Reptile Fight Club - Is it ok to make Hybrids/Intergrades to further Morph Projects?

Episode Date: June 4, 2021

In this episode, Justin and Chuck tackle the topic of is it ok to make Hybrids/Intergrades to further Morph Projects?Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comWebsite: https://www.moreliapythonradio.netYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQ@MPR Network on FB and IG.Email: [e-mail]-spring store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

Thank you. Welcome to another Reptile Fight Club episode. I'm Justin Julander. I'm Chuck Poland. And we're here to fight. All right. Well, things going well? You doing all right? Things are good.

Got three new baby Lachydactylus williamsii from Frank Payne the other week. Lachodactylus Williamseye from Frank Payne the other week. Lachodactyl Blues. Yes, little electric blues. They're tiny. I've got some 12-12-18 Ecoteras that I'm keeping them in. And I found out very quickly that the back, so it has like vents on the back and you can close those vents, but it's like you can, they can still get up in between and over and they can get out. So I was like, I put them in there and I was like, okay, cool. And I, you know, everything was fine.

And, and I was like looking in there when I, when I checked in on him and I'm like, man, where is that one that's hiding? And I kind of look back and there it is sitting on the top of the cage under the light, just looking at me like, what are we going to do? What are we going to do? So, uh, I ended up catching it, uh, and, uh, getting it back in there. So, uh, then I did, you know, uh, uh, a repair job to get those, those vents kind of, uh, closed off so they can't get out. So that's, that's fixed and, and, uh, they're, they're doing great. Uh, got, um, two more, um, Falsuma Grandis eggs. So I've got four, four eggs in the incubator now. And, so that that's good uh and i don't know it's just

been kind of cranking along work's been kind of crazy and um you know yeah that's that's that yeah so i uh so i was listening to um uh eric and owen on the hangout uh for mpr and and uh eric was saying that hit like his sisters into plants. And so I'm like, ah, that's cool. Cause I, you know, I, I like plants and, uh, and Eric was, was joking about how they, they were going to make a, like a reptile plant and, uh, you know, like store all in one. And so I, I, I wanted to just throw this out there just to get, you know, Eric's wheels spinning hard. So, you know, I like to do plants and I've got an outdoor garden. And so I start all my stuff indoors. So I have in my garage, I I've got kind of a, an insulated room

that I actually, uh, he like, so I grow my startup plants in there. And so I have like a, you know, like a plant light in there. It's about 315 Watts and, and it actually warms that room enough to keep the ambient. And, and when it gets too high, I have an air conditioning unit that cools it off. And so, yeah, so you can basically keep your ambient off of your, you know, the light for your plants. You can grow plants in there where your plants need water. They evapotranspirate, which puts humidity into the air. So you can use a dehumidifier at a certain level to keep the humidity where you want it. So you kind of make an enclosed, you know, environment for your, not only your plants, but for your reptiles.

And so, you know, you can, then I kind of move the, you know, and in the summer, and it only works here in San Diego for me, right? Because it's not, it doesn't get super hot. Well, it does get super hot, but I don't run the light when it's super hot because it's really too hot to garden outside. So, more of the spring crop, fall crop, and those times work out really nice to just have the light running and keep the ambient. And it keeps the room really steady. So I just wanted to drop that in his head.

So now he's like, oh, plants, reptiles. Furthering the madness. Yes, of course. That's cool. Yeah, it's fun to see how all nature kind of course. things like that. I, I was listening to, uh, the Australian, uh, herpetoculture podcast or herpetological podcast. I can't remember which is, which it is, but, um, and they were interviewing Matt Somerville. This guy is one of my heroes, man. I don't know if you've listened to that yet, but you got to check that out. Matt Somerville is the man like he's, he, uh, he's, he's herped

all over. He's got, you know, he's seen well over half of the, the species of, of herp in, in Australia. So, I mean, there's what, 1200 and he's around 600. So pretty, pretty impressive. And then, um, he's, uh, he and his, uh, significant other are making some really nice naturalistic cages and they have a YouTube channel. And so, uh, he's, he's just got some awesome enclosures. His own Peli enclosure is phenomenal, you know? So, um, but man, just, he's, he's just a wealth of knowledge when it comes to field herping and just reptiles in general. But yeah, check that, check that out if you haven't listened to it.

What a, what a cool guy. Um, and, and I i mean he's been very helpful in in the book process you know he's given i've been able to bounce some ideas off him he's given me some uh cool cool observations that he's made in the field and and with his captive animals and um just really cool guy really you know laid back and and has and get some nice uh uh photos of the reptiles to boot. So, uh, they're, they're featured prominently in the book. So good, good stuff. But yeah, I, I really enjoyed that episode this week. How is the book coming?

