that way, when I get home from exhausting work, I can just relax. Yeah.

That makes it easier on me. Nice. Okay. Yeah. That's, um, any, any plans for any more, uh, cool species or you looking at new projects or are you kind of happy with what you have? Yeah, just the Pilbarencyth. And then for some reason, this past two weeks, I've, for some reason, want to get a Lyallis, which I should probably talk myself out of because they're lizard eaters but yeah i've got heteronoria bouncing off the walls so i could just i figured to feed

them now but we'll see if i find them and actually keep them we'll see what happens i'm just obsessed with that right now they're awesome that's a cool idea yeah i mean talk about a cool thing yeah for sure are you just looking at the New Guinea ones? The Jicari or whatever? Jicari I've found those are probably the most Available But Bertonus falls out of the sky

Maybe I'll pick that up We'll see That might be worth feeding lizards too If you could find a Bertonus I'm also curious if you can get them on those iguana reptile links or if that would work or not oh yeah it'd be much easier right if it's scent or motion or yeah yeah yeah who knows yeah those uh binos geckos are cool though they're a lot of fun yeah i haven't sold a single one though i've been

keeping them for years no one wants to buy them so whatever that's too bad they're they're so even that's feeders for those yeah pilgrances too when i get them yeah i guess i mean they're nocturnal so they how many people yell at me for that they'll probably come out for that they're definitely a prey type species. We saw them all over the place in South Australia. They were like, you'd just be hiking and oh, gyra. Bianca's found many of them in the guts of even like Perenties. Oh, really?

I don't know what they're doing eating those little geckos, but yeah. A lot of studies. Yeah. Heteronodia galore in their stomachs so yeah just flipping over a log on accident like oh i guess i'll pick that up yeah i think yeah yeah i'm not sure which one won they're either more heteronosia or or the gahira i guess the gahira were several different species, but it seemed like wherever we went, there were several Gehira and several Hedronotia. So cool geckos though. It's, it's fun.

I'm really enjoying keeping them. I, you know, they're easy. I don't, I stopped picking out the eggs because they just hatched. There's the hardiest eggs I've ever seen. Leave them in the enclosure in the sand. They pick them out when they're running, but they'll still hatch on the surface of the substrate. Nice. Yeah. Well, they're simple. See if I can get them to hatch out in the enclosure. Yeah.

Yeah. Don't bother taking the eggs out. That's what I'd say. I'll have to pick your brain a little bit, see how you're keeping them and see, you know, that kind of thing. But yeah, i'm enjoying them for sure so i guess uh you know based on your cool trips we wanted to get you on here and talk about uh you know herping and and kind of uh photography you take some really great shots and so i wanted to kind of pick your brain so today we're going to be discussing kind of the pros and cons or the, you know, should you, shouldn't you pose them in, you know, pose them in a naturalistic setting?

Or should you just take it, take the photos as found or, you know, kind of setting up animals and the pros and cons to that. So that sound like a reasonable topic? Sure. All right. Well, we'll go ahead and flip the coin between Rob and I and see who gets to fight you tonight. So go ahead and call it, Rob. Heads. It is tails.

I think, I mean, you came in a little hot today. I think you're in a fighting mood. And you're also a very, how shall we put this, dedicated photographer. We usually leave Rob on the side of the road with the snake and go drive some more and come back. So I think you'd be a good one to talk about this topic. So I'll let you fight with Matt tonight. Okay. Fair enough. All right. And then Matt, you want to call it for which side you want to take?

Tails. It is tails. So you get to choose which side you want to defend. So to pose or not to pose. I'll go. That is the question. Okay. You'll pose them.

All right. Well, and as the winner of the coin toss, you can decide if Rob goes first or if you want to go first. I'll hear what Rob has to say. Okay. Awesome. Well, so this actually, this circumstance, right, gives me the opportunity to kick off with the diatribe from last, that I was starting to go into last week. I don't remember if it was before the episode or not or whatever. But a couple weeks ago, to find my Lyper Eastern Diamondback rattlesnake, we'd gone to an island off the west coast of Florida,

which, you know, in winter, right, the thought being that we're probably going to get, especially in those insular habitats, you're going to get, especially in juveniles, there really probably isn't the thermal mass on an island to allow them to cool in the same way that you would get. And I'm recognizing that all of Florida, right, is, we're not talking about a great level of depth of substrate, but in terms of just the surface mass that we're talking about, I think on those island, in the island or coastal populations, it's that much less so that absent being large adults, they're probably not really fully estimating over the winter. And especially come January and February, those animals probably look worse for wear. And so that comes from two different things, right? I think basically,

they're getting their water, there isn't a ton of fresh water in those locations. So we're getting it from dew. But if we're talking – it's one thing if we say, okay, below 68, right, Peter and Etchess, so that an animal can be out, and then they're below the dew point. Dew will form on them and all their surrounds and all this stuff. That's one way, but if it's 45 or 50 degrees, an animal probably doesn't want that dew effect to then cool its core temperature, right, in the way that we would get at those temperatures. So it's one thing to do it when it's August or September and we're talking a nighttime low of 65. It's a whole other if we're talking 45. The other part of it, right, they're getting it from prey.

But based on the prey that I'm seeing, they're probably not getting with the cloud cover that happens there and not being at elevation. They're not getting the diurnal, the daytime highs, especially the spot basking daytime highs that would allow them to eat the food that they would see. So in juveniles, they're going to be out basking trying to survive. But come January and February, half the ones on iNaturalist look worse for wear. And certainly the one that we saw looked worse for wear. The question is – so you take this photo, right, and you can – Owen – I love Owen. Owen took terrible photos of this animal, and it looked terrible. It made it look far worse than it even – the condition even was, right?

Whereas my photo, I think I was pretty happy with that picture. And I think it both illustrated the condition but without being like, oh my god, it's like a coach whip that we saw in west texas where well that was the one coach whip in my life that it was easy enough to walk up on because i mean heck the thing was you know probably be dead the next day or whatever right that wasn't the case with this animal instead to me right so i get all this sort of feedback especially off owens photos of like yeah no wonder you could find the thing because it was going to die tomorrow that wasn't the case with this like it was certainly super responsive and definitely you know totally uh calm never an indication that it would try and strike maybe give a single rattle all this stuff but the point is that that being a juvenile in that state instead it was

showing itself as being the most awesome representative of how they can survive in those conditions, right? This is an animal being tried. It will survive. This is just what that population has to go through, what they have to undergo, right? And so I'm getting this feedback saying, oh, well, you found the thing that was going to die or whatever. And while I admit, right, that there's a part of your brain looks at it and says, I want

to have the beautiful animal that everyone will think is beautiful taken in the most beautiful frame and all this stuff. This isn't a conversation you want to have. But as I'm sitting there in the airport because I had to take Owen five or six hours before I'd gone, so I had plenty of time to think on this issue. I was like, I'm actually – I was thrilled. As I thought it through, I was thrilled with the animal that I got because it exemplified the strength and resilience of that animal in that population and what they have to go through. Despite not being sort of the picture perfect, what anyone who just happened to scroll through it on Instagram or see on the website or whatever would say, oh, wow, that's amazing. You know, sort of the textbook image. Instead, as I thought about it, this is the textbook.

