Reptile Fight Club - Is iNat Detrimental to Herp Populations?

Episode Date: August 2, 2024

In this episode, Justin and Rob tackle the topic of is iNat detrimental to herp populations?Who 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. I'm your host, Justin Julander. And with me, as always, Mr. Rob Stone. How are you doing? I'm great. How are you? Well, I've got COVID, but other than that, I'm doing all right. Recovering and almost back to work. So, you know, but I guess, I guess I'd say it was worth it because we had a really nice trip and one of my siblings brought it with them on the trip.

And so we contracted it. So I didn't have, I wasn't sick on the trip. So that was nice. But I guess I might talk a little bit about the trip because the first couple of days were. Absolutely. Yeah. Oh, man. So first off, I have a bone to pick with the tin flipping boys over there. They're flipping tin guys. So I listened to their Florida episode. So I was prepared for like World War Three.

And, you know, they said somewhere in there that you're not allowed to use lights in the everglades or flashlights yeah they were super weirded out yeah yeah and and i talked to somebody who was like a general naturalist that were on one spot and he's like oh no you can use lights all you want so i didn't bring any headlamps or anything and so i had to go to the walmart and spend 50 bucks on a flashlight you know it's like i didn't i didn't want to do this but uh yeah so anyway you sure you weren't just nicking it and said oh yeah no no because i i i was specifically gonna bring him but i heard those guys say it's not allowed in the everglades but then these local naturalists from florida said oh yeah you can do whatever you you're fine and and every every

person we saw out there had a headlamp or a flashlight or something. So I don't know, maybe it's further North that they are strict about that. And I don't, we didn't run into any, uh, any weird people or wildlife officers or yeah, anything. It was actually the herpers we did interact with were just young, kind of young herpers that were enthusiastic and friendly and like helped us, like showed us a couple of things that they found, you know, so it was, it was kind of, it was a great experience. So I don't know what you tin flipping guys are talking about, but I had a very pleasant experience in Florida, much different than Rob has experienced, I think too. And, uh, but yeah, so we, we took a red eye, which, you know, has its pros and cons

for sure. But, um, so we got there at like six in the morning and we couldn't check into our hotel until like three or four. So we just drove straight out to the Everglades and we were, uh, we, we were based in Miami where we were going on a cruise with my family. And so we were in the Miami area and we wanted to kind of get acclimated a couple of days before. And so we were hanging out. Uh, so we just drove to the Everglades and went down to the very Southern part of Florida through the, through the park, um, that Southern part of the park. And, um, I mean, during the day it was mostly birding and we did do a couple of trails and it just got bit by mosquitoes and other horse flies and stuff. So that wasn't very pleasant, but we did have the forethought to stop off at Walmart and get some bug spray and some other bug spray and sunscreen.

So we didn't have to try to bring that with us. So, um, but yeah, we, we, uh, saw, you know, some really cool birds and, and, uh, some, some neat stuff. I got a few more lifers on my bird list, uh, down there, although I missed a couple, uh, really cool ones that you could find down there. But anyway, we get down to, um, Flamingo where there's this boat ramp. That's, you know, pretty, uh, pretty good spot for seeing crocodiles. And so there's this boat ramp that's, you know, pretty, pretty good spot for seeing crocodiles. And so there's actually a boat tour that goes out of there to, you know, and you can see crocs on the tour and stuff. Careful, you might be giving it away. Oh, I might be.

It's, it's, you know, it's about the. I mean, there's only a tour industry around it, but you might be giving it away. And I mean, I don't know if you want to go try to catch a croc or something, you know, then that's on you. But we get to the boat ramp in the morning and we go out to see if we can see any crocs. And I see this like round disc shaped thing coming out of the water, this gray disc thing. And I'm like, is that a ray or some kind of, you know, and, uh, it was manatees. There were like a half a dozen manatees swimming around in this little bay, saltwater, you know, bay. And, uh, they were going up to this pipe and drinking fresh water out of the pipe. So they were just like six feet

below us, um, drinking water. It was so cool. And I'd never seen manatees in the wild. So that I was pretty stoked about that. So we sat and watched those for, for quite a while. Um, really cool looking little mammals with their tiny eyes and, you know, big old faces and stuff. So it was pretty cool. Kind of sad. All of them had all the ones that we saw had like propeller you know marks and scars on their backs one was like pink and you know pink in the area where it looks like it got torn up a bit so you know scar tissue and stuff it was pretty sad so i guess uh boat interactions with manatees is pretty common down in that area so but uh so we we didn't see any um crocs there so we drove up uh we were heading back into town as you know the day was getting hotter and we we did a little uh walk around you

know kind of near a lake and um saw you know didn't see much saw a couple of nullies and and other things but i think we were there a little maybe late in the morning, it was getting pretty hot and the bugs were ridiculous. It was crazy. But, uh, um, we stopped by this, uh, lake on the way back and there were these people kind of looking over the, um, over the edge of the railing and I'm like, Oh, you got something good. And they're like, Oh, there's a crocodile female over there. And I'm like, Oh, sweet. So we got to see our croc. And, um watching you know taking pictures i had my zoom lens and she was kind of moving her head up out of the water like under some trees you know some or mangrove room and i'm like what is she doing and i'm zooming in i see like baby crocodiles

moving around and they're like wild yeah half a dozen little baby crocodiles or more um crawling up the the roots and stuff. So, yeah, it was pretty cool. One kind of jumped in the water and then climbed up on the other side. So I've got a little video of that. It's pretty sweet. So I was very excited. I was geeking out.

And then she swam around out of the mangroves and into like open water just right next to the dock. So I'm down there like, you know, maybe three feet away from her filming, you know, this crocodile swimming past us to the dock so i'm down there like you know maybe three feet away from her filming you know this crocodile swimming past us along the the dock so it's pretty sweet um so maybe go during the day at least that time of year you know because it seems like they're mostly talking about it at night and then yeah you know but yeah that's a great experience yeah i did not expect that experience is very very exciting and unexpected but very cool um so that you know that started out i mean that was kind of that would have made the whole trip right there so yeah but uh we went and checked into the hotel you know drove back went we we stopped at that uh

is it richard is here somebody is here fruit stand i guess it's this famous spot where you know uh you go and grab a fruit smoothie. They have all these, you know, tropical fruits and things. It's pretty cool. Cool. We were coming in there when like half a million cyclists were coming out. So there was like the whole place was just inundated with cyclists. And they're like ringing out there, like washing their headbands and stuff in the fruit bowls.

I'm like, what are you doing? It's horrible. Yeah, nasty stuff. But we got a couple smoothies. Even after that, a little cyclist. Well, in the backyard too, they have kind of this little mini zoo thing, you know, like petting zoo type thing. But they have a few parrots in cages and there's like a bunch of sulcata tortoises and iguanas and, you know, cows and goats and emus and things like that. So it's kind of fun to see. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. And then we went and checked in our hotel, took a nap for a couple hours because we weren't very rested after that red eye flight yeah although i i didn't i wasn't too tired i think heidi slept a bit on the drive but i was pretty alert you know i i guess whenever there's herping involved or the chance of seeing things yeah the other disappointment was you know i thought there'd be alligators everywhere you know because when when i'd gone before to the Everglades, we were a bit further north. And along the road, there were canals. And I was seeing alligators in the canal during the drive to the Everglades.

And then in Everglades Park, they were everywhere along the road and, you know, all over the place. I'm thinking, I'm like, oh, yeah, we're going to see a ton of alligators. And we saw no alligators the first day, you know, on all that driving, I guess, 40 or so miles. And then, you know, there and back was closer to 80 miles. And then we went out that night and, you know, got a bunch of snakes and things. So I saw my corn snake and, and a scarlet snake, a few cotton mouths. It was, it was a great night of herping. And then, yeah, so we, we had really, really good time. I, I forgot to put on the bug spray and I got out to take a picture of the corn snake. That was the first find of the trip. Oh, nice.

And all of a sudden just, I mean, I came back in and I had 30 mosquito bites on each arm, just right kind of at the top, you know, where my sleeve ended. And so, yeah, I didn't forget to put on bug spray after that. It was like, God, load up on this stuff. It was terrible. But yeah, the bugs were next level ridiculous. But yeah, it was terrible, but the, yeah, the bugs were next level ridiculous. Um, but yeah, it was, it was a really good night of herping. And then the next day we drove down the keys, we went all the way to Key West and, um, there was a shop, uh, Jordan Parrott recommended stopping by this Bass Pro shop that had, um, oh man, now I'm going to space the name the name um old man in the sea who who wrote that hemingway hemingway hemingway's boat was in this uh bass pro shop you could walk on it and you know scope it out and

stuff okay so yeah it was really cool so we we uh got old man in the sea on audible read by donald sutherlands and and listened to that as we drove down the Keys. It was pretty cool. And then once we got down to Key West, we stopped at a restaurant and, you know, the old man in the sea kind of revolves around this man catching a big sail swordfish or, you know, sailfish or whatever it was. And, and so we got swordfish appetizer, like these little fried swordfish bites that were fantastic. And then we ate hogfish. We stopped at this hogfish cafe and had some hogfish.

