Reptile Fight Club - Hybridization with Nathan Barretto

Episode Date: August 16, 2024

In this episode, Justin and Rob tackle the topic of Hybridization with Nathan BarrettoWho will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comIGFollow Rob @ https://www.instagram.com/highplainsherp/Follow MPR Network @FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQSwag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

all right welcome to another episode of Reptile Fight Club. Thanks for joining us. Tonight we've got a special guest, Nathan Barreto. Am I pronouncing that right? Yes, sir. Okay, welcome to the show. Happy to have him on. He came out with a suggestion, so yeah.

We wanted to have him come and fight that topic, so welcome to Reptile Fight Club. Of course, Mr. Rob Stone's here as well. So always good to see Rob and chat with him. So good times. Ahoy, hoy. All right. Well, how's life in the reptile world?

Things going well? You've got a herp trip coming up, Rob? Yeah, that's true. A little mix dates out there. And I guess I hadn't clarified that, you know, the dates had been pushed back a week as a matter of life going forward or whatever, different permutations and things. So we had two people from our four person party show up a week early. There were a couple of warning signs in hindsight. I think it was already too late at that point. But nevertheless, they've been out for the last four days and they're taking the long way home today. Trying to get in a few more things. And then Monsieur Wolf and I will follow it up next week and see if we can't do them one better, either with species or counts or whatever.

But yeah, trying to give them advice throughout. And then they've picked, gleaned some little interesting tidbits and things. So yeah, it should be good. Good stuff out there. I, you know, a few things that I haven't seen on my two trips out there, but definitely raises the stakes for me. Yeah, absolutely. So we'll see that a copperhead was pretty, pretty.

Yeah, that was cool. A little, probably a yearling or so, you know, a last fall or something like that. And then the lepidus, obviously the point of the point of the venture, you know, at least it is for me, right. Relative to my U.S. Crotolus count. That brings Dustin up to the 20s. So he's joined the 20 club right 20 species of crotalists is he counting that the enyo though no i don't think so okay yeah i just

wasn't sure everyone's we gotta we gotta sit there and actually need to standardize make a checklist you know yeah we gotta have a standard checklist that we can work against. Have a verified stamp date and time when you saw it and a verification by Bobby Pebbles. Third-party verification. There you go. Make it official. Have it on a shirt so you can check it off when you find it. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, Nathan, Rob kind of started this competition to,

to find all the U S crotalist species. So we're kind of working our way through those and he's, he's gone on a couple more trips that I wasn't able to make. So he's, what are you? 23 out of 27 or 24? Yeah. Hoping to get to 24. Yeah. So we miss counting American species or yeah. Yeah's only u.s crotalus forms so it's basically what's in the uh the rubio book plus atricodatus but within crotalus you know cistrus being its own thing so i've only seen one of those at this point so that'll that'll be extra then all the u.s venomous so we have we have all these different approaches and numbers and all these different things but yes relative to 27 we're just talking about uh basically it's

the rubio book plus atricot at us the cane break being different than timber yeah well that'll keep you busy yeah yeah it was kind of uh an ersatz plan when since we weren't able to go to Australia. It was, hey, let's go find all the crotalists in the US. Fun little friendly competition that Rob came up with and he is leading the pack, so that's good. Right, well, yeah, and certainly

unsurprisingly, the one that wouldn't surprise you is I don't know, we'll see if that winds up being the last one or not. Certainly, we're going to try and put some work in to at least start our efforts towards seeing one of those. And then actually Northern Pacifics and then the Blessed Atrocodatus are the last ones, save Leplep. And Obscurus, right? Oh, that's what.

Well, that was the unstated, yes. Does it count if you find it in Mexico, even though it's an American fruit? Yeah, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, right? So I know the group had gone down there, the zoo group and all that. They were going down there this past weekend or whatever. And I tried to talk my way onto that. But my connection would have been sort of was already a second party invitee, that sort of thing. But I know that Chris and maybe and hope to get in a couple quick jaunts to start learning what that looks like and entails have you been down that way i'm not not uh i have a friend who uh lives in tucson and goes down there a lot. And he's really convinced me to try it out sometime.

So hopefully soon. Has he found them? He's not found Obscurus, no. But he's found some crazy stuff. He just pulled out a Alvarez eye. Sent me a picture of yesterday. Really? In the U.S.? No.

Oh, down in Mexico. In Mexico. That's cool. That would be neat to see those in the wild, for sure. Absolutely. We tend to miss them when we go down to southern Arizona. I miss that on uh the uh i know i still have to see that gila right so we've seen the utah jobs but not uh the arizona ones i've

only seen them that one time when i went out with frank uh reedus and saw like five of them in an afternoon right one of the year call was last. Well, when we were out there last time, they were saying, this is a Gila year. We're seeing them everywhere. They're all over the place. And we still missed out on seeing them. Well, I think we didn't target it or focus it where we would have. Well, we kind of did. I mean, in one of the areas.

Yeah. Sure. But I'm saying, okay, one morning. That's, you know, that's not much of the areas. Yeah, sure. But I would say, okay, one morning, that's, you know, that's not much of a targeting, but the funny thing to that point, right, is we have been to the place you're talking about where we could have seen

him several times. You know, we have put in time there and I sent Dr. Zach Lofman out that way. And sure enough, they found within five minutes. And then he just saw another one, you know this

possibly at the same spot i would imagine at the same spot given where the conference was and all that so maybe someday you know it's not always the ones you expect that are the last ones yeah he wasn't down for the lizard he was down there for some bug conference wasn't he dr yeah he was out in tucson or something yeah so maybe it was a different place i don't know i was imagining no i think it was done in two well did he yeah but that wouldn't be yeah but steve steve was down there for the lizard conference and he's out herp and he invited me he's like yeah i'll have a hotel room you can come stay with me and i'm like i don't have the time off i can't get off of work so it was a bummer yeah i would have liked to have been out there herping with him that's they or next week's venture you put the kibosh on that as well no yeah i mean west texas versus southern air i'd pick southern arizona oh yeah me too i've done west texas well

i absolutely i absolutely agree that being said there's stuff that you need to find you know is i guess the point becomes is it joy or a checklist? Because there are certainly things on the checklist that need to be done there. I got to remove that from my mind and go down again. But I don't know. My buddy Jared's got some land down there. So he invited me out there. So maybe that's a possibility, her some uh private land might be a better option i think that probably is more fun yeah certainly it's been interesting hearing the guys

talk about uh their adventure and i didn't mean to cut you off there um nathan in terms of where are you going to say you've been out to the you've we can talk about the west texas thing generally oh yeah i i did what uh west texas back in 2020 for a little over a week and it was great um but it doesn't compare to southeast arizona or yeah especially when it comes to the climate how comfortable it is but yeah absolutely when you're camping when you're camping so yeah for sure even when you're not camping yeah yeah you're gonna be out late and you're gonna be sleeping during the day when it's when it's hot super baked yeah are you finding finding relatively cool spots like you know some rock cover or something to to shelter in a cave or something where it's a little cooler or you just

bacon. Uh, then the campground kind of area, um, also was able to, you know, split a cabin with a friend, uh,

some of it, but yeah. Yeah. It's brutal out there. Yeah. Very high temps. Uh, I don't know.