This is them showing what they can be, what they can do, what they have to do to survive. This is the survivor that I want to be the photo, right? And if someone can't appreciate that subtlety, I don't know that that's really the audience I'm looking for. So that'll be my kickoff. Unfortunately, the way this lined up, it put me right into the thing. And here we go. We'll see what we get. Yeah. So I was going to talk about the completely opposite audience that you just talked about. The entire – because, yeah, the entire reason I started investing my time and money into photography was to show the haters the true beauty of these animals. And I feel you thought the only,

the best way to do that is to capture the most beautiful picture of them I can. That's the whole reason I got into photography and the whole reason I'm trying to get better and better at it is so I can make them look as good as they can. That's why I mostly do white and black background stuff because I want them to be the the ultimate subject of that image and for haters that say they're ugly and gross can see their little their literal living pieces of art i mean their colors their patterns and all that

nothing's hidden in the plain background just that that gorgeous animal. Then you can pose them and show their entire habitat, too, with a wide-angle lens, which I just tried to figure out on this last trip. I've never done that before. Now you can show how their gorgeous habitat and everything, plus them in it. I don't know. I don't think there's any beating that but yeah what you said if you're looking at us reptile nerds what you're you're talking about is is also good to see uh yeah my explanation isn't as long winded as yours because i don't know how to do that but we're all sorry no i think no i love it you're far more concise yeah i love it yeah no that's totally

fair and certainly all the sort of the the macro imagery and sort of the highly focused i certainly agree you know that it is art right and they are exceptional and beautiful um and i would imagine that it is compelling for folks right that just that don't see the subtle distinctions or even sort of the reticulations in the parenti. When you got headshots of all the different hatchlings as you're growing them up at the zoo and all this stuff, that like it truly is they're all individually unique pieces of artwork.

And I can certainly appreciate that point. You know, and admittedly, right, I guess the other context, although this mostly happens in my less preferred herping method, maybe, you know, and Justin knows, maybe more effectual. I'll admit that. But, you know, I love to hike up an animal as opposed to either road cruising or flipping garbage or flipping tin, whatever. That's just not my preference. Certainly, if the options are you can see an animal or not see it, Fine. You know, if that's what we have to do. But in terms of spending day after day working through this stuff, I mean, that was sort of the brutality of Florida in the fall is that it's, oh, well, what do you do? You cruise dirt roads and it's like, oh, my gosh, man, after a couple of to with that, right, is that it's like people who aren't interested in seeing animals, be it birds or reptiles or whatever, will go on a hike and just hike in this beautiful environment.

Very few of them would spend, I don't know, 20 hours over two and a half or three days cruising, you know, driving at 10 miles an hour on dirt roads just over and over, right, to not see animals. So in the first context, if you don't see anything, well, you still got out to do things that other people, normal people, quote, go out and do just for the heck of it. The latter, you better be seeing stuff or that's just brutal. So bringing it into this context, I guess the thing that it reminds me of, certainly if we're talking about flipping literal garbage that people didn't want to pay to take to the dump and taking a photo in that and saying like, oh, they're under this recliner or whatever. Admittedly, that's certainly my own personal preference would be to pose that maybe 10 feet away in a more naturalistic setup or in the road cruising example, take it off of the road and put it into whatever that habitat might look like. Even if it's just, you know, two foot long dead grass, that's still preferable to the road shot to me. So I will certainly give you that point. I have no interest in defending that beyond, I suppose,

saying be instructive as I say for the potential herpers out there of saying like, yeah, I know Eric had made this comment the first time we went to Australia that he be instructive as i say for the the potential herpers out there of saying like yeah i know eric had made this comment the first time we went to australia that he kept looking in the buttress roots of trees um expecting snakes to be coiled neatly inside those buttress roots and uh i guess that kind of gets at this dynamic is that well in australia particularly where you're not supposed to be touching i'm having the containment that's offered by either two-thirds or three-quarters by those buttress roots, that's often selected. But those photos don't necessarily represent where those animals were found. Yeah, but it takes a little corralling to get them in there, doesn't it?

To just let them crawl on their own and follow them now we i um i think about you know kind of in regards to matt's point with uh right you're probably seeing ross mcgiven's uh photography yeah that dude's crazy he probably has a 15 millimeter lens that he shoves in the face of the lap it says but i mean his his pictures are just fantastic i mean i, I think to Rob's point, too, is, was it DK books that the kids books that always have the animals on white backgrounds. I love those books for that reason, because it just shows off how cool they are. Yeah. So I think, uh, both of those first points are really, uh, important and, and good to good to think about, for sure. Well, got another point for us.

Me? I feel like, yeah, nobody wants to see Lake on the Road. I have some of the lapids on roads that I'm probably never going to post because that's the only picture I got of them because I'm not going to – wasn't going to mess around with those and have snake equipment or anything. I'm not a crazy Aussie that just walks up and picks those things up. But I think it depends on the situation. I think that's fair. And even if they're half in focus, you're doing pretty well. I know the, so when on our NT trip, we had come upon a Northern Brown snake that was out on the road.

And the funny, the funny thing is that to me and Justin, you have much more experience in that, maybe even you as well than I do, because for whatever reason, and maybe it's what we're being sort of less of a point of focus or whether it's just random chance or whatever, the observation I had was that, and presumably death adders would be different, but in terms of brown snakes and mulgas and things that, brown snakes and black snakes, that pythons sit on the road whereas the hot snakes are just like you come up on them and they're not sticking around and then if you follow them then they'll

kind of left charge and come back and then they'll try and leave again and if you keep following them then they'll do it again and get a little bit closer and it's sort of that was the dance we did with the northern brown snake so that I mean heck if they're even half in focus you're doing better than I did with that thing because eventually it reached the point where it was like, oh, and I think we've probably pushed this as far as we can go because it's coming closer and closer with its bluff charges. Yeah, our first King Brown I came across,

that thing was just going after me like crazy. I was like, oh, it's Satchville, then it's lunch. Like, okay, I'll leave you alone, buddy. They have the funnest charges for sure. Oh, yeah, it's crazy. It's fun. It definitely is fun. The last one, we saw one just like on our last day in South Australia, and it was a pretty cool night. So it was just at sunset, and it was cooling down pretty rapidly. And this giant, you know, mulga King Brown was on the road and, and, uh, we were taking pictures of it while it was on the dirt road.

And then it started crawling past me and he was not, you know, he was moving kind of slow. It was, it wasn't very warm. And so I just reached down and picked him up by the tail and he didn't like thrash or try to bite or anything. He just kind of sat there and I carried him over off the road and set him down. And then he did his kind of his mock strike thing. And it was a pretty, pretty exciting, but yeah, it's, I don't know. Once in a while. Yeah.

