Reptile Fight Club - Guided Herp Trips? Yes or No? w/ Zach Baez

Episode Date: January 20, 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 Rob tackle the question, Guided Herp Trips? Yes or No? w/ Zach Baez. Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comFollow Chuck Poland  on IG @ChuckNorriswinsFollow MPR Network on:FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQMore ways to support the shows.Swag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

all right welcome to another episode of Reptile Fight Club. I'm your host, Justin Julander, and with me is Mr. Rob Stone, a.k.a. Bob Rock. How you doing, man? All good. Excited to be here. I'm really excited for our guest today. Yeah, yeah. That same topic. Right? There we go. So without further ado, Zach Baez, welcome to the show. Thanks for being on.

Hey, what's up, guys? How you doing? Am I saying that right? Is it Baez or Baez? Technically, you know, when your name ends in a Z, it gets a little crazy, but it's Baez, Zach Baez, like Joan Baez, but not related. Okay, okay. Not related. Do you sing? No, I don't. Okay. Only in my car.

Going to the shower. Yeah. As we all tend to do, right? Yep. Cool. Welcome to the show. Zach is over on the East Coast. Are you close to Eric and Owen and those guys?

I'm about 45 minutes away from Eric and probably about an hour away from Owen. Okay. Are you in? Oh, you're in Jersey. Okay, cool. Yeah, well, it was great to see you at Carpet Fest and catch up a bit and see your amazing photography. Oh, thank you. That was a good time so you know and i'm sure we'll we'll get into that a bit here soon

but um i don't know how you guys how's everything going and having a good season so far i don't know do you do you keep much uh any more zach or do you got you have any i i keep some um right now i have a group of uh phylobates terribilis, the golden poison dart frog. So I keep a group of those. I've been raising those and breeding them for the last six years. Um, yeah, yeah. They're awesome. Uh, other than that, I have one chameleon.

So I have one Pardalis, uh, which who I love dearly. He's very spoiled. Um, but that's it. No snakes. That that's that's on purpose because you know like snakes are like potato chips yeah that's true once the collection dwindled down to none i said that's it i can't start it up again a reformed addict in in action totally totally sober on the snakes yeah that's hard to do i i don't know that i could do that no it was really tough it's tough every day every day yeah yeah yeah i can see that but i mean i think you've uh made a reasonable

trade so you know we'll get into that a bit but correct um yeah that's uh i i do enjoy dart frogs other than the uh fruit flies that's the the downside enjoy dart frogs other than the fruit flies. That's the downside to those things, but they're really cool animals. I was really surprised how long lived they are. I didn't realize, you know, when I got into them that they live, you know, 20 plus years sometimes. So that's kind of cool. And the terabilis are one of my favorites. They're really neat.

You said you have the yellow ones? Yeah, I have yellows. So I have yellows. And then about, I guess, what, three years ago, something, I guess you could call it a morph. I'm still trying to prove it out. It popped out of my line. So I'm working on those. Very cool.

Yeah. So that's pretty cool. But really interesting frogs, super bold, always out. They beg me for food every day. Oh, yeah. Super cool, super cool animals. So I highly recommend them if you haven't had them before. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Those are those are great species. There's there's so many cool herb species, that's for sure. You know, if I just had more time, more room, more more money, all sorts of stuff. But yeah, what kind of setup do you have them in? They're in like a 36 by 18 by 18. I have, how many do I have now? I have two adult groups and then I probably have something in the neighborhood of about 30 babies.

So they produce a lot. So yeah. Very prolific. Do they take forever to hatch and grow out from the tadpole stage? I mean, what's the time you're looking at there? Between times that the eggs are laid, by the time I get to them before the females eat them, because sometimes they will do that. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah.

Because I keep them in groups. So if one of the females wants the male's attention, she'll eat the eggs. So you kind of have to pull them pretty quick. But by the time I pull them and they're out of water, I guess, as we call it in the frog hobby, I would say at least two months. Yeah. Sometimes a little longer. It really depends on the weather. If it's cool in the house, if it's warmer in the house, they tend to grow a on the weather if it's cool in the house

if it's warmer in the house they tend to go they grow a little faster if it's cool in the house obviously slower so you know it's like it's almost like keeping fish in a lot of ways yeah tadpoles so um it's you know how much you feed them depends on how quickly they grow i mean same stuff so um yeah but usually it takes a couple months to get them going and then at least a couple of another months before they're ready to go yeah that's kind of i guess i i kept tinctorius for for quite a while and same kind of thing you just like almost forget you had and they took so long to you know it's like like you said like having a fish tank in addition to the frog so it's kind of fun at the two different stages, I guess, you know, you think, I think about the local amphibians and they are typically like, um, from egg to frog and,

you know, less than two months because their, their water source is drying up, you know, but I guess the rainforest, uh, creatures don't necessarily have that problem. Correct. Yeah. And I and i also think um at least when tictorius you know they they're cannibalistic the the tadpoles you know you raise them kind of separately and singly and that sort of thing but philobates they're communal so oh nice they're they're good to be raised in a group so okay yeah so that makes it a little bit easier because all you really do is take care of one tank but um yeah it's still the same same thing really cool though it's really really fun to to see all the stages yeah yeah that's cool i i just i would have a bunch of different uh cups you know clear cups with one tadpole each so i guess

that's right i'd forgotten that they were uh that that was the reason for that it's been a while since i've had them so yeah yeah they're they're cool, though. Yeah, they'll also produce a hormone, believe it or not, the Tincturius, in the water. So that way the frog that hatches first or the tadpole that hatches first actually will release a hormone to stunt the growth of the other frog. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's crazy. It's like chemical warfare from birth. Wow, against your own siblings. Yep. Wow, that's pretty crazy. It's like chemical warfare from birth. Wow. Against your own siblings. Yep.

Wow. That's pretty crazy. Yeah. There's some really interesting behaviors with dart frogs, you know, where they place tadpoles in different bromeliads and they'll visit and lay eggs in each of the bromeliads for the food source and stuff. It's just incredible. Yeah. Definitely understudiedied but very cool i think uh the cool part about cerebrist right is that uh i guess you know that boldness is

associated with being what the most toxic vertebrate right in the world planet yep yeah and it's like well they're not afraid of anything so that makes them you know especially in that uh without without that toxin in them, makes them an ideal captive as opposed to some of the smaller stuff that doesn't have quite that potency, so it doesn't have that same level of bravado to it. Exactly. Very true. Yep, you want to get those toxic ones so you see them out and about.

Yeah, doing stuff. And when you're talking about the hormone being released, right released by the first one that is capable of doing it, essentially, there was something around cane toads that came out research in the last six months to a year that was then put into the sort of popular media where they actually are releasing a hormone that's increasing the rate of cannibalism or increasing the rate of predation amongst others something like that right so yeah your point super interesting all the complexities of the natural world right again right the cosmic octopus exceeding our capacity to understand it right all these different subtleties additionalities for sure yeah that's crazy yeah there's there's some amazing things that occur in the wild for sure. That's part of the fun of it all, I guess, is getting out there and finding this stuff. So cool.

And then one, I'm assuming it's a male panther chameleon. Yeah. Yeah. It's a male. Yeah. That's cool. They're so beautiful. It's a fun fun

thing to have for sure nice well um i guess maybe tell us a little about yourself a little maybe a little bit of background and where you fit into herpetoculture oh man um born and raised in new jersey um i've been into reptiles i guess like everybody else most of your life chasing stuff in the backyard keeping stuff um that you find all that sort of thing um now did you did you grow up close to the pine barrens or you out out uh running around there it's it's interesting because yes we i grew up closer to pine barrens but um it was i don't know how to say this but the pine barrens have a certain reputation and certain folks for a long time never felt welcome in the pines. It's changing a lot now, but at the time, it was not something that, you know, a couple of Puerto Ricans from the Bronx went to go hang out in.

That's just the reality. Yeah. So, unfortunately, that wasn't the case. I wasn't able to hang out in the pines too much growing up i'm making up for that now nice and uh but yeah at the time that wasn't the case and so mostly just when we went on camping trips and stuff i would i would get out there um you know i'd spend the whole camping trip out by the pond fishing catching frogs you know normal stuff yeah yeah and then uh kept reptiles for pretty much my whole life um really got into carpet pythons what was it at least 15 years ago maybe at least yeah um had a few clutches of that a few breeding seasons of that and then i just threw life and things i

needed to get done i couldn't keep anymore so i let go of the collection and then focus heavily on field herping and that's um and specifically international field herping um because it combined my love of travel plus my love of reptiles and my love of photography so you kind of combine those three things together it's the perfect storm for that so what a combination never look back yeah never look back yeah i mean you do do all those very well so that's why we wanted to have you on here to kind of chat about that but yeah like i said i was just uh just in awe of your photographs and you know all the trips you've been on really cool stuff and um man it makes me question whether i want to ditch my

collection or not that's yeah cool stuff yeah yeah cool well um i guess that kind of leads us into into the discussion we're going to talk about is uh so part of it is uh you know rob and i both kind of enjoy planning herp trips and kind of figuring out where to go and all these kind of things. And and a lot of your your your your international her trips have been with like guided her tours. So we kind of wanted to compare and contrast, I guess, those two different styles and kind of the pros and cons of of both. So sure. We brought you on to discuss that topic. I guess those two different styles and kind of the pros and cons of, of both. So, um, we brought you on to discuss that topic, you know, uh, should we, should you do a guided herp tour or is it better to plan your own or, and I, I'm sure, you know, we can all fall into, to both categories.

So of course, you know, we need to be prepared to defend either side here, but, uh, you know, where you're, you're the expert in uh the guided trips and we probably don't know that we're probably not going to pick that side because it'll maybe be a little harder to defend but who knows maybe we'll throw you a loop here and we'll uh we'll see how it goes but um so first off we'll uh flip the coin between rob and i and and to see who gets the pleasure of fighting with you tonight. Sure. I'll let,

uh, Rob call the, the toss here. Okay. Heads. It is tails. Tails. Yeah.

Um, man, I, I think, I think Rob has the passion on this one. So I might, I might let Rob go ahead and debate you, and I'll moderate tonight. Fair enough.

How does that sound? Fair enough. Sounds good to me. Does that work for you, Rob? Yeah, that's all good. Okay, okay. And then I'll flip the coin again for you guys. Zach, why don't you call this one, and then you guys can pick. Tails. It is tails.