That's it's, it is cool. I did, I did enjoy the trips for sure, but just seemed like a lot of driving a lot of crane in my neck and not seeing much. Yeah. I think what I need to satisfy, you know, my desire to go out there. I got the Altona, the Leopardus, the Kukulata.

Oh, nice. I like Kukulata a lot they're cool cool for especially for a tantilla right yeah yeah i mean if i were being greedy i'd go back for the liar snake but yeah trying to be realistic yeah we we got the um i really like the, oh my gosh, the Blacktails. The Arnatas. The Arnatas, yeah. Yeah, they're really nice. We got one of those, but, you know, the other two.

That's what it seemed like was going this week. I mean, shoot, I think they saw a dozen of them of different, I mean, some that look like Molos, you know, basically. And it seems like the upper Davis ones ones kind of have that look i guess so yeah the ones in the davis mountains they kind of have that more bronzy apple look um i really like the more lowland form um they're like platinum looking yeah yeah those are my favorite they're so cool yeah we the one one we saw was on the wrong side of private land fence. And so I reached over the fence and hooked it over to the common side and, yeah, embedded one of the barbed wire barbs in my arm. Totally worth it, especially since it was your arm.

Yeah. But luckily, yeah, he came over pretty well. And then we put him back on the private land after we were done photographing him. But beautiful snake. Yeah. I guess maybe I shouldn't be talking about that. It's probably technically illegal or something. Come find me, coppers. Yeah. Airspace violation. I didn't go on to the private land. I just reached over to the private land. Everything was returned as found. Yeah. But yeah, I'll, I'll make it out there again someday, I guess when I get more time off work, less trips. Yeah. All right. Well, um, we're going to chat about hybridization. And if it's just an evil, horrible practice in herpetoculture and people who do it should be shunned and mocked and pointed at, or if it's a potential tool for creating some interesting and useful pets. So does that sound like a reasonable way to frame it? Sounds good to me.

Okay. So we'll go ahead and, well, let's have you give just a little short introduction, kind of what got you into herpetoculture and what's your place in herpetoculture as you see it. Yeah, I'm Nathan. I've been keeping snakes since the moment my parents let me. I was about 12 years old when I got my first. What was your first pet snake? It was a corn snake, an antheristic corn snake. Had it for a couple months and it got out of its enclosure and never saw it again. Did that dissuade your parents from letting you have more you think it would they were smart it would have but um yeah but i was i was pretty deep into it real quick my second snake was actually a green tree python um yeah and then i was kind of hooked

on morelia ever since. You know, I have a lot of other stuff. I've had a lot of other stuff. But Morelia is kind of, you know, what I like. I have some green tree pythons now, some diamonds. I've got an inland from you, Justin. I've got a Brisbane coastal, a pair of breadline. I've got some random oddball stuff, too. I've got a leopard rat snake I'm trying to pair up.

And a big black milk snake. Okay. Yeah, I don't keep as much as I used to. I kind of move every year since I've graduated high school. So it kind of keeps me from breeding and, you know, having as big of a collection that I like, at least as far as breeding groups go. But one day I'll get there. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm also it's a double edged sword, i guess you know because if you if you're breeding stuff there's less time to go out herping so that's true yeah um i do enjoy uh field herping i'd say just as much as i enjoy keeping um i try to herp as much as i can around arkansas where i live um and i try to take at least one trip a year somewhere out of the state. Have you seen many of the herps of Arkansas?

Salamanders and stuff like that? I've seen, so my favorite thing to find is the ring salamander. I don't know if they're ambistoma. I think they're my favorite ambistoma yeah they're i think they're my favorite ambistoma whatever i'm really glad to have them where i live uh and they're really unique and you know we can find

them in the rains in october okay so yeah yeah that's awesome fall breeding salamander yeah yeah we have cool snakes too um i like to go out for mud snakes they're probably my favorite snake to target here and uh well that's behind atrox we get atrox out here and their ecology is a lot different than out west really yeah they they kind of act more similar to the timbers up northeast um you i usually go out in the fall and uh find them at their hibernacula over there so that's cool oh that's that's awesome yeah it sounds like you got some good uh spots out there are they uh high strung like the like out west or uh they're i don't really mess with them um usually i'm asking and i yeah i just leave them alone uh one of my friends actually did a

toxicology study on them and found that they were the ones in arkansas are considerably more hot than the ones at west interesting they get bigger too um they eat you know squirrels and rabbits out here so okay they get a decent size bigger than what you see out west okay they look a little different too but it's the ecology of them that i really find interesting and just how different it is they're like you know a mon like our version of montane here um pretty much just find them you know in the winters on south facing bluffs okay and in the summer just on the foothills of those bluffs so that's very cool yeah i love getting into the natural history and kind of just watching and observing the animals and seeing what they're doing yeah it's pretty cool especially if they if you've got them

in your you know backyard basically and get out and see them and it's always cool yeah it's nice to you know revisit the same ones every year too yeah for sure yeah yeah very cool all right well For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. All right. Well, we're happy to have you on here and looking forward to be here. Yeah. Looking forward to a good discussion. So, all right. Well, um, Rob and I'll flip a coin to see who, uh, gets to battle with you today. So go ahead and call it tails. It's tails. Wow. You're on a street. you're on a street you're on a street that is unreal i'll have to uh you know send chuck a message and let him know that it's possible well he had his streak too i remember he was winning about every toss and then it just came

down really hard yeah then he stopped to win again yeah Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of funny. All right. Fair enough. Well, I think I want to hear you, but I will interject as appropriate. So I will defer to you as the argumentative one with maybe helpful or unhelpful thoughts and insight for both sides. That's always my favorite. All right. Moderator it is. Okay, Nathan, go ahead and call it. Heads. Heads.

And it's heads. I'm the double loser this week. So, yeah, what do you think? You pro or con hybridization? I can go either way on this. I think I'm going to choose anti-hybridization. Okay. All right. So, hybridization is not great for

herpetoculture okay um and as the winner of the coin toss you get a either have me go first you can chuck me or you can go first yourself i will defer okay sounds good all right well um this topic is is fresh on my mind uh so i'll i'll lead with this one and it's a it's a pretty good one i think um i was just listening to our old buddy ron saint pierre um on the um trap talk network there's a new segment with uh davinson. He was talking about Blue Tongues Ginks with Ron and also Ron's significant other.