Because he's sitting there with his hand in front of its mouth, just flicking away. See, and I have a ultra zoom. zoom so yeah although it doesn't work great for a close-up i need to figure out how to use that thing for close-up pictures of dangerous snakes but yeah my my first snake in australia was a death adder and i was on this windy road up in the tablelands up near cans and and i was, it was the first car I was driving in Australia. So I'm trying to get used to driving on the other side of the road. And then it was a stick shift. So I had to shift with my, my, uh, opposite hand, my left hand. And, and so I was

trying to do like a four point turn on this narrow road and there's trucks, you know, blowing through there pretty, pretty, uh, scarily. And so I see the snake and it hadn't been hit, it was crawling. And so I hurried and turned around and luckily there was a pull off not far from where the snake was. So I parked the car and I run back and I'm like, Oh, it's a death adder. Whoa. And I, I just grabbed a stick off the side of the road and kind of shoot it off the road. And then it starts, you know, flattening out and looking like a death adder. I didn't realize death adders weren't always fat like flat snakes they look like a normal snake when they're crawling yeah death adders are way way easier to deal with yeah you can just mosey off the road a little bit yourself with a stick and then they'll just sit

there and take some good shots of them yeah and they pose nicely too because yeah they're like defensive just kind of i think us being americans are easier they're like just sit like a viper and they're a lot easier to the gauge the lapids can just turn on you real fast for sure but i i think that's kind of a point that goes to rob is you know the danger of it you don't you it's you know unless you have the skill well and yeah i'm yeah i imagine you've probably worked with venomous snakes in your capacity as a zookeeper but you know the the captives in the zoo might be a little different animal than the ones in the hot sun yeah we have a king brown that's just nuts yeah nobody likes pulling that guy he backs up goes forward backs up goes forward like like hooking a very venomous limp noodle yeah so does

it make you i guess respect them more in the wild or does it give you confidence to handle them in the wild it gives me more confidence but not without a hook that's the problem you can't take make hooks to australia as a foreigner especially you're like i don't know what that's doing in my car that's a rental yeah it was it was there when i got it yeah yeah i i we had uh our friends over there uh hook us up with some snake hooks yeah we didn't have to bring them with us but yeah that can be a pain yeah for sure yeah so the yeah venomous I mostly just let them do what they like. Come on, poke them with a stick, get them off the road at least, and they get run over.

But that's all I did with those guys. My first trip over was to the center of Australia, and we saw both a brown snake of some sort, but it was in the heat of the day, and it was like lightning. I mean, I didn't even get a i didn't even get a good look at it you know we saw it on the road kind of crossing the road we pulled over jumped out of the car ran and it was just gone like we couldn't see it or you know anything and we thought that was probably some kind of brown snake but we couldn't id it either so it was

you know some some random fast venomous lapid but but then we saw a big moga on the road and it was just sitting there and and you'd kind of tap its tail and it hood up and i'm trying to get pictures but it it was the same pattern as the the road and like the same same texture and color and stuff yeah you couldn't get a good focus. So all my pictures of it are blurry, but then it, it took off, you know, just crawling away as fast as it could into the bush. And so, and we kind of, and then it was under, under some aisles of debris. So, you know, not getting the best picture under that either, but I guess, you know, it was the experience that I always think of that, uh,

secret life of Walter Mitty when the guy's got the snow leopard in his camera and he doesn't take the picture and he says, that one's just for me. Sometimes I think it's not bad just to take a look at the animal, not necessarily try to get the greatest picture of it. Yeah. That's purpose. We have to get our hands on everything.

We need to take a page out of the birders' bug price sometimes. Just look at it. Drive 500 miles, look at a bird, say, got it. Mark it off on your book and leave. I don't know. Yeah, we like catching stuff. Which is a check in my side. Catch it. That's true. Manipulate it. a check in my side catch it right yeah manipulate it but i think also posed images especially if uh they're in situ not in situ posed in situ but it shows uh people that are trying to make their enclosures at home maybe they have that species they can get a look at the

where this thing is just found like yeah five or ten feet away maybe if it's on the road or not but gives everybody an idea that they want to make their enclosure naturalistic and look nice well you can have it unposed and then you just want wind up with the where's waldo pictures i don't love those on instagram where it's oh can you see the snake and the thing and it's like okay well you're looking at a full-size photo and saying like, oh, you can clearly see that it's this, you know, 5% of the picture. And it's like, dude, it goes down to two and a half by three inches on my phone. So now I can't see it, but that doesn't mean that I couldn't see it if I was looking at what you're looking at, but sort of the same thing. and it's even more of the natural environment because you can't even see the animal half the time.

Yeah. Although the interesting thing to me too, going back to the diamondback thing, although I've seen it with carpets, anything that sort of has a banded, although in the diamondback pattern, right, it's the way that the diamonds sit is that when they're coiled, and you can really see it in that photo and it right. Adamantius, the most distinctive feature is probably those pre and post ocular white stripes, right? Is those just looking at that photo, as it's got its head rested upon its coil body, it's not, it's not a hundred percent perfect, but it's like 85% perfect. The line that runs from the one diamond into the facial pattern into the diamond on the other side of the curl. And I know if you're looking at, I've taken a picture of a

Darwin carpet here a couple of years ago, and that's when I really noticed that all those bands essentially create singular lines into different directions on that coiled pattern. And it really spoke to me, either posed or unposed, I think in either way, you know, what those photos can do. And certainly your photos do this, Matt, is that you can notice, okay, well, that's probably both. It's a camouflaging factor and it's a directional confusion for a potential predator, right? Where it's like having that banding pattern that oscillates in these

different directions. You have no idea if you didn't have a focal point on the eye where even is the head where is that thing going where is it what's its potential direction of escape or whatever and either posed or unposed i think looking at photos with that sort of critical eye of saying what is this telling me wow it was like oh I see why they have those really vibrant pre and post ocular stripes as well. It just makes a line of continuity to their the diamond patterns. And why do they sit like that? Well, that would differ if they're in a cryptic, you know, or a kind of resting state, like, like you saw that. Elevated, right. With the body elevated or. Yeah. And if you hooked it out and posed it, it might, you might, you might've missed that, you know, that that would be a, maybe different if it's, you know,

up in its defensive pose or in the S shape or whatever. So that's a good point. Yeah. What's your favorite photo you've taken, Matt? What has been your favorite thing to photograph and what's been your most challenging thing to photograph other than the Lapids you already talked about? I don't know uh that moloch and full body probably is up there i love that picture plus i say i'm all right

can't see anywhere else and wasn't sure if i was gonna find one yeah uh found two oh that's cool were those both kind of around ularu or were they alice area where'd you find them all the first one was on the worst road i've ever been on in my entire life because google told me it was going to be paved all the way or we thought it was going to be like i was route six going towards uh what what arca king's canyon so it's the shortcut from alice springs there and apparently once you can't drop your pin anymore on google it becomes unpaved and just road for another 150 kilometers uh so if you if you're gonna go go Alice to Kings Canyon, go to the south. The long way. Yeah. The long highway. You'll get there faster. We drove that road and it wasn't

maybe it had just been graded or something, but it was pretty smooth. The washboards were the smoothest part of that road for whenever we were on it. Really? Oh, that's rough. But that was our little consolation prize was our first Moloch was on the road.

