Reptile Fight Club - Fight Club Super Show

Episode Date: September 17, 2021

In this episode, The RFC hits the road and heads to the Reptile Super Show in Anaheim CA.  Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comFollow Chuck Poland @-FBIG @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 MGR Network. All right, welcome to another edition of Reptile Fight Club. We've got Justin Julander and Chuck Poland with you. Hello, everybody. We're coming to you live from the Anaheim Reptile Super Show in Anaheim, California. So we're going to fight with a bunch of people in line. It should be a fun day. Yep. This line is incredibly long. I have never seen this many people. I've been doing some Anaheim shows for, you know,

back in the day when they were here. This is by far the biggest show I've seen. This is absolutely crazy. So yeah, it's going to take us a couple hours just to get into the show, but it gives us a lot of opportunity to chat with people in line. There's plenty of people to fight with in line. So they're just snaking the line around inside one of the halls. It goes from the door of the show all the way back. I mean, we walked probably 10 minutes. And then into the hall, and now they're snake-wrapping from one end of the hall to the other, back and forth.

I mean, an insane amount of people. So I guess California is starving for reptile shows or something. We are hungry. That's a good thing. I guess I should have vended the show or something. Yeah, for sure. It would have been a good one. This is going to be a crowded house. All right.

So today we're just going to give attendees and vendors and whoever we can talk to the opportunity to pick a topic or fight about a different topic. So we've picked a couple topics that we think are kind of relevant to the show or reptile shows in general. And we're going to just kind of try and find people, vendors, and attendees, and have them kind of fight one side or the other. So, yeah, it should be interesting. It should be a mix of different answers and opinions and different perspectives. So hopefully it will be something interesting to listen to. Yeah, with this many people, we might have three or four shows in the mix.

Yeah, this is going to definitely turn into a multi-show extravaganza. Yeah, we'll see how this goes. But we'll see if we can make our way along the line and get some people to fight. All right, thanks for listening, and hope you enjoy the show. All right, we're here with Brandon Wheeler. We'll let him introduce himself a little bit, but he's going to fight. Yeah, how's it going, guys? My name is Brandon Wheeler.

Morelia House is what I call my pretend breeding business, a fun hobby thing that destroys all my money. And I'm pretty much obsessed with everything that lives on a branch, you know. I love carpet pythons, scrub pythons. It's just fun. It's a passion. It's a lifestyle. Awesome. that lives on a branch, you know? I love carpet pythons, scrub pythons. It's just, it's fun, it's a passion, it's a lifestyle. Awesome. So we got a topic for you here.

Should reptiles be discounted at shows, right? Or whatever they're selling here, right? So we're gonna flip the coin. Heads is yes, tails is no, and you gotta defend it. There you go. All right, here we go, call it in the air. Or I guess, well, yeah, I guess it's, yeah. So tails, so, all right. No, they should not be in the air. Or I guess, well, yeah, I guess it's the... Yeah, so tails.

All right. No, they should not be. That's what you're defending. So you can hold this if you want. All right, so I defend no. Yeah, you defend no. All right. So why shouldn't reptiles be discounted?

Yeah, why shouldn't breeders discount reptiles at shows? Well, you know, it depends on what kind of breeder that you are and what you have. Because if you're producing quality stuff that's unique and not, you know, if you're the only guy at the show that's got something, then absolutely not. Why would you discount it? You know what I mean? You should hold your price, you know, if you have. And it depends on what you're breeding.

I mean, if you're breeding normal, you know, whatever, crested geckos to where they're all over the show. All over the show. And you probably won't have a choice. You know, you want to sell your animals or go home with them. But if you're breeding quality stuff and, you know, you're putting yourself in a position where you don't have to move animals, you should absolutely hold your ground for what you think your snakes are worth. Yeah, for sure.

Any other insights into it? Any other reasons why you wouldn't discount? No. I mean, that's it. You know, working in a sales mentality, people are always going to try to talk you down. They're always going to try to talk you down. Sometimes you almost have to build a little bit of a room in the price just to accommodate that. Not necessarily that you're going to discount it, but you may as well mark it up 50 bucks more

because somebody's going to get you to try anyway. Either way, however you want to approach the transaction is up to you, but get the amount of money that you expect for your animal. Awesome. Hold firm and have pride in your production, right? Yes, yes, yes. Cool, man. Well, it's good to see you.

Thanks for your input. Good to see you too. All right. So we got another fighty here and we're going to fight with him a bit or have him fight us, whatever you want to say. So the topic is whether or not there should be variety reptile show, like if you prefer to see variety or if you don't.'ll we'll go ahead and flip the coin and let that decide um oops we got tails that fell on the floor so tails variety he wants to see variety show so go ahead and introduce yourself and let us know how you feel about the topic hey marcel hawkins and uh man i want some more variety like uh i we don't see a lot of um a lot of scrubs, just a lot of boegas. We just need more options for people to have more reptiles.

Just because if people have more reptiles, I mean, ball pythons and corn snakes are nice, and it's a good start, but then everyone's looking for more stuff. It's like, where do you go after that? And then you start looking into monitors, and you start looking into lizards,ards and it's like okay but if if the show doesn't have any especially captive breeding then it's like we have to outsource and sometimes the outsource is bad you know so you have to more more variety right right yeah so more variety is good because if we get more people like breeding the the variety then there's less of there's less of people taking them out of the wild.