Heather. Thank you. My memory here is shot for names for sure. At least I remembered Ron, I guess. I would feel really bad if I couldn't remember his name. Speaking of which, we'll have him on in a couple of weeks. So that's exciting. Anyway, he was talking about their, they were talking about their Blue Tongue Projects because I think Heather kind of

spearheaded. She's kind of the, you know, done a lot with the Blue Tongues and Bearded Dragons and that kind of thing. So anyway, joint project, they got them. Ron seems to love the system, so he set up the caging and likes that kind of aspect of it and trying to make it work as a commercial success. But anyway, they kind of diverged, especially in the Blue Tongue world. Like crossing, mixing, you know, Northerns with easterns has kind of been taboo for the whole, you know, time of blue tongue skink breeding in the United States. So what they've kind of, what he coined the term as ulti-muts,

they're going to take the approach of just breeding everything, you know, whatever blue tongue, whatever has a blue tongue, they'll breed it into, you know, these projects. And so, and they've actually been the first ones to produce albinos in the U S using this method. So they bred the albino, which is in the Eastern blue tongue into northern blue tongues. And so these, I guess, hybrids or intergrades, I guess, however you want to look at those, I think they're subspecies of the same, skink oides.

So they would be intergrades, but breeding those two together. And then also including maybe some of the arangia stuff in there for different genetic traits, kind of ball pythoning the blue-tongued skinks. But successfully produced albinos, which, you know, people have been working with them for probably more than a decade or almost two decades now in the United States and nobody's produced anything from the, from the albino blue tongues. Now they're, uh, Roger Kramer over in, in Australia has kind of taken the same approach and has bred kind of really nice blue tongues, but mixing Easterns with Northerns and some, I don't know if he's included in any of the other species in Australia, but mainly easterns and northerns, but, and has had some really nice results. And same with Joe Ball, and he may have included some alpines in there, maybe he just has alpine morphs. But anyway,

you know, kind of the idea of hybrid vigor, when you cross two species, you get that sometimes more vigorous outcome, stronger offspring. I guess the classic example is the horse and the donkey, and you get a mule, which are taller and pretty robust and strong. So, I don't know, I guess that's kind of what I would lead with is that, you know, you can have some nice advantages when interbreeding different subspecies or species. through some crossing and hybridization. But when that hybrid vigor becomes so desirable or even a trend with something like blue tongues that we can't get anymore, at least of the ultra-alien ones, we may not be able to undo that if that becomes more popular than keeping the pure lines. If those fall out of favor

to these you know these crosses these hybrids um do you think that maybe those might be hard to get in the future or less attainable i mean that's a fair point and and i guess uh you know the argument could be made that that point may have already been crossed and before we knew it, you know, with intermixing different subspecies together. It's really hard, especially with the Australian stuff, to know if what you have is actually, you know, been kept kind of that subspecies or whatever. I think green tree pythons are a really good example of that where, you know, there was some kind of cryptic speciation there. They all look the same. So people just assumed, you know, a green tree python is a green tree python. And so they're breeding, you know, ruby acts and all the crazy, you know, different designers. And then we find out, oh, you know, they're actually different species. They're producing hybrids. So, of course, they're crazy patterns and colors

and all that kind of stuff that may come along with that. Some of us may not have been so cryptic. I think most people suspected. Right. But with the green tree pythons, thankfully, we're able to import those still. Like, yeah, without that, I don't think we would have really had pure green tree pythons. You know, if all we had was what we had, you know, I do think there are, you know, kind of a subset of, of individuals who do like.

Yeah. It seems to be shifting and, you know, I think whatever's going to go for more money is what's going to be what you're seeing the most of. But, you know, there's always those people that shun the money and go for the you know either the purity or the crazy mixing you know that kind of thing even if the the majority of the people are saying oh you're crazy you're insane how dare you mix an eastern with a northern blue tongue skink here you know that kind of thing yeah i i think where i stand on the hybridization thing truly is the more novel the hybrid, the less likely that that hybrid is going to end up, you know, encompassing the whole, you know, population, captive population. Yeah, muddying the waters. Right, right. captive population yeah um muddying the waters yeah right right so no one like a carpondro

um green tree python carpet python hybrid i actually produced a clutch several years ago yeah but and i thought they were really cool uh i still i would like to you know make another attempt at that um but i don't think i would do that before i ever bred you know an inland to a coastal or something like that you know just because it's less likely to end up uh you know dirtying the waters so to speak um especially when you throw in morphs into that like uh how many times has like axolotls for example critically endangered species um but the ones that we have in captivity are not pure axolotls they just uh bred a bunch of tiger salamanders to you know move their morphs over into the axolotl and now we kind of have a lost you know we we had our chance at having a pure species

in captivity but chasing morphs we kind of lost that that's interesting i did i did not know that as ed mcmahon would say but uh yeah that's that's uh crazy that uh they introduced genes from the tiger salamander into there. I always go back to the idea of, well, it's snakes in boxes. Nobody's going to use those axolotls to repopulate the wild or that kind of thing. So that's kind of, I guess, the fallback. And that may be the cry of the i guess the fallback and that that may be the cry of the hybridizer you know yeah yeah and this is a hard topic too yeah yeah this is a hard topic because i agree with you i would rather not yeah right but to me what i look for in my

captive snakes is i want a piece of wherever it came from and yeah you know in my box right so i kind of apply that to morphs as well um and to uh selective breeding even yeah like for example if you took a palmerston carpet a locality carpet python and you bred it uh so that its offspring eventually looked exactly like every other carpet python out there is it really a palmerston well i and that's the question i mean once you take it out of the wild and the selective pressures of that area is it a palmerston you know like right right same could and if you are choosing who it's breeding with you know you're keeping the nicest baby or whatever to to breed back to each other is it a is it a palmerston is it a good representation of that area and is it having the selective pressures on the pattern

and you know predation some of that selective pressure is great like more likely to take a mouse in captivity that's great oh yeah yeah but i like to i know that i said i went carpenter's a bit ago i still i mean that's true yeah i i still you know like the look of an inland carpet python that looks just like it came out of south australia yeah yeah that's that's true and and i think for as far as carpets go, inlands are probably the least variable of the different subspecies or species, however you want to look at them. You know, they tend to look, you know, once you see an inland, you see an inland, you know, they don't have a huge amount of variation, but there have been some unique genetic mutations or whatever you want to, you know, variants that have been found in the wild. I mean, obviously the silver peppers, you know, the most common one over there, but there was a thesis that was, you know, somebody did for their research was studying

inland carpets and they found this pink inland carpet. It's beautiful. I mean, it's just crazy looking. And you would look at that and go, oh, wow, you know, that's a mutation. That's a morph that I would want to work with, you know. So it's kind of a double-edged sword because, you know, once the silver peppers hit, then everybody wanted to mix silver pepper into every other mutation. So you want albino silver peppers and jag silver peppers and so then by nature of that you're mixing the different subspecies and i think morphs are probably more to blame for hybridization or integration than anything else you know most people are not just taking a wild caught uh you know producing borneo bad eaters or something somebody did it as a novelty

and because they heard maybe they integrate in the wild in some places or you know and i think others maybe for uh curiosity's sake like uh breeding a ball python to a woma python you know and producing those uh woma balls or whatever they call them. Yes. I think a lot of it is just, you know, a curiosity of, like for the novel hybrids, you know, like you would never think that two different genera, like a Aspidides and a Ball Python could reproduce and create fertile offspring. Oh, yeah.