And coincidentally, we spotted a couple hogfish on our snorkeling off the cruise. So that was kind of cool. Right. What's a hogfish? I don't know. It's this really bizarre looking, it kind of has like an upturned snout. It almost looks like a pig's nose. Sure.

And then it has these three or four, uh, big spines kind of on the top of it, the, that it can erect when it's like, you know, freaking out or whatever. So cool looking fish.

Yeah. Yeah. Look them up. They're, they're neat looking. And then, uh, I mean,

other than that, they're not too descriptive, they're kind of a reddish colored and, you know, short fins and stuff, but really weird looking fish. So, yeah, it was a really great trip with Heidi. And then on the way back, we saw, you know, 500 iguanas on the side of the road.

We did pull off on one road that looked like kind of a nature preserve type area. And we were driving down the road and there was this bright green baby iguana right in the middle of the road. So we stopped and got some pictures of him and a couple videos. But, yeah, it was pretty cool. I tried to grab him, but I wasn't fast enough. And it was very hot. He took off pretty quick. But, yeah, so it was fun to kind of spot the iguanas as we're driving back up the Keys.

And just crazy how many are out there. And they're neat lizards. I mean, even though they're not really supposed to be there, right. They're invasive. They're, they're, uh, cool lizards for sure. Seeing a giant lizard in the wild is, is kind of fun regardless. Um, you know, I feel bad that they're probably not supposed to be there, but what do you do, uh, besides enjoy them.

Right. And so we get back to Miami and Heidi's like's like well do you want to go out herping again i'm like really you want to go and so i'm like let's do it so we went out there and did another round and this time they were like cottonmouths everywhere you know we were seeing them all yeah all along the roads and stuff so that was pretty neat i got one to display, open its mouth. And it was surprisingly difficult. Like the other ones would just kind of run away. And I'm like, no, stop and display for me.

You know, I didn't have a snake hook or anything. So I think I got a tree branch and was kind of, you know, escorting them off the road or whatever. I think that might be technically illegal, but I'd rather do that than see him get hit by a car, you know. But yeah, we saw a couple more corn snakes, a couple of species of water snake. Yeah, I think we saw a total of three or four corn snakes. Maybe. Yeah. Well, that's four up on me.

I still have. Maybe it was just one each night so maybe only two yeah i didn't speak too much but yeah it was it was really cool and uh we another scarlet snake but it had been hit by a car um and uh a green water snake that was kind of a weird looking different looking species that was the one that the Flippin' Tin guys were excited about, right? Yeah. It was Jake's first one. And they get really heavy and big and heavy.

I don't know. The two we saw were juveniles, so they weren't too impressive yet. But they were neat looking, like weird looking little things. Little mini anacondas or something. And we got back down and looked at the manatees were still there, like hanging out, you know, drinking water at night and stuff. So we kind of checked them out in the night and then, um, we were heading back and there were some of these, uh, oh, so on the way down, these young herpers were on the side

of the road. I'm like, oh, did you find something cool? And they're like, yeah, the giant alligator in front of our car. I'm like, oh yeah. So Heidi got to see her alligator and that was pretty sweet so we sat and checked it but it took off pretty quick like it jumped in the water soon after uh we got out and took a look at it and it took off but that was really cool so she got to see it and and got excited about that and then we went down and um we were heading back and we ran into those

those kids again the ones that had shown us the alligator. And they're like, oh, did you check the boat dock for crocodiles? And we're like, no, we didn't make it. I didn't know if they'd be out or whatever. So we went back. And sure enough, this giant crocodile is just laying on the boat ramp or on the dock, like up above, like out of the water a few feet. It was pretty cool. This thing was

giant and coincidentally it had it was missing part of its lower jaw and aspen said oh is that one missing part of it because i saw one in there that was missing part of its lower jaw i'm like yeah that's the it's got to be the same one and so it was really cool we were pretty close i mean you know you got up pretty close to take pictures of it and stuff and it was just kind of laying there. It moved, you know, it changed positions and you know, opened its mouth and stuff. And then there was another one over on the grass, not too far away from that one. And it was really cool.

So fun stuff, but yeah, really great trip. The cruise was fun. Had a great time with my family and with Heidi and had some really fun snorkeling out there. Went and drove Razors around on Nassau Island, and that was pretty fun. No Nassau Boas, though, hey? No. I imagine that's where the cruises go. Yeah.

And while we were there during the heat of the day, you know, they drop you off kind of like at 9 o'clock in the morning. And then I guess if, you know, if I thought I could have got my whole, you know, all 10 of us to go out herping, I might have suggested it, but I didn't think that would fly.

Maybe next time. Right. So, good times. And then then because it's you know a cruise i understand you you didn't get it on the cruise but uh you got covid you know what would a cruise be without you know communicable disease exactly exactly i mean yeah you gotta get your your uh souvenirs from the right at least it wasn't norovirus. I don't want to be crapping for the next week. You know, that wouldn't be right. Yeah. What might be a good weight loss plan after all that food we ate on the boat,

but, um, my herb trip. Yeah. Right. My brother Eric talking about that, which one, the, did you hear Eric talking about that, about your weight loss plan for the, that he and Dory had gone to the shore. And at some point they reach a point in the middle of the day where he's like, Oh, I'm kind of hungry. And she's like, we haven't eaten anything all day. And he was like, Oh, I'm just not used to it. I'm used to living without food. Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean mean anytime we're out and heidi has to remind

me we probably should eat you know is there something we can like oh yeah i guess we need to eat yeah good point yeah but there was some there was some good barbecue down there in florida we had some good stuff yeah it was nice so yeah well i know i know your experience with florida wasn't great but maybe if we go down to miami or something it wouldn't be too bad to hit the everglades and that was that was a fun trip i still yeah be a great i might have to you know it's one of those things where it just feels like going into the belly of the beast even more so than where we've been but that might be wrong you know where it's one of these where I'm like conceiving of it that way. And it's actually not relative to, uh, we've already seen some stuff. So, so maybe I have it backwards in my mind. That's entirely possible. So, yeah. Well, I mean, national parks tend to be

a little bit better to be in, you know, they're, I don't know, it seems a little safer to some extent as you have in the back of your mind, at least there's somebody kind of patrolling and, you know, you're not going to have a ton of illicit activity if you've got yeah i think i think there is something to that the even uh national park versus state park versus like state managed area i think there are that is a tiered system relative to intervention and what other other visitors are doing yeah yeah that's for sure but you know like i said the experience the people i met out there and the experiences we had were really great it was it was a fun time so yeah well and i guess that kind of leads into our discussion a bit but i don't know do you have have anything you've exciting happening in the reptile world and in your in your world, I guess?

Now we'll see. I got tomorrow slash this weekend. We'll see if I can do it. I'm not going to I won't bring it up until we'll see how it goes. OK, sounds good. But yeah, we'll see how that plays out. Just in terms of your stuff, though, I know I't, certainly it's not a mischaracterization. I don't know if it's a misquote or whatever, but Phil was like unbelievably impressed with the amount of herbs you had managed to kick out of the dirt on your trip. Well, that's exciting. Yeah. I don't know what lined up or if that's a typical night in the Everglades.

It doesn't sound like it. Yeah. Somewhere. Right. I,'t sound like it. Somewhere, right? Because I was thinking, yeah, July is not going to be the greatest time to be out there herping. But, yeah, it turned out to be really nice. And the weather was great. I mean, I think it might have sprinkled on us a little bit. But, yeah, not a torrential rain or anything. It was hot, but it wasn like unbearable by any stretch especially you can get back in the car and turn the ac on you know so

yeah the most frustrating thing is at night when it starts to cool down a bit and then it starts to fog up your windows i was just gonna ask you when you mentioned cooling down the car i was going yeah i don't know man i remember being at mission beach getting in the car you know having in the whole thing now you can't you're not going anywhere it's all fogged out oh yeah and it's like what do you do like you try to you turn on the ac put the you know put that on the window and that makes it worse or you you know it's on the outside so you got your windshield wipers going and you have to have those going constantly yeah i had the same thing in the tropics in australia as well as down in southern Florida. But I think we ended up putting on the heat and then that cleared it up and fixed it.