There's less imports. We have we have a good, stable, you know, colony in the in the U.S. So we don't have to go outsource like that. Yeah, that's awesome. Good, good job. So also, you know, you've got a kind of a rare clutch of eggs on the ground anyway. Why don't you tell us about that? Yeah, I have a I have 17 eggs on the ground from my pair of Malucan scrub pythons. That's fantastic. So I'm really excited about it.

It's been a long project. I've been learning on the way, so by no means an expert. It might be a fluke. It might be like I did something right, but we'll see next year if I can do it again. So, yeah. Right on. Best of luck with your project it again. So, yeah. Right on. Best of luck with your project, and thanks for fighting us. Thank you.

All right, we got a special treat for you. My brother-in-law, the one, the only, Anson Lloyd. He joined us at the Reptile Show, so we're going to get his take on one of these topics. We're going to give him the topic of diversity at reptile shows versus kind of the monoculture idea and, you know what what's good about that so we'll go ahead and flip the coin and then let him introduce himself and defend his topic so here we go all right we got heads so you gotta defend having more of of the same kind of species so introduce yourself and let us know what's going on all right Anson Lloyd I'm

married to Justin's little sister when I I first met Justin and his family, one of the things that we struck it off with well was, in fact, I had a python growing up, a ball python. Yeah, yeah. And so when I come to the show with you and Chuck, my take on it is completely different because I'm a total amateur. I had one when I was a kid. When I met Justin's family they had

things that I just loved because they were bigger and better than what I had as a kid so automatically I was enamored with that but when I come to things like this, thinking of podcasts y'all have done previously about how do we get how do we perpetuate this how do we get people in the door and just walking around

here seeing how many kids are here today and I can relate to kids because i'm on their same mental level so what's happening is is uh a lot of the same is here and and i see that but i see justin chuck go up and look at stuff that is oh hey look at this and i'm like oh it's the same thing but different colors like no it's a subspecies of that i i don't understand that from my level what i'm looking at is I don't know. I see the price tag, and there's a limitation for me there because I don't know what I'm looking at. And just like your friends were saying, hey, that's really expensive and it shouldn't be.

Automatically, it's like I don't care if it should or shouldn't. That's out of my range. But when I look at things, I'm looking at the markings on it. It could be cheaper or more expensive because I don't know the difference. I'm looking at, hey, this is unique or different or it's not unique and different because they're a lot of the same. Yeah. But some of them just have better markings than others. You guys are educated on it and you'll say, well, that marking is actually subpar from what it could be. And I'm looking at it like I like the way it makes an X angle instead of a more rounded off edge because it looks different and unique to me yeah um so the aesthetics is

more important necessarily than even though you see maybe a lot of the same thing right it's still different because it has different color patterns or mutation to it or how it looks right so there is a lot of the same stuff, but is it hooking people? And you have a show like this. I think you still need the variety, though. I can't not argue that side because there are people like you. I mean, we keep running into people. I hear you all talking and kind of geek out at that level, which is awesome.

I'm just like, that's cool. I don't know what they're talking about. But you need that, too. And I don't know if there's different shows that tend to cater more to that versus this more like this i think you know most of them are like this is pretty prototypical yeah yeah especially the big shows where you get like a bunch of crested geckos ball pythons yeah so it's just coming from an amateur eye looking at it to me i i am i'm seeing a lot of the same things but i'm even seeing more of the same things than you are because i don't notice the subtle differences to me it's all neat to me it's still like other reptiles look at the color look at that just like just like all these

little kids going around here and so basically even though it's a lot of the same you still see those subtle differences and it's almost like it's it's a different thing yeah to me it's different and you guys can point out yeah it's different because it sucks man but it looks really cool and you're like but that's not why you should buy it yeah but i'm looking at just like a little kid forget the fact that i'm in my mid-40s i still act like a little kid and get excited when i see this stuff hey i do too yeah that's anyway that's my take on it. Awesome. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you.

All right, we got another fight person here, so we're going to have him introduce himself and kind of what he's about. What's up, guys? My name is Jacob. I'm 20 from St. Louis, Missouri. I just got into the hobby like last week. I got one ball python, and now I just can't get enough of them, so I just bought my second one today here at the convention,

and I'm already looking to get another one today. That's awesome. Yeah. Okay, so we're going to ask you, we're going to have you debate the topic, are morphs good or bad for the hobby? So we'll flip the coin. Heads will be good and tails will be bad. So we got heads.

So how morphs are good for the hobby? Yeah. I mean, I think morphs are good for the hobby yeah i mean i i think morphs are good for the hobby especially for getting people into the hobby like me because i was kind of scared of snakes when i first got into them and the super dark complected ones like more like the that you see like in the wild and stuff i would have been way less like i probably wouldn't have got one if that was the only one i could get i was just a little bit scared of them but since like it got like a brighter color one and I got like a pied one and stuff like they're there, they look a lot friendly. And I think that they can help open up eyes for other people that were scared of snakes originally. Like they're a lot more able to hold them and stuff and not be as

scared because especially like my girlfriend here, she doesn't like the darker ones and she is still scared to hold a dark one, but she'll hold a white, like a lighter colored one. So kind of the prettier, the prettier snake kind of draws you in a little bit yeah i think a prettier snake can draw more people into the hobby and then it can express love so like i think one day i'll be able to get a darker one and it's just a good introduction and entry to snakes in general awesome that's a really unique perspective i hadn't thought about that i like it i like it cool all right thanks a lot jacob thank you all right we Thanks a lot, Jacob. Thank you. All right. We've got a couple more victims for our fight here.

Why don't you introduce yourself? I'm Christian. I'm Ava. All right. And are you new in the hobby? You've been doing this for a while? He's been doing it for a while. He kind of got me introduced to it about a year ago.