Oh, that's cool. Yeah. And then the other one was, yeah, by Uluru. There's a little place where we stayed, which is a little natural like circle thing. And then there's a bunch of reptiles have been found in there. And that's where that one was one early, super early morning, like before sunrise was out there. That's awesome. Did you get any shots with Uluru in the background with the moloch?

No, Uluru was too far away. Oh, okay. Yeah, that was in town where we were staying. So I wish I did. Yeah. The only Uluru shots I got were, yeah, baby sandlotter and the gill and eye. Okay. Yeah, that gill and i shot was cool yeah yeah i

have an in situ picture of that one it was just out of a street hollow but then that obviously the background supposed picture yeah but yeah finding it was exactly how everybody describes the gill and i would be you know live in tree hollows mulga tree hollow just came out right when the sun came out so its tail was live in tree hollows, Mulga tree hollow. Just came out right when the sun came out, so its tail was still in the hollow. I mean, it was a super cool sight to see, and it was our last day to see him. So we actually scoped that place out the day before, after it had gotten scorching hot. I still wanted to see one, hadn't found one yet. And there's a path from Uluru to Uluru to like

another area, like a shopping area. And it was just full of these, full of trees. I think they're acacia trees with just bark everywhere off of them. I was like, there's gotta be a gotta be a gill and eye here somewhere. So we'll come back on our last day and search again.

And yeah, we found one in there. Sure enough, there was a girl and I just like I thought there would be. So that's a super cool find out. I mean, going, I have a special place in my heart. First, I read and that's I laid eyes on him when Daniel Bennett's book was like, that's the coolest thing I've ever seen. So now I got to experience it in the wild.

That's pretty cool. That's awesome. Yeah, they're pretty bold. Like they at least. Yeah, just let me walk up and grab it. Yeah. Better or worse for that thing. But I put it back in its hole when I was done.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's another.'s yeah with this posing pictures you gotta respect that animal's time and stress so it's like get your picture and leave it alone yeah that might i think some people can yeah especially if you're in huge groups i don't like that at all like i'm the only it was me and one other person like sierra but she doesn't take pictures so just she's my little my handler yeah well i take the pictures so that's yeah take some shots you know if i get the the money shot or not whatever the animal's more stress level more important than my picture so experiencing it for me is the important part but i do like showing it off when i can yeah we were talking about i think maybe last week i can't remember if it was on the podcast or not but uh i saw when i was with my wife in western australia we saw cattle lineatus the

striped tail monitor on a on the base of a tree just in the morning coming out to bask and yeah and uh it was just it was you know one of those perfect yep just there is that's that's exactly where i'd expect it to be and instead of trying to get a picture of it first i went for the grab first and of course it disappeared and i never saw it again so but i could you know heidi could vouch that it was there i wasn't crazy you know that i actually saw it but yeah that was kind you know heidi could vouch that it was there i wasn't crazy you know that i actually saw it but yeah that was kind of the yeah i've been there a couple times too like that i should take that picture taking a picture so like the sometimes those yeah those in situ uh you want to take the natural shot at least so you have some kind of voucher you know

the like the second glue upama we saw like i didn't have the right lens on my camera like stay there buddy i was like slowly changing my lens and as soon as i got the the zoom lens on he's like nope oh yeah that's like i should just take a picture with the shorter lens uh-huh yeah some of those yeah we chase them around a bit but you know those things weren't they're not gonna stay around for nothing so yeah you gotta i got a half of a shot kind of that's a decent and then a video of him running in under a rock so that's something to prove he was there yeah that's awesome but yeah i guess sometimes you don't have a choice whether you pose or not especially like a speedy monitor like like a Black Palms monitor.

Yep. They're so cool, though. That must have been a very cool. I couldn't believe it. It was 10 feet away from the Mertens, too. Really? It was crazy. Yeah.

We saw the Mertens. I just saw the head of the Mertens. That's why I wanted to go back the second day because I wanted to see if that mertens would still be there, see if I can see something better. So the mertens was like, had its head out of the water and a bunch of moths. I was like, awesome. And I took a video of it, a picture,

and then disappeared in the water. Like, huh, well, that was cool. And I walked up the path, and then a little lizard zoomed by. I was like, what the? And then it stopped and looked at me like, oh, my God, it's a glival palmama and then it was yeah one of the calm ones that went up to the in the rocky area a little bit and it sat on a boulder let me shove a gopro in its face and then yeah i got some pictures and that slowly walked off just like my video showed like that's so cool that's crazy that's a rare occurrence yeah

and then yeah i went back and the next day mertens again was back where it was the first day it wasn't when i went to the falls so we just continued to the fall and i'd hopped in just because why not it's hot and then but it on our way back i checked the spot again i just saw it go into the water and slide in the water and then sat there for an hour watching it just surface watch it look at me again a little bit and then i shove a camera in his face like nope go back down but so yeah for like an hour we're just watching that thing do its thing which i always knew seeing mertens in the wild would be one of the most entertaining lizards probably ever, just because of the habitat, most gorgeous habitat I've ever seen. Super cool little lizard otters.

Like, I've worked with them at the zoo a little bit, but I don't know, after seeing them and do that, I don't think I could never keep a mertens. There's no way I could provide that for a lizard. Yeah. That's, I think if I had to trade place with an animal, it would probably be either a Pilbaraensis, you know, the Pilbara rock monitors out near Python Pool, or the Hemersleyensis in Dale's Gorge. I mean, just such a beautiful place to live. And it looks like a lot of fun they're having, crawling around on the rocks. Yep. That thing doesn't look like it had a carrying a world other than me and my GoPro.

Was that trail you saw those two on, was it fairly well trafficked? I mean, was this Glebo probably used to people? I think it's one of the most common places, but we were there before everybody. I mean, we would wake up before sunset and get there right as the sun hit the rocks. So nobody was out there yet until we were well on our way back. We had a similar situation with the pilbarencis and wa where we got there just right as the sun was rising and got to see them come out and start their basking and just kind of crawl around before they're too wary or

too heated up you know or too fast yeah basically for this big time to observe monitors yeah for this entire trip we basically just made ourselves crepuscular i mean we'd yeah wake up before the sun rose get out there get on a trail just find some lizards as the sun heating everything up and get back to our hotel right at the peak of you know 45 degrees celsius yeah take a couple hour nap then get out out there once the sun sets and find some nocturnal stuff. So it was many days of maybe two, three hours of just sleep when we can. Yeah.

I think that's one of my favorite, like on backpacking trips or herping trips, when you can just kind of curl up in a, like in a canyon where it's a little cooler and just kind of wait out the heat like in a canyon where it's a little cooler and just kind of wait out the heat of the day and in the cool shade and in a deep canyon next to water or something that's one of my ideal places to take a nap sleeping on slick rock or something but yeah do you guys stay in yellow water or do you stay at the crocodile crocodile yeah how was that yeah we stayed at the other one i mean it's cool constantly we weren't there very much but it's cool cool hotel further away that was what i was thinking but uh yeah no i hear you

yeah it is further away but although it is where we got er's phone back. So there you go. That's where the German with the phone. Yeah. That led to the Owen Pelly. That led to the Owen Pelly. So I guess I do have some affinity for the beyond. Yeah. It looks really cool. Especially aerial shots. Yeah. If Eric's phone goes missing on this next trip, I may or may not have, uh, so we have to go back somewhere.