But then we got the heat up to like 78 or something. Okay, well, this isn't great either, but oh well. We can at least see out the windshield, you know. I guess that's important yeah i need a good formula for getting rid of that i guess we need to talk talk to our tropical friends because that's not a problem in utah and yeah in colorado right good times but all right well um yeah we i think my season's oh i think i do have some eggs still uh going i've got some leaf tail gecko eggs that i that that reminds me i need to go see if she's laying more because it's about a month since she laid those so they kind of tend to go about a month apart

so i'll have to see if she may have laid some more but um it's getting hot out there i probably need to take her down into the basement in this in this room and and keep the leaf tails down here especially after seeing them in australia and having them be like how cool it was oh yeah it's crazy and i got uh four four new very large cages well i guess i can't say very large but they're they're good size uh upgrades upgrades for a lot of my pythons. So I put some womas in some larger enclosures and some jungles and inlands. So yeah, moving everybody up and moving some of the juveniles into larger caging and stuff. So that's nice. And got rid of a bunch of stuff that wasn't really being used and moved you know, moved out a couple of troughs that I had Accys in and that kind of thing.

I know all about that sort of stuff. Did you, on those things in the larger cages, are you keeping them paired up? What are you, what's your approach? Yeah, for the, for the Womas, I've got them individually because I want to make sure. Is that an issue? Just the way they're, the way they are? I haven't had problems keeping, I've kept those individually because I want to make sure. Is that an issue? Just the way they are? I haven't had problems. I've kept those together year-round for the most part,

maybe other than taking them out when the females grab it. But I've kept them together, and they seem to be fine. It's just easier for feeding and things like that. And the males I've got are a little bit smaller anyway, so the smaller caging isn't as bad in my mind for the males as it is for the females. And so, and then I did these like false burrow things I made for the new cages. The termite things? Yeah, yeah.

I've got like a little fake termite mound and then a hole and then, you know, a tube that goes into the hide box. I don't know if they found their way in there yet. I almost want to like stick their head, go in there. been a study they put a camera on like a little lab mouse cage or whatever and that they then recorded it and that they circled the thing a thousand times over the course of the night or whatever you know it's entirely maybe you just need to put a camera on there and yeah during the day they're just sitting on top of it but they've actually you know checked it out so i guess the fact that they're sitting on top it maybe means that they don't want to go inside i don't know you know it's like who knows right you don't want to is there something wrong with it or did i mess it up somehow like i don't want to get bit by termites yeah exactly it's so realistic looking i noticed some big cracks and i'd already painted it and

stuff i'm like oh well it's not gonna be i mean if it breaks up i can just put a little patch on there or something right take it out and paint it again or something but yeah it's not going to be, I mean, if it breaks up, I can just put a little patch on there or something. Right. Take it out and paint it again or something. But yeah, it's not my finest work. It's more like get it done. And I messed it up on the first coat of, I use that hydraulic cement that our buddy out in Pennsylvania recommended. Robert. Robert.

Yeah. Thank you. And that he uses for his caging. And it works like a charm if you read the instructions correctly. I was adding three parts water and one part cement instead of three parts cement to one part water. Nice. Beautiful. Yeah.

It was not working well and it was all flaking off. I'm like, what did I? Oh, yeah. I'm an idiot. You know, like this stuff is going to gonna last me forever i don't have to use hardly any of it oh okay so i had to crack it all off and get it all off and then redo it and and it worked much better the second time but uh wasting all that time doing the first code that didn't work was a little frustrating so read the instructions kids um so So, yeah. But, yeah, it's nice to see them in these larger enclosures,

and hopefully things will go smoothly. The other thing, I put in a pair of Inlands, and they start combating. And I'm like, what is going on? Because that happened to me last year, and this was another female that I've been raising. Oh, a different female that i've been raising oh a different female okay yeah and it's so now i've got another so now i have three males and three females and you're really gonna go have have to go after the the breeder that uh you got those from oh wait yeah i smacked myself and yeah uh and inlands are so easy to sex so i don't know how i

got that wrong you know what i mean that's almost like the late it's like you put it in this tub instead of this stuff you know what i mean like you didn't know that's right yeah had some mislabeling or yeah it was weird so weird to have two you know i don't know you can pop an inland blindfolded and half dead or something, you know, they're easy one handed with your eyes closed. But anyway, I guess someday I'll, I'll learn to do it right for now. What do you do? Right. Well, that's a bummer, but still three, three, that's not too bad then. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that works. And you know, I don't know if I want to produce four clutches of inlands a year and and where i missed this year's and hopefully these new cages will mean you know for

for better breeding for these females as well so um that's the idea i yeah i'm i'm excited to see what the future holds hopefully this will help a little bit are these so these are first generation ones that you produce yeah first generation with you at least yeah um yeah okay the ones that i produce from the ones that i imported from europe and then so i guess they're f2 the babies are f2s so yeah and i'm holding back one or two f2s is all so i don't know And now I don't even know if I need to hold back another male because I've got three males. Yeah, but he's nice looking. So maybe, hopefully he'll turn out early. Yeah. I can replace another one with him or something, but they're cool snakes. I'm really excited. They're the, you know, they're, they're all doing well now. I had a couple that were kind

of picky feeders and then all of a sudden they just took off, and they're just pounding food. So, yeah, they're fun snakes for sure. But I don't know. Is it time to fight? I guess. Should we get into this? Time to flip a coin anyway, hey? Yeah, exactly.

So today we're going to kind of discuss the pros and cons, however you want to look at it, of kind of the idea of iNaturalist versus HerpMapper, kind of, you know, the more open access, you know, pin, you know, gives you an exact location of where something was seen versus a more nebulous, like county, it was seen in this county approach and harder to identify the exact spot so um we'll talk about the the good and the bad and the ugly of those kind of things so absolutely um so i guess we'll flip the coin to see who kind of goes yeah the inat or hurt mapper The INAT or Herb Mapper. So I'm going to call it. Tails. It is Tails.

That's two in a row, Rob. What are you doing here? I know. I'm cheating the system. I got Ruby going, you know, the Ruby equivalent going. So I'm going to use myself. Your own Ruby. Yeah.

So I will take the contrarian. I will defend iNatural know hurt mapper i know mike's involved a ton of great stuff i really like the ideology all that but uh i think that i not gets a bad rap so i'm happy to take that okay and i know that you've done a ton of research so i think i'm really excited to hear what you have to say on these things. This will be good. So do you want to chuck me or do you want to go first? I am happy to go first. Okay. All right. The anti-chuck.

Yeah, on this one, because I think the fundamental thing that I want to say is when the post that sort of prompted this question, and then actually on NPR, I think that same one that I referenced, Owen and Eric, and I actually was really happy with the conversation that they had. I don't think they hit all the points that sort of are in my mind, and I know you have to mine too, but I actually thought they did really well um and uh as ever this this shouldn't be a surprise the man with the words of wisdom owen and i are aligned on this one which is always a great sign if owen and i are aligned i feel really confident about the spot we're in um the fundamental uh thing that struck me the wrong way about the Instagram post that kind of prompted that conversation and the conversation we're having now was just sort of the self-righteous straw man argument that often comes out, even in just general scientific discourse, where people will say, essentially, if this straw man person X is given any modicum of information then they will go out and completely pillage the habitat they'll spend hours days weeks months taking every animal out of the habitat regardless of the time effort expenditure their capacity to sell i guess illegal animals

all these things that that's meaningless they will go and personally make it their mission based on your pin to go pillage that habitat. I posit that that person exit to the extent they exist, which I would sort of push back on exists at a much lower rate than is commonly framed, right? A lot of scientific discourse is presented as we can't tell those herpers because they're going to come out and strip the land clean and salt the earth that's sort of the messaging it's put out and that's that's the messaging that i saw on that instagram post right and i just find

it disingenuous that the person would be uh were it not for your pin they would be at home twiddling their thumbs but because there was the pin they uh they were going to go out and spend a year collecting every animal out of that habitat no matter what the cost or their capacity to sell it i just think that's disingenuous and fundamentally i think it's as i say a straw man argument that in reality is dissatisfied with property development, you know, and other, you know, sort of all these other ancillary things that are a lot and selling rare or difficult or illegal animals, that they probably would look on Google Earth. hurt mapper and found the county record they would probably again go to google earth go to the source material go to books from you know that were published yesterday last year or a hundred years ago right we were talking about the handbook of snakes yeah right and in there there's explicit information on that stuff like if someone's industrious enough to spend a year collecting over a population they probably won't be thwarted by you being the

secret keeper of that population right you know but it's just you know i say that somewhat in jest because i think so much maybe the thing that really offends me is sort of the self-righteousness of saying i'm the secret i am the sole person i am the keeper of this lore, of this knowledge, of, oh, this snake is in this place. And I just am offended by the thought process there of saying, like, really, you're so bold as to think you're the only person who could think that that animal would exist there based on the whole capacity of human knowledge that we have. I think it just fundamentally offends me. And, i read too much into it but that's what i read

when i see something like that it's like yeah no what you're right dude you're the only person who ever considered that that animal might be there you're the only person who ever put in any work to identify that that could happen um that really gets my goat and maybe it's because both you and i were so into the research aspect of it that it's like it's a fundamental i take that as a fundamental call out to me that hey you rob you couldn't find this place you you wouldn't be able to find it on your own it's only my pin or more accurately just the pin of a random birder who doesn't care or a person you know a civilian walking about you know it puts up the picture or whatever. And, you know, if you didn't have that civilian's post, you couldn't figure it out.