Break the rules that you're told in school. Yeah. And not just a different genera, but like the most basal member of the python of day, which is all pythons with the most recently evolved in the womb of python. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. And then some of the offspring are fertile. You know, they can breed.

And I think that's kind of always been, you know, the idea behind hybrids is, you know, with mammals, a lot of hybrids are infertile, but that doesn't seem to be the case with reptiles. I mean, they may not be as strong. So I, you know, some of that hybrid vigor idea might not translate into reproductive viability and i think you know people have struggled with maybe some of the fertility of their hybrids um but you know they can still still breed but they're just the males are sterile maybe there have been a couple cases of proven fertility but uh yeah i the clutch of carponders that i produced um back when i was in high school actually i kept three for myself um they all ended up being male the sterile ones so i ended up moving those on one of them is actually in the carpet python book the new one

you look in the hybrid section okay um yeah i'm sure you know yeah it was yeah that one was my favorite it's like a navy blue color and yellow very cool looking snake for sure yeah um but the i think the sterility is you know kind of a blessing in some cases yeah i mean that would make it easier than it would right you know then it would be and and almost like a designer, you know, where they're not going to breed it. So it's not going to muddy the waters. It would be kind of nice if all hybrids or integrates were sterile because then they could make these crazy morphs. But then that would be the end of it. You know, then I guess then people would have to buy the wild type or the, you know, the anyway.

Yeah. So, I mean, I, I get it, you know, there is kind of a supply demand thing, but at the same time, I mean, if you're constantly chasing the dollar and you're not working with what you love, I think you're missing some of the point, you know what I mean? Like I, I mean, that kind of goes against my argument a little bit but yeah yeah even you know zoos sometimes can be guilty of you know this hybridization and like for the sake of genetic diversity in their case um not morphs but for genetic diversity uh there was some i don't remember which zoo,

which zookeeper I was talking to, but they had some reticulated pythons. And for the sake of genetic diversity, they were breeding, you know, manlins to dwarf, you know, the dwarf insular type. And then they found out that it's looking like, uh, it's going to be its own subspecies, you know, Malaya python reticulator championis. Um, and now they had this like scrap the project and, you know, now these are kind of useless. Yeah. Kind of happens a lot, I think. Um,

yeah. And that's, you know's you know taxonomy can can play havoc with with those kind of things you know when it's hard to find the line between you know preserving the form and you know maintaining that genetic genetic diversity and especially when we're limited with some things you know and i i think that the retics are a great example of that where, you know, they were mixed and matched to produce morphs. And then it became very difficult to find true mainland forms. And once they stopped allowing imports, then it was kind of, you know, a big mess. And it was kind of over at that point to some extent.

There are a handful of people keeping those alive. Some of them have already been lost, but thankfully there are a handful of people that are keeping those alive. Yep. So there, there definitely is, you know, both sides to it. But again, you know, I think if, if, you know, if you ask 99% of people who keep reptiles are not keeping them and allowing natural selection and those kind of things. They want to have the prettiest, nicest looking snake that they we just want something nice looking and and uh and potentially something that's worth a lot of money so you know people are that's right are kind of selling that their their morals for that pretty snake you know yeah some of these carpet python hybrid have have been popping up in australia oh yeah mind-blowing some of these albinos and

the thing is it almost tempted me to breed an inland into an albino just because they're so nice looking but i just can't call it an albino inland no i would not i think that's kind of false representation yeah yeah but i mean if you if it's an albino inland then it's yeah pretty obvious that they did that crossing. But yeah, they're not explicitly saying that. Yeah. Yeah, I think one of the nicest carpet pythons I've seen has been like a seven-way cross with diamond jungle, inland, coastal, everything in it mixed all around. And it was gorgeous.

Some of its siblings, maybe not so much you know and i think some of those cream jags yeah like the brattle stonewashed tags yeah don't i'm impressively impressive yeah don patterson just hatched out a crazy clutch of really nice uh looking animals and and you know if you want a beautiful pet, there you go. I mean, you're not going to find much more now. I think the thing that kind of, and again, this kind of goes against my argument a little bit, but once people start crossing and making these crazy, beautiful things, sometimes the prices go up where it makes it look like more desirable than it really is, you know, where, where people are excited about it for a

little while, but then the, the novelty wears off after a year or two, and then you're just left with, you know, a bunch of crosses that nobody wants or cares about. And if you can't get back to that original, um, you know, subspecies or species or whatever you're looking at, then that can be a little sad. Right. Yeah. As far as hybrid vigor goes, it kind of reminds me of, you know, I keep or I grew into penthes, tropical pitcher plants in Southeast Asia. Okay. indipendent these um tropical pitcher plants from southeast asia okay um and their the community is

kind of uh split the same way our community is a lot of people are uh super into you know the pure species as they are found in nature and a lot of people are into the hybrids and you can you know make some crazy looking stuff stuff and uh it's a lot easier to keep like some of the pure species have some really high maintenance needs like you got to have an ac on them at night and stuff like that um but the vigor like is it you know like some of these most most of these, uh, hybrids you can keep just as a houseplant.

Yes. Pure species. You can't. Um, and you kind of see that say I'm a Falconer as well. Um, I'm going to purchase Falconer and cool. I'll just finish up my first year.

And a lot of these guys around me who fly Falcons are flying hybrid Falcons, you know, Peregrine, uh, Saker hybrids or pure falcon hybrids um it's because they tend to make better falconry birds i guess it's the same with like you know leopard geckos in captivity uh maybe i've never kept a pure species pure form of leopard gecko but i'd imagine they probably are a little bit more bulletproof just because all that hybrid vigor going on yeah um but and it

seems like i mean there is kind of a push for people to bring back the and i mean this is again another case of of taxonomy strikes again where you know all of a sudden we find out all these things we've been breeding together are actually different species and so now there's a push to get all the pure you know species from from the wild uh that can be very difficult in a lot of instances but you know with the help of europe, we can make anything happen. It seems right. But yeah, I would love a pair of, uh,

Iranian leopard geckos. Uh, it's, I, I thought, you know, you couldn't really get stuff like that. And,

you know, seeing that stuff pop on, pop up, pop up on my feed, uh, but I can get locality leopard geckos from Iran is, you know, got to have that.