I'm looking forward to getting back to Kakadu. It's been, been a long time. And it sounds like you got, you didn't really do it. That didn't give it the time that you would do it justice. We will this time. Basically a full day. Yeah. So I'm, uh, we'll hopefully be, uh, looking to get some notes from you here with the planning of the, the trip, but yeah, you got some cool spots. What was your favorite location to photograph stuff on your trip?

Yeah. McCook Falls where the mertons and the people were that was yeah i've been to honduras western australia northern australia northern territory i think that was one of the best habitat i've ever seen really just the smooth rocks the clear water the palms and eucalyptus trees everywhere and then a merton sitting on a rock in the middle of the stream that's cool yeah it's i don't know it's hard to beat caragini i just love that place i could yeah it was cool too but yeah yeah well i have to have to go to magook falls and compare and contrast yeah that's awesome. I did love that area around Uluru too.

We were, we actually camped in the parking lot of the Olgas. Yeah, you broke the law. Yeah, we did. But we didn't get caught and it was raining. And I was mad because we'd only seen DOR Molochs and we saw a DOR Western Blue Tongue and a DOR Centralian blue tongue and that's all I've seen of the two blue tongue species. Luckily I've seen a couple. Yeah, we didn't even see DOR blue tongues. I was upset about that. I was looking for

hoping for both of those but didn't even see one dead. It's a good spot to see both species. Yeah. Multis are supposed to be running all over the place down there. I've only seen them just shortly after they've gone on the road and gotten hit. It's driving me nuts. I need to see a live one of either species. This last trip, it wasn't on the road even. It was a DOR underneath a piece of tin of, Western blue tongue in South Australia.

I'm like, come on, what is the deal? I cannot see a live, uh, occipitalis or multifacetal, but you represent a real threat to their continued existence. I guess.

I don't know. Maybe I should stop looking for them. Then I'll find them alive and healthy, healthy and happy, but it's cool. yeah there's just so many cool places over in australia it is it's hard to beat that orange sand too though in the red center like that is that is a color you don't see very often yeah that was another landscape another one where we were just kind of driving between i think we were driving somewhere

out there and there was just the sand was just too inviting and i'm like i was with my dad and we're like let's just pull over and walk around in the sand i my my dad was uh photographing some bullet ants and he didn't notice one that came up and bit him on the toe and so he was kind of limping the rest of the trip that thing like it took a couple weeks to heal the bullet ant bite yeah so but i went i went kind of you know looking for reptiles of course and there was a burton's legless lizard that was cruising around that was really a neat it had some kind of like reddish in its pattern because it was on the red sand i guess but it was really pretty and then i saw a monitor two monitors they were like um doing something you know like either combating or mating or something and i interrupted them and one took off this way

and the other took off this way and i'm running with my camera trying to you know get them to stop long enough to take a picture and one just the one i was chasing dove under the spin effects and just disappeared and i'm like digging through the sand trying to find it but it was uh a pair of uh aremias the rusty desert monitor and so i didn't get a picture of it but yeah i was looking for those two they're supposed to be found in that little habitat area i was talking about by our hotel but okay maybe i saw a glimpse of one. I just didn't know because I saw lots of glimpses of something. What was that? I don't know. It's gone now.

The way that goes. Yeah. And then there's also Levisimus there. I looked every night for those. Didn't see one. Didn't see one. Unfortunately. I didn't see one.

I did see a Levis on the road out of Uluru. And it was. Yeah. It rained. Was that, you saw a couple of those? Yeah, we saw a nice red one and then a normal purpley one. Cool. Yeah.

Yeah, we saw one scraggly little male that was venturing out during the rain. I guess the rains meant we got to see,falls off of Uluru Which was kind of cool Yeah we did too but I was depressed Because every night it rained And then I had an astro tour Scheduled and I got cancelled Because of the cloud cover I watched hours of YouTube videos

Trying to figure out how to take astro photography Because I wanted to do it over Uluru We're all for nothing Yeah Shoot The best laid plans right Because I wanted to do it over Ularu. We're all for nothing. Yeah. Oh, shoot. The best laid plans, right? When you're planning a trip months in advance, it's really hard to.

I was getting super depressed that whole week because I was like, nothing's going to be out. It's too cold, too rainy. Like, what is happening? The entire time we were there and then the next week looked perfect. But saw some stuff. Got Molok. Yeah. All sorts of stuff. We were in Alessari. We were in uh one of the canyons again you know a local told us yeah the signs say don't do it but nobody

ever checked so yeah so we did it but then the canyon it was simpson's gap simpson's gap that was just kind of out of alice just a bit and and uh we pretty much stayed there i think three or four nights in a row and then uh the week after i got back somebody posted a picture of a parenti that was living in simpsons gap like it just alongside the road in some rock outcrop and i'm like we passed that rock outcrop every day and i saw no parentis yeah the printer we saw was on top of uh what's that called they didn't stay like the only chasm this is the aboriginal owned yeah section of it like their little consolation prize for the you know yeah they both take over their their cool area but right so yeah we went and saw, we saw the Chatham

and then there was this little trail that went literally straight up the mountain. It's like experienced hikers only. We're like, eh, we're experienced enough. And we got all the way up there, just out of breath, winded, like, okay, that was enough of that because the trail just kept going. But like, okay, well, we can head down. And on our way down, Sierra actually slipped. I was like, you good? winded like okay that was enough of that because the trail just kept going but like okay well we

can head down and on our way down sierra actually slipped i was like you good i turned around to look at her she's like yep and i looked down just under a cycad was this half-grown juvenile parenti i was like oh my god a parenti yeah just in the shade of a you know super cool plant that's awesome yeah you see a printy here and look right and you're looking all over alice springs basically just yeah up on the up on the mountain that was super cool super cool yeah did it pose for you pretty well or uh yeah it stayed around like it didn't appreciate our presence but it was pretty bold about it just you know did the slow monitor walks and look at you every couple steps and then stop and oh yeah i got some good shots of him that's very cool yeah did he go for a white background or

only did that for the poster board behind yeah yeah i did bring i brought a piece of poster board just for a moloch in case we found one. That's cool. And I used it because it's awesome. Then we did, we also saw probably Yearling Perente also by Katajuda, which I tried to catch that because I wanted to get a Katajuda Perente picture, but he darted away. All I got was a shot of him in the grasses which that was cool yes cool the two shot the uh his pattern blends in with you know i see it black and white lizard you're like what's that doing an orange saying but yeah you see him in that bushel of grass barely can see him so they know what they're doing they figure it they figure it out whether we do or not

right are the are the juveniles in central australia are they a little more brightly patterned like more black and white or and they kind of yeah they look wow does it get all there oh i found yeah we saw one in western aust Australia too, but I don't see it. They were maybe a little bit more patterned. I think the ones we saw in Central Australia and the one I saw in Western Australia, the Western Australia one had more black and then bolder oceli. And these were like kind of modeled throughout their whole body. Yeah. I like that model book.