And that's how I take it. Whether that's how it's intended is probably not. I'm probably being cynical, but that's how I take it. Yeah. Well, and as we all know, that no illegal activity has occurred before iNaturalist came into existence. Absolutely not. Nobody's been collecting illegally or selling illegally. Now, I do think that there is a bit of a transition, you know,

because of the captive breeding market and things like that, that the demand for wild-caught, especially American or U.S. wild-caught animals, has gone down from what it was in the past. I mean, you read Caulfield and he's out there collecting everything. Absolutely. Yeah. And so I think that was just kind of the way things were done. And we see a lot of the kind of importers and they also have native species. And, and I think a lot of that, especially like

the commonly, you know, back in the day, the only way to get a corn snake was to collect it. You know, nowadays there's a million and, you know, different morphs and all that you could get a corn snake that looks like anything you want, you know? So there's no reason to go out and collect a corn snake because you can buy one for 20 to $50 at a reptile show, you know, especially if the person's desperate to sell, you know, you can probably get them for free in some cases. So I don't think that's, you know, the collecting is is probably much less than it has been. Now, we we do know of, you know, we've we've seen people that are out there just kind of indiscriminately collecting those those folks in Texas that rubbed us the wrong way, you know? And so I think it still happens, but yeah, to think that they need INAT to go out there and find those things. Usually the people who are doing that are probably pretty good herpers or they're not going to be very successful.

Right. They're just wasting their time. Yeah. They're not making money. They're losing money. Right. You know, that's the point on the corn snakes. Right. And I, first, I do want to acknowledge your point relative to the Kaufeld story and all this stuff. I think when, other than like sort of incidental or accidental clutches of offspring or whatever, maybe they hatch and maybe they start the babies well and all this stuff, you know, the previous knowledge, right, wasn't there to make those animals to then have something to trade right it sort of reminds me even in the zoo context right of well he's going out there to collect

pine snakes in new jersey because that's what he can collect then trade for rattlesnakes so staten island zoo has the you know premier world collection of rattlesnakes at the time that's that's his currency and yeah I totally agree that that's just not where we're at at this point. Yeah. And some, some of the best herpers I know were also field collectors and they would take their finds and sell them. And I mean, and the ones that I know of that have done illegal things that have gotten caught or something were, were the same way. Like they knew where to find these rare or endangered or, you know, protected animals because they were really good herpers. And so they didn't need anybody to tell them where to go find

these things. They were out there finding them in the wild in numbers. And so they're like, oh, well, you know, this can support a little bit of collection and they're paving over that habitat over there. So, you know, I don't know. I think that's kind of the idea that, to think that these people need INAT or anything else. Now, I would say maybe, you know, in the, in favor of HerpMapper that, you know, it does make it easier to find some of the, you know, some maybe species that are locally abundant, but kind of widely distributed. I'd use the collared lizards as an example, the ones that we saw in southeastern Utah, where, I mean, we went through lots and lots of habitat that could have had collared lizards,

and we didn't see any. But in one couple mile stretch, we saw, what was it, 15, 20 of them? I mean, there were a lot of coll colored lizards in this small little area. And, you know, there's people that might go in there and say, oh, these are beautiful. I'm going to, you know, collect a bunch of these or sell them to my friends. Or, you know, even if they're not selling them, if they're just giving them away, they're taking them out of the wild, you know.

And that could, if it wasn't a national park and the risk of the mines that are associated with that you know and um i you know i think that might be one of the big things is i don't know that we need to obscure things in national parks because of the extra layer of of uh you know the the rangers patrolling and people that are consequences I think of that story that Dustin told us about the guy who picked up a price eye

and then the field officer jumped out of the bushes basically and said here's your ticket for $5,000 I mean that's going to teach them a lesson pretty quick I don't think they're going to collect that price eye but just the fact that they messed with it and got caught doing it that's brutal yeah so absolutely five thousand dollar fine is not fun so you know you you need to pay attention to the rules and know the rules and that's that's very important so

and you know i think i don't know maybe this is a topic for another time. And I think we've discussed this topic. But most people are going to maybe try to pose the snake or get it out where they can observe it. Oh, yeah. This was a whole different kind of worms. Yeah. And so is that detrimental to the animal if you're taking pictures for 10 minutes or 30 minutes? You know, is that snake going to be okay?

And, you know, are you paying, you know, mind to the snakes? Is it getting overheated or, you know, those kind of things? You know, as long as you're careful and, you know, not that I'm suggesting you should go do illegal activity. It's just one of those things. Like in Australia, you know, you're not allowed to touch the animals, but I see so many posts of people holding animals, you know, taking pictures of animals when technically it's illegal and you know, nobody's going and finding them and putting them in jail or giving them fines or anything. It's just kind of one of those, if you get caught doing it, you're in big trouble, you know,

but everybody does it. It's kind of a weird thing. Anyway, we'll, we'll say that for another day, but I do think, you know, those locally abundant, but dispersed populations might be potentially a little vulnerable to that. Yeah. Yeah. And I can see that. I certainly, you know, even thinking in that, uh, so what I wanted to say to two quick things,

right. Certainly, you know, even thinking in that. So what I wanted to say, two quick things, right? We'll have to say, I mostly will table this, but with the Sonata we had seen on the most recent trip, then when Brandon had posted that, there was someone who had gone out with Jeff Lamb earlier that day that reached out to Brandon and said, hey, where did you go? Because I think I may have seen that exact one. And he had like flipped

that one and another under the same rock ostensibly several hours earlier or whatever it would be and that was again the one that was then it crawled out right in front of me so it's possible like as a possible um negative to that interaction that he had had was quite possibly that had disturbed it from where it otherwise would have been such that it was then out on the crawl in that middle of the day or maybe just the temps and conditions were such that it would have done that anyway i know way to say right was it the same day yeah and it was the same spot i don't same spot same day he was even like maybe hey was this you and we couldn't remember. Like there were very few people there,

but it was like, was that, it was, and it didn't sound like they, it was almost, um, not an, it was like not enough communication to really validate it one way or another. And I certainly, I didn't even see the other photos or understand or whatever, but, um, that was the suggestion that evening was like hey i think i saw that same i think i flipped that same thing a couple hours before you've seen it or whatever so it is an interesting idea right one way or the other um i did want to follow up and reiterate

the point that you had made right and actually highlight so in the michael smith and clint king book herping texas highly recommend a lot of great narrative basically working east to west across the different bio regions in texas just with narrative stories of different places they kind of lay out in the apprentice piece of it their ideology around speaking in detail to the places that they went and it's sort of a tiered system of in national parks and state parks that are under heavy scrutiny um and where animals are really protected they felt pretty free to specifically identify a lost mine trail big ben national park that is a heavily protected

very monitored area they're happy to that also is very easy to find it's like the most one of the top two or three if not the most popular hike that you could take in big bet this is a trail that sees a ton of activity there's another one the river walk through austin or whatever you know and they're seeing black neck garter snakes and all this stuff it's like this is a trail that sees tens of thousands of people if not hundreds of thousands of people a year like that's not my you know my own little secret right you know maybe the fact that you would see this animal there yeah maybe maybe not but i'm sure that incidentally they're seen all the time so like that's really not that that's not the spot that needs protection and that's sort of how the book addresses it i'm

saying those places we feel confident to be to share and give insight try and teach people stuff right yeah if it's uh private land then they would kind of generally describe it but with some level of specificity knowing that you can't go there right particularly in texas it's not like you're going to be wandering about uh you know someone's private land even if you did know oh it's west of x river in x in y county right no you're not that that doesn't make it it's as inaccessible as if it was on the moon you know basically uh save for you know if you have a death witch or something um they when they're talking about road cruising public spaces that are, you know, so obviously freely accessible, that still exist at this point as prime habitat, then it's much more vague. It's like a dirt road in Y County.