So pretty cool. Yeah, absolutely. I want to go see him in Iran. I want to go to Iran. Right. That would be so cool to, to get out there and try to find some of those spider tail,

the vipers too, while you're at it. Your Arachnoides. Yeah. Yeah. They're, they're on right yeah iraq iraq seems to have some nice stuff too but i i met an iranian iranian iranian guy and uh really cool guy but yeah he was like oh yeah i if i was welcome in my country i'd take you out he he's not going back to his country either. So he's like, they're a little bit, a little bit, uh, on the fanatical side and in my town. So there was a few years ago, there was, there was some hope that surfers might be able to make it out there.

Yeah. Well, there've been a few groups that have gone out and found them in the wild that, um, recently. Yeah. You just need a non u.s passport is basically that yeah yeah i don't think you can go there if you're a u.s citizen like you're not allowed right yeah which is kind of sad i don't know but that's the way the world is i guess yeah they don't want to deal with with uh consequences if worst case scenario happens, I guess. I'm not sure we do either, but nevertheless. True. Very true. I did see a story about a woman who biked across Iraq and relied.

She didn't speak the language. She was from France. She didn't speak Iraqi, and she rode her bike across the country and just relied on the niceness of people. And they would take her in and feed her and let her stay at their house. And then, you know, warn her about the dangerous areas and off she'd go again. But yeah, she made it all the way across Iraq. I wonder if she found any snakes. Yeah, right. I don't think she was looking for those. She was looking for kind people, but I guess she found them. But you know, I mean, majority of people are pretty, pretty good. It's just the, you know, the 1% or, you know, the, the bad, bad actors out there if you just happen to cross paths with them. that's uh neither here nor there yeah but uh yeah that would be cool to see uh see the difference piece now the uh kind of the opposite way is this uh anteresia paper that sunk uh stimson eye into children eye which is pretty ridiculous in my opinion uh other than maybe some of the stuff

from queensland you know that was probably warranted i'm not too familiar with that paper i know there's some strong feelings about it i'll have to educate myself on that some of the stuff from Queensland, you know, that was probably warranted. I'm not too familiar with that paper. I know there are some strong feelings about it. I'll have to educate myself on that. But I do see people, people showing pictures of Stimpsons and calling them children's and all this kind of stuff. I'm like, come on guys, we don't have to accept this. Did that same paper identify the Papuan version as its own species as well? Yeah.

Which is even more ludicrous. I mean, they were connected, what, 5,000 years ago? Yeah. And nothing else seems to be different between the two. Yeah. You know, I think I'll, well, if I can bring up another topic, I guess, in favor do occur and kind of introduce new genes, new genetics into a population. I think one of the famous examples of that is, I can't remember the species, but there's two species, I believe in New Mexico, when they hybridize, they create a parthenogenic population.

Oh, the whiptail? Yeah. Did I say whiptails? Anyway, yeah, those whiptails will hybridize and produce a parthenogenic colony, which is kind of interesting, you know, a weird thing that you wouldn't anticipate as an outcome um i mean our our own species is a good example of you know different uh different species kind of coming in and going out and and if you look in your own dna you might find several different uh you know homo species so it's kind of an interesting concept hybridization as a facet of evolution kind of always fascinated me. But the question is, can you copy that in captivity?

Well, yeah, that's definitely a fair question. Yeah, right. Even like intergrades, like for two species, you know, overlap and range and that overlap part of that thin diagram you know it becomes just a kind of a gradient you know intergrade means between grades so these hybrids of varying degree um you can't take one species or one member of each you know respective species and create that same thing in captivity at least in one generation um and i i seem to see a lot of people think that oh it's like a diamond and a coastal they breed in the in the wild so i can just

create the same thing by breeding this probably not the same species coastal the diamond python and end up with the same thing they're using northern coastals which are technically jungles right right yeah um but you know i i think if if you were to breed a brisbane with a diamond and you kept some of those offspring and bred those back to each other, you know, you'd probably end up with something similar to the rainforest diamonds or whatever they call the intergrades. And, you know, in the intergrade zone, it's not necessarily coastals waiting to find diamonds. It's the intergrades breeding with the intergrades and kind of strengthening that intermixing. And I think the the fact that there is an integrate probably represents that diamonds and coastals are probably different species i i would go so far to say you know if if

you have a noticeable integrate zone that probably denotes that there are two different species um that and the genetics seem to back that up a bit even though nobody wants to really go down that road right yeah and this doesn't uh help my points at all but it would probably help the genetic diversity of brisbans and yeah yeah it stays so yeah that's true i mean yeah the the how how diverse brisbans are in Brisbane, you know, there's just so many different looks. And we've kind of refined it to say this is what Brisbane's look like. You know, we want that. Yeah. And from what I understand, there's been some semi-serious inbreeding depression of Brisbane's.

Yeah. In our American population. Yeah. Well, and again, we did in brisbane that looked exactly like our textbook brisbane so it's not to say that they're not there in the same way that the gelatins we saw one with the double railroad track with the the prototype look so it's not that our phenotype is wrong it's maybe that we've fixed the phenotype on some of this stuff right but if we had a bunch of gelatins where they come out they came out not looking like the gelatins that we've seen before, would you think that they're pure gelatins? Oh, the other one we saw looked like Eric's citrus tigers. I mean, it was wild. It was light purple.

And yeah, this is totally. So if a gelatin that looked like a citrus tiger would in the united states would you say that that's it could be pure i would say that other people having seen one in the wild that looked just like that other people i'm sure would be highly skeptical to the kind of the point of farce probably yeah well i would be skeptical just because the ones that we have don't look like that so it's either i think i would be skeptical just because the ones that we have don't look like that so it's either i think you would just ask us about our trip you'd be like wait when did when did you go when did this come into your collection yeah that's that's uh i mean i think that's fair i mean you know from what was collected and what we have in captivity i know that uh a lot of the stuff that did have locality i mean you've also got the other side of like

it's illegal and so you know they weren't sharing that information like oh i collected this on the road to you know tully gorge or whatever you know they they weren't giving untrustable source exactly and so you you know they they uh and and then when jungles were all the rage and they were really or whatever, you know, and, and the people who were buying and breeding only wanted those, you know, nice yellow and black ones. And I mean, I still love a really nice yellow and black jungle car, but don't get me wrong. Like that's my favorite, uh, probably I would say my favorite snake if my, uh, uh, feet were held to the fire, but, um, I, I love black but I love black and yellow jungles. And I've seen a jungle in the wild that was very nice black and yellow,

just a beautiful snake. So, I mean, they happen. But, yeah, once we follow that popularity, we limit what we can do with them and it matches the wild type less and less and less. Like you said, you know, if you if you keep inbreeding and breeding for a certain trait, it's really difficult to go back and try to get a different trait. Because then, you know, all of a sudden, oh, black and yellow jungles, everybody has them. Nobody cares. So the price goes down. So then nobody wants to produce those. Oh,, oh, black and yellow jungles, everybody has them. Nobody cares. So the price goes down. So then nobody wants to produce those. Oh, now everybody wants black and white jungles.