Yeah. Such cool lizards. I'm really hoping to see, I'm going to central Australia in 2025. Of course you're invited to the big birthday bash, my 50th out there. I don't think anybody's going to come, but we'll see. I don't think my budget's going to make it yet. I'm a zookeeper budget. Can't go to Australia every, every year. Well, and you were just there. So you know. Yeah. Yeah, you'll probably

have other places. I think I kind of got wiped. Yeah. But yeah, I'm looking forward to herping Central Australia. I'd go back in a heartbeat. Yeah. Did you get to see Amy? Yep, saw two Amy. I think, yeah, they're both

both in West Macdonaldald i think yeah yeah that's cool that's another one that's high on the list that i haven't gotten to see it so male and a female yeah nice yeah was it so the first one yeah the first one we saw was there's like one little literally 10 kilometer strip where you can find, I guess, where I think the desert death adders are. Apparently, there's one strip of road where they're always at. So we tried that one time, but we only did one one night because it takes so long to get there. It's all the way at the other end of West McDonald from where we're staying. So it took us, you know, technically two and a half hours to get there. It's all the way at the other end of West McDonald from where we were staying. So it took us, you know, technically two and a half hours to get there. But, you know, we're road cruising.

So it took about four hours to get there. And then didn't see one. So we just turned around and came back. And on our way back is when we found the AMA. So like 3.30 in the morning is when that guy was out. So that made it worse, I guess. Not getting back to our hotel till 5. Getting back out at 7.30.

But hey, got Amy and my favorite gecko. Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. One little victory is all that it takes. And then the other one was a surprise, just random night. That's cool. Did it run fast? I've heard they kind of maybe run uh faster than i wanted to it didn't want to didn't want me to take pictures of it either so i only got

like maybe two okay pictures of it just because i was like okay you're if you don't want to do it then we don't have to yeah yeah yeah that's cool another dream species to see oh yeah i was over the moon like that's a big gecko oh my god it's namey that's cool yep um yeah just like a white blob in your headlights what it is huge little white blob on the road. Nice. Any other cool experiences from the trip that just stand out? The Scalaris was cool just because of where we

found it. You hear stories of monitor lizards utilizing termite mounds and this one was doing just that. it was on a termite mound basking when i drove by and we stopped and when it saw us it had dug out a through and through hole in this termite mound that just used that as a refuse so that was super cool to see that and scolaris was a species i wasn't even on my list i even think about finding so

and that was like our first lizard we saw that was we we went straight into the lost city because that's where everybody told me where glue palm were supposed to be i didn't see any of that so terrible road there too apparently on our loan agreement for that car we weren't supposed to drive on that road which i didn't know until we were halfway down it and sierra said we're not supposed to be on this road well yeah lost city was supposed to be cool we're not supposed to be on this route. Well, he was supposed to be cool. We're going. Yeah, that was one that we had avoided on the first one because of that,

being too contractually abiding or whatever. But no, all good. I think we'll have to on the return, we'll definitely make it a point for sure. People have made their own. Actually, there's a track off the road that people drove on so that's smoother oh yeah you do that and then you hit like a ditch where you can't so you have to go back on for a little bit and then go back on like that so that's

what we did like it was way easier otherwise you're bouncing around the whole time like can't even keep your phone charger in for your maps to bounces right out the usb port so that was a super annoying come on i don't know where we're going the one that killed me we were driving through uh carrie genie on one of the dirt roads and then i found out uh after we'd driven you know this long dirt, there was a paved road that paralleled it. And we could have driven that instead. I'm like, dang it. Yeah, it was terrible. It was a bad road, too.

Yeah, we tried useless loop for maybe 10 kilometers. We're like, we can't. We're not doing this. Yeah, we were driving that very slow. Our bones are rattling ever since. Right. Yeah, Steve said, yeah, go useless loop. There's cool stuff there.

Okay. Oh, my God, Steve. We're not. No, thank you. I don't remember it being that bad. I guess we're in an old car. Yeah. It must have been okay.

But that, yeah, Carragini Road was horrible in that car. We just. Yeah. I'm surprised we survived that. That's all i guess far the car survived it but yeah we had a huge toyota 4runner and that was a grump on that yeah in south australia there was a lot of dirt road driving and at one point i noticed that there was dust just filling in the car like it was just coming in from somewhere. I'm like, what is happening? Where is this dust coming from?

It was terrible. And yeah, after the trip, it was just covered like inside. It was like a quarter inch thick dust layer over everything. It was terrible. The things we do right to get to cool places. Yeah. It's an adventure every time worth cool places. Yeah. It's an adventure every time. Worth it though. Yeah. The worst thing that happened was a bird flew into the car. Like they were chasing each other. These apostle birds,

they're really cool, weird looking birds, but they were chasing each other and one just headlong into our bumper and knocked out the sensor of the, like the, the front sensor. And so, you know, it's always a sensor is out, you know, the front sensor. And so, you know, it's always like sensor is out, you know, every five minutes it would flash some warning. I'm like, gosh, dang it. And it happened like on the second day of the trip, I'm like, come on, I had to drive a week with that flashing at me. Uh, that was annoying. Yeah. That road, the King's Canyon was, that was scary. Like every 10 feet, there's just flat tires on the side of the road. So my but was that was scary like every 10 feet there's just

flat tires on the side of the road so my butthole was clenched for about eight hours just like don't pop a tire don't pop a tire right and then it would get teased because every time there's there's two intersections and they'd pave it right where the intersection was so it hit the pavement like we did it and we sit there like all right two-wheel drive we made it and then you round the corner all right, two wheel drive. We made it. And then you round a corner. It's back to the terrible road. Yeah. Oh my God.

No. Sometimes it's hard to figure out the, how passable a road is, you know? You will say two and a half hours. You drop a pen like, yep, it's paved. Yeah. Nope. Nope. It's not.

Eight hours and not paved. Yeah. Nope. Nope, it's not. Eight hours and not paved. Yeah. That makes for some interesting situations. All right. Any other points that you've got in regards to photographing herps? I thought of one kind of on Rob's side is legality. You know, if you're not allowed to manipulate snakes or reptiles in certain regions. Now, obviously that's kind of the rule in some parts of Australia, but I see most Australians

breaking that rule. So I don't feel too bad about it, but I guess technically if, you know, a ranger caught you doing something like that, then you could get in trouble. But, um, heck, even if you go to our PA, uh, New Jersey trip, right. If the, if we had gone one step further and it's like looking through our photos or whatever, then, uh, a wanker shot or, you know, um, I mean, we might've taken some other trips last year that where that, uh, certain things might not have looked great like if they'd gone back in the camera roll or whatever so yeah i think there's something to that but i don't know i think there's an argument for both sides right and particularly i do find your argument compelling in terms of a

beautiful beautifully situated animal in situ meaning like posed but in situ i think is probably sort of my favorite photo to look at the as you say, because it's instructive relative to those conditions and things. And at the same time, an unposed photo, if you can genuinely come upon it without disturbing it or whatever, both as a voucher shot and as a this is it in its natural state as opposed to the death adder that's in its defensive posture and all this i think both those things have a ton of value although you know that being said death adders that are in that defensive posture man they look really pretty so i totally understand that there's a compelling you know art art argument as well yeah i like both too but yeah i will say i get more jealous of nice post pictures than just a regular just a snapshot of the animal where it was. But like, man, I want to be able to do that. Well, and –