So I'm pretty new. He's been doing it his whole life. I've been it 10 years plus. Cool. All right. Okay. Well, we're going to ask you about morphs. morphs good or or you know not so good for the hobby we're gonna flip a coin let you decide or see what see which side you defend so tails they're not so good so see if

you can defend why morphs may not be the best thing for that um well i would say that morphs can be really bad when they negatively affect animals. They can give them neurological issues and like it's really just for our pleasure it doesn't do anything for the animal positively. Awesome. Anything to add? No! That was good! That was a good answer. I don't think I've heard that one before so yeah I mean that's that's a that's a really good answer. When it takes away from someone's, the animal's life, yeah, that's, like, not good for it.

Obviously, we all should care about how the animal's doing, and that's the most important part. Absolutely. Awesome, guys. Awesome. Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah. All right, we got another fighter for you all. Go ahead and introduce yourself.

My name is Earl Taylor, and I'm from los angeles california all right so we're gonna ask you about your opinion on morphs so if you know good for the hobby bad for the hobby heads is good tails is bad um we got tails so maybe how you know morphs might not be the best thing for the hobby uh i don't know because morphs makes it better. You get more variety. Sure, yeah. Better animals, healthier animals. Okay. Any downsides to morphs, do you think? When they're breeding and the breeding is not good,

when you're breeding animals that shouldn't be bred together. Sure, like a lethal gene or something. Yeah, that's a good point. All right. Anything else to add? No, that's all. All right. We appreciate your opinion. Thanks a lot.

All right. Hey, we got a couple more fighters here. Hi, my name is Alex. I'm from Monrovia. Hi, I'm Melissa. I'm from Monrovia. All right. Okay, we're going to ask you today about gimmicks, like, you know, booths, and whether or not that gets you to go visit a booth or not. So the heads would be they're good or they're helpful, get you there. Tails, they're not so good. So heads, so gimmicks good be uh they're they're good or they're helpful get you there tails they're not so good so heads so their gimmicks good defend that i guess defend it um how do we defend it does that does that draw you into a booth when there's like crazy stuff going

on there or is it i would say yes and no okay i'm gonna go for the yes side uh i feel like owning a reptile could be a really good experience to learn and to understand how it lives and its habilitation and stuff like that. And the big posters show their cool and crazy unique items that go along with it. I'd go ahead and say that the big crazy posters attract more people because they're like, oh, what's going on over here? Or, oh, let me learn about this because everybody wants to know about it. Why should I care about learning it too?

Cool. That's basically my opinion. All right. So maybe Brea should maybe keep doing that. Yeah, a little bit. All right. Thanks for your opinion, guys. Thank you.

All right. We got a couple more fighters here for the podcast. And let's have you say who you are and where you're from. Joseph, I'm from Anaheim. Okay. Darlene, I'm from Fullerton. All right. And we're going to ask you guys about morphs, whether or not they're beneficial or not so much for the hobby.

So we'll let the coin toss dictate. So we got tails. So that means the morphs might not be so great for the hobby what ways are morphs not so good for the hobby so let's hear what you think i don't even know nothing about that okay like like say for example your albino pac-man frog like why you know maybe an albino is not as good as maybe just the regular type you can see it more it doesn't really camouflage as much. Okay.

Yeah. They're more like the natural appearance or whatever, so they look normal. Any other insights? What do you think? I think they're clearly on the morph side of things right now. They got the morph frog, yeah. All right. Well, what do you think about, why are morphs cool?

What do you like about the morph morphs cool what do you like about the morphs uh the patterns the colors it's like some colors are vibrant yeah yeah would you would you would you have picked up the frog if it was just the the wild type or was the morph the thing that really sold you on wanting to get it i wouldn't pick it up in the wild. Okay, cool. Alright guys, thanks. Alright, we got another fighter. Why don't you introduce yourself? Hi, I'm Johnny Barrett with Snake Daddy Serpents.

Where are you from? From Menifee, California. Okay, and what kind of stuff are you into? I have a whole bunch of carpet pythons, just got into chewy geckos, and I got some knobtails. Awesome, sounds like a really good collection there. Alright, so we're going to ask you about variety of reptile shows heads would be like a you know a few species a lot a lot of examples of a few species and the tails is a few examples of a lot of species heads so heads all right all right okay a lot a lot of species a few species yeah

okay so one of the things that's nice about having just a few species is that you can really kind of find out who's going to be focusing, if that makes sense. You know, they're going to be able to, you're going to be able to narrow down who's picking out and who's actually got the attention for detail. You know, what work, what stuff you're going to want to work with. You know, you're going to be able to narrow it down. Okay. These guys are just breeding together everything with a cloaca. Sure. These guys are actually picking out all these different things and they're, you know, they're

selective breeding. Okay. So when you have more of a, there's a refinement and focus and you get better quality. Yeah. And you have something to compare it to. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Tons of comparisons.

That's good. And you can kind of figure out what you like and what. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Great, great answer yeah thanks man all right we get another fight for you let's see who we got here uh this is brandon i'm from northern california and i'm a crested gecko hobbyist um i go to a lot of different shows and uh i'm just answering a couple questions with the reptile fight club all right cool cool. Today we're going to be talking about diversity. Is it good to have a diverse show or a lot of the same kind of species? Heads will say it's good to have a lot of the same, fewer species, but a lot of different morphs and variations. Then variety is tails.