Um, good, good. I, I just, uh, so Nick sent me the, the evolutionary history chapter a few, well, a week or two ago. And I just got through with that one and somehow had another five pages. I'm not sure how that happened, but yeah. So it's going to be a beast, I hope. So now comes the layout process, and that can be a little tedious and difficult to try to figure out where to place all the photographs. And, um, and you know, we're still looking for a few pictures, I think of morphs. I think Nick still needs a couple and, um, you know, but I think we've got some really nice photos. I think this should be, you know, hopefully we'll be able to replace pretty much

all the photos, except for maybe a couple kind of key photos that we had in the first edition. But yeah, it's, it's going to be, uh, you know, largely a new book. So I'm excited to finish it up. You know, it's a labor of love and yeah. People are talking like you might rewrite, rewrite carpet history with this book, man. I I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm excited now. I'm, I'm, I'm ready. I'm excited. I'm excited to see what people think. Cause I've kind of thrown out a few interesting ideas. Nick and I have kind of ruminated on them for a while, of course, you know, even the last decade since the first edition. And I don't know, I've got some, some interesting thoughts on, you know, how these things break up and, and what kind of, uh, you know, taxonomy might be anticipated. Uh, taxonomy is not my

thing. So, you know, I may be looking at it too simplistically, but from where I stand that, you know, there's some, there's some, uh, changes that might be needed, at least in the way we think about carpet pythons and in general, you know, and what, what they are and I don't know, um, how they're interrelated and where the breaks might occur. So I've, I've, I'm really excited to get that out there. Cause I had kind of a couple of epiphany moments that, um, I'm excited to, to bounce off people and have people read about. I feel like we've had a conversation, at least one, where some of that insight has come out and I'm excited for other people

to kind of glimpse into that as well. So I have, yeah, the utmost faith that people will be highly interested in the ideas that you guys are going to be putting forth. I mean, it's, you know, species concepts and taxonomy develop over time.'s, you know, species concepts and taxonomy

develop over time. So, you know, taxonomy is ever changing, but frankly, the animals don't care what we call them, what they're doing and, and, you know, evolutionary processes are a lengthy thing. You know, it doesn't happen overnight. So, um, you know, I don't know, taxonomy is kind of funny that way, but we'll, we'll call them what we call them, I guess. Yeah. It's mainly to help us know what we have and what we're working with. So, yep. Yep.

Well, you know, we, we, we like to name things and claim things. So, uh, if we can, you know, uh, and, and the human mind's really, really good at separating things out. Uh, that's kind of how we think about stuff is, you know, we don't necessarily, we understand things are all interconnected, but we don't always think of them as interconnected, right? Our brains are kind of naturally wired to like put them in a category. So having a system that categorizes things is to me pretty natural for humans. Yeah.

Humans are labelers and we've always been that way. So, and you know, it's fun. Where was it? Uh, I don't know. I was reading a book and talks about some, you know, some of Wallace's travels and he was kind of a contemporary with Darwin and did some pretty cool trips out to New Guinea to look for birds of paradise and stuff like that. So, you know, pretty crazy stuff. I can't imagine being a, an explorer back in the day, collecting some of the first specimens of, of species, you know, that have ever been seen by Western eyes. Of course, uh, you know, the, the indigenous cultures knew about them for forever. So, um, but you know, crazy stuff, I guess, uh, if we can

kind of throw out our ideas there and hopefully it'll, it'll help, uh, others to kind of see the interrelatedness and how these carpet pythons are, um, how they may be divide up and, and are related to each other. Um, some people might not be too excited about some of those proposed changes. And I know we have differing opinions from a lot of people out there, but, uh, you know, it is what it is. We'll see, see how people react, but that should be good. So, um, yeah, I've got, uh, today was a cleaning day out in the rodent shed. So I, you know, fed, fed some stuff and went out to the reptile room and I had a litter of, uh, Northern blue tongue skinks. So that's kind of nice. And then, um, got a, uh, another clutch of, uh, Western Stimson's pythons. So some more, uh, some more of those on the way and had some hatch out last week as well as some pygmy pythons. So the, uh, season's progressing nicely. That makes, uh, three litters of skinks. So I'm going to be overrun with skinks here in a bit, but so

if anybody's interested, I did get a nice, uh, fairly large litter from my, uh, sunrise female, uh, sunrise pair actually. So pure sunrise, uh, lineage, uh, Northern blue tongues, which are fairly, uh, high in demand. So if anybody's interested, I should have some good ones available this year. And I still have a couple left from last year that are coloring up nicely and doing fairly well. So hit me up if you're looking for a Northern blue tongues kink in the U S um, I don't know what, what else is we got, uh, got this trip coming up. So I'm pretty stoked about that. Of course, uh, heading out with the pod father and, uh, the, uh, uh, Rob. Um, so the Morelia Python network guys, as well as the, uh, THP guys, herpetoculture Podcast Network guys.