And I think that lot of this sort of drama and debate comes down to this issue, right? It's, it's not actually herpers. It's the things that populations have to deal with in terms of development and all those things is saying like, I mean, he goes into great specific, anytime when I'm reading the book and I'm getting into a chapter and he goes into great specificity, Oh, it's the North end of the pond on this college campus and the crayfish snakes are there. And i'm amidst the reeds and all this i know that that story is going to end with him saying and 10 years ago they

bulldozed that and decided that instead it should be the atrium you know or i think in this case they were just like oh they didn't like the look or the presentation of those reeds that fostered that habitat so they stripped it out now it's uh you know kentucky blue you know instead or whatever and it's like so where the habitat no longer exists so that literally they can speak to it in full detail fully sharing knowledge about sort of what makes good habitat without actually giving you anything of a roadmap because that no literally no longer exists as viable habitat that's probably the ideal circumstance to be so open. So kind of either national park, super popular trail in a national park,

or that doesn't even exist. Those can both be great teaching tools without being, here's a roadmap to go catch yourself crayfish thing. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, I mean, I guess in regards to like development and, and paving over habitat and things, I, I, it's almost to the point where, you know, if you've been herping long enough or, you know, you used to go out there and see a bunch of different snakes. And then they rerouted traffic through there. Now there's just a ton of cars that are going down there.

So most of the stuff you see is, you know, dead on the road. And it's so frustrating. you know, if, if you share that spot, maybe that means more herpers are out there, you know, or, or if they know pins are out there, maybe they're out there looking and they're getting to the snakes before they're getting hit by cars. Getting snakes off the road. It actually might be a good thing, you know? So, and, and, you know, somebody like we, we had, um, um, my brain is, is fried, but, um, the spotted leaf-nosed snake out there. road is brutal that road is brutal like we've seen it we've found uh probably done pretty well actually relatively on it in terms of finding live animals getting them off the road you know seeing cool stuff all that stuff but like you know you if you follow uh chris allen jensen's

inat and maybe he just only posts when he finds dead reptiles but holy moly man his ratio of dead the number of dead reptiles that he posts online at i i don't know if i'd have the stomach to do it yeah yeah it's hard and and i mean saint george is one of the fastest growing cities shane shane madsen is the one i was thinking of i was trying to sorry shane um but yeah we had him on the show a couple couple uh episodes ago yeah great guy um but you know that's uh i think you know sharing those spots or sharing places that are gonna be a city soon you know or not the worst things in the world and i mean people might as well as enjoy might as well enjoy them before they are gone, you know. And there's other spots that everybody thinks are secrets, but everybody knows about them.

You know, anybody that's connected in the herping world probably knows these spots if they're going to a specific area. So I have something to share, right? And it actually cuts a couple different ways. So I think it could prompt something interesting. The thing that jumps to my mind out of that is alterna in west texas right so that amongst the alterna community there's literally the animals are defined by the cuts the road cuts that they come from so the name of these captive lineages directs you if you if you put in the time and effort and work and some of them it's a little fuzzy like so big hill from river road you know the old school river road stuff that kind of

post dates when it became legal to road cruise before you couldn't road cruise you had to walk it uh was really the um so 1987 to the mid 90s is going to be sort of the epicenter of when the River Road, the road that goes along the Rio Grande below Big Bend State Park, was a thing. That was kind of the epicenter of collecting at that location. And basically all of those things would be, there aren't distinct cuts in the same way or necessarily as clearly. And I think some of that is also that they would just be actively out on the road as opposed to being walked up based on as i say how people were operating at that time where the animals were legality all this stuff it would be i'm three miles west of big hill well when they say big big hill what they mean is

santana mesa but if you don't know like if you don't know that yeah then it's just like what what the heck is big hill right you know that's not that useful because it's not defined as that it's that's the herp term for santana mesa which is actually you remember that giant boulder i call it giant i don't know what it was the size of a yeah sedan that had come off of that's where it had come off of okay when it slid out down on the road yeah that makes sense we had avoided in the thunderstorm um that is a big hill to be fair it is a big hill and it lost a big old it lost a sedan size chunk of rock yeah i'm glad we weren't in that area at the time absolutely i'm glad we had turned it like let's get back it's kind of eerie

weaving around that thing yeah absolutely um so you know a lot of those records would be oh three miles west of big hill which even then is a little obfuscated because it's not like the i mean the hill there's just more gradation to it because it's not a singular point that's you know the thing itself is a quarter mile long or whatever half a mile long um so what does that really mean and it probably means something different to each person and all this different stuff but um the point would be that okay if they're talking about river road or alternative generally and all this different stuff we're talking about public road access that's probably what i forget the number but again uh never forgetting the key lesson that saying a giving a figure with confidence uh makes it true you know 90 it's

something like 98 of texas is private land so um in that context right take taken the same way even if not more extreme if it's not universally or uh equally distributed is that uh alternative habitat the vast majority of that is either in mexico or on private land in texas so not legally collected you know on any of that so saying like oh the one that happened to be out on the road or on a road cut where they just decided we're going to put the road here even though the that's we don't respect we're texas we don't respect terrain as a thing um we're just going to plow through it a great forum because they're just you know making those openings to uh subsurface level habitat and things and that's how we see stuff on those those road cuts um i mean realistically the damage to

an alternate population that could be done by those collections is so minuscule because you're talking about literally ancillary animals that are going to try and get hit by a car anyway, you know, or whatever. Whereas 98% of it is protected. Yeah. And I think that's a great example of how, you know, certain species are not impacted by giving away exact locations because, yeah, that's a great example of that with the, with the gray banded king snakes. And they're like darn near impossible to find. And even knowing doesn't solve your problem. You know, invariably why are, why are gray bands popular?

It's because they're like the least common thing to find, even if you're at the spot where you know the exact spot you know they come from even compared to other things that'll come out to that same spot you know like that's that's the the appeal is that you could go out there every night and you still might only you might not see any and even if seriously if you you know did it all summer maybe if you saw three to five you're probably doing really good that's a good year yeah right yeah you might go back a dozen times to try to find your one you know another time absolutely yeah and that's some of those the densities are so low that it really does seem like that where people are putting in one night i mean you could get

lucky in 15 minutes uh what chris montross right Had gone out there and, or no, sorry, Chris Payne shop, right. On his first trip to West Texas, I'd gone out there and, you know, he went out there with his buddy, Dan Lasseter, John, you're infecting me here, John Lasseter, John and Chris went out there and I think it took John, you know, it took John, like the rest of us, you know, countless trips, you know, whatever it would be. Oh, I looked all these many nights to try and find one. And, you know, to no avail, Chris Painshop goes out there and within 15 minutes, it's, oh, there's one, you know, this sort of deal.

So that invariably can happen for folks. But like, you know, going to that same spot, it'll come off or it won't. You know, it's just so arbitrary. It reminds me of the Owen Pelly play. It's like, you know, if you look on Atlas of the Living Australia, again, ignoring that, I think all the taxonomic changes have caused those records to be a little less visible than they were when we went five years ago. Because just the number they're on the site are way lower and i assume that's why um even including sort of historic records and things

the point is like it's publicly accessible stone country in kakadu national park there's not that much of like if you know that that's where you have to go. OK, good luck. Yeah. You know, pack a lunch. I think that's a sleeping bag. A lot of the you know, a lot of the records to, I mean, kind of give a distorted thing. And they actually point you to the more heavily trafficked areas anyway, because if you're going to go by, oh, I'm going to go by the pins that, you know, go specifically to those areas, you're going to go to where a bunch of people

already have been, or, you know, where a car hit a snake and you're looking at Chris's records or something, you know, you might be going to where a DOR was, but I mean, those can be really effective places to look. I mean, if there's DORs, that means they can. Yeah, but either way, right? So remember, when we went to San Diego for the first time together, the first place we went, because Eric's flight was coming in later, or either Eric or Tom's flight was coming in, however it's situated, Red Earth or both or whatever, was coming in later.

I had found this spot on i naturalist uh that wound up being with you know various record a handful of records of various things but it was the san diego dog park yeah so the answer is that there's just thousands of people there every day and they kicked up a few snakes out of the dirt right as opposed to a place that is off the beaten track. That same number of records would mean a wholly different thing. Right. And their dogs looking at something or sniffing at something, you know,

and you, Oh, that's a rattlesnake get away. You know, I better make this known so people know there's rattlesnakes here or something. Yeah. Um, or they call the, the, uh, wildlife, uh, officers and say, Hey, come remove this thing from the dog park. It's threatening our puppies. You know? Um, I, I think that's, you know, that's a, that's one caution of using iNaturalist is

that you're, you're in those kinds of areas when you're, you're following those pins a lot of times. And I mean, a lot of the habit, like in Texas, you know, it's all private land. So you're not going to have a ton of pins unless you have somebody habit, like in Texas, you know, it's all private land. So you're not going to have a ton of pins unless you have somebody who's like, oh, I'm going to record whatever's on my property. And they go around their acreage and record pins on their own property. You're not going to get in there and herp there. You're just going to know, okay, they exist in this area.