We'll flip the coin. You got heads. Heads. Yeah, like flip the coin. And you got heads. Hedges. Yeah, like the ball python, crested gecko. It's good to have a few different species. Why is having those few species good for? Yeah, it's a lot better to centralize, especially when you got like ball python or crested gecko,

where you have lots of morphs. So you're still working in the same category of care. You know, the care isn't going to be different but you still have a lot of variety to offer when it comes to your chocolate lab versus your german shepherd but it's still they're all crested igneous they're all ball pythons and the care for those the reason that a lot of people centralize in one reptile or another is because the care is really good for a ball python. It's really easy and it's not an accident, you know, that's how I feel and I'm a

crested gecko advocate. It's the first gecko I got and doesn't take any electricity, has a two-way diet of both the the pangaea and the cricket so if you don't want to go to the store you have options unlike with insectivores you don't have any options you've got to go to the store once a week it's a regular habit that you've given yourself and then I you know another reason to centralize is like I have a my coworker who's also here with me at the show he's looking for uromastyx and he's looking for Euromastics. And he's looking for specific Euromastics. And so if you centralize on something that's really expensive, you're not going to get

a lot of buyers, but you're going to get people that grab business cards and buy later. And then you're also going to make connections and you're also going to end up with really expensive purchases. High purchases, not as much quantity. You're not going to have to pack as much as a vendor, you know. So I think it's better to centralize, you know. I don't think I would. It's easy for me to argue that you spread out too thin and you're too diversified. You really don't have enough

experience in one in in in what you're selling you're too like if you like it i'll tell you what i've i've read or what care we know but yeah versus if you're all on one you you have a lot of experience with multiple different ones you've had problems fixed problems and so you're just uh well-rounded yeah yeah exactly and there's a ton of information you know a lot of people with a lot of information versus not much known on a lot of yeah yeah no that's a great great point of view appreciate it thank you all right thanks a lot take care guys All right, we got another fighter here. Why don't you introduce yourself? Hey, I'm Reid Sneddon.

I own SoCal Reptiles. I'm based in Long Beach, California. I specialize in tortoises, especially the testudo, so Russian, Hermans, Greeks, Marginades, all those. And do some monkey tail skinks as well cool yeah he's got some really nice hatchlings here the tail some cool russian tortoises yeah um so today we're gonna ask you the question about uh is you know variety good at a show or is monoculture okay so heads is uh variety tails monoculture okay okay chuck's gonna flip here all right you got tails so monoculture

you got to defend monoculture defend i'm gonna be on the side of monoculture okay uh so one species or like morph well yeah you know morphs morphs okay um morphs of one species morphs of one species uh yeah so it's good to have uh the monulture just so, you know, get everybody on the same page and we can exchange information for it. Really, you know, bring new ideas on husbandry of one animal potentially or, you know, a gene of one animal. It can really explore that and really, you know, make like a database and, you know, maybe that animal needs help in the wild. And, you know, 20,000 people have those after a reptile show and can exchange some info and, you know, really band together and help that one thing. Yeah, I mean, crested geckos were, like, functionally extinct, right? And now they're the most common thing here.

So I think we've nailed it in. Yeah, great input. Cool. All right, thanks. Yeah. All right, we have another fighter here. Why don't you introduce yourself hi what's up my name is chris mckale i'm an employee at triple l reptile all

right so uh we're gonna ask you about monoculture versus variety at a reptile show which you know which is uh beneficial for the hobby or more important or whatever so chuck Chuck's going to give us our toys. So heads would be variety. Tails would be monoculture. All right. Nope. Tails. So monoculture. Why is monoculture a good thing? So monoculture is a good thing because you get all your bread and butter animals like your bearded dragons, corn snakes, and crested geckos, which are going to be your big sellers. And if you look at a lot of the big brands, a lot of them have products geared towards that. So if you're a retail store, you're going to be able to sell a lot more product based on having those bread and butter animals versus having to figure out like how you're going to set up a green basilisk in a bearded dragon kid or this, that or the other. Cool. So I would say monoculture definitely has its peaks and it allows for a focus on a specific animal like if you look at a lot of other animals that are more uh rare in the hobby or you're less likely to breed frog-eyed geckos or green basilisks or your frilled dragons a lot of those guys don't get

extreme amounts of focus so there's not a whole lot of them and because of that not a lot of them look all that great and there's not a lot of morphs and there's not a whole lot of them and because of that not a lot of them look all that great and there's not a lot of morphs and there's not a lot of variety to those morphs when you focus on particularly like one animal for 20 40 years you end up with like ball pythons 5 000 different kinds so it's more appealing yeah absolutely well you get more color and more variety more to choose from which means your market opens yeah so even though they all require the same care exactly that we've kind of tailored our our market to exactly awesome yeah cool no that's a great insight i really like that thanks a lot no problem yeah all right we have another

fighter here my name is josh dunlap with scales fins and feathers uh sunland california cool all right we're today we're going to talk about should reptiles be discounted at shows. So if you get heads, that means you've got to say yes, they should be. Would you defend that point of view? Tails, no. We should stick with our prices. All right. Ready?

Okay. All right. We're tails. We're tails. So stick to your prices. No haggling. All right. Yeah, I think if you have a quality animal, you should stick to your prices.

The quality buyer is going to recognize that animal and assures it goes to a good home. I think you mark your stuff down too much. You get people buying them that don't really have the investment, the time investment, the money investment, the care investment that it takes to really to give that animal proper home. And so I think, you know, there's, you know, previous customers, people, you know, you maybe maybe give them a little bit of a cut or something. But but now I think you stick to your guns on your pricing if you believe in your animals and the time you spent raising them.

Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, I fully agree. You know, somebody is going to be invested in an animal. They're going to pay the money. I think properly priced animals lead to better outcomes. I think giving that... Give it in for your pet. Nobody wants to admit to a financial motivation to take care of something, but when you're invested in it, you have that onus to protect that investment.

If you pay nothing for it and you lose, what do you lose? You're not outmatched. You know what I mean? It's not something you really want to talk about it that way, but it definitely is that way. At a show, you don't know your customer that well. That's the different thing about doing the shows is it's a brief interaction. You try and learn what you can about them, but you don't really know. That's one way of assuring that it goes to a place that cares. Cool.

All right, thanks a lot, man. Cool stuff you guys are doing. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. All right, guys, we've got a heavy hitter for you here for the Reptile Fight Club. Jules Sylvester, Snake Wrangler to the stars, if you think something like that. That sounds great to me. All right, so we're going to be asking you about morphs.

Are morphs good for the hobby or not so great? And so heads good, tails not so good. So go ahead and flip the coin there. All right. Yeah, heads. Heads are good. Morphs are good for the hobby. Okay, heads are good for the hobby.

Well, actually, since my job is I do movies with snakes and reptiles, I have a company called Reptile Rentals, Inc. And I have to have an assortment of reptiles, obviously, for the movies. And the folks that write these scripts have no idea what snakes do, what color they want. They say, we'd like a red one with white bands. And it's like, okay, so we're going with albinos, hybrids, whatever I can find, red snakes with white bands.

And you end up with, you know, three different types. You've got the Nelsons, you've got all kinds of coral snake lookalikes. Oh, we like that one. So I'm going for, yeah, morphs are great for me in this business. However, once you've done that, I mean, there are some fascinating colors out there, and people like pretty colors. Let's face it.

They go for the white ones, they go for the red ones, they go for green, they've got bands and stripes and all stuff that doesn't exist really in the bush. They wouldn't survive very well, but they do very well in captivity. Is that good or bad? Well, there's bad because they're breeding all kind of mixed breeds,

and that kind of screws up the DNA. Or it's bad because they're breeding all kind of mixed breeds and that's kind of like screws up the the dna or it's good because people are breeding snakes and they're getting into the reptile thing that's really good so i'm sitting on the fence on that one and it hurts because there's a sharp fence yeah hey it's snakes in boxes right yeah we're not repopulating and we like colored snakes we like colored things but for the you know for the true breeder um morphs are a pain in the ass it's like uh just give me it you know i think the idea eventually what we would like to do is have pure breeds we know exactly what location they came from so worst case scenario we can

repopulate the place yeah if we had to you know my preference. I like the wild type stuff. I like them wild. It's like I deal a lot with rattlesnakes. Do you de-venomize them? No. Why would I do that? Besides, it costs over a thousand bucks per spang, and is it really happening? Yeah.

Oh, I left a little bit of the gland in there. Oh, so you're only going to die a little bit. It'll swell a little bit. So, no, I like them as they are. I prefer them purebred and we can find exact locations where they came from so we can you know if we do have a like a dna collection we can eventually repopulate the area provided we've got any forest left you know yeah that's my that's my head on that ah that's a great yeah very unique perspective yeah really uh

we won't get many uh answers that. That's for sure. Einstein's younger brother. All right. Thanks, Jules. All right. We got a good fighter here now. Tell us who you are. My name is Riley Jimson. Ready to fight. Very familiar name on the her. The Morelia Pythons Network. Man, I can't think. It's a late night. What's going on here? So, Riley, we're going to give you a topic of morphs. Are they good or bad for the hobby?

So heads, do you support morphs? Tails, we don't like morphs. Tails. Tails. Woo-hoo! All right, so no morphs. Morphs aren't the greatest. Okay, so I'm going to argue morphs are not good. Anti-morphs., so no morphs, yeah. Morphs aren't the greatest. Okay, so I'm going to argue morphs are not good. Anti-morphs.

Okay, yeah, so I guess my opening pitch on that is, for me, I think people need to learn to appreciate the wild type of something before they take the step into morphs, whether they learn about them first or the wild type first i think i think we lose an appreciation for what the animal is behaviorally its natural history why it looks the way it does because we're so caught up in morphs now that's not to say that the morphs are necessarily necessarily unhealthier sure but if you really appreciate that animal and why it is the way it is i mean yeah we're keeping things in boxes but like that animal and why it is the way it is,

I mean, yeah, we're keeping things in boxes, but that animal is designed for a specific look, purpose, for a reason, and there's so many others out there. If you really want something that's going to be flashy, you can find something that exists like that in its own natural state. You don't have to get into this seemingly like Frankenstein lane of things that just kind of loses the wholesome touch, I feel, to why we get into reptiles in the first place. And it's because we love them. We're drawn to them. For some reason, they're different.

And for me, if you just if all you care about is the morphs and these different looks, do you really care about the animal itself? And I think that causes a lot of misguided intentions in the hobby. People don't think about that stuff, and I think it results in a loss of certain species, a lack of emphasis on certain species. And, you know, it just ultimately hinders the hobby more than it allows its progress. Awesome. Yeah. Cool. That's perfect, man.