So it should be interesting. We'll try to get them to fight and record that for the Reptile Fight Club podcast. So we'll see if we can get some good discussion going on between the two groups. Well, I've lost Chuck. I don't know. Maybe he's taking care of some business, but I'm ready to fight. I don't know. And maybe he's taking care of some business, but we, uh, I'm ready to fight. I don't know. I'm, I'm, my, my eyes getting raised here as I'm, uh, droning on about stuff around

here. Um, is there anything else that we need to talk about beforehand? I, uh, I'm, I'm just ready to get out and hurt. That's for sure. Let the desert bake my brains out and stare at some rock cuts for a while. I am hoping that the conditions out there are improving and, and we'll have a very successful trip, but, uh, yeah, we're, uh, we're looking forward to getting some, herping done here soon i think everybody's uh ready for a for a herp trip so well are you ready to fight chuck yeah let's do it okay well as as kind of an introduction today's topic i i got a message from my old friend Peter Birch over in Australia.

He thought we should fight about the topic of if it's okay to make hybrids or integrates in pursuit of a morph project. So we're going to cover that today and we'll take the yay or the yay or the nay and and support or or against that topic um and we'll fight about that so um here we go with the coin toss you ready to call it sure i'll call it here we go call it in the air. Heads. It is tails. All right. Well, I'm going to go with the nay side. I don't think it's all right.

Yeah. I don't think it's all right to make hybrids and integrates in pursuit of morphs. So I'm going to go against that topic. And kind of, you know, in honor of Peter, I know he would have wanted it that way. Okay. Peter's not dead, but he didn't make it to this episode. Yeah. He was too chicken to fight you, I guess, or maybe it was to fight me.

I don't know. He's pretty tough though. He does that, uh, martial arts stuff. So I guess i shouldn't flap my lip too much but he is in australia and they're not letting people this is more of a verbal sparring though so exactly you know no fisticuffs no blood yeah maybe bruised egos but it would have been fun to have him on so we'll have to get another topic to to get entice him to come on again yeah or to come on the podcast not again he hasn't been on here yet okay so let's see do you want to start or i'll let you choose if you start or or if you defer why don't you walk us out the

gate my friend all right let's get this going here um okay so morphs morphs there that's that's such a uh big topic these days i mean lately that's kind of what's been getting people into the hobby getting people excited about reptiles and frankly i kind of i'm a little sad about that because there's so much more to reptiles than just a different weird paint job. And honestly, a lot of the times the paint jobs that are coming out aren't much better than the natural look of the animal anyway. So, you know, they've they've produced a lot of controversy and definitely, you know, uh, the, the making in hybrids and integrates and all these kinds of things when you're trying to make morphs, uh, is one of the downsides of the hobby in my opinion. So, um, that's, you know, that's the reason I kind of want to take that side now. Um,

why is that? Why does that matter? Right. We're, we're not zoos. We're not, you know, repopulating the wild with these things. So who cares? Right. What, what does it matter? I think that might be what you're thinking right now, but I would, I would counter and I would say, you know, we, we may not be rewilding these things, but we're not, we're losing more opportunities to get these things out of the wild. So we're losing more opportunities to get these things out of the wild. So we're losing those opportunities to have the natural forms that you would find in the wild. And for me, when I go into my reptile room, I want a little slice of Australia. That's where my interests lie.

So I like Australian animals. If you couldn't tell by my business name, Australian Addiction Reptiles. So when I go out there, I want to see what I might see in, in Australia. Right. And so I've kind of selected a collection that, that has that look to it. And so, you know, I, I don't want to go out there and see a bunch of, you know, bright neon yellow snakes. Now, granted, I have a couple of those, but, uh, I, you know, that's not my whole collection and that's not really where my interests lie, especially right now. Now that's not to say that morphs don't have their place, but for me, when I go into my reptile room, I want to enjoy a wild

type animal. Now, if the people who kind of start these projects, right? They, they might start making, uh, the wild type animals, but in some instances, a lot of times, if there's a morph involved, especially early on, like say, uh, uh, a new species that has a morph along with it gets imported from Europe or something. And so we have a limited number of these animals. Well, of course the people are going to focus on the morphs. And that's a little bit to the start of the albino carpets in the United States, right? There weren't a lot of pure Darwin carpets in the U S. And so when the first Darwin carpets come in, they were either het for albino or albino. And so, you know, the first ones that made it into Europe, they were bred, you know, especially the albinos, anything with the albino gene was bred to anything with the cloaca, including all of the different subspecies of carpet python, as well as different

species of, of carpet python, you know? So, um, what resulted was kind of a mishmash and you never knew, you know, for sure if you had a Darwin or a cross or whatever. And so, you know, especially when you've got an Erian giant, you know, West pop and carpet in the mix, um, you're going to have, uh, those, those issues, it's going to be really difficult to determine what you have. And so that's, that's kind of what happened. So, you know, then you have this mixed up gene pool and you don't get to be able to see that wild type animal that you might be wanting to see.