So you got the choice of which side you want to take. I'm going to get this real easy for us. I'm going to defend the, I'm going to defend Herp Tours. Okay. All right. You'll take the side of guided Herp Tours are great and wonderful. And that's how we should Herp and probably go and plan your own trip. I don't want to go that far

yeah now as a winner of the coin toss of course you get to decide if you go first or if rob goes first oh man i think i'm gonna go first actually okay wow the anti-chuck here chuck would always make me go first if he won the coin toss. So that's very benevolent of you. No, I think I have to go first because I think I have something to prove here a little bit. All right. I'm going to go ahead and go first. I like it. Come out swinging.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What was it? A couple of weeks ago, I heard you guys on this podcast, of course. And something that Justin said, Justin said, you know, those herb trips, those tours. I don't think I'd have fun on one of those. And I would disagree. OK, that's when it spurred me on. I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on. Wait a minute. I don't think he quite understands how they are. So maybe if I get on there and we talk about it, maybe I could convince him one way or the other.

And so we'll see. We'll see how I do. All right. Sounds good. Yeah. I mean, you reached right out to me and said, hey, I'll take that. I'll take that argument. Yep. Absolutely. I'll take that fight. So kudos, man. Yeah.

Thanks for coming on. No worries. So I'm going to say probably this might be kind of interesting, I think, because this could be both a pro and a con, depending on the kind of person you are, depending on how gregarious you are, I guess we can say. But for me, the biggest pro I could ever say about herb tours or expeditions, however you want to coin them, is the fact it's the people you meet. To me, that's number one. I can't tell you how many tours that I've been on and the people I've spent those two weeks in the jungle with or in the desert with or whatever have become lifelong friends. And these are friends that I've met all from all over the world. And so you can't, it becomes hard to do that without these kinds of trips. And so you get a big perspective on a lot of different people coming together with a shared interest, people from different backgrounds,

people from different countries, all coming together, uh, and being one and having this one solid goal to find as many reptiles and amphibians as you can to kind of enjoy it and for that um it's it's hard to beat um a tour frankly because you don't get to pick who comes with you right and so if you're if you're an anti-social person probably not for you gonna be totally honest with you if you if you are if you like people if the things if places likepetfest get you excited and you want to meet new people, you want to talk about reptiles and amphibians in nauseam for two weeks, then I'm going to say that tours might be for you. On top of that, not only do you get to meet new people, you get to become friends with those people. Those people then invite you to their trips.

And so what one opportunity can then blossom to more opportunities and those trips that aren't public or the trips that aren't you know being toured essentially you get invited on you get invited to meet people in different places you know i have you know i have apartments all over now if i wanted to crash somewhere um and so that's that is an amazing thing that is hard to get if you were to go solo. Yeah. So without a doubt that for me is the big one. That is the big one for me.

That's see that, that kind of takes me by surprise. I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have considered that. I guess, do you have any examples of the opposite of that where you've been stuck with somebody for a couple of weeks where it's been like a little miserable or. I'm not going to name names. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We don't want you like a little miserable or I'm not going to name names. Yeah. Yeah.

We don't want you to name names, but I'm not going to name names, but I mean, there's been, I mean, there's been obviously situations. Um, and so it's, it's tough, right? Uh, when it comes to a tour, you want them a certain size, you don't want them too big, but you don't want too many people or not enough people. You kind of want a good mix and you know, like to me that eight to 10 is probably like where I'm hitting my maximum. But there's enough people you can kind of get away from each other, too, which I think is important. Is that about the size of trips you're doing?

Yeah, anywhere from eight to 10 to up to 12, maybe even on a crazy big trip, maybe up to 16. But usually it's lower than that. So look, ultimately, not everyone gets along. And that's one of my cons as well. Not everybody gets along. And so with enough people, you can kind of shelter yourself and leave from certain people that you maybe don't necessarily get along with. And so that's good. But I'll tell you, I mean, I've gone on herping trips with just me and somebody else in the car for, for a week. And by the end of that week, you want to, you want

to kill him. So, you know, there's, there's that part of it too. So at least you get to get that, kind of, uh, I guess, uh, switch up. Yes. Spread out a little bit. So you get to talk to different people and kind of, you know, maybe, maybe this couple of days, you're spending a lot of time with this person next couple of days, spend a lot of time with this person. Next couple of days, spend a lot of time with that person. That's what makes it really fun. Very my opinion. OK, Rob, let's see what you got to say about that. Well, you fit neatly into one of the things that I wanted to talk about, not necessarily as a negative, but just in terms of a curiosity.

Right. In terms of the dynamics of variable group sizes, things like that, saying even, right, not only sort of inherent personality, I do think you're totally right, right? If on, for the most part, my stuff is not solo versus 10 to 12 people. It's more like, I think our normal group size is more like four to six.

But to your point, that's all people that I know to some extent right and for the most part is actually like sort of a revolving cast and crew where like a trip might have a new person or it might be a person who's new to other people on the trip but who i've known for a long time or whatever so just sort of there there is an interplay there but it's certainly not the the random strangers save when we're in uh we're experiencing local culture however that sort of there is an interplay there, but it's certainly not the random strangers, save when we're experiencing local culture, however that sort of takes shape, right? And that obviously is not the same level of relationship and impact as being traveling about with folks for better and worse for two weeks. What I did want to ask kind of with a group that size, and maybe this is more reflective of the particular trips you've taken, does it seem like everyone is sort

of pulling in the same direction? Because even on trips that, you know, sort of I've led, so to speak, that's not always the case, right? Both in terms of what folks are interested in seeing, or even just the willingness of, hey, you know, as Justin knows, right, both he and I like to push it a little bit. And sometimes not everyone is, that's not the speed that they're looking for, or it doesn't always make sense with a particular group dynamic or however it plays out, right? So I can only imagine that in a situation where people are more like, oh, I saw this tour company on Instagram or heard

good things or whatever, and I paid my money, that you might have an even broader range of willingness to play along in that context than in mine, where it's more of a curated group. I would imagine that your friends who host their tours probably love to have repeat customers as opposed to people that they're not familiar with. I'm sure that is a big part of it, but if you could speak to that a little bit. Sure. So, yeah, of course. That goes without saying, right? Obviously, you would want people who have gone before to be at least some, so it just makes it a little bit easier for everybody.

If that is the case, if people know what the gist is, um, so that that's pretty good. Um, but you're right. I think it could, um, if, if the tours or if the, if the, if the leader of the group is, is regimented enough, understands what we're doing, what we're not doing and kind of is able to, I guess, herd cats in a lot of ways, it makes it a lot easier. But I think that's also the fun of it. I think, yeah, I may not have this interest in X, Y, Z, like a lot of the birds I'm walking right by, there's a lot of birders that go on these trips, believe it or not. So maybe they're interested in the bird, they're interested in this arachnid. They're interested in these bugs.

They're really into plants. You know, you get a lot of different kinds of people. And so you're right. Sometimes it could be, Hey guys, we didn't want to go hard for this. We want to go hard for that.

But the half the team's tired and you know, there's, there is those locations of course, but I don't think there, I don't think there's ever been a time where I've been watching on these trips where I'm like, there's not enough herping. There's plenty of herping.

That's why you're there. Sometimes, in my opinion, sometimes it feels like it's too much herping. It's like, my God, can we maybe not? Can we do something else? And there's opportunities for you to maybe not go on the night hike, maybe not go on that part of the trip. Stay at the hotel, whatever it is, wherever you are. And as a result, you can the hotel whatever it is wherever you are and as a result that kind of you can kind of tailor it to what you like and what you don't like um but yeah there is a dynamic there that um you know you could look at as a con or or a pro um i'm curious

uh on your on your trips how many uh repeat uh, you know, what number of people do you get going on the same trips? You know, the next trip, I guess you could say, or the subsequent trips. How many repeat customers are you going with on average? Oh, man. I mean, is there usually like one or two guys that are on all of them? Yeah, no, no, at least. OK, there was the last tour we took. I was I think, yeah, I myself was the only person who's been on a tour before.

That was I believe Namibia was like that. And so like or no, no, I'm sorry. I'm a second person. Yeah. So I guess there is. It really depends. But yeah, there's usually at least a couple of people who have been on the tours before. Okay. Yeah. Cool.

Awesome. Yeah. And you hit on a point there, just in terms of the extent to which these tours sort of have modality where you have side adventures or open you know open to possibilities right is it every sort of everyone's uh captive uh captive and along for the ride and i'm sure the answer when you're going maybe when you're going from place a to place b and in a uh one-way fashion the answer has to be yes but uh to what extent that sort of and not that that's any different from the way that i would lead a trip but i'm just out of curiosity mine you're probably more captive to be honest regardless of the situation so i'm just curious that's funny

yeah so i um yeah no that's really good um I guess the kind of going to the fundamental, one of the fundamental joys of a trip for me, and Justin, I know as well, is the idea of the pre-planning and sort of the sense of agency and directive and kind of being able to invest that time on the front end um do you generally enjoy that or do you uh is that not uh not half the quote half the experience or whatever for you do you just it's really about seeing the thing more so than it is sort of that getting that real type a enjoyment on the front end as well um i think it comes down to, frankly, for me, it comes down to probably time, time, effort, those sorts of things. And it comes down to information. Often places I'm really interested in visiting are not places that you can necessarily get a lot of information about or um you need somebody on the

ground to kind of curate some of that information and so well yes i'm sure there there could have been some of the trips i've taken where i could probably have put something together that was halfway decent and similar um to me it's it's where am i putting where am i investing that time and that effort um that's not to say i'm not preparing for a trip right um we you know we're looking at the itinerary you look at it okay where should i be looking that sort of thing you do a lot of pre-planning anyway okay what kind of camera equipment am I bringing? What kind of flashes am I bringing? Do I think it'll be good for this?