And so now we're going to, you know, line breed until we get a black and white jungle. And now that's the big popular thing. And maybe some of the ancestry of the founders was a little questionable. You know, maybe. I don't know. And so, you know, we end up with some really nice looking snakes. But again, what does that represent? You know, that does that represent a locality? Probably not. Like, you know, like Rob said, some will look like that. Others will not, you know, and, and if we don't have that full diversity, do we actually have the, you know, the real thing. Once you take it out of the wild, it kind of technically ceases to be that thing because it doesn't have the natural selection, the natural pressures, the natural cycles, all that kind of stuff. The gut, you know,

this is a weird thing. I mean, this is kind of out there a little bit, but I mean, our gut contents shape a lot of what's going on, you know, with, with our, uh, our form and function and, uh, and our vigor to, to say, you know, to put it, to put it that way. So, I mean, are you giving your jungle, uh, dirt from Australia and, you know, is it getting the correct, uh, microbiome in its gut. Of course not. You know, so we definitely lose something when we take something into captivity. And if you really want to appreciate a wild jungle, you just got to fly to Australia and go watch them in the wild. I mean, that's kind of the bottom line, I think.

It really comes down to why you want to have what you have you know like you you want a pure whatever so that you can say it's pure or that you know it looks like something that you could find in the wild yeah um that would be it for me is i want to be able to imagine that that's a wild snake at least based on its morphology um but well once you start adding you know hybrid hybridization in there or morphs or extreme selective breeding that's where you kind of lose me a little bit yeah and then fair enough i mean i i think there was that opportunity a few few years back to get all the different localities of jungle carpets. There were Tully's available and Palmerston's available and Rockhampton's and all sorts of different

localities that came in from Europe. And I don't see a lot of those today. I don't see people advertising, you know, they're pure Rockhampton's. And frankly, some of them look just like a wild jungle. You know, they looked like a typical jungle that you'd see out in the wild that are not bright yellow and black and, you know, are kind of muddy and, and, uh, might be a little bitey or, or pissy, you know? So, you know, you can, you can find those, but people just, they didn't take off because they weren't bright yellow and black and they weren't pretty to look at. And so people kind of left them by the wayside, which, you know, again, speaks to our need for pretty snakes in boxes and not necessarily, you know, what's natural or what's wild type. Now that's not to say nobody produces them because there are some people still working with those wild and natural forms and locality forms, but they might be pushing them to have a

bolder stripe or to have more yellow or more white or whatever, you know, the gelatins, like, you know, we're not pushing for a gelatin to look like a citrus tiger. We're pushing for a gelatin to be, you know, that black and white, cool looking, you know, railroad track animal. So that's, uh, that's the, the challenge I guess, is you're going to have a hard time getting people, um, behind you in the purity, uh, the strictly, you know, and frankly, if you really wanted to do it that way, you probably should just throw a group into a very large outbuilding, you know, a 40 foot building and just let them do what they do and breed with who they want to breed with and throw some predators in there. Maybe not go there at the very least have like a like what they do with you know dog breeds or horse breeds just have a standard and then look and see what conforms to that standard um maybe try to preserve at least the morphology bit of it i don't know well we kind of do that anyway we say

this is what a gelatin should look like you know right because that's our limited experience of what gelatins look like from what was imported into europe and what was line bred and what we got in the end you know or what the australians showed off as a really nice gelatin became the archetype and that's what we want to conform to yeah i do think there was kind of a i think it was nick a missed opportunity with uh his ivory jungle project where he was trying to introduce new blood to his ivory jungle project and uh i think if you just would have put a gelatin jungle in there it wouldn't have set him back as much with the with the yellow but yeah uh of course don't call them gelatin jungles well i i found out too there's one area that was really great to herp in uh cans they actually

shut down um they put a gate on the road last last time i was in australia i was trying to go herp there and like there's a gate there now i'm like what the heck i just want to go herping and uh so we just went back to the hotel because that was the best spot you know and uh i found out that the fish and wildlife people in australia would put any confiscated jungles they just release them on that road and so the jungles you would see there would be from all over, you know, jungle territory where they would confiscate them from people trying to sneak them out of the country or whatever. And so, you know, even that spot is not a locality because it's just all the localities being thrown

into that one area. I always had kind of the theory that if you took a coastal, you know, and brought it up into the rainforests of Northern Australia and put it in a pad a coastal, you know, and brought it up into the rainforests of Northern Australia and put it in a paddock out, you know, fenced in area, then you'd probably wind up with a bunch of jungles after a while, you know, just that selective pressure to look that way. So, yeah, it's an interesting thing. You know, we want to label, we want to put things in boxes, we want to put things in boxes we want to put things in categories you know so it becomes very difficult for us to kind of see species as kind of a fluid you know like it right kind of ebbs and flows over time and now not human lifespan so of course we

want to you know have a label for something while we're alive, but that label could easily change in the next thousand, ten thousand, whatever years. Right. Yeah. Like those intergrades, you know, those rainforest diamonds. Yeah. They don't have to you don't have to justify their existence by saying they're, you know, they're intergrades or whatever. They just are what they are as a result of nature yeah exactly despite there being what we call pure populations to their northern self yeah it's you know it's just us trying to put a label on things and those not falling into what we consider our labels so yeah and going back to the jungle example if nick wanted to put gelatins in his ivories he he'd actually be introducing variegata.