So, you know, it can be helpful from that that idea and i mean same kind of idea with the hurt mapper if you have an idea of which county they're found in and you can you know say oh well there's a there's a state park here there's a great spot to start you know like go what's the habitat like can you exactly look can you look on Google earth? Oh yeah. If you're looking on iNaturalist, I'm confident you understand that Google earth exists. Right. So those two things are probably correlated. It's just kind of the easier step above Google earth because it gives you

exactly where they have been observed, you know, so makes it a little bit easier that way. But I, you know, and, and we, when we went to South Australia, trying to find the carpet pythons i you know and and uh we when we went to south australia trying to find the carpet

pythons you know we had a bunch of records from ala and things like that inat and and i mean you know not a ton of records but most of the records are from popular trails where people go and you know they're more um some of the ones out in the middle of nowhere may have been like some faunal survey that went over several years or digging pits or mining or something, you know. And so we went out to where these pins were specifically identified and herped in the area and spent, you know, miles and hours and saw no carpet. The whole population. Oh, you didn't see any. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So we knew exactly where to look, but yeah, did not have the luck. And I think that's, you know, with reptiles, that's also the other side of the coin. I mean, one side is if you're going to the area and they're easy to find and you can catch them easily, then, you know, yeah, there might be a problem for the most part. They're not easy to

find. They're not surface active very often. You know, that's the downside of looking for pythons is they're very efficient and they don't need to move a lot. So, you know, unless they're a small species like an anteresia, you're probably not going to find them in numbers, you know, except for some exceptions, maybe coastal carpets, you know, in Brisbane area or something there, they're all over the place or, or crotalists, you know, certain crotalists populations are pretty thick, you know, Western diamondbacks are not, you know, with that, that example, the spotted leaf nose snakes, you know, in Southern California where one trip I found 30 of them and then subsequent trips to that same spot have yielded maybe one or two, you know, total over several trips. So it's not a guarantee that just because you know where something is, they're going to A, be active and readily, you know, findable or be, you know,

um, you're, you're missing, you know, you're not having the luck of being there when they're crossing the road or whatever. So, um, yeah, I don't think it's, there's never a guarantee in a lot of these things, but, and I really think, you know, the, the, one of the best things about something like Hurt Mapper is for the person themselves who, who are making the observations, it gives them a database of where they can keep their observations and have those records, you know, that they can look back on and say, Oh, where did I see this? Or, you know, record their own things. Um, so in one way it can help, you know, more people, especially,

I do think there is some benefit, you know, scientifically or with some reservations, you know what I mean? Like you can see where things have been found and you might extend a range map or things like that. That's very helpful. And things like Herp mapper and i naturalist definitely help you know help you do that especially if you're just doing a blob map you know if you just want to get a general idea of where they are in the state or in the country or whatever you can do that pretty well with herp mapper or i nad and you know and herpMapper will share those data

if it's for a legitimate reason and things like that. So you can do the, you know, get the things done you need to do scientifically, publishing on things or, so that's, that's very helpful with the caveat that you're going off of people's observations who are limited to major thoroughfares, public lands, you know, that kind of thing. So you're, you're really not getting the whole, the whole picture in one, on one hand, you know, there's, there's millions and millions of, of miles of area where you could search and find these things, but nobody's going there because it's inaccessible or it's private land. And so, yeah, that's kind of the, the other side of the coin, if you will.

Yeah, absolutely. So that reminds me, get me at least back on the track a little bit here, fighting, you know, people say I don't fight enough. I did want to highlight so another book to uh recommend would be lost frogs and hot snakes herpetologist tales from the field edited by martha crump came out this year really great book that i'm about halfway through at this point and i was reading through what is it again what's the name of it so it's lost frogs and hot snakes okay herpetologist tales from the field so it's really good so it's this edited volume where basically it's like a whole bunch of different herpetologists and they're each i think

there's 50 of them in the book and uh each author is submitting one three to five page paper detailing. I think there's four or five different sort of categorizations of the stories, but they're kind of giving an overview of their history plus a good story, whatever that might look like. The second to most recent one that i read was by susan walls following the mole uh peren salamander and peren trail the mole salamander trail um and the point that jumps out to me is that so she was a postdoc i think at a university in louisiana and looking at the specimen so super into ambistoma, right?

So all the different mold salamanders that there are. And there was a whole bunch of, I think, marbled salamander specimens with a pin description, right? So this would predate a lot of the GIS stuff and all this, but with the description. And so her thought process was, wow, we have 300 pickled marbled salamanders that came from this spot you know oh i'm gonna go out there and check that out

in the when the pre-spring comes and see yeah see what that looks like i must be able to find some well she went to that site over several years and never saw any because it's pretty clear that that graduate student phd whomever had gone at that peak time of the year so maybe the answer is with turtles or with salamanders or with whatever it might be yeah like literally they just pickled all of the adults of that population so that you know so that kind of cuts both ways right It cuts both ways in the sense that it's saying on things that are more on a population of breeding marbled salamanders. Yeah. things that have a broad range, but occur in specific places within that range that those specific spots might be, might be sensitive to over collection, particularly at times,

certain times of the year. Maybe, maybe my thing is being most, you know, I love all reptiles, all, all herps, right. Reptiles and amphibians, but you know, except in goannas, I am undoubtedly a snake guy and maybe goannas just really remind me of snakes. So maybe that's part of it. But, you know, except in Goannas, I am undoubtedly a snake guy and maybe Goannas just really remind me of snakes. So maybe that's part of it. But, you know, I guess I have to admit that maybe my perception is biased towards not sort of, you know, being a little less credulous around the feasibility of over collecting this stuff as someone out there looking for pine snakes in new jersey that yeah like or in florida or whatever it's like yeah we got super lucky to find we put in a ton of work and got super lucky to find a florida pine snake knowing exactly where

they are yeah doing exactly what you're supposed to do finding one took a tremendous effort yeah um new jersey i've tried even more and found even less yeah so like yeah right you know um but wait how many how many publications did he get did they get from those 300 pickled salamanders zero no one did any work on them at all yeah so yeah just you know just throwing that out there so both recognizing that specific sites can be an issue also just saying hey maybe it's not always about trying to collect them to sell them yeah collecting them even with the best of intentions maybe misguided saying hey maybe you could how many do you really need to pick up right yeah right you know maybe 10 is enough maybe 20 is enough i mean 100 in one day seems excessive yeah but 300 total that

but i i mean i i look back at um a lot of uh rick shine you know reading his book uh so many snakes absolutely um so many snakes a little, you know, reading a lot of his early publications and a lot of kind of the breakthrough discoveries were based on pickled specimens, you know, so the conoidal, you know, stages and all these different things. With the caveat of, you know, within reason, of course, you know, don't, don't pickle a whole population if you're working on a study site. And I, you know, within reason, of course, you know, don't, don't pickle a whole population if you're working on a study site. And I, you know, I was always frustrated because the, being friends with Ben Morrill, he was in the biology department for his undergrad degree.

And so he had connections with the Herp folks there. And so I got to look at some of their collections and go back and see some of the live studies they were doing. And they were doing a study on banded geckos. I'm like, oh, those are beautiful geckos. What happens to them at the end of the study? Oh, we have to euthanize all of them. I'm like, what? Why?

Like, just let me take a few of them before you pickle them. And they had a confiscation of some, in Ben's words, big bumpy skinks. And it was a shingleback and a and an alpine blue tongue and they had them in you know horrible like it's sitting in a crate like box with no light and no and they just kind of were withering away i'm like are you kidding me the freaking you know the couple at the time a two thousand dollar lizard languishing in a box because you know they're the herpetology department. I was really frustrated with that.

The other thing that really got me was, and this is kind of an aside anyway, but one of the herp students, he had a bunch of pets. And Ben was taking care of his pets while he was away at a study site or whatever. Well, the guy got his degree. He finished his PhD and was going to move. And so he just took all his pets and pickled them. Like, what the heck? Like, I don't, I don't get that. And that, that's one of the reasons I thought I I'm glad I didn't go into herpetology. I don't know. Yeah. It's crazy. Like, I just, I don't understand that.