Do I think it'll be good for that? Doing some practicing at home, right? And those sorts of things kind of prepare me. Reading every guidebook I can find on the place. So that way I understand what I'm looking at when I do find it. All those things are still pre-planning. another place so that way i understand what i'm looking at when i do find it um all those all those things are still pre-planning and so i do get enjoyment out of preparing for an expedition without necessarily having to feel like i need to call the hotel or i need to call the lodge and try

to get you know that to me that's not the fun part like to me i want to learn i want to learn about the place i want to learn about the culture i want to learn about the language even i want to learn as much as i can about where I'm going. And if I could spend all my time doing that rather than necessarily calling hotels and booking this and booking the car and doing all that, and I could literally offset that to somebody else and pay somebody to do that essentially for me, then to me, it's money well spent. I manage stuff all day. I manage a, you know,

a $6 million furniture store so the the uh i'm tired of managing stuff you know that's a part of it like i don't want to call people but this but that no no no listen i i do that all day long anyway. So for me, I get enough practice with that. And I don't feel like I'm losing anything by, again, offsetting that to somebody else. Yeah, I think that's totally fair. I don't necessarily mean the pure logistics. I don't particularly enjoy that either. That's just a necessary evil that comes.

I mean, more in the context of like particular – trying to suss out particular spots that you would want to hit or whatever. Although I think – so you alluded to it there. I do think an important context for this is I've traveled to 35 or 40 countries or whatever. But in terms of herping, my experience is I'm talking about the United States and Australia in terms of these trips to this point. So I do think that's a really important context and is a real pro given particular context for your side. So we'll hop there in one second. I did, before we get there, the one sort of practical question I had is in terms of beforehand. So if we're talking about the planning and in my, my vein, right. In terms of saying, okay, where,

where might be spots or habitat niches within a particular national park or whatever it is, right. Entity, wherever you're going, saying, Oh, maybe this is what I does sort of habitat that I want to be looking at. Or if I'm looking at this habitat, this is what I might see, that sort of thing. Do you have a clear sense of the itinerary beforehand, meaning like literally we're going to this, maybe not this parcel versus this parcel, but in terms of saying you have a real good idea of where you're going? Or is it more like you're just sort of you'll be getting on the bus and the bus will go where it goes? Is it more like the first one or more like bus will go where it goes is it more like the

first one or more like the latter no it's actually more like the first one so uh the itinerary so two things and every every tour group is again i can only speak from the folks that i've worked with which which company do you mainly go with i I go with Herpological Education and Research Project. So Herp out of Belgium. They're a Belgian company. Okay, cool. I think they do. I could gush about them for days.

So I'm not going to do that right now. I could do it maybe a little bit later. But, you know, because I work with them at this point almost exclusively, a few other trips I've not have it done with them, but they do such a good job and making sure that you kind of get a gist of what the trip is going to be like. The concern is, listen, ultimately they are a company, right?

And they, they do run these, these is IP, right? What they know about that area is their, their research and ultimately their intellectual property in a lot of ways and so you can say um so they give you a lot of itinerary at least a general gist of what's going on and only until you i guess put your name on the on the

list sign up at least you know do a little bit of a deposit, something like that, where you get the full itinerary. And that just makes business sense, right? What you don't want to do is start shocking out your itinerary to everybody so they can go ahead and do the same thing you're doing or just literally run their own. I mean, these things you have to protect. So in that way, yes, I don't really know the full gist of the plants until obviously off the air. I've signed up. And then usually, I mean, they're very good at what they do. So everything I'd want to see it's on there. Right. So usually they're pretty good at saying

they tend to go maybe for as I guess, higher variety. They like, they like those high counts of as much biodiversity as they can get you um and sometimes that could be conflicts right yeah so there's so there's that so but generally i i would say the itinerary is pretty much given to you you know pretty much every night where you're going to be um And so you kind of, okay, this, this area, I want to target. This is what I really want to be looking for, you know? And so you have, we all come with target lists when we get there for sure. Yeah. Does it, do they, do you have any kind of agreement that you won't share their, their itinerary or the spots that you go to,

or is it just kind of a, you know, courtesy that, I mean, you know what I mean? Like if you had a good friend and he wanted to take you to some country that you've been, would you be able to show him those spots? Or is that kind of like, you know, something you've said that you would not do? I think it's all, I think everything is relative, right? So no, if I took somebody to one of these countries and I wanted to show them, you know, for instance, right, let's just Rana Mafana, right. In Madagascar, everybody's going to Rana Mafana. Okay.

Nobody's been visiting Madagascar and not going to Rana Mafana. Right. So there's certain areas which are kind of no-brainers. It's just the access to other areas maybe is potentially not feasible without local guys on the ground, people you know, that sort of thing. But generally, yeah, I mean, most of the time I could probably take some money out there and it would be no problem. But that's what I would do regardless. Those are not some secret spot. A lot of the places we're going anyway. So, you know, it's not some other areas. lot of the places we're going anyway so you know it's not

some other areas some different countries could be different on that but generally speaking i think what they what they don't want is for me to be like all right well this is going to be zach's herp tours and i'm gonna start charging people and taking them and taking their whole itinerary and doing that that would be obviously not okay yeah Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It just makes sense. For sure. Yeah. Okay. Cool.

I guess the one, and I have a guess on this, and maybe it's, maybe how it'll be presented, but it'd be good to hear one way or another. um say that there's a trip to a place that has a ton of diversity and there's almost within the constraints of the trip there's just there's too much right there's a an abundance of choice are they open on the front end to input to say like and maybe this means on the trip before if you're you know you're on trip a with them and they're they're still figuring out what the next one's going to look like either at that same place or a different one say like, Hey, what about we try and hit X, Y, or Z, you know, and maybe that won't mean, you know, the thing that comes to mind for me, right. And JJ and I will be, uh,

giving us, giving it a go again, uh, here, not too long from now. Yeah. If you go to Kakadu, right. There's a, it's a, an incredible place, a huge, you know, a huge range of diversity. But the abundance is relatively low of everything except Carlia. So that there are a couple of things. If you find anything, it's probably going to be amazing. But it's probably not like a herp expedition sort of place because there's the the odds of just stumbling. It's not Costa Rica. Right. The odds of just stumbling into it it could be anything out of this, you know, 150 different herps, right? It's pretty low.

And it might take you four nights to find one snake, but that one snake might be very well worth it. Obviously, those are kind of competing aims, right? Are they open to input on that generally in terms of saying, hey, on this next one, when we're coming back to Indonesia the next time, let's go to this island instead of this one. Let's go try and find a Sao Paitan, even though that's a mess to try and do. Or logistically, you know, it's probably really hard. But it would also be hard, I'd imagine, to do it without if you were standing there with no local connection at all. So it's sort of that is probably a really tight, tough spot, right?

I can imagine of saying like, well, we're going to a place with low abundance. The odds are not great. But at the same time, probably the only chance you have of getting there logistically, you would want a tour to make that happen. Right, right, right. I hear what you're saying. I mean, yeah, look, especially after you've been on a few tours, obviously they take your input into account,

especially when we're sitting around talking about what the next tour is. Especially if you're doing a pilot tour, like some place they've never been to before, that sort of thing. Obviously, yeah, I've gotten questions like, what would you want to see? What would you want to look at? That sort of thing. I don't know necessarily that you would be able to change the itinerary as you see fit because if everybody started doing that on a eight ten man group then forget it you know um it really kind of doesn't work out that way

i think you kind of have to understand that ultimately it's still a commercial venture right and and so it's not i i would imagine that if you were to go on a tour and then decide you know i want to see this island that island and you can probably make connections and get that done yourself uh having been to that spot already that sort of thing i think that'd probably be okay um but i think that generally you're not going to be able to change the itinerary too much how you see fit. Which just makes sense. Everybody has been signed up for this specific thing and then all of a sudden somebody says, you know what, but I want to go see this python on this

island specifically. Can we take the two days, three days to go do that? Probably not going to happen. Got the Charybdis talking to us in the background. Oh, sorry. You'll hear them for sure yeah and i i think that's one of the the you know biggest pros of kind of doing your own trip is the flexibility to say look you know the conditions aren't great right now for this

spot let's move on let's go over here let's go over here. Let's go over there. You know, that kind of thing. So I think that's, uh, that's definitely on Rob's side of, of the, the, the argument here is the flexibility and kind of tailoring it to what, what you're focused on or what your thing is. But, but I imagine too, like, uh, with a her tour, it's probably a one and done. I don't know that you, would you like, would you have interest in, I guess, is there, is there a benefit to doing the same tour again? Uh, you know, maybe if it's, I don't know, what do you think? Would you,

would you ever go on the, on the same tour twice? Oh yeah. Oh, absolutely. Um um just because you've went once doesn't to me diminish um there's there's so many things i haven't seen still right um and sometimes you know for instance we we just came out of madagascar and so they've been to madagascar three times now and so the talk is well when we do another madagascar trip we're probably going to change itinerary. Okay. Because frankly, if we want people to come back, right, who are interested in other – because Madagascar is huge. So if you want to go see certain other parts of the place, well, maybe we should change it for the next itinerary to get more people excited about it who have already been.

So that's something that could potentially be done. But yeah, I think ultimately for a lot of places, yeah, it's going to be a one and done, right? Especially if you have as varied interests as I do. Or maybe, for instance, like Namibia loved it to death. I want to go back, but I'll probably go back with just my girlfriend and I will probably rent a land cruiser and go you know camping and doing all that sort of things do some herping but go and do different things while we're there go rock climbing things like that so there's reasons why I want to go back not necessarily maybe on the same tour but you know there's always reasons to go back to anywhere.

Yeah. I guess that makes sense. And I guess to some extent the, the, uh, guided her tour would kind of give you, give you your feet under you, you know, you'd have a better sense of the layout without having to go through the pain of the groundwork, all the nitty gritty, I guess you'd call it. And, you know, sometimes you, you get an Airbnb and you get there and you're like, Oh man, what have we, what is this place? You know, this is not what it looked like online. So things can, can happen. But that hasn't happened at all to us. I don't know. Mostly Airbnb's have been fantastic. We won't talk about the acceptance. Most, but not all.

But those ones may have had diamondbacks in the yard, though, so that was kind of cool. Yeah. There you go. All right. So I guess I have plenty of more practical questions to kind of talk through. Okay. Of course. And when I say that, I recognize that whenever you're herping in a group, right, you're going to see lots of stuff that you weren't the first person to see or all these different things. And as much as within that group, then, I think that there's actually sort of the common purpose and common goal and all those things that make it. It's still special, right? I guess the question is, does the sort of commercial nature of the venture, does it diminish that at all?