Thank you. Yeah. Sweet. I mean, I could go on forever about it, but just to be rather succinct about it, I just think, you know, if you can't appreciate the wild type the natural and then move into morphs yeah then find something else do something else that's okay maybe there's something that's flashy and natural on its own that tickles you that same way but to me like you gotta you gotta crawl before you run and that's you gotta appreciate the wild type before you get into the designer stuff awesome yeah thank you thanks man all right well it's uh chuck and i are driving back down to san diego now and kind of thinking

about the show and thought we'd have a few kind of parting words hope you enjoyed the input and and perspectives of a lot of different people. We had pretty wide range of like keepers or just new people to the hobby and, and old, you know, people who've been around for a while and know, you know, know a lot and some that know, you know, just a little bit. So it was a good to hear different perspectives and i i learned some cool stuff yeah i heard some stuff i didn't think i was gonna hear from you know new keepers who said things that i was like wow i never never thought about it like that it's you know my perspective is somebody who's super in been into reptiles or super into reptiles it's it's just

changed you know like i'm not used to even thinking that way. So, you know, it's good, good to hear some, uh, maybe outside of the box or new, new perspectives that maybe I wouldn't consider. So yeah, it was, it was really great. I, I, I enjoyed all of it. Yeah. Um, so as we were leaving the show, we, we had a really nice conversation with Ryan McVay from Viv vivtech and yeah um picked up a bulb from him to try out and you know see how it's doing and saw some of the the data that's coming out of the bulb and you know the wavelengths and things that it's hidden and i mean it's it looks pretty legit like promising it does look promising yeah i am i am hoping for him that uh

you know he continues to have success and i the enthusiasm and where he wants to go is really, I think, in line with where we all need to go. Yeah, he had some really good insight. I wish we would have just hit record. Yeah, I said we should record this. But we'll have to have him back on. We'll do another show and we'll let, we'll let him have the, have the floor and, behaviors that followed. And so it was really exciting. So I'm excited to go home and plug in the bulb and see how my lizards react. So hopefully have some cool stuff to report.

But just hearing that passion and that excitement and kind of where we need to move forward really gets you pumped up. Gets you excited about doing the same and following the same kind of thing. Upping your game, upping your keeping, increasing your vivarium size or whatever. Doing something to enhance the animals' lives and not just have a snake in a box. But try to replicate natural history and make their lives a better thing. That was a fun way to end the show. We got to hang out with Steve Sharp. Yeah, that was amazing. We never had him on here.

That would have been cool. We should have, shouldn't we? Yeah, I mean, we had him on one of the previous episodes about working with Susan. Yeah, I don't think they've heard the last of Steve. No, no, Steve will be around. Steve, yeah, he's such a great guy. It brought back some really good memories being down in Anaheim of the shows that we

vended down there with him and good times. And so, you know, we got to eat breakfast and go cruise the show and then hit some lunch with him. So yeah, really good catching up with Steve and seeing, you know, kind of where he's at with his zoo career. And he, I mean, he's doing fantastic. He's out at the Chaffee Zoo. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, fun, fun to catch up with steve for sure but yeah it's it's hard to have this come to an end uh i i don't know if we have any parting thoughts on some of the topics you know do you do you have anything else that you want to say about like you know morphs in the hobby man you know well i think i mean you know, well, I think, I mean, you know, that's a tough, you know, that's tough. We've discussed a lot of these topics at length and, you know, as always, we always take one side or the other. But, you know, I'm very much in all things in their place.

And I do believe morphs have a place in the hobby and, you know, I just think that, you know, wild type animals definitely have a place too and we need to protect and do both of those things well, you know, and I think when things swing out of balance and we don't always do things, you know, both things well, then it starts to hurt us. Right. And so, you know, there's definitely challenges around doing both things well. And so, you know, but but, you know, we have to figure out ways to and this kind of goes back to Ryan and our conversation to do things better and not just say, oh, this is the way we've always done it. This is good enough, you know, to get more education, to get more data,

to get more research out there and, you know, up our game, everybody's game. And I think if there's people out there up in their game, it's going to help new people who are brand new to the hobby coming in. It's going to help, you know, the, um, and maybe you'll have the, the cynical old guy who never wants to change. And that's, that's, that's gonna, that's gonna be there. But, uh, I think, you know, one of the things that I took away from and agree with, uh, is that this younger generation of keepers is very willing to change. They're growing up at a time where

they've seen a lot of stuff that they're just like, man, this world is messed up and it's been laid bare for them. And, you know, I think when they see an opportunity for change, they'll grab onto that change. So creating that space where change can happen and mechanisms for allowing that to happen is probably a great way forward for us. Yeah. I think we need to kind of get out of the way and let people move forward with, uh, the good things that are, they're surely down the road. Um, I, you know, I, I caught some different perspectives and, and kind of thought about things a little differently and, you know, I'm, I'm still more of a, like, I like the wild type animals and seeing animals in the natural environment and seeing kind of how things are designed to survive, you know, and have evolved to be after, you know, millions of years or whatnot.

And to see, you know, a pretty good variety. They had, you know, quite a few different species here. Some that I'd never seen before. Yeah. And it was pretty cool stuff. But there was one snake that was really, had some really crazy scolation. Is that Winterfang? Yeah.

It was. What's that? Yeah, it's. I can't remember the name of it. I don't know why I brought it up when I don't know. Oh, Thrasops occidentalis. It's kind of a rear-fanged colubrid that's just really cool looking. It almost has scalation like a crocodile or something, really big scales.