I guess that's true. We forgot about that. The second edition. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter if they don't look anything like what they do in the wild. Yeah, exactly. Again, it's snakes in boxes. So to get hung up on these things is, you know, some, sometimes counterproductive, but sometimes has, has definitely, uh, has, has a valid point and probably, uh, I mean,

there, there needs to be some, some folks from both sides. And I think too, you know, anytime you, I think this is kind of a cautionary tale. Anytime I've chased the moor for the money or whatever, it usually hasn't worked out great and I haven't enjoyed it as much. Because then you have the idea like, okay, I bought this animal for X amount of dollars and I want to recoup that investment. And so, you know, then you're stressed about, I got to produce these and I got to make these. And, you know, my, my $10,000 pair of, uh, Het albino, um, Darwin's, um, finally produced like eight years after I bought them and I sold the babies for a whopping, you know, $300. So, you know, I did not recoup my investment. So, you know, that stress and the, all that kind of stuff that went along with that, you know, just, and, and one, one clutch and that was it, you know, I did hold back a couple albinos so I could prove that I did something with that pair, but yeah, it's not, not a great return on

investment. So I would, I would not tend to recommend looking at snakes as investments, look at them as living creatures that, you know, can be wonderful and fascinating in captivity. And I don't have anything against people keeping snakes in cages as long as their needs are met and they're, you know, giving them the best life they can give them and taking care of them and they're excited about them and all that kind of thing. So, and I think nothing can depress you more than spending a lot of money and then having that not pan out or, you know, that kind of thing. And, uh, yeah, a lot of people, yeah, exactly. And just, uh,

let them squall squander, you know, or let them, uh, so yeah, that's, that's always hard to mix living things with dollar dollar amounts i don't know i think everybody should have a project that is worthless in regards to monetary value but they find pure joy in i think mine are the shovel nose snakes i love shovel nose snakes they're such cool little snakes that will never, I mean, they are somewhat popular. I think people like them, but I just want to keep them to have a cool snake. You know, I'm not looking to be the next Cyanactus breeder, but they're beautiful animals and I really enjoy how they interact with me and how they, you know, chase their crickets around or their roaches around.

Really fun snakes. Well, have we exhausted it? You got any more points to bring up? Rob, you got anything to add? The only thing that has jumped out to my mind right that i always think about in this context and nathan i think you had hit on this previously is just sort of the extent to which someone's sort of truth in labeling doesn't really hold any water down the road right so that i think about it in the context of leonis variable kingsnakes and the idea that with a couple

notable exceptions if you just bought a random variable kingsnakes and the idea that with a couple notable exceptions if you just bought a random variable kingsnake based on the variability that they naturally have and the proclivity from the 80s when mexico largely shut down to the commercial export of reptiles like you could have no confidence that that actually is purely a leonis or therai animal at this point if you just bought a random one, it's far more likely than not that there's something else in the mix. You know, if you're talking about 30-year captive lineage animals, that no matter what it looks like, that's probably true with like a couple notable exceptions that were associated with particular confiscations or,

you know, locale, highly, highly detailed and maybe only a couple of generations as opposed to just a generic, if you went to any reptile show and you see a variable kingsnake there, chances are much better than not that that is not, that would not align genetically with a wild variable kingsnake. Whether that actually matters, that's an entirely separate question. It might be solely within sort of the mindset and mentality of you as a keeper, but I think that's undeniably true. Certainly carpets are kind of in that same vein, particularly coastals, I would imagine, you know, kind of in that same vein. But that was the only thing you'd hit on that, but I really wanted to kind of hammer that home that I think that's absolutely true. So the idea of, oh, well, I'm going to be honest about what I'm doing.

The second it leaves your hands, that's totally meaningless. And there have been several people who have ideated around specific examples of saying, oh, I did that. Nick even, right? I think Nick, when he was talking, that new podcast that's out. I don't know, Justin, if you've listened to it. Eric was just on there. I don't know the fella's name.

It's something like the Idiot and the Snake Keepers. I'll look it up here in the interim. I'll find it, and then we can give it a proper mention here at the end before we log off. But I think Nick himself on there was like, oh, the first clutch of carpets that he had bred was a diamond coastal integrate or something and he he sold the surplus to a pet shop and then it had gone out as a pet and wound up being returned to the pet shop point was you know nine years down the track he saw one of those animals recognized it as being oh this went to a pet home and then was brought back because the person moved or whatever and it was being sold as i think a jungle you know it wasn't any of those things you know so um and he had he was talking about he had this whole write-up and they had posted it you know there's the whole thing on the cages when they saw when he's brought him in and

sold him this whole thing yeah you know well you can imagine go listen for yourself it's a nick story it took a long time um but uh yeah I'll look it up and we'll mention it. But yeah, there's just there's no no utility to that, especially if we're talking about decades later, you know, all all this many days down the track. It's essentially it might not matter beyond sort of the will of interest and mindset of you as a given keeper but just there's it's farcical to pretend that that actually will be that information will be retained yeah right and even just you know keeping track of locality and making sure all your stuff is true to locality, whatever that means, you know, due to potential future taxonomic, you know, revision. That's not going to be enough sometimes, you know, because you got to trust someone.

Yeah, it becomes a tricky thing. But I mean, as long as you're doing your due diligence and you keep track of, you know, the information you have and you honestly represent it, um, regardless of, I think at least people can kind of have the, I don't know, peace of mind that I'm working, I'm working with this, uh, pure subspecies or this pure species. And it turns out down the road not to be the case. And you have to go back and find everybody you sold the snake to and say actually that was you know an integrator across between

these different localities um yeah that story with the next carpet pythons reminded me of a there was a scrub carpet hybrid that i saw on facebook a long time ago um and then several years after that i saw on fauna there was a bolin's carpet hybrid it was the exact same snake and it was supposed to be a i think a southern scrub crossed with the carpet at first and then suddenly it was a bolin's hybrid yeah it was was it around the same time that that bolin's carpet hybrid was produced so they went oh they're asking eight thousand dollars for that thing i'm gonna try to do the same thing yeah i don't think it was that long ago i think it was just uh maybe five years ago or so that it popped up on fauna some of those bolin's carpet pythons uh actually like you've probably seen

i think tom kiogan's photos of them yeah there was one that i saw that actually looked phenomenal i'll have to throw a picture up on the discord or something but uh they use an aryan giant for that mix and this one makes you wonder what if they used a nice jungle because it was that good looking but not sure yeah one of those rather have pure bolins but yeah well i think that was kind of an act of desperation like my bolins aren't breeding with each other so is it because the males like we learned that the males are they can reproduce this time yeah they're fertile we're missing something in their cycling or when we're introducing them or how many males we're using or

whatever you know right i think i saw i saw a bullens clutch this last week somebody produced some bullens i can't remember yeah i think over in europe somewhere yeah yeah so i mean people are people are hitting on it occasionally it just seems that i guess the the german fellow has produced them over subsequent years but not many people have figured them out or gotten a terrible pair. Yeah, there are a couple guys out in the Midwest who seem to have it figured out, at least from what I can tell. I have my suspicions, but I'm just some wannabe Bowens keeper. Yeah. So I did find it the,

so it's both on YouTube and findable on a podcast app, which is very important if not essential to calling something a podcast. It's seemingly the expert and the idiot snake boy, B O I. But on, if you look it up, the expert and the idiot snake boy, B O I. Uh, but on, if you look it up, the expert and the idiot hash, uh, uh, hyphen,

a reptile podcast. So Eric was on there. Matt Minitolo has been on there. I heard that one. I heard the one with Nick, uh, Steve Cush was on there. Yeah.