So that if it's like, oh man, the person that you're not getting on with in the 10 or 12 person group or whatever, they stumbled onto the thing. Or the local guide is just like, it's like he's going to the pet shop basically, you know, with, oh, I know it lives in this tree. Does that hit differently for you? Or no, it's just I came to this place and I wanted to see this thing. And while it would have been ideal for you to be the person, ideal relative to your experience to, oh, you were the one who magically stumbled upon it or whatever. Does that, does that a hit differently and if it does does that obviously you're advocating for it so it doesn't diminish it to the point of not being enjoyable

but do you do you feel that uh that aspect of that huh so uh i would say yes we do we do find a lot of it. And so there's not – frankly, it really depends on where you go. Some places like Costa Rica, everybody's finding everything everywhere, right? You're walking out of your room and you're almost tripping on a snake, right? It's like just – Costa Rica is crazy. So when it comes to something like that, yeah, you're finding just as much stuff as anybody else is and you're finding just about the animals and anyone else's i for me i guess you have to separate either the desire to see the animal uh the desire to photograph that animal to be in environment with that animal to be in the presence of that animal to if you if all those things come before your ego, I think generally speaking, you're going to feel pretty

good about it. But if we can be totally honest in terms of terms of herpers, sometimes it could be a bit of ego involved. And so there could be like, damn it. If I didn't see it myself, my own eyes by myself, then I, then it doesn't count. Or, you know, if, if, you know, I didn't flip that rock and my other buddy did, then it doesn't count. And so I, I, I look for me, um, there's too much I want to see for me to start, I guess, uh, painting myself in a box. And I think that's oftentimes what people do is they pick themselves in a box

saying like, Oh, the only kind of herping I what people do is they pick themselves in a box saying like oh the only kind of herping i want to do is this that or the other uh versus and kind of keeping their eyes um keeping your i guess feel the view a little bit wider and understanding that um yeah does it have to be you now there's situations where it is the guide fighting everything and that does of course it absolutely it tends to diminish the fun absolutely would where he's like oh it's there oh i already found it oh you see it yet like any that can sometimes your guides are too good where you're like damn man let me find something right that does happen i'm not gonna say it doesn't happen but sometimes

they're so good they're almost too good you're like man can you at least let me look a little bit like they're like that um yeah you can also run into the and look we not not necessarily on on the trips i've been on but you you can have instances of staging of course of course and so you have to be um you have to go with a group that has that moral code and that doesn't sit well with them and for for for herp they they that's not okay with them and so they make sure that their guides understand their guides on the ground understand that that's not something they're interested in seeing and so there is that fine line and um and that could be a little tricky some some continents are more known for that than others africa is very well known for staged animals so you have to make sure you're going with the right group and with the right guide so that that doesn't happen because nothing

hurts worse than you know you take photographs of something that you thought serendipitously you have found and come to find out that it was in that guy's backpack all day. Yeah. That would burn. That wouldn't be as exciting. Yeah. That would really kind of chap everyone's ass. So that's not something that is okay. You have to be careful with who you choose.

You got to be careful with you gotta be careful with that you gotta be careful with that but again that's that's that's the reason why i do the tours because i understand that they're doing that groundwork for me if i were to contact somebody in um east africa and i want to do east africa herping trip and i contact a local guide i don't know if that local guy's legit i don't know if he's if he's doing the right things i don't know if he's going to take that animal put in his pocket after i walk away i don't know what's going guy's legit. I don't know if he's, if he's doing the right things. I don't know if he's going to take that animal and put it in his pocket after I walk away. I don't know what's going on. And so making sure that I'm going with somebody who is making sure they're doing that groundwork that either has been there before and know who to talk

to those sorts of things. It just makes a lot of sense. I was in Costa Rica and I went to this little, I don't know what you'd call it, but it's like a little forest preserve that was privately owned. And so you had to pay a fee to go explore it or whatever. But I asked, you know, if they'd seen any snakes or, you know, any areas to focus on there. Oh, there's a viper, you know, go on this trail and go to number, this number, you know, stop or whatever. And you'll see it there.

And so I went there and there was like police tape around this little spot. Oh my God. And there was a viper on the forest floor in the middle of that. And I'm like, either that viper doesn't move a lot, you know, and that very well could be, it was a bull throbs Asper. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, I, that's possible,

but also possible too that they just plunk it in down there and bring it in, in the night or something. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, you know, I'd love to see a basilisk. Oh, go. There's one right over there. Go look right there. You know, so I got to see it, but I didn't find it on my own. But, you know, I guess I'd rather see it in the wild than not see it. You know, but of course, finding it yourself is a little more thrilling, especially if you've kind of mapped out where you might see that species and, you know, find one doing what it's supposed to do and all that kind of stuff but yeah definitely pros and cons but yeah that's uh just like anything else we're herping right where where you find animals sometimes just as or how you found it right just as important as what you find right and that's always the case so obviously if i'm i'm a hike for five five miles and i'm up a mountain somewhere and I'm by myself and I happen to find a car,

you know, come across the price side. Pretty good. Yeah. Good day. Right. It's definitely better. Our road cruise back to,

from the hotel to McDonald's. And I found one, right. Yeah. Right. So we can, we can play those games. We can say,

okay, that was a better experience than this one. And there's always been better experiences on the trip than others. There's always been some animals that are like a like a you know standout situation like on the last trip in madagascar where i followed that hog nose watched it dig the whole nest watch it eat you know those eggs and that was me that was me that morning waking up early on purpose make sure i was out there on my own on purpose and And, uh, and, and we were able to witness that. And that was, that came out to be the standout situation of the trip. Yeah. Because

it was me, it was all those things, but it doesn't, that doesn't say that the rest of the trip was, was not as memorable. Sure. That made that just a little bit more special. Yeah. Yeah. There are definitely those experiences that just kind of stick with you forever. You know, you're not going to forget those moments. Yeah. I mean, right. So for instance, right. Yeah. I know that, Justin, you go on some tours in the Baja, right? Let's say, let's say you go on a tour to go see a whale shark. Does the fact that somebody else found that whale shark make it any different than you experiencing that whale shark in the water? No, I mean, honestly, not, not for that, but you know. and any different than you experiencing that whale shark in the in the water no i mean honestly not not for that but you know right so like where do we draw the line right so for me just being in the presence of that animal being in that space that that to me is enough for me i don't have to be like i was the one that found it because in terms of a group trip you can end up um it's oftentimes

not you like even if you're there with four guys you have one you're gonna have, um, it's oftentimes not you. Like even if you're there with four guys, you have one, you're going to have 25% chance that it's going to be you that that spot at first. So like, eh, for me, I I'd rather see a lot and I'd rather experience a lot. And, um, that's why I do it. I wondered, I had a quick, quite sorry if, um, uh, interrupting your flow, uh, Rob, but I was, uh, wondering if you ever miss out on things because of like the size of the group, if you're over in this corner, you know, the, you know, you're, you're a ways away and, and they see like this cool venomous snake, but it goes down a hole. And so you miss out on seeing it. Is that, is that how common is that? Or, or do you all have radios

and you can kind of, is it hard to find where the people are that are finding stuff if you're spread out? Yeah. So it's, it's tough. We always have a, hey guys, stick together. Yeah. Make sure within like a distance of each other. Okay. So you stay pretty close typically.

It depends where you are, but there's been times where, you know you know i mean when we were in namibia it's such a vast landscape that you know that guy's on the other side of the mountain right yeah you know then at that point whatever you bag it what have you but the but but what's crazy is i i tend to take my time for taking photographs i tend to lollygag a bit i'm interested in a lot of stuff right not just the reptiles there's some people going on trips they all they want to see is snakes they have no interest in any frogs no interest in any i have interest in a lot of things and so that tends to make me sitting back in a pack for a while so i tend to be the guy trailing behind and spending more time with the animal spending more time with the animal photographing it doing what i gotta do but yeah

that it causes opportunities where you miss things right or that animal was in situ and by the time you got there not in situ anymore right so you missed that beautiful shot of it on the rock and now all that and that happens that's gonna happen um last uh in madagascar you know uh about a third of the team saw fusa oh cool by the time we got there it was it was long gone and so it's like they saw a glimpse of it but still at least they got to see it right yeah and so at the same time you could say well because it was such a large group that's why i didn't see it or you could say we're such a large group that gave them the chance to see it depending on how you look at things right you can look at a half glass full half glass empty right so i tend to look at it like listen you know the reason why we're finding so much is because we're

we're in a larger group um so if you end up missing out on something yeah you know as long as wasn't the target stuff that's why you make sure everybody knows listen this is what i'm here for so yeah do you find when you let me know don't be like oh that's the third one i saw or whatever and keep walking you let me know um that sort be like, oh, that's the third one I saw or whatever. And keep walking. You let me know that sort of thing. In some environments, again, like Costa Rica, there's so much stuff. And in places in Madagascar, it was like you were tripping over stuff. It was crazy. So there's opportunities.

Yeah, you're not going to you're not going to see it all. OK. I don't know why you would bring up venomous snakes going down a hole that we didn't get to see just in the end but i can't imagine why you bring that up um that actually reminds me of kind of a question from that same day and tied in you know you being interested in the photography and all that do you feel like you have the time to photograph and engage with an animal in in this group setting that's like satisfying to you right so are you able to do that and this is uh naturally counting in the question of sort of the the ethic around time frame of exposure for that animal to people taking pictures and all that stuff

of course so that's the big right that's the big ethical dilemma right for all of all of herpers right what what the especially as a photographer you always have to have to um kind of suss out what is okay what's not okay where that where that line is drawn and yes so there's opportunities where you are, right? If there's 10 people trying to photograph something, yeah, your time with that animal will be limited, right? It's just the reality of it. For the sake of the animal, for the sake of everybody to get their turns to take photos and things like that, that is a conflict. That's a conflict every trip. It always will be.

That is, to me, the biggest con. Biggest con of the trip is of group trips. There's a lot of pluses, but the big con is that time with the animal. And I take my time. And so it's kind of known that I'm like that. So I usually, I will wait until everybody's done. So I'm the last one. I could take my time a little bit more than maybe other people because I don't have to be the first one. But that may means I miss out on the sit-to shot. That may means I miss out when it was perfectly coiled up. These are things that I just have to accept as if I want the time, I have to be on the big con. However, for most people who take a few shots, cell phone shots, what have you, it's no problem. There is no issue. But yeah, it really depends. It helps when there's other photographers with you. So if you have other people in the group that are also just as interested in the photography as you are, then it becomes you kind of sit around.