So that's my first argument against creating hybrids and integrates when you're pursuing a morph project. Okay. Well, I mean, you know, we kind of know the stuff here. And, you know, if we were talking ball pythons and ball python morphs who cares right it's all you know they're all the same species exactly so so they they kind of get away from you know uh any of the the unwanted side effects of of uh uh you know of making morphs and and uh it's all good for them. Uh, they just overproduced the crap out of all pythons. That's all. So, I mean, but, you know,

I think, unfortunately the argument is, uh, simply that if you pop out a, a mutation in one of these subspecies, the only way to get that mutation, unless, you know, you play the extremely unlikely long game, uh, and the importation to, to get it to wait until that mutation pops up in McDowell lie or, or whatever the, you know, whatever the subspecies you're talking about. And, and then you work with that subspecies as pure. And obviously, we've been in carpets for quite a long time and we see that that's not a prevalent thing. The color diversity and the different looks these animals can give in one clutch is far greater than the amount of mutations we see coming out of these animals. So it's kind of a moot argument.

If you want to work with morphs, you have to produce integrates because a lot of these things are going across subspecies. So just in form and function, you can't get around it. That's to say, you know, that that's neither here nor there on the merits of why you should or shouldn't do it. Um, I mean, I, and you know, for me, I, I, um, I did, uh, I had a, it was like the first jungle that I got. It was like a diamond, some type of a diamond jungle cross and the thing was really ivory looking and i bred it to a female silver coastal that i had and what i produced out of that was you know uh uh an integrate uh that looked

better than any ivory jungle i've ever seen this thing just just blew up. It just pops so hard. It looks so good. The whole clutch did. The whole clutch did. And so, that's from working across genetic lines. And we kind of briefly touched on the problem with taxonomy and naming things. And so, we get it in our head that there's this line we just don't cross. You can't do that. That's not good. That animal's not worth this. It somehow devalues the animal.

And I just don't think that on its face, that argument makes much sense. You know, and like you said, we're not repopulating the wild with these animals. And yeah, you know, the biggest problem people have with it is nobody, nobody wants to associate with a snake that gets a bad rap because it's just a normal cross. That's a pro by-product of, uh, of breeding morphs. And I, I think that is a gross disservice to the genetic diversity that carpets throw out. And just because it does cross subspecies lines or even species lines sometimes, it doesn't necessarily make it not a fantastic animal. And I think you can see plenty of examples of integrates in carpets that are just absolutely shockingly stunning animals. So, you know, I think that would probably

be the way I would lead with this. You know, certainly, you know, you could, you can look to the wild and say, well, this is an abomination of, you know, of what the wild is doing. But the animals in the wild would be breeding with each other if they could get to each other. They don't know any different, right? So they're broken up along either resource partitions or geographic partitions. And so that's why they don't integrate with each other. And, oh, wait, they do. Oh, they totally do integrate with each other. So, you know, it even happens in the wild

and nobody, nobody, when it happens in the wild bats an eye at that. They say, well, that's, that's nature, that's natural. And it's like, okay, well, we're not, you know, one, we're not in nature and, and we're not doing natural things here. You know, we're not, we're not in nature and we're not doing natural things here. You know, we're not trying to carry on the genetic diversity of a species that's doing fine in the wild right now. You know, that's kind of where I'm coming from in that, at least to lead out. Yeah. Now, I just need to clue you in here. So, if, you know, putting two snakes together, you know,

you have that choice before you put them together. So they're not, you know, just bumping into each other in the night and we control, you know, of course, in our, in our own collections, what breeds with what. And so, you know, I, I think, uh, in the wild, of course, yeah, there are some, some where populations might meet where you'll have some intergrade zones. Um, you know, so I guess if, if you're talking about that, that probably would mean they're subspecies of each other or, um, so that would be more integration. But I guess my, my main, uh, I guess issue with it is, is, you know, the formation of hybrids. Now, some of that might be

made in ignorance. Uh, people didn't really, well, people say they didn't realize there were multiple different species of green tree pythons, but of course now we know there are two, two main species and potentially even more so, and at least at the subspecies level. So, um, you know, there's a bunch of hybrid mutts running around now Now people say, oh, we don't know where they really came from. We're just taking the word of the importers. Well, I think that's a little bit of laziness to some extent, because we can do as much as we can. And we do have to trust the word of some people. And, you know, they may be lying, but they may be telling the truth as well. So, you know, we go on the best information we can. And there's, there's indicated, like, obviously to describe them as two separate species, they need morphological as well as genetic differences. And there are quite substantial genetic differences between Azuria and Viridis, the green tree python species. And there's also substantial morphological differences between them. So you should be able to tell, you know, if you