It has like a different dorsal scalation and then almost like a set of sides to set side saddle scalations that are it was really interesting i i think they're somewhat related like the puffing snakes of south america and stuff so but just cool like big fancy scales that you just don't see on a lot of snakes so it's kind of unique there was a dragon snake there that was kind of cool to see so you know these things uh naturally are just really cool looking so i think there's uh opportunities to do well with cool species from all over and you know trying to figure out and and how to maintain these different species is a cool challenge so you know while morphs are fun and interesting and i you know i don't really have too much against them they were definitely well represented I mean yeah a lot of ball pythons a lot of leopard geckos a lot of you

know yeah a lot of crested geckos yeah 100% yeah um I I do think you know that they're you know they have their their place but at the same time you know I I think we need to appreciate the wild animals and the animals in their natural state to see them do the job they do so you know it's i think there's a lot of different perspectives on that and um although my my takeaway necessarily you know hasn't necessarily changed all that much i still prefer wild type specimens and and seeing them in their natural environment i i do appreciate some of the more and some boas like i'm not a, I do appreciate some of the morphs. And some boas. Like, I'm not a boa guy by any stretch of the imagination.

Yeah, some of those boas were nuts, right? Yeah, they had all these IMG boas that just looked really weird. IMG Aztecs, IMG Motleys. And I thought that was really cool. I can't remember the breeder. I feel bad about that. But some neat, neat boa morphs at the show that I could just look at and go, that's really cool looking.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I'm not getting getting into boas but they were neat to look at yeah um so my favorite part definitely was still the the the the rare stuff the stuff you don't see around i mean it's still you know i mean when you go to a show and most of it's all you know a monoculture uh and you you know you've kind of seen that monoculture before seeing that that that rare things you don't see what's what's new or what's what's making its way into the hobby certainly a lot of monkey tail skinks were there yeah yeah that was there's definitely no shortage of monkey tail skinks around right now yeah but uh but that was cool there was a lot of cool little geckos uh you know just neat stuff yeah um

the uh the other thing was the you know gimmicks i i don't know that we saw too many and it was like back in the past you used to see like these crazy belly dancers at john's jungle or something i was like she almost avoided the booth because of it you know it's kind of creepy out or something it was pretty weird. Yeah. It was weird. You know, there were a couple little gimmicky things. Somebody was in one of those blow-up dinosaur suits, you know, that you run around in.

You know, I get it. Like, some guys had the bright Hawaiian shirts with chameleons on it. That was, you know, kind of catches the eye and gets people, oh, they must be chameleon breeders or something. So, you know, that kind of stuff is interesting, you know. And I've tried to design my booth to be somewhat eye-catching and somewhat different to the norm, you know, with the big rock type of scarf. I think there's something to be said for standing out, right? I think, you know, I mean, ultimately, I'm always a fan of speaking with your animals. But certainly, you know, having a thing and like, you know, I remember your caging, you know, from back in the NARBC days was unique and different.

And anybody who sees that's like, oh, I remember those. That's, you know, you got to have your thing. I don't see anything wrong with that, but man, some of the gimmicky stuff, you know, it's kind of like, really? Yeah. Yeah. It's like the used car salesman type. Yeah.

I agree. Propaganda stuff. So, you know, I think some is more effective than others, but you know, that's kind of my thoughts on that. Anything else to add or we cover that? Yeah, we're good. The variety thing, like Chuck said, there was quite a fairly decent variety, although the five big ones were well represented.

You saw plenty of ball pythons, crested geckos, leopard geckos, and a few others that were just well represented. It's nice to see the colubrids coming back. There were a lot of colubrids at the show. We talked to Dan and Colette Sutherland. They're kind of local to me in Utah, and they've historically been known as a ball python, boa breeder for quite a while,

but they had a ton of colubrids. A ton of colubrids. A lot of colubrids. That was a lot of animals and i think that might be their uh daughter's influence like she's working with them as well and she was there at the booth as well we tried to get her on but she she chickened out so yeah um but you know that's that's okay we we don't want to shame anybody here we tried to try to get people uh to represent but you know couldn't couldn't twist their arms hard enough i guess

but uh you know they're maybe more shy or private anyway they're great great people i i like the sutherlands but um so you know it was fun to see all the cluberts at the show that that you kind of went away for a few years and now are coming back and you know at crazy prices that you're not used to if you've been around for a while you know and remember the the 25 king snakes you know now now they're 250 dollars so it's uh and i and i think that's appropriate you know people uh animals should should maintain a decent price you know and that kind of uh i was excited to see some different gecko species that I hadn't seen. What was maybe frustrating was that they were all males.

So there weren't pairs of some of these rare species. I saw some Granosaurus Rex and they had a Diplodactylus galeatus. That was cool to see. So, you know, a few of the Diplodactylus geckos and they had some uh couple strophurus not too many um you know some interesting things they had some like a mossy leaf tail gecko or two there were there were some cool species there that you you know don't see uh too widely um i felsuma borbonica i remember listening to emmanuel van hagen talk about you know the reptiles of madagascar and that's i think that's his favorite felsuma species you know i guess he

can correct me if i'm wrong but he i just remember how excited he was about borgbonica and you know with that deep booming voice yeah i was gonna say an excited emmanuel van hagen's a fun thing oh he's a great guy i really enjoy that guy and herped with him and he's just the real deal, man. Watching him lay down in the mud to take a picture and stuff. I really enjoyed talking to Russ Gurley. He was, dude, what a cool guy. Yeah, few better people

in this hobby than Russ Gurley. He's the man. So it was really good to catch up with him. He's laying out the second edition of the Carpet Python book for us. Yeah, he works with Bob pretty well and you know looking forward to the next steps of having him lay the book out. We're getting closer to that. So I always love talking to Russ and catching up with him. So but yeah as far as the species,, so there is a diversity in keepers there. The species, you know, seeing the Felsuma borbonica.