You guys take your turns and it becomes a collaborative effort, which I i think is also really cool that's something that's often not talked about so yes while getting everybody trying to take the photo of the same animal could could be a conflict it also you can look at it that well i'm also around these awesome photographers and we can bounce things off of each other hey what about this what about that hey can you pull my light here hey can you do and so you're if if you're with the right group and you're with with friends and you're with people who who also respect what you do in terms of photography as well then it could be a collaborative effort and that even in my opinion makes it even better so again it really depends it's it's all it really depends on on your situation how you look at it but if you want full time with that animal then well you know it's it's not it may not be the

trip for you i remember our trip in 2011 to to darwin uh nick mutton had a camera that cast a red light every time it was trying to focus and so like half my photos of the animal have like a red light on it oh no dang it nick can you wait till we're done and then get your crappy red light camera in here right right right exactly yeah so so that's a conflict right that's always going to be a conflict but that that could be a conflict in a group of four people yeah you know it's true it's not necessarily only you know if all four of you really want to spend that hour with that hopefully not an hour but if you spend that amount of time with the animal and take your time then you know that can become a conflict especially when the time's clicked the time is in my opinion the

minute you are interacting with animal you the time starts starts going down you don't have that much time to be fair to that animal, to be respectful, to be, you know, not going crazy. If the thing is going through all four of its threat displays like 12 times, then my guy, you are way out of line and you should have let that thing go a while ago. Does the guide step in at all? Depends on the guide, depends on the situation, all those sorts of things.

Herb do a really good job that even if the local guides, honestly, if I've got to be honest, local guides tend to be a little more lax than depending on where you are, than let's say even the host of the actual trip. The host of the trip, Brian and Laura, they do,

they make sure that guys that's it you gotta that's it we're done last shots you got two more shots each and we gotta it's it's stressed out we gotta let it go or this is enough we can move it on and so they do a really good job and make sure they're regulating that as well to make sure that nothing is being done that it that shouldn't be done which i think to me is a plus yeah yeah i've been on herping trips where you've seen you know even a friend of yours where you're not too happy about what they're doing and you're like it becomes kind of awkward to say hey dude that's enough like or hey whatever it's nice to have that third party

be like hey we're done like yeah we've got enough yeah that's true it always helps to have that third person saying i think we've i think we've reached our limb with this animal yep so because if you know sometimes you get tunnel vision and you don't realize like i've been i've shot 150 photos of this thing like if i don't have it now then i shouldn't be photographing anyway so it's true um you kind of have to like usually somebody has to peel me away so um and they're and i tell them guys yank me out of there because i'll be there all day. So they're just like, Isaac, that's enough. Okay, I agree. One more.

One more. It's always one more, right? Yeah. I had a friend in New Zealand and they found one of the Naltina species, the green gecko species. And the one who found it was a native New Zealander. And he spent most of the time with the animal. And then when it was time for everybody else to photograph, he said, oh, this animal's too stressed out. We need to let it go.

So my friend didn't get any pictures of it in situ. He had one picture of it in his hand, and that's it. It's like, come on. Why did you hog all the time when you live here? You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I guess even if you're not on a paid tour, you can still have that kind of experience maybe.

Correct. And maybe the guides are nice to kind of regulate it and say, hey, you know, you've taken your share of the time. Now let's turn it over to somebody else or, you know, move out of the way so they can get the shot, you know, in the right lighting or the right direction so the sun's, you know, right on it, you you know that kind of thing right right oh cool yeah yeah totally i mean i definitely uh fully um you know co-sign your point that that is not unique to a commercial trip it's just from my perspective it was if you're talking about eight or ten people, that's, you know, obviously that's a lot more opportunity for that to happen than if you have four other people or whatever.

Correct. But I do think that that additional to the point you both made about having a sort of neutral to semi-neutral third party there to sort of adjudicate and or make sure make sure that yeah the animal welfare is important i think that's a great point for sure correct right so like you know i've done tours to the galapagos let me tell you the amount of regulation and things that happen in the galapagos or you know there's a guy next to you the whole time there is not you don't get to go to galapagos by yourself you don't get to plan your own herb trip to to galapagos it doesn't work like that right there is there's certain right so you don't get to do that um and that brings me to like one of my biggest second points is that guiding in depending on where you are is a necessity right there's some countries where

you can't go by yourself you just can't you can't developing countries it gets really dicey to go by yourself without having um a local with you um the language right if there's a language barrier again easy when you're in australia you speak english right but if you're in middle of i don't know anywhere uh uganda or what have you then it becomes a little bit more difficult to, the language barrier can be an issue. And so that's something that's potentially dangerous. I mean, if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, you know, it can be a sketchy, sketchy thing. Correct. What is okay to do? What is not okay to do?

What are the superstitions? What aren't the superstitions what aren't the superstitions what are what are like again you to have that person there is um it's worth it um it's definitely worth it and and needed so i think that that's that's a big plus um i also think that if you think about the communities you know ecotourism is good for the community yeah well there's a rule in costa rica that you can't go into the national parks without a guide you can't go in there alone so you know sometimes the countries will dictate that and and you know i was i mean i had my family over there you know several children and my wife and my parents and so each time you went into the forest and having

and they and they charge per person not like for the you went into the forest and having, and they, and they charge per person, not like for the group or for the time, it was like, you had to pay 50 bucks per person. Every time you went in the park, it was, it got a little expensive. So you have to plan on those kinds of things too. I didn't realize that when, you know, planning the trip, but, uh, so that was kind of a shock to the wallet. Right, right. Yeah, no, public lands are a privilege. They really are. And sometimes we're pretty lucky in the United States that we have a public park system, that we have national parks and state parks. And these are pretty accessible to us and we're allowed to be there and we're encouraged to be there and we're supposed to be there.

But, you know, that's not necessarily the case everywhere. And so you may be, so for instance, in Madagascar, yeah, those times where we were in national parks, of course. But there was also times where we were in this rural area where we were looking for these reptiles on the side of the road or on somebody's privately owned land it's not okay for you to just trounce in there by yourself without that local guide being hey this is what we're doing this is how we're doing it we're not going to be long you know and so we have to sometimes separate ourselves from that and understand that those things are important and making sure that we are being welcomed into these places it's a privilege

it's a privilege for us to travel 100 it's privilege for us to go to these countries and go look for their reptiles yeah and handle them and photograph them and do everything else we do it's a big privilege and for me doing that on my own i would feel a bit like I'm taking advantage in some ways. And I think without the locals, at least blessing in a lot of ways or their, their benefit, then to me, it's,

it wouldn't feel right. If that makes sense. Yeah. Good point. You know, like it's again, easy, right?

We go to the United States. We, we we plan a trip we're out there we're hiking we're we're we're backpacking whatever we wanted sleeping in the car and that's great but if you know you do that in somebody's uh rural field yeah it's not you know you're trouncing on their plants on the way to looking for snakes i've seen that yeah i've heard a uh uh fun story i think it was on mike pinkleton's podcast but he they were herping in california and all of a sudden these dogs came charging at him they they treat him basically i had to climb up a tree to get away from the dogs and then the owner came and it he's like you know overalls missing teeth it's like's like California or somewhere else. But, uh, and you know, he had his

gun and was pointing at Adam and stuff. And they're like, we're, we're just looking for our car. We got lost. You know, we don't mean to be on your land, but yeah, it can be a little sketchy if you take a wrong turn. And I know even in like Australia, I think Rob has a story or two of getting on, you know, private property or that kind of thing. Yeah. And certainly winding up law, you know, just, uh, that, that, uh, the first trip and exercise in insufficient planning, right. To rely upon like, Oh, the, you know, local or semi-local or whatever advice to, you know, that, that was the big lesson I learned on the first trip to Australia was I never wanted to be in that spot again, where it was like in very, you know,

from, as you can imagine, Zach, I mean, shoot, you've heard plenty of those episodes where it was like, Oh, come to Australia and we'll tell you, you know, we'll take you out or we'll tell you where to go. We were way too reliant on that on the first trip. And because again, we'd had at that point what seven years of hearing hearing that same sentiment and i don't doubt that it was well intentioned but when it came came down to it it wasn't uh wasn't super useful and definitely the lesson i

learned we saw some exceptional animals and all that and had a great time that's not that's not the question but when i came home my lesson learned was yeah i'm never doing that again i'm never going to be caught out not having done the research on my end right right right right right right and and right so so exactly um i think another reason the reason why i started taking tours is on an out of frankly necessity for myself you know uh herpers can be like a bit like her uh herding cats in a lot of ways where it's like all right guys are we gonna go we're not gonna go we're not gonna go are we gonna go all right are we are you buying the tickets are we not buying the tickets what are we doing oh yeah well let me talk to my wife and let me figure

out what's going on you're like oh my god and so God. And so for me, I was in a place, to be honest, at the time when I decided to go on my first tour, I signed up for Costa Rica. I just turned 30 and I said to myself, you know what? I don't have any more reptiles really in my house. I'm kind of, I'm itching to get out there. I'm just going to go ahead and book something. I would have loved to go on a group tour,

a small tour where I could have had a bunch of my friends just going to go ahead and book something. I would have loved to go on a group tour when I go on a small tour, when I could have had a bunch of my friends and we can have gone to do something. I just didn't have that luxury at the time. And so it was like, okay, if I want to go do this, I have to sign up and do this with somebody. And I did. And it's been nothing but a blessing to me. So that's, that's another thing. I think it's a great start. A lot of people would love to go on herping trips. Right. I would love to go to herpes.