I mean, what value to science does a bunch of captive, you know, held that? I mean, they were wild caught at some point, but he'd had them in captivity for at least four or five years while he did his PhD. I just don't get that. You know, what value to science do those have? But kind of crazy. Why not place them with somebody who's going to give them a good home? Well, when I had read that, right, about the ambistoma, it did remind me of Hank Bolt, you know. I don't know if you want to align or not, but in Stolen World, right, going back to the story of the pricei that had been collected in the early 2000s, right, so those were study animals, so they had the nail polish in the early 2000s right that were so those were study animals so they had the nail polish on the rattles yeah you know where they're identifying which ones are which and all that um and the two kids had turned up with them at some pet store in south north carolina south carolina something like that and you know they could post it online or whatever and that's that's notable. Maybe let them shed first.

They certainly wish they would have for blue rattle. Yeah. Pretty much. Right. And you know, that turned into a whole thing. Well, Hank's point, as he wrote to the person who had sort of orchestrated the confiscation or was involved or whatever, who was involved with the university arizona museum or arizona state whatever it was um was oh yeah notably your collection contains 60 pickled price side really you know what but you know just sort of highlighting the disparity there of saying like the the problem is this guy with two price side saying well i understand our motivations are different sure but uh you should look in the mirror a little bit and say like you

have 60 of them dead in jars yeah like right i don't know and the fact that those mountain ranges again are very inaccessible you know there's like very well very well noted we're very well protected and you know like yeah probably more hit on the road by by uh ranger vehicles than are right you know uh taken into captivity or whatever so i think that's a fair point in the herpingping Texas book, they were talking, there was a story about that where it wasn't a ranger, but it was Border Patrol. They let a Border Patrol pass them on the road down by Lajitas. And that Border Patrol agent hit a blonde Trans-Pecos rat snake right in front of them. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, that's the only car they let them pass them. And, you know, they go a quarter mile down the road and there's a writhing blonde Transpecos rat snake. Yeah. And that's I mean, that's the thing. Like they don't give a crap. Like that one that we ran into at the prairie rattlesnake in front of his vehicle. Yeah.

He wanted to get out. I'm out of here. I'm not sticking around. There's no. Yeah. Drive down the road. There's not going to be any down there no because they're they're all right here apparently yeah i'm just glad he didn't shoot it so yeah or the snake yeah yeah yeah that was sure that was a bad day out for him bad night out yeah i don't know if i'd trade my life for seeing a prairie rattlesnake.

Well, that population, though. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. I mean, so let's see. Other points that I wanted to make, right? So a couple of factual things from my perspective would be saying, so iNatural, Hurt Mapper is inherently obscured to the municipality level. So in the United States, that means county. I don't know really what it means in other countries.

I'm sure it's hugely variable, right? What that would mean in Europe versus Australia versus wherever else, right? As we sort of alluded to previously, San Juan County, Utah is a giant county. Whereas if you're on the east coast like it's much smaller so presumably if the herp mapper the the function of obscured probably works less well on the east coast than it does on the west coast where we have in general much larger counties so inherently that region is going to be a different size even texas like i was looking at that the herping texas book and

it shows the counties and there's a heck of a lot of counties in texas compared to something like utah you know so yeah some of them are real small and other and a lot of those ones that are i guess here's another point that i wanted to raise thank you for that is that in those in general counties that are smaller are going to be more densely populated and developed than counties that are large. That's a fair rule. Right. So looking kind of drawing a dichotomy between Hurtmapper and INAT, if we're saying that, oh, well, Hurtmapper is the best because it only says it's X county. If we're on the East Coast, it's highly developed anyway or if we're in florida which i think the specific example would have been from right like in the picture itself it's like the the intent of the image associated with the post was to make fun of the fact of oh there are

obscure dots in the ocean around this uh state park or whatever that's the out on this peninsula yeah and literally the entire rest of the uh image is development well guess what hurt map are telling you that it's in that county i bet you would probably go check out that state park anyway so like yeah it's funny they're obviously not in the ocean and they're all surrounding this state park okay yeah fair enough i mean the same thing happens with san francisco garter snakes and I'm not that hesitant. You're transitioning to another point. I'm not that hesitant to point out, you know, where exactly San Francisco garter snakes are, because in some sense, all that's happening, if people aren't communicating online about it, is that we're

gatekeeping local knowledge versus local knowledge versus online knowledge. So we're saying the locals who have the capacity, much greater capacity, to actually go out and collect with or muck with the animals, they know they're there. It's only me in Colorado who's not in the Bay Area that shouldn't know where they are. That's sort of the implication. Because the state park website itself identifies that it is one of two or three publicly accessible habitat spots for the scarter snake. So like the only the only person being gatekept, the only person who isn't getting this information is the person who's not the threat. And that's the part that sort of drives me nuts. It's like if there's someone out there who's going to commit what's been a federal crime since what, the late 60s, early 1970s to touch, let alone take a San Francisco garter snake.

The only person that's being dissuaded or not informed from that is someone who doesn't have hasn't gone, hasn't gone to the park where there's an entire there's literally a billboard spread that says right here is where they live. Yeah. Literally, it's on the, we're talking about something that's like 300 feet of accessible habitat along this march. And there's literally a sign right there that says this is where they are. Yeah. But only if you go do you see that. I will say too, though, if you're from a different state and your intent is to illegally collect, it's going to be a lot harder to prosecute you if you're half a country away. If you're on the East Coast or something, they're going to have to expend substantial.

Oh, absolutely. That's absolutely. And even just get buy-in from local. Practically speaking, right right it's more difficult that being said if it's a federally protected species like san francisco garter snake subspecies sure um then like they'll go out of you you know supposedly they exist in captivity in the united states i i've had no even secondhand knowledge of that. It's all like, oh, thirdhand, my uncle's brothers knows a guy, you know, sort of thing or whatever. And it's like, I don't even know that I really find that credible, you know, to be honest. But what I can

tell you is that if you go to Europe, they're readily accessible. I went to the House de Mures in Vienna. And the only one I've seen in life, because Lucas was down the trail, and when he half saw one, turns out garter snakes. The thing I realized, you learn so much as you go through the process. Garter snakes, at least in my experience, absent flipping them, they're a flush and grab sort of species, which is pretty tough when you're in a heavily monitored state park with something that it's a federal crime to touch yeah that's a really tricky thing to get a to see let alone get a good picture of um the only ones i've seen in life i saw in vienna in a zoo and they're in private hands in europe and whatever and they're not special quote not special yeah yeah they're commonly bred and available. Because to your point, they were sent out. You know, they've been collected over the last 60 years where it's been illegal to do so. And they went to Germany and Austria and wherever. And they're garter snakes.

So, yeah, they breed easily. The reason that they're actually, why are they rare now? Why are they in danger? Because of the habitat destruction. Exactly. And limited space. Yeah. They require fresh water right immediately inside of the ocean in the you know northern half of coastal california yeah the priciest real estate going so yep yeah and and you know and that's

to that point i mean if they would have you know collected from the other spots before they paved them over i guess that's my my contention with a lot of these. And this is kind of off topic, of course, but like Gila monsters in Utah, you know, we can't keep Gila monsters in Utah because they range in Utah and they're, they're, they're hard, hard to find, or they're threatened or they're, you know, limited areas, but they, they're paving over their habitat in leaps and bounds. Why can't we go on top of those maces i was just pointing that out to nipper that it's like man i bet it's a cool view but that doesn't feel sustainable it doesn't feel like i've had 10 years that house isn't there yeah that's true it's another point of that yeah and but the but the same token like they do that for desert tortoises. Like if a desert tortoise is displaced, they'll place it with a home that will give it a certain requirement.

Why can't they do the same thing with the Gila monsters if they're going to pave over their habitat anyway? Well, first off, they're probably underground and hard to find. And so they don't even know they're there. They might find once they dig up their burrow or something, but yeah, it's just, I don't know. That really rubs me the wrong way is like, yeah, we're going to protect something into oblivion because, you know, eventually that, that prime real estate will be high enough price that we won't give a crap what's living there. We're pave over it regardless you know so i do think things have changed a bit in the u.s and and like there is some at least you know as evidenced by lucas

having a job you know yeah that's fair they are setting aside things but yeah australia strip might you know again you can run over anything and they'll, you know, strip mine it to full minerals to send to China. You know, like, I mean, that's at some point here, we'll have to go to your favorite spot of WA and, you know, check out, check that out. But I've heard that some of those hikes are ruined because, oh, yes, look at the Vista where they've stripped mine away half of the hillside. But if if you were to move that Woma from the bulldozer yeah you're the one you're a bad guy yep exactly and you know i i guess in kind of the other side of that coin is the the mines also put in really nice paved roads that you can go road make it easier a lot of good stuff and find a lot of herps on those although it also results in them getting

crushed by yeah trains yeah so it's as ever right it's a mixed double-edged sword and yeah mixed mixed bag for sure but you know that's uh i guess that's the way it goes if you if you don't have accessibility you're probably not going to get in there to herp and if you do have accessibility that means other vehicles do and they're probably going to see some DORs. But at least on the mining roads, the traffic is much less frequent and busy, aside from certain times of the day. Coming out of South Australia, we were coming out just at dusk, and man, the miners were moving. There were lots of cars on the road for a few hours there. I've seen that too. We saw that when we went to coastal central Queensland on our last trip.