I'm probably trying to pronounce it like Emmanuel. I don't know how. But beautiful species. I didn't get the name of that breeders booth either, but they had some cool stuff. They also had the galeatas and a couple others, the helmeted geckos. So, yeah, fun to see, you know, diversity. There were some frog breeders, you know, and some tortoise breeders and stuff. So it was fun to see, you know, more than just balls and crested geckos.

And I will admit I got a little fatigued. You know, I wasn't necessarily, I was kind of maybe skipping over some of the crested gecko booths or the ball python booths and but uh and you know seeing the um importer booths of course they have a pretty big diversity some looked like it was uh doing better than other animals you know that's always hard to see and that's the downside of the import uh and we've talked about that so i'm not gonna i'm not gonna get the best at a show and when you don't always see the best that's kind of it doesn't feel good but you know we kind of understand where that comes from yeah and

hopefully that continues to improve i mean looking at uh yeah like uh dan uh malaria yeah this stuff looked all of it fantastic yeah fantastic i mean i don't like dan did dan's so cool like yeah it was fun to chat with him i i was really curious about his uh new guinea spotted python so it's nice to hear that that project is doing well and he's getting ready to breed him and you know try it so it'd be fun to have some of the new guinea spotted you know available in the hobby down the road so glad to see that's moving forward um the his monkey tail skinks like a lot of tables had monkey tail skinks but his looked just just great nice hydrated like healthy they were moving around they looked really good compared to

some of the others so yeah nice to see an importer kind of upping the game a little and having those healthy-looking animals. He had some cool racers, some bronze-sided racers or something like that that were neat-looking. So, yeah, overall, caught up with Steve Sykes. He had a ton of geckos. He had a lot of geckos. Neferus is, of course, my favorite, but the knobtail geckos. But, yeah, a lot of nice fat-tailed leopard geckos. You know, that's kind of his bread and butter for the most part.

He's well-known for that. But a lot of cool geckos at his table as well. So fun to see him again. And I'm sure Tyler from the tortoise, he had some, you know, cool tortoises and dry goods and stuff. We caught up with Reed Sneddon. He's on here, so that was fun to hear him. So, you know, it's always good to hit a reptile show and catch up with people. Some friends, Christian and Jess, they live down in St. George,

and they breed a lot of the leachies. They're really nice. Cool people. Really great. A lot of good stuff. That's probably the best part of the show is catching up with people. We got to hang out with Brandon Wheeler

and Riley Jemison and a few others. I'm sorry. I'm terrible with names so I apologize you guys should have recorded on the podcast but yeah we've it's that's the best

you know best thing about the hobby is connecting with like minded individuals that enjoy the same things you know the reptiles and can kind of get together and chat about the, you know, the good, the bad and the ugly and, and, uh, just have a good time and, and geek out over reptiles. So it was a fun weekend overall. Um, the last topic, uh, what am I missing? We, uh, the, Oh, pricing of reptiles. You know, I,

I, I'm kind of, I, I think if you've, I always put in a little wiggle room, you know, I don't mind a little bit of bartering, but when it's like almost offensive bartering where they're trying to talk you down, you know, half price or, you know, less than that, it's, it's like, okay, you can take a walk, go find it somewhere else. But, you know, I, i think ben and always ben and i always kind of had the attitude of you know take take a reasonable offer it's not bad so i don't i don't know that i'm necessarily fixed price i'm not in it but i also don't do this full time so i don't need to do it for the money i'd rather have somebody that I feel comfortable with buying the animal. I'd rather sell it to them for

less or, you know, rather than, uh, have just somebody with a lot of money buy it that may not do a good job with it. So I don't know. I do appreciate, you know, some projects, you know, keep that price firm because, you know, there may not be a lot of them or you may be the only one or have the most quality animals. So, you know, there's some be a lot of them or you may be the only one or have the most quality animals. So, you know, there's some instances where you don't mess with the prices. Yeah, I think getting, you know, that discount is all right. I just think when it goes to this, like, how low can we go kind of thing here, you know, you're doing the animal a disservice because you're selling it to somebody who literally wants to pay as least as they possibly can with. And if you value the animal and you value, you know, the breeder who did the work and, um, you know, is, is gonna put you

hopefully where you want to be with something. Um, that's worth something, isn't it? I mean, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't think that, um, you know, we need to necessarily be unflexible, but at the same time, like, you know, I think, uh, it, it, it's fair to say that animals are, um, and it sucks because we're talking about, you know, money for, for life. Right. And, and, um, you know, how do you, how do you make that a moral argument? Um, and you know, I don't think the money should matter if, if, if it's what you want and you want to take care of it and you want to give it the best life that it can have and you can enjoy it, um, you should be willing to pay for that. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, overall, I really enjoy attending reptile shows.

Sometimes it's hard to see some of the things that go on, or you hear kind of behind-the-scenes stories that make you cringe. But, you know, all in all, it's a good group, and there's a lot of good actors in the hobby and in this business, or whatever you want to call it. So good times all around. It was fun hanging out with Chuck. It's always a good time.

It was a blast. Yeah, it was nice. Have to do it again soon. Yeah, for sure. We'll conclude our live show or live broadcast. I guess it's not live because you're listening to it recorded. Yeah, anyway, we are hanging out in the same vehicle, hanging out in the same place.

Yeah, that's been a lot of fun, and we will fight again another day, but thanks for listening. I've got to get this dude to the airport. We're out. Fight Club. Thank you. Outro Music