But it becomes so daunting to say, OK, I've got to figure out where I'm going to go, how I'm going to get there. I've got to figure out the logistics, all that sort of thing. And while that can be fun, it also is a huge barrier to entry. Right. Yeah. And so for a lot of people, myself included, who didn't have the time to do whatever, and also want to do it for my birthday. So I had kind of a bit of a time crunch there. It was like, all right, so I'm going to go ahead and do this. And, and it worked out for me. And so that's something to think about too, is it's a great,

and Costa Rica to me is like, again, I could gush about it because it's such a cool place, but it's a great and costa rica to me is like again i could gush about it because it's such a cool place but um it's like the gateway drug in my opinion to uh to international field herping um because it is so accessible yeah that country is built around ecotourism yeah yeah so it's so. You feel like you're welcome. You feel like the thing, what you're doing, you're supposed to be doing. You know, the locals want you there. All those things is, is important to me. And so it, it was the gateway drug for me can't go and do these things unless they did it on their own or were able to convince their three buddies to go with them or what have you. Because if I was doing that, I'd still probably wouldn't have gone. Ultimately, I'd still be trying to convince people to go. Right. And you kind of notice that as herpers find a group that they're compatible with and that they travel well with and that can make plans at the drop of a hat kind of thing, you know, that are going to follow through and

make the plans and go, you know, then you tend to stick with those guys anyway. So, you know, and it's a rare find to, you know, herp with somebody like Rob, who's willing to put in all that time and put in all that effort to plan the trip. You know, I think, uh, there's a lot of times on those trips, there's either, you know, you might have somebody who wants to dominate and tell you, no, we're going here, but you know, it's rare find to have somebody who's that into the planning and, and, but it also is flexible to say, yeah, we can do an alternative plan or we can do something else. And so, you know, that is hard to find that. And I think when you do find it, you tend to kind of cling to that a little bit. But I think you're kind of getting that to some extent from your buddies on the previous trips.

And so, you know, that can evolve into that tight knit group of buddies rather than a paid tour. You know, that kind of thing. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So but again, I'm always going to determine based on the tour. tight-knit group of buddies rather than a paid tour you know that kind of thing right right yeah yeah so but again i'm always going to determine based on the tour and the kind of tour and the kind of guides and the kind of hosts it's it's all it's all i guess a lot of ways up in the air um and i guess that's that's that's possibly a con where you don't know exactly how it's going to go right yeah yeah and so you know but you know, but yeah, try it out. Well, I, I, uh,

I had some frustrations cause I was trying to book a tour in Costa Rica to go on a herp tour, you know, somebody who knew the area knew and had a, had a place. And so I kept trying to book this group that I found through, you know, an internet search basically, but it was kind of, um, around the time of COVID or just after. And so I think that may have influenced this. So, you know, it may have been just a, a one-off, but, um, I could never get them to respond to my messages, you know, it was just kind of, and when they did, it was kind of, uh, not very specific or helpful.

You know, I'm like, I'm here this day. Can you do the tour? You know, or they weren't in the area or it's going to cost way too much money. So I think eventually I relied on a local that my daughter knew because she was there teaching English. And so she was able to find a group close to where we were that was reasonably priced and knew the area well. And so it was a really nice little trip. But that was kind of a headache and a stress trying to find a good, you know, tour group to book where I had to book a tour or else I wasn't going to get out into the, you know, into these areas.

Correct. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. For sure. I think, you know, this idea that it's still work, man. I mean, you're herping with guides, this idea that it's still work man i mean you're herping with guides no guides it's still work okay i'm still getting shoot on by leeches i'm still getting back with uh you know yeah bleeding sweating the whole nine it's still work um it's just you know

work but the most rewarding work work of all right that. That's right. Yeah. It's not easy. Like it just because I'm with a guy, it doesn't, I mean, sometimes it is, I'm going to be honest, but oftentimes it's not right. You're still putting in that effort. You're still putting in the work. Um, you know, so it's not necessarily like going to the zoo. Right. Yeah. Go ahead, Rob. Sorry. No, no. All good. So I just just had two practical questions but i love the way this conversation is going so justin if you had something there go for it oh i just had a curiosity uh if in galapagos are you sleeping on a boat are you sleeping on the islands

so i i went on a liverport so you're sleeping on the boat and uh in my opinion i think that's the the real the only real way to do the galapagos in my opinion okay um is to do it via boat if you want to see the different islands i mean the galapagos is very very regimented um yeah you must be with a guide yeah there is a certain right it's not you don't just get okay go have fun on the island no there's a certain trail you must be on you're not allowed to leave trail you're not allowed to use flash photography you're you know you can only be on island for x amount of time there everything is regulated only two groups on the island at all times. I mean, it's down to, they have it down to a science. And so that experience was, you know, not my normal thing.

Yeah. Very different trip, I'm sure. Very different trip than a lot of my other herping trips. It's not, you know, that's a very, you can't really compare them. However, you know, not having to rely on flash photography made me a better photographer. Not having to, you know. Good challenges. There's good challenges, right?

But being on the, you know, then being on the boat all the time, going to island, island. Yeah. I was fortunate where, you know know there's some legwork too right not all tours are created equal and and i did the legwork i did was make sure that i when i booked the tour it was going to be a tour that hit the islands i wanted to hit that was going to be in the right season it was going to be at the right time i didn't i did not do all that based on what a guide told me to do all that research was done beforehand and then i found a tour that would accomplish those things i needed i needed a tour i needed to happen sometime in

january february because i wanted a breeding season for the iguanas because i wanted to see the christmas iguanas lit up right that was my goal okay well i gotta make sure i get to the island where those things are at okay i gotta make sure that the you know so the tour that we ended up going on was not your classic galapagos tour um it was the southern islands which are often overlooked but have the most diversity in terms of reptiles so that's why it went right and so understanding all those things before i went that was and then that panning out and that working for me and able to see you know seeing female iguanas building nests and seeing male iguanas in full display colors and all those things it was like damn like this is pretty good i picked the right time to do this so yeah there's

still there was still part of that even though it was in theory a guided tour right yeah but it was elements of your own preparation like that. I, um, I remember, uh, Bob Ashley told me a story where they went for a swim and they came out of the water and there was a sea lion that had kind of laid on their shoes and towels and stuff. And they had to wait until you couldn't move the animal or try to shoot away from your, you had to sit and wait. And I know Bob actually is not the most patient person out there. So he was pacing, waiting for that, you know, thing to move off his, his stuff. But yeah, I thought that was kind of cool that you can't interact with the animals to,

to get them to even to move off of your things. Or if there's a tortoise in the way of the tour bus, you have to sit and wait until the tortoise moves on its own time and not try to move it out of the way or something kind of cool yeah i think that's all great um a couple practicals as i say what does the cost look like to do something like this and i'm sure it's variable based on where you're going and how long you're going. That's my other sort of practical question is what does an average sort of trip duration look like? Again, probably varies widely, but to the extent you can speak to your previous experiences. I mean, obviously, if it's a commercial venture, not only are you paying for the host to go, right, and all the infrastructure and guides and all that to happen. But like, then, you know, that presumably

plus something is it is it affordable, you know, in a really accessible way in a, you know, semi accessible way, you're doing really well. So you're situated to do that. But, you know, is it affordable to everyone? Is it sort of, you wouldn't necessarily categorize it that way. There's a an option at every price point, depending on how far you want to go categorize it that way there's a an option at every price point depending on how far you want to go what what does that look like yeah i mean just like anything else um obviously the length of time is going to dictate the price but not necessarily um i think that um the group i go with do a very good time do a very good job and not necessarily i don't ever feel fleeced if that makes any sense.

I don't ever feel like I overpaid. Oftentimes I feel like the opposite where I'm like, Oh my God, we're doing so much, you know, and, and, and that's not the case, but, you know, I don't know. Well, let's say a two week trip, two week trip with everything. And usually most of the trips, food, everything's included so it's usually you know the only thing you're paying for is alcoholic drinks usually on these tours depends but oftentimes that's the case because lots of times you have to book to make sure that

we have breakfast in the morning make sure that there when we're out there if we're out in the jungle somewhere we're camping out there that there's cooks there to cook for us you know that those things are taken care of and they're all taken care of for you so you don't have to necessarily worry about that you could just again focus on the herping and enjoy that part of it um so as a result like let's say like a two-week trip to most places i think it probably looked like twenty five hundred dollars or so which okay you know is that with the flight or do you buy the flight that's going to be that's going to be separate from the flight that's going to be separate from the flight so depending on where you go on the ground yeah transportation food everything yeah transportation food they

pick you up at the airport drop you off at the airport right so you know they're taking care of all that for you. So $2,500 to me for two weeks somewhere, not too bad considering. But not extremely cheap either. So it really depends. In my opinion, for most people that can put their money together and decide it's something they can do, I think it's affordable for most people. You know, Galapagos is obviously going to be a little bit more money. Certain trips are going to be a little bit more. But I think that for most people, if it's something that you really want to do, I think it's worth it.

Fair enough. I suppose it doesn't make sense. This will be the reason that I can't come together as a commercial guy, one of the several reasons that we've talked about tonight, that I couldn't come together for that, Justin, is that my goal is always to have people lose a pound or a pound and a half a day uh you know on the trip not uh no i gain weight on these trips yeah oh my gosh it's crazy to me if you go if you go on a trip with rob you need to make sure that you plan ahead to have food because you may or may not be stopping somewhere for food.

And that place may or may not be great. No, no. Food, look, you know, food, maybe because I'm going with Europeans and their taste is a little more refined. But we tend to eat pretty well. I ain't going to lie. We tend to eat pretty well. And look, most of the time we're going to places where food is relatively inexpensive, right? So, you know, if we're out there in Madagascar, you know, $7 could get you pretty far.

I went on a boat trip once with a friend of the family and he has his boat and he used to guide river tours down the Colorado through the Grand Canyon. So he's a very great boatman. And he was used to cooking for like 30 people. So we'd stop and he's just got this huge amount of food and he's cooking it all. And we're just eating to our heart's content until we're sick. And then he's like throwing, you know, extra food into the river. We're like, oh, my gosh, that's so much waste. Like, why did you – I only know how to cook for 30. I just don't know any other way. We're like, well, learn another way.

It's crazy. We ate – I'd probably gain weight on that trip for sure. Right. Yeah, I mean, yes, I generally gain weight, so that's good. So for me, that's a plus. That's pretty funny. Well, and I know Nick, right? Nick invariably does that based on his own.

He's so regimented at home that then he goes on these trips, and to your point, he's like, oh, a bowl of noodles is $0.10. Let me have seven, you know, or whatever. Right, right, exactly. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, that's awesome i guess the so i think this is kind of the the classic way that justin and i have been doing these things you know and it's so awesome to hear all these details and sides that you know visibility into it that having never gone i just don't have don't have that insight into so it's a little less uh a little less of a fight i think there's

clear you know we even agree there's clear pros and cons on either side but uh really great to have all this detail and perspective that i feel like uh honestly these businesses rely on people like you being an advocate for them because um otherwise it's just sort of oh fancy pictures or whatever but there there is that price point there is the you know to some extent a reduced agency and all these different things that would that would dissuade someone like me beyond saying oh wow that is a pretty picture and i don't speak thai or i don't speak um you know whatever it is you know or i can imagine difficulties heck even in places where there is less of a language. South Africa, yeah, that doesn't, you know, I don't feel like getting kidnapped.