And some of the time too, right? Yeah. So what I was going to – it sort of reminds me of the – you mentioned the astrophotography. You mentioned we're talking about stuff with this post. I think the part – maybe the part that is a truth that's not images that are made to get to make a beautiful piece of art that is both true to the animal in the sense of being this is an animal that exists in the world right and in their habitat or whatever but that isn't i shouldn't be looking at that saying why can't i recreate that photo with my camera well you probably A, you almost certainly have a more expensive camera than I do, but also that's not a singular photo that could be taken where both the stars that are however many,

tens of thousands of miles away are in focus, and this animal that's six inches in front of the camera is in focus. That doesn't exist. That's not a thing. That's a beautiful piece of art to look at and even can be true to the species. But that's to me, there is some misrepresentation to the extent that someone who isn't aware of that will take that in as like, why can't I make that out with my $200 camera or whatever? There's a little bit of falsity to that to me. Yeah, that was kind of what i was going to say there's some that are like neon that you're like there's no way that animal looks like that it's you know but i mean they're it's fun to look at them and you know it might kind of show the ultimate of

what they could look like what's that potential yeah i don't even mean so much that it's just everything being oh wow this beautiful landscape all of which is in focus, and the stars are in focus, and the animal that's six inches away is in focus, and it's like – but it doesn't look flat. That's not one photo. That's ten photos, fifteen photos, whatever it is. Stoked, yeah. Which is cool. Yeah, I'm not against that. I guess the only – to the extent that I do kind of think it's a little morally questionable is just if it's being presented as like, yeah, well, I mean I guess you just can't make a photo look like this. You're just not as good as me. And that's not saying that Ross says that, but to the extent that you see some of that, that became a Herper Bro thing for a bit there where it's probably, frankly, too much work for the herper bros for the most part you know more you know the more negativity around well i've only seen 45 alternates tonight so it's fine you know whatever i guess i could take a picture of the last one too but

um no that's gratuitous on my part i apologize well any uh any other parting thoughts um things that have come to mind that you haven't gotten a chance to get out there no sometimes i look at these like the clevel palma pictures i took like man if only i had that my hands and i could pose it right it was like, it was made for that. Yeah. But yeah, no, I got some good natural pictures of it. Yeah. Well, yeah, we're amazing.

Yeah. Like, yeah, I'm sure you could have done amazing things, but heck that's, and I wonder to, you know, at some point,

right. Is Justin, you had mentioned, right. Uh, what's your midi quote or, you know, idea of like,

if you're doing that to what extent are you diminishing your own experience of being with that animal right and that's something i struggle with myself yeah yeah yeah you gotta yeah you gotta stroke you gotta yeah balance that like who cares you didn't get the picture you just experienced like this animal you might never see again in your life so yeah yeah and i guess on the flip the flip side of that too is even if it's a crappy photo you can look back and recall the experience it kind of brings brings those feelings brings that excitement back more so than if you're just looking through facebook or instagram and you see it you know if you didn't experience it but if you like kind of i guess piggybacking

on last week's discussion of you know uh herping solo versus herping with a group you know when you're with a group of friends and you've you've all had that same experience and you know you can see even the crappiest picture from that day and go that was a good experience that was you know bring those those feelings up to the surface oh yeah several crappy pictures of lizards that are like i want to catalog it at least like snap snap snap yep it's like darting away from me i want to know look what but you are later at least exactly say that i saw you yeah like the notice where i'm sure i saw probably 15 different tenospecies so i picture those because they're there and gone like under a rock

well a black and white striped skink I'll mark that down and see what that was yep it turns out the species differentiation you need to look at the toe pads on the rear feet or whatever and it's like it's like those fat-tailed

Diplodaculus I didn't know there's three different species that look the same. Yeah, they split those into it. I thought this was Conspicuatus. It's the other one. It's like, oh, it's a tail tip. It's like half a millimeter longer. Like, okay.

Bumpy scales. You got to bring the ruler and the coin and all that. Yeah. Like, I just took a picture of its face. Yeah. It's funny well i i think the main thing is is get out and herp and find some cool stuff to photograph whether you pose it or whether you take in situ or whether you take a crappy iphone shot like me because i've given up i i guess i look at everybody else's pictures and i go man i

just i don't have the patience or the and it doesn't stick in my brain for some reason, these photography skills. My dad has them. My brother has them, but it skipped me for some reason. So I let people like you and Rob take these professional photos with their nice cameras, and I just get down there with my iPhone, take a couple shots, and sometimes they turn out. All right. I mean, these phones we have are almost as crazy, almost better than the best cameras we had 10, 20 years ago, you know, all my habitat shots and Ulu shots are on, on my iPhone and they're incredible. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes I get a shot on my iPhone. I'm like, it's better than the route that I took with my nice camera. So yeah.

I'm like, so 10 years into trying to figure out for photography and I still know what I'm doing. So yeah, it's, I mean, it's definitely better by the day, but yeah. Some of that camera functionality, like, right. It's almost, you're, you're being lost in a sea of choice and the ability to make all these variants. Whereas the iPhone, it's not, you don't have that level of modularity so that it's like i just click the button dude you know that sort of thing as opposed to you know all these different settings that you can manipulate and it's like well i don't need a

fancier camera because i'm already confused by what i have right so there's already way above way beyond me in terms of what this thing could do that i that i can't even access so i think there is something to be said for them. Yeah. And I, I went with, uh, I've gone on a few backpacking trips with my cousin, who's a semi-professional photographer. And when he's got a shot in mind, like you could be there for hours staring at the same thing. And he's just focused on this one shot, you know, and my dad was with him one time and

he turned around and there was this beautiful sunset behind him. And he's like, oh, you might want to check. He's like, no, I'm good. I'm looking this way. So my dad turned around, took some shots and they're beautiful picture, you know, but he wanted the other, the other view and, and was waiting for his shot. And yeah, it's pretty intense, you know? I'm like, okay. Yeah.

That's not me. I'm too impatient for that. It's also much easier and lighter to travel if you don't have camera gear on your back. Right? It's in your pocket. You don't have the camera swinging around hitting you in the chest when you're trying to climb a rock and throwing you off balance. And, yeah, it's another reason. Or the feeling going through your mind as you're smacking it into the room.