So a handful of different ones, but, uh, all right, I'll check it out. Check it out. It's always good to see new podcasts coming on, especially if they're getting good guests like that, right?

Absolutely. Yeah. Well, yeah, I think this has been a good discussion and definitely some good topics on both sides. So we'll have to think of, if you think of any other things we missed on, let us know and yeah, we can,

we'll do maybe we'll rehash it out. There you go. All right. Well, where can people find you? I'm on Facebook. I don't really post anywhere, but if you search my name,

I'll come up. Okay. Um, more of a lurker. Um, I always have the idea that I'm going to, you know, into that, but never, never do. So, but okay. Well, if you want to reach out again, I don't know why you'd want to, but well, I mean, uh, you know, chat with you more about some of your ideas or talk about herping with you or something i mean yeah it's been it's been a pleasure to chat with you on here so yeah thanks for thanks for coming on and thanks for the idea we appreciate it a lot

um i don't know if either of you seen anything really cool this week in in herpetoculture um i mean i i brought up uh uh, Ron's and Heather's success with the albino blue tongues. That's, it's pretty, pretty cool. Um, my buddy, uh, John Felicity, I think that's how I pronounce his last name. Um, he produced, uh, some shingleback skinks. Um. Really cool stuff. I think he got a couple females, got babies from a couple of his aspers. Really awesome looking shingleback. That guy's, I don't know, he put out a video with, a little while back. Man, I'm so bad with names.

I don't know what's wrong with me. But anyway, he was on YouTube. With Gary? Yeah, with Gary Giovanna. Sorry, Gary. But yeah, really cool setups that he's got. And apparently they're working out for him out in New Jersey. So next time I go to Carpet Fest, I'm going to have to go visit him.

Yeah. So I think, um, when Eric, Matt and Owen went up to Keith's place that he was there and so they were chatting with him on those photos and stuff. Yeah. So as you were saying that, I was like, well, how many people could possibly have produced shingle backs in the last six weeks? It's gotta be the same guy. Oh yeah. And he knows Keith pretty well. He was like, Oh, I'm, I'm jealous. You get to go herp with Keith in Australia. So that's pretty cool. He's a, he's super nice guy. Really a great guy. I got to meet him at Tinley and I kept bringing, I'd find out somebody, Oh, I breed shinglebacks here. You got to come meet this guy. So, but yeah, he's a, he's a really nice, uh, nice guy. guy so one of the one of the good up-and-comers for sure but yeah he's he's sunk a lot of money and effort and time into these uh skinks so yeah he'll

he'll definitely be glad it's coming up for him much i know yeah me too because that was a significant investment to get pairs of shinglebacks, you know, and to have that work out is just really exciting to see. So well done, John, and congratulations. Yeah. Anything else cool out there? Yeah, not a very fun species at all. Yeah, right. That's nice to see them being produced, though. That's one species I'd love to work with. I mean, when we were in South Australia last October, we saw 40 of them.

I mean, they were everywhere. It's so incredible to think these things that, you know, have one or two babies every couple of years are so common and just everywhere. You know, it's amazing. I guess they just must have a long lifespan and produce for a long time because um there was no shortage of them in south australia in october it was really cool and the diversity oh my gosh i would love to have worked with worked with some of those yeah yeah something interesting i saw was a it was ghanoma margaritiferas. Is that what they're called? There were some listed available in the United States, or at least in Canada, I think.

Interesting. I don't know my Ganyosoma very well that's a well so those are a weird one yeah and as far i mean as of a handful of years ago i'd frame that as never having been in the u.s so yeah that's super interesting where are they from borneo borneo okay there's not imports from borneo or are there not commonly okay i mean it's sort of been on and off and very limited. But yeah, I mean, part of it is wild. True Ghanis don't generally haven't done well. I mean, there's been success, but only, you know, as a war of attrition against, you know, being brought in to be fed to other snakes and stuff like that over time.

Yeah. And the Ghani somoma are the Asian rat snakes? Yeah. Marguerite autumn. They are the, they're the third rail, Justin. If you, I don't think you want to start that right now. Oh, that's right. I know your strong feelings really yeah yeah cool um i don't know i i listened to i really enjoyed that episode on trap talk with david levinson and ron and heather that was really a good episode and um of course i think we mentioned dan Daniel Natush and his interviews with Kush.

Stephen Kush's podcast, yeah. Yeah. Want me to listen to that? Yeah. It's really good. There's some wildly interesting bits that he goes into there, particularly around a half hour in. I know I sent it to several people and truly wild stuff that you would only learn by looking at by cutting open snakes basically but uh yeah super super interesting

so definitely worth the listen i definitely listened what four four different times decreasing my podcast speed as i went let me listen to that again hold. Let me listen to that again. Hold on. Let me listen to that again. And I still need to listen to it again. So there's a lot there. Yeah, that'd be cool to have Daniel on and see if we could fight with him a bit on it, challenge some of his... Prove into that a little bit further. It was super interesting. I would be very interested in seeing that published i mean he should uh i mean that's doesn't seem to be a

well-known thing as far as i've ever heard i'm not familiar with it i've never run across that at all so that's a pretty significant finding which would be really uh interesting to to have uh to expand our knowledge absolutely i'll really have to listen to it to have, uh, to expand our knowledge. I'll really have to listen to it to know what you guys are talking about. Yeah, that was on, yeah. Cush's corner on the trap talk network. And, um, he, he also did an interview with, uh, with, um, oh my gosh, Brian and, and, um, who's the main trap? I'm so bad. I'm sorry. Anyway, he was on, on there as well. Um, okay. With MJ, with MJ. Yeah. I don't know why I can't think of any

names tonight, but so yeah, it was, uh, good to hear him, you know, talking about scrubs as well as green tree pythons. And, I mean, I'd heard, I mean, he's been on a few podcasts. Right, he's been on a handful of things. Yeah, he was just on Snake Talk not that long ago, which was good as well. It was kind of fun to hear Ryan kind of challenge some of his ideas or, you know, him challenging Ryan on some of Ryan's ideas or, you know, giving each other a hard time. That does sound kind of fun. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's worth a listen for sure.

Okay. Fair enough. All right. Well, um, there's nothing else to add. Uh, we'll thank you guys for listening and thanks to Eric and Owen and really check out Morelli Python radio.net. Yeah. I think that's what it is, but yeah. Really pythons.com. I'm sure one of those will work. So yeah. If you don't know about them, then you're probably not listening to this. So yeah, I sure as a rat. Yeah.

Always. I mean, Eric's got to be the nicest guy in the world and no one's pretty special himself i really uh enjoy own as well so all right well thanks for listening and we'll catch you again next time