You know, that's not on my bucket list of things to have. Brazil, you know, like not things that I'm looking, yeah, exactly. Not things that are high on my to-do list. So I certainly appreciate that there are contexts where that would be helpful, you know, or not even helpful doesn't, helpful is too much of an understatement, essential, right? Or even, you know, where the legislation requires it or whatever. So I think that's, that's super clear. So it's great to have someone with that experience really speak to the positives beyond just, well, you need to, so you got no

choice, right? I think it's done. Yeah. Well, I, I, you know, I hope people have enjoyed kind of the nuts and bolts of things that we, we probably should have you back on to talk about all the cool animals you've seen. I don't, maybe, uh, do do you have a do you have one that just burns uh you know it's burned into your brain and we'll stick with you forever one of your favorite finds you can throw out there for us oh my goodness that's a tough one yeah it's like picking your kid which is your favorite kid oh or just a memorable one i guess yeah oh man huh i know i have one on one of my i think it was yeah it was my first trip to australia um i went to the rainforest and i knew you could find boyd's forest dragons there you know and so

that was kind of what i was looking for and i had search image. I knew what kind of size tree they would be on. And I just scanned every tree in that freaking forest. And I, and I went one, you know, the first day I was there, I went on my own, didn't find one. And, but the, the, you know, the area was so cool. I wanted to take my dad back there cause I was on the trip with him. So we went back the next day and, you know, right when you started to have to take the loop back i i spotted one on the tree and that image is just burned into my brain it was very cool to see that animal right where it should be you know on this the size of tree that they said they'd be on and just sitting there on the side of it was really cool and that's just stuck in my my brain um one of my favorite experiences oh man okay okay let's let's i'm gonna pick one let's see all right i'll pick one from from not quite i mean i guess there was guides

i do have guides but not necessarily a trip with with the people i go often with it was when i went to peru uh-huh this is about two years ago i went to peru uh met a friend there and then eventually went out on my own essentially um with uh to a lodge called altarongo out there and uh we were looking for bushmasters and um it was crazy where we were herping all day all night for like two days and had and it was dry it was pretty dry had it rained for a while in peru and you know uh and nothing was moving essentially and for one whole day it rained i mean it poured i've never seen rain like this right for a whole day and then that night we're like no tonight right? For a whole day. And then that night, we're like, no, tonight's going to be a good night. I mean, the guy, Johnny, like, no, tonight's going to be a good night.

Like, we're going to go out. We're going to find something. Yeah. And I'm excited. And I'm like, all right, this is a place. Well, there's a place known for Bushmasters. We know they're around the vicinity of the lodge. We know that they're here.

We just have to find one. And we set off off and we're looking and i mean the am i've been a lot of places the amazonian jungle is um unbelievable yeah it is the quietest and loudest place on earth i don't know how else to describe it other than oftentimes you feel like you can hear your heartbeat and other times you can barely you know the cacophony is so loud so it really depends but they're and look you turn off your flashlight and the you're the herper next to you could be three trees away and you can't see him at all yeah you can't see even his flashlight like this is like deep deep amazonian jungle and thick forest yeah really

thick really thick forest and we're out there we're looking and you know i get a i get a call snake and i come running and again to your point right john was the first one to spot it however john lost it oh right had no idea where he saw it because by the time he came and found me he totally forgot where he had seen oh no it's like it's that way somewhere i'm like yeah there's like eight different animal trails going off of there so then the search began right we know we saw a snake he saw two eyes and he came running to find me he saw like a glint of eyes so in my opinion that probably was a bush master if you found if you saw um eyeshine like that so got really excited started running around looking around and we just couldn't find it it's like maybe 20 30 minutes it's like this is it like this is it we lost it like maybe it went down a hole maybe like who knows what it's it's over i

guess we have to keep looking something told me like i think he ran probably further than he imagined right so i'm like i'm gonna keep going it's like i ran i went way further out than i think that we even looked and i kept going kept going made a couple rights a couple lefts and between a fork of like four animal trails sat this huge bush master wow huge female bush master in in an ambush position on the on the crux of like four animal trails like exactly where they say they are like down to the t um and there they call them shishupe that's what they call that's the the local uh word for bush master and they're considered to be like a spirit of the forest um because they often are

said that they appear and disappear right and what they're trying to describe is is their ecology is that they most of the time are on the ground right they're tree hollows they're they're on the ground they're on the brush and every once in a while they come out and they'll sit right in the middle of either person's trail animal trail any kind of trail they'll sit right in the middle of either a person's trail, an animal trail, any kind of trail. They'll sit right in the middle and wait for an animal to come by so they could snag it. And so it became this kind of like they show up randomly. You can hike out all the way back, find one sitting on the trail. So they have this mystique about them being this ghost of the forest.

Yeah, yeah. And so seeing that female there, I mean, was just unbelievable. It was just, it was one of the coolest things ever. And, you know, it was just, and it's the Bushmaster. It is the, to me, the, you know, if it's not the, some people may say kings are the pinnacle of venomous snakes. I disagree. I'm going to say that the Bushmaster to me is absolutely is absolutely the King of snakes. Um, and, uh, it was super cool to see her like that.

Oh, very cool. Uh, that's awesome. Yeah. That's the stuff, you know, that's what keeps us going out there and keeps us looking for these things in the wild, you know? And, um, I, I know that sometimes like missing on a target species is what drives me to go back and try again and see if I can find that thing, you know. So very cool. Well, if you have any kind of final thoughts or some summation of your thoughts, and maybe if you want to throw out that group that, uh, group that you go with commonly, uh, just so people have that, if they want to check into it. Sure. Um, so final thoughts, I say, um,

you know, if you, if you wait around and you think about doing something rather than doing it, you're wasting time. Just get out there and do it. Um, if, even if that requires you to contact somebody else to help you get there, um, ultimately, um, how you get there is sometimes not as important as just going and getting there. And so don't think that you have to do this crazy solo situation and that there's no, um, potential, uh, benefit of going as a group. There's a lot of benefits growing as a group, including my favorite, which is meeting new people. Um, so go ahead, go have fun, go to places that scare you, um, go to places that you, you can never imagine going. Um,

and you'll be surprised, um, one, how strong you are and, um, two, how big and small the world is. Well said. That's awesome. Yeah. I think that's one of my favorite points that you brought up was, I mean, just get out there and do it. If you need to have a tour group to do it, then make it happen. If you want to plan a trip on your own, make it happen. That's great advice. Go see the world because our time here is not long enough, right? Correct. Exactly. Right.

So if I only limited myself to things I can do on my own, I would have gotten nowhere. Africa would have not have been my favorite continent on planet Earth.'s just i have to be willing to to do that so um if you are interested in any of the trips that i've talked about at least some of them a lot of the times i go with herp again it's herpological education and research projects their uh web address is herp so it's pretty easy herp.be's for belgium so it's pretty easy to find them um and then you can see um a lot a lot of the trips they'll have there. And I think they're – you know where they are currently? Where's that?

Western Australia. Oh, really? One of my favorite places on Earth. I know. I know. And what's crazy is that I got some information on that tour. Obviously, I'm not there. But I got some information at least on some of the itinerary where where they were in it is literally exactly what i would do yeah down to

exactly how much time i would spend there like it's like almost a full three weeks like it's hardcore it's awesome so uh they're having a great time there they've seen a lot of stuff already so god bless them i'd be curious to hear kind of like or see the list of their finds, you know, just to maybe convince me that that would be helpful. If you can wow me with your find list, then, yeah, that might convince me to do that. Yeah. I mean, if yes, if you if you jump on their Facebook page, you can see at least some of what they, especially Brian, what they're finding. So they're, they're doing pretty well. They're doing pretty well.

So that's what they're doing now. So I think their next trip coming up, they're going to Suriname. Unfortunately, I'm not going to that one. I wish I could, but that, that looks amazing. How many trips do you try to hit a year? Man, if I could, as many as I can afford. Or every other year, yeah. As many as I can afford, essentially.

For me, actually, the issue is a lot of it with time. A lot of the places I still want to visit, I don't want to visit for a week. And it seems like every year I'm getting more and more responsibilities at work. So it becomes harder and harder to take these trips. So as of right now, technically, for this year, I have nothing planned. But, you know, I just came back from Madagascar, so I feel pretty good. I have so many photos to go through still that I have plenty to keep me busy for the next year at least. But right now I have nothing planned.

But, you know, that doesn't mean I won't go anywhere. Just possibly maybe not a trip with them this year. Yeah, yeah. Speaking of which, where can people see your photos? Oh, my goodness. The big question. You know what's interesting about that? If you go to my Facebook page, you can probably see some of my photos.

But to be fair, I haven't posted a lot of my photos recently um what i have found denying that you're denying these people of uh phenomenal photos so so yeah well let me let me let me preface this by saying this i think that social media while it's a beautiful thing in some ways right gets gets us talking gets us to find like-minded individuals it could also tend to make you feel competitive in a lot of ways and what i found was i had to especially with my photography i had to sit back and think okay why am i doing this just like just like herping why am i hurting am i herping to to prove something to somebody else am i herping to prove something to myself?

Am I doing it for my own enjoyment? Am I doing it to get some kind of likes, clicks, that sort of thing? And a lot of what I was feeling, I was feeling pressure to get my photos up, get the album produced, make sure people see it, get those likes.

And I felt like that was kind of weighing in on my hobby in a way because photography is first and foremost my hobby and so if you've noticed for less and less few years i have really posted much of my photos luckily when you're at carpet best we sat down i showed you a lot of photos that i have i've had in my back pocket um eventually the the hope is i will uh probably get a website for my photos so they can live somewhere indefinitely and they can be presented in a way I want them to be presented. Yeah. Um, and I can, and I'm doing it for the right reasons.

Okay. Um, so that being said, the minute that a website gets put out there, I will make sure that I will let you know. Very cool. Yeah. I'm telling you people, this guy's photographs are incredible, like really amazing. And the species that you found are just very diverse and wide ranging and just, I mean, had my jaw hit the floor multiple times. So, yep.