So we were up by a byfield and we were there two or three nights and um they were sort of non-dis maybe it was well one it was like torrentially raining so that you know people weren't super out and about or whatever but the point was that it basically dead ends into this airbase and one of those nights then this otherwise road where legitimately we didn't see a car either with us or against us the entire time over hours. Then we were doing it on a Saturday night, and each one of those airmen was blasting through at 35K over the speed limit. It was like, oh, it's over tonight. We did save a couple things uh regularis we did see a coastal not on that main road whatever but like yeah i mean it to your point right when when

it's going it can be a real it can be worse than basically anything but yeah then there are other most of the time there's nothing yeah now i you, I think a lot of people may, may not post their, their finds, you know, in certain areas where they're unknown or, or they're, that might be more of a hurt mapper type situation. If you're wanting to safeguard those observations, you're probably not going to post them on INAT. so you know the inat records kind of um maybe manipulated a little bit or or bias towards that and so that's another kind of downside of of inat is that people who are out there herping and you know i'll see that a lot from my utah friends guys that i know have seen like a hundred, you know, uh, mountain Kings or something,

you're not posting those on INAT or on hurt mapper. They're keeping them for themselves, you know, and, and that there's nothing wrong with that. That's their prerogative. That's fine. You know, and, and, uh, but you know, there's, there could be a lot of value in that. Hopefully they're keeping them somewhere and someday that could be available if somebody was going to publish on the natural history of mountain king snakes in Utah or something. But you know, that just as an example,

I'm not saying that that needs to happen or, you know, that person has to give up their location. That's kind of the, you know, that, that kind of, it's hard to say, Hey, you have to do this or, hey, this is important. And, you know, but it could be or it could not be like, you know, the marbled salamanders in the pickle jars. Maybe nobody does anything with them and that was a complete waste. Or maybe somebody comes through and makes some huge discovery on marbled salamanders using those pickled specimens it's really hard to predict you know right say what's going to

run and what'll happen exactly yeah you're kind of yeah you're just sort of casting a lot on it i think um that does raise a good point just for clarity around the another point of offense in the post was sort of the suggestion that no science happens with INET, that sort of the sole utility is negative. The pushback to that would be we've heard at least two episodes of herpetological highlights where the principal article that was discussed came utilizing citizen science data from iNaturalist. So the first one was looking into sort of the regionality of the Bell's phase versus non-traditional lace monitor. That was a really good episode. I know you will have listened to. And then

in June, so I reached out to Tom Major about this, sort of talking through this stuff and whatever. And he had some interesting points that we've mostly gone through, which also I'm sure we'll hit on here shortly. But the other one he reminded me and i was like wow i can't believe i didn't remember that because it was six weeks five or six six weeks ago that they did an episode talking about um evidence of nocturnal activity in natrix grass snakes um that was all based on you know a super wide-ranging species that has a great uh uh both

latitude latitudinal and longitudinal distribution and they were able to look at that variance look at the time of collection you know the time of the photograph look at the light conditions in in uh in visible in the photograph and see like oh yeah it's southern as you might guess they're more likely to be nocturnal in the summer in southern latitudes than they are in northern latitude you know this sort of um but just so the compiling the data and state you know showing that through the data it's very important to scientific process if you don't have the data the whole paper what utilized data that was collected by people, recognizing the limitations, some of which you've highlighted, right? Recognizing those limitations, that entire data set for that paper or that piece of knowledge,

again, probably confirming what we might suspect, right, what our intuition might be. But nevertheless, all of that came from citizen science data on iNaturalist. So to the extent that the Post said explicitly that no scientific material ever has come out on iNaturalist. So to the extent that the post said explicitly that no scientific material ever has come out of iNaturalist, that is fundamentally false. There are at least two herpetological highlights episodes strictly related to articles that solely came from iNaturalist. So not true.

I know it's fun to be like someone we know who everything is 100% one thing, 0% the other, or vice versa. Never and always. Never and always. If you say never or always, you're almost certainly wrong. You're always wrong. Yeah. Well, almost certainly.

Yeah. And I think, I mean, the, you know, like we mentioned before, Hurt Mapper will provide data for, you know, scientifically sound. So that's not so much a negative to Hurt Mapper. Yeah. Grant that access to appropriate people. And as I know, Mike, you know, so love Mike. I love listening to Mike Bingleton. You know, great podcast. He's going on hiatus. Maybe Justin and I have some plans to compete, at least in the gap. We'll see. We'll see what happens with that. But I think he does a great job, heavily involved with Hurtmapper. He highlighted on an episode where they talked about sort of getting into Hurtmapper and why it exists and what they do and sort of their core tenants he said that

you know he's had people suspect him of oh well you when you go hurt brings up place you'll access our records or whatever and he vehemently denied that and said no absolutely not i'm not abusing you know my place of privilege based on my involvement here none of us do that uh so that's it's not disrespect to hurt mapper this is more to me highlighting that a you know i like to fight straw man you know and b saying that i don't i think they're way it's just as ever there's a far greater level of complexity than that sort of like so i think i said to you when we first saw it, anyone who's unironically using the large brain, small brain meme, I probably disagree. Yeah.

Well, and I'm frankly working on a project now that I'm using both Herb Mapper and iNaturalist for different reasons. And they're very helpful in that objective. So, you know, I think there's benefit and usefulness for both of those things, as long as they're correctly identified. There have been some instances where I'll go back and, and, you know, some of the records that are in INAT are misidentified animals or things like that. So, you know, it's, it's got its pros and cons for sure. Looks like Rob is frozen. Oh, I hear you. Yeah, I'm here. I was just letting you go. Okay. Gotcha. Your, your, your image is frozen on the,

on my screen. So I'm not seeing you move, but yeah, it's frozen. Both, both of us are frozen online. I can hear you. So yeah,

hopefully, hopefully we're all good. Maybe, maybe this is a universe telling me that I can stop for a moment and, uh, save my enthusiasm for, uh, the weekend's venture and our our next um episode but uh i think this has been really good i mean there's utility to both it's again we don't

fight about things that where there's no conversation to be sure but it's in the conversation right that hopefully there's utility. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I think, you know, this is a really important topic, and I agree. You know, there's a lot of kind of shade thrown on INAT and some of the things associated with that or HERPMAP or even, you know, where I don't think it's warranted. And I think this was important to kind of discuss these issues and kind of counter some of those claims like we have. So very, very helpful and useful topic, in my opinion. So in my very biased opinion, but yeah, I appreciated your insights too. You had some really great points. And, you know, of course, we've talked about these offline as well. So, yeah, it's really good to think about all the ins and outs and pros and cons of these things.

And, you know, also recognizing their limitations. So I think we've hit on a lot of good things. If there's something we missed or something you want to add, feel free to contact us and come on the show. Happy to have some guests on to talk about this further, but yeah, interesting stuff. Well, um, aside, uh, I'm really, uh, curious to see that, you know, read that book. That's, I like those kinds of books where they talk about their herping, uh, adventures, uh, you know, that kind of thing. That's really cool. So I'll have to check that out.

But any other exciting things in the world of herpetoculture or herpetology you've run across? Oh, did you miss that? I just asked any new stuff in the herp world that you're excited about? Hold on. Hold on. Let's see. I know I listened to the roundtable about the short-tailed pythons and borneos and all that stuff. I'm not so much into that, but it was really great hearing Keith and Matt and Eric and

Owen discuss kind of the history and all the fun stuff in the background of those different species, the big fat pythons of Southeast Asia. So that was really great. But I really enjoy listening to those guys chat about them. pythons of Southeast Asia. So that was really great. But really enjoy listening to those guys chat about them even if I have no interest in keeping them. But they're beautiful snakes. I just don't think they fit well in my collection

strategy or mindset. But I really appreciate those good looking snakes. I think I'm in line with Eric's view on those. Very cool episode of NPR. I also listened to the one that you recommended with Daniel Natush talking scrub pythons on Kush's Corner. That was a really interesting episode, listening to Daniel talk about kind of the wild scrubs and that kind of thing. So very cool episode that Kush put out. So good stuff.

Well, we might be done with this episode. I think Rob is having some sufficient technical difficulties. So I guess we'll bow out of the show now and say thanks to Eric and Owen and the NPR umbrella. And we're grateful for their support and helping us publish this content. And hopefully you guys are enjoying it, and we'll catch you next time for another episode of Reptile Fight Club.