Exactly. Oh, that expensive it into the room yeah the the last trip uh to south australia there was a alpine blue tongue on the side of the road i'm like stop stop stop and i jump out of the car and my camera goes with me and hits the the road i'm like no luckily it was okay but yeah it was like seeing my camera die before my eyes, but luckily it was saved. Well, cool, cool discussion. And even cooler to think about the animals you're out there photographing and the regions that you're in. I just love, you know, Australia, of course. And I think we share a lot of the same favorites there amy and yeah parentes and i will say getting into reptiles i was on your website

too many times like australian addiction and then especially the geckos like these are the aspir are you kidding me yeah well and behold i became friends with steve yeah i had those aspers he bought gill and i for me because he liked that's right yeah uh yeah yeah did he get the kims from you too or is that from somebody no he got those from an agent called blood i think oh okay brandon yeah what's his last name? Ashton Austin Too many cool animals for sure

We appreciate you coming on Yeah an epic trip Yeah that's so cool You guys saw some cool stuff for sure Where can people find your photos? Instagram at mtgen for most of my reptile stuff and then my at home stuff of that bloody goannas and nephorus and now you're a mastics i

guess now where did that name come from uh it's a play on words from when I had blood pythons and monitor lizards. I thought it was funny. Bloody goyana. Now everybody thinks I'm from Australia or England. You're just cursing at a glebo that's running away from you. Stupid lizard. So I thought it was funny, so I just kept it. Went with it. Nice.

Yep. Right on. Well, any, uh, cool things you've seen over the last week or so in the news or herp related. That's cool. I got a couple books.

Uh, I don't know if I talked about these on last time, but I got the, uh, complete guide to the snakes of Southern Africa. That's pretty exciting. And it's kind of convincing me. I need to go to South Africa at some point here. And, and then I got that bows of the West Indies book.

They're cool, cool snakes. And I need to be able to hang with Rob in conversation. So maybe I'll have to read this book and learn something about those darn live bears. I've always been so opposed, but I'm softening a little, I guess. Your cutting egg agenda kind of meets, you get a little head-butting there, right? There you go. Was the complete, was the South Africa book, is that out of the Darth

Olapis Snakes and Stogies book club? Or they talked about so many African-an focused was that from that or no i i'd gotten it before well before i listened to it i'm not sure if i got it before they recorded it but yeah i i listened to that the other day i'm like oh maybe i i can't remember if they talked about it but it's you know it's a field guide so it's just kind of the photos and talking about their natural history and stuff but there's some pretty cool pretty cool snakes in south africa and there's a a new edition of the other kind of companion book this is john uh marias or marius whatever his name is he's got yeah he's got one coming out of the reptiles of southern africa so i think i'll pick that one up too just because it's i mean the the

real interest i think i have in south africa is the tortoises and the lizards some of the you know chameleons and stuff like that and the flat lizards the yeah some of those things would be cool to see out in the wild but the tortoises are just incredible out there and then you know the uh, uh, cordless. Yeah. Cool, cool stuff. So someday, someday I'll make it over to South Africa. Too many places. What about you, Matt?

Yeah. Or what? Any, any cool things to report? Uh, the last thing I thought was that eyelash viper breakdown, but I'm sure some people are probably upset about it. They split them into different species. Several species. Yeah. That's that.

I'm sure a lot of people have. I have eyelash vipers now. The interesting thing, right, is a lot of those are coming from places that don't really export or don't export in quantities. So I don't really export or don't export in quantity so i don't know yeah you know yeah certainly i had the same sort of thought process on the front end on the back end looking into it i was like yeah i mean ecuador has been mostly closed to entirely closed for a really long time and that's a couple you know it was kind of like maybe it's not as bad as it seems it's not just saying yeah they're all they're all uh have monotype presentation, and so to the extent that we consider them super variable, that means they're all hybrid.

It's not saying that. It's saying just within these pockets or whatever that they've looked at, but the same sort of thought for sure. In terms of things that are exciting to me, so one of them, Nipper pointed out, and then I saw on Facebook, I'm mostly off of it, save Messenger. But he highlighted, and then I saw that Mark had highlighted this as well, is that now on Amazon Prime, the first season of O'Shea's Big Adventure, in this case, the America's version. So, yeah, that whole 13 episode is available on Amazon Prime, at least in the U.S., for purchase for $21 or so. But you can download those, and maybe that's a good thing in the sense that maybe it's less likely to just randomly disappear than if you weren't paying for it as a download and extra and all that. So I've checked out a couple of those, remembering having seen them, particularly the Golden Lancehead one. It's fun seeing Mark from, what is is it 25 years ago now and all this

stuff and just sort of his presentation and at the same time you see the front end of reality tv where the producers maybe accurately are presenting like that uh mark and his sort of his style or style of interactivity with the animals has his brazilian hosts very uh concerned for his well-being and all these things and all this sort of stuff. So I don't know. You know, that would be interesting. And I still got to finish out his second show when he'd come on with Nipper and Phil.

But and the reason isn't because of lack of interest. It's because I want to be super zoned in and listening. And at the same time, it's a little trying so i i need to be in the right headspace so just haven't quite gotten there but i have checked out the first couple episodes of those again and yeah both of them it's like oh i remember seeing this before the bushmaster and the atlantic coast bushmaster and the golden lance head um the other thing that goes further back is there was a so much pingle episode where he talked to hans brauer who has been in taiwan and then lived in sarawak for a long time and he had a couple

username didn't he have kind of a weird username i think it's in there so it's uh h-a-n-s and then it's b-r-e-u-e-r um maybe these. And I think it's in there if you just search it in Instagram. It's basically like more or less like that. Not many posts, a half dozen, something like that. But the point is that he's written a couple books, one in 2012, mostly on field herping in Taiwan, which I ordered off of a books. It was funny that, uh, the whole discourse around Schmitty getting the, uh, the updated class Peter Schultz overall rat snake thinking that a books was the seller or whatever, and Phil kind of going in on him about that. So that was pretty good. Um, and the, uh, the other though,

2023 is on Amazon for 25 bucks or something like that. So I got that. And that's the, uh, what is it? A green horn naturalist in Borneo. Um, so yeah, I'm excited about both those books and I really enjoyed that interview where Mike talked to him. I thought it was really compelling stuff, really long form for Mike's show and all that. And yeah, really good. That's cool. I'll have to check that out. I like Mike's podcast. It's fun to any, to any any uh herping podcast is it's good in my book i think and the funny thing about that right is i either the episode before or after

you know i'd gotten a little bit behind on it he talked to a handful of folks when in peru right so they go on the trips and they're kind of talking through stuff and there's an episode where he talks to three people in a singular episode. And one of them has started mixing and trips, I think, a Canadian guy who had herped in Ontario and then herped in the U.S. and then added Australia to it. But the funny thing is he was talking about, I believe it was taking a picture of a Moloch in front of Uluru. So he got the Moloch-Uluru shot that reminded me from our conversation.

So that was another great episode, too, that's kind of three different people with different perspectives and all and experience and all that but uh i thought that one was really good as well nice i'll have to check those out yeah that's great stuff well um thanks again matt for coming on and i appreciate your insights and the the light, the debate that's been, um, some really good, uh, topics brought up. So, um, we appreciate, uh, NPR radio and allowing us to have our podcast on their site and, and, uh, under their umbrella and appreciate Eric and the good work he does and Owen as well.

And we, uh, we'll catch you next week for another episode of reptile fight club. Outro Music