I look forward to that day. Now, Rob, we haven't forgot about you. Do you have any kind of final statements kind of on your side of things? No, not really. I really appreciate you coming on, Zach, and giving us this insight. And it's great to hear about maybe the ideation around a website to present your images and stuff. I'm sort of doing the same thing with my website in terms of a space. Yeah, I think we're aligned in terms of the

pros and cons of social media and presentation and how you're doing it. And I do feel like, you know, maybe that's its own conversation in terms of the social media content creators. I feel like they often misjudge who their audience is. And sometimes I think there's a dulling effect that comes, especially if they're stuck in a particular area. They really like to go to a certain area or whatever. I'm saying, oh, not a big night, only found 15 alterna you know whatever and it's like i understand that that message comes across as like okay you're pandering to the five other herper bros that you consider to be your competition or whatever and you're kind of

putting on airs for that i mean the answer to me a lot of the time is genuinely like if you really feel that way go find something else to do with your time, because as Justin said, there's not enough of it. So go find something else to do. In reality, I think the sort of saying that to for whatever reason to this small audience, neglecting the fact that ninety nine point nine percent of your audience would be super excited to see one. And that's not really great messaging. So I'm with you that a lot of the time, the way it's presented or the way that we take it in does no justice at all to either the animal or the work that it took to find it. Correct. Yep. Yep. Very cool.

Well, I think this has been a nice discussion. Thank you guys for your points of view and for all the information. Hopefully this has been helpful to the listener and appreciate you listening. But I don't know. I like to end the show with kind of talking about any big reptile news or anything like that you've come across. I don't know. You guys got anything cool or notable lately? Obviously.

I have one. Go ahead. Zach. So this threw me for a loop. So our buddy Nipper sent this to me this morning. We've been chatting. So on the Chameleon Academy podcast, there's a fellow in the uk who's produced namaqua chameleons and they come on to talk about them there was a little bit of an issue with the upload uh so it took i

had to go seek it out separately because i guess the initial upload cut off at 15 minutes but in reality it should have been an hour and 15 minutes whatever uh so if if it shows as short then go seek it elsewhere be it itunes or what the spotify feed i guess it doesn't update or whatever so that initial upload kind of threw it for a loop but i reached out and the answer was oh you can get it but you have to access it in a different way than what i'm used to um bill told me so anyway i i wasn't you know germany they have everything so i'm not i wasn't surprised but it was good to hear someone kind of freely talking about that. Cause talk about a bad-ass lizard, right?

Zach, you know, talk, talk about, Oh my gosh, that, that's one of the items that I've seen, you know, heard you talk about or see that you've posted. That's one that certainly hits hits for me. But then, and Nipper said, so the guy who was on the show was offering offspring that he had produced in the uk or whatever and doubtless that'll mean that maybe in the u.s at some point they'll have some they're they're quite spendy as it is or whatever

but then nipper sent me an advertisement today saying oh well our our leucistic namaqua chameleons and so it really it reminded me of the thing with King Oram, how we're talking about something with presumably a very small initial founder population, and there's a damn mutation in them. And that's like, you know, out of whatever, a pair or two or three animals. And already, you know, and it's like, talk about a mix. Yeah, that kind of put me for a loop today. And it's not just the ones that can turn bright white because they're odd.

Well, who knows, right? Yeah, exactly. Presumably not because they have normal ones and these as well. There wasn't a photo or anything like that. It was the listing, I think, out of Germany. But it was just, yeah, kind of put me on tilt there for a bit. You know, it's, it's interesting. Cause when I, when I see, you know, there's a lot of, a lot of thoughts like, okay, well,

why does morphs pop up in, in captive cat, you know, population so often. And I think without that natural selection happening. So it's happens. I mean, I don't know what the percentage of baby Namaquah chameleons make it to adulthood, but I know it's really, really small, like really small. And so when you talk about when you take away that natural selection for a few generations, all of a sudden these morphs that would pop out even in the wild that would immediately be decimated are able to continue to go um and so it's it's interesting to see how quickly that that can happen um it's it's really and um uh namaquara chameleons are uh pretty phenomenal pretty phenomenal creatures you know it's interesting uh and and uh here's a here's a leaving on topic here. Yeah. We're there with – we obviously found Namikawa chameleons when we were in Namibia. And of course, just like any other chameleon, you go to pick it up.

Just like you find any chameleon, you go do your thing. And thank goodness we did have a guide, right? Because there's no way where you can find this, right? You can't Google this really but touching a namikawa chameleon will pretty much doom it to death in the really um and not for the reasons you think you think oh maybe it's a stress maybe it'll expel its uh its urates and causes dehydrated all the things that reason why you don't pick up a tortoise in the wild that sort of thing but it's not that it's the reason that the minute your hands they have no scent so the minute that you touch one you are now transferring

scent onto that animal and that animal lives in a place where hyenas live so you have to understand that its predator is just looking for any inkling of scent in order to track that animal down it will be gone so by you touching it you're transferring your scent onto that animal and that animal will not make it tonight wow that's interesting i mean that's amazing to think about is it that because they had that's part of how they survive is by not having a scent i'm curious how they work that out you know what i mean is there studies where yeah i that's what i was told the guy who told me he's been there his whole you know he seems like a very knowledgeable guy just made something he's like oh do not you know anything else fair game but we know for sure that if you know they don't they

can't run very well they they rely 100 on their camouflage not a lot of cover out there correct so you can't if you have a little scent to you and you're looking for and there's brown hyenas They rely 100% on their camouflage. Not a lot of cover out there. So if you have a little scent to you and you're looking for it, and there's brown hyenas. Believe me, I saw plenty of them when I was there. They will track them down and eat them. Wow. How hard were they to find, the Namaquah chameleons? The first one we found, driving. Okay.

It was up on a rock, literally, perched up on a rock literally up on a just perched up on a rock you know as clear as day just sitting there up on a rock we're like what you know we slam brakes like it's beautiful it was beautiful the other times we found them out in the um in the grasses and other various things and we even found a baby uh one morning that was really really cool wow so yeah now the namaquas they're they're pretty prevalent um so they tend to be um hit by car a lot so yeah that's too bad that would be hard to see a dor yeah luckily for them there's not a lot of cars but uh yeah that's true pretty low traffic areas out there amazing species amazing yeah i saw a really cool instagram post from matt somerville

um he he had gone up to the iron range uh what maybe last month or something and and uh during the wet season right and so obviously it's probably the hottest time of the year up there. And he observed a green tree that had come down. He found it at night and then he went back and found it up in the tree during the day. And it was sitting in the sunlight, like basking, like out in the yoke, you know, kind of where the sun had full bore on it, you know, and he said it had to have been very hot in the sunlight, you know, sitting there for that long. And I just couldn't imagine how hot that animal was getting. So that was kind of an interesting observation for me. And I, you know, I asked him, do you think it had eaten recently? You know, it was a digesting

meal. And he said, not that he could tell. It just looked, you know, it was just up there in the in the sunlight. So kind of interesting. On the same trip, he located a juvenile as well, a yellow neonate and and showed kind of a zoomed out photo of it in just sitting on the edge of the forest, like kind of out in the open where you'd like, how is this not getting eaten by a bird or an owl or something like that? But kind of a cool, cool observation as well. But I guess they kind of hang out on the forest edge and, and that, uh, juvenile coloration, either the yellow or the red is, is actually very camouflaging of the animals to, uh, owls or nocturnal, you know, bird predators, even some of the diurnal predators don't see that color. It just blends in with the greenery. So for us, it sticks out like a sore thumb, but for them, they blend in really nicely for their natural predators. So I thought that was pretty interesting.

It's like the tigers in the orange coat. Yeah, yeah. They're bright orange to us. We can see them pretty well, but they're bright pink. The deer deer season is green instead of orange. Yeah. That was kind of cool. I love those nature shows. I mean, I still remember the first time I saw an Amakwa chameleon on nature, you know, the, that program on PBS that showing like half of it was white and half of it was black as it's warming up in the morning, just crazy stuff. So nature's wonderful. Yeah.

On kind of a sad note, you know, we Brian Barczyk passed away this week. And, you know, as I guess a polarizing figure, he was in the reptile industry. You know, you see a lot of haters and a lot of people who just adore the man. I was kind of on the side of the adoration. I mean, I remember meeting him the first time and just a really super positive, helpful person gave us a lot of time. Me and Ben were new, you know, at a big show and just he he just sat and talked with us and gave us advice and was really positive and excited and just a really nice guy. I just had a really, you know, all the experiences I had with him, we got to speak at the same reptile show out in Australia. And so I got to

share the stage with Brian and give a talk, you know, after he, or before or after he did, I can't remember. I think he was probably the closer, the Aussies loved that guy. But just always a really super positive and happy person. So I think it's a loss for the reptile community as a whole. Yeah, I agree. It's a rough loss, I'm sure. But yeah, take him too soon for sure. Yeah. When it comes to, you you know when you're on top of the game you know you just you're gonna you're gonna gather ire it's just the way it is and the

reality is is he's always been a very positive person he was always very positive and you know we have to look at how he affected not only just the reptile community but the broader public you know he was our face you know you can have problems with that but that's the reality We have to look at how he affected not only just the reptile community, but the broader public. He was our face. You can have problems with that, but that's the reality. And he was a positive face. Yeah. Right.

Rather than so many negative faces that we have now, especially on YouTube, my goodness. So he was a positive face and he would surely be missed. And we were all inspired by him. Whether we want to admit it or not that's true yeah yeah no i mean i i've heard a lot of uh folks that have said that you know he's the reason they got into reptiles and and uh you know kind of had that steve erwin type uh presence in regards to the number of people that he reached and and and presented reptiles in a in a positive light that's uh you know real feat correct yeah yeah i mean in law school when i was up in michigan um literally kept a roof over me

and my family's head selling him baby rhino rat snakes and type m rats and a whole host of things every season we take a whole whole host of them over to him and yeah as i say literally paid for the roof over the head with this uh definitely a sweet guy yeah yeah he'll be missed yeah well on that cheery note we'll thank uh hurricane owen and the npr crew for uh letting us uh put these shows out and thank you all for listening and we'll catch you again next week for another episode of reptile fight club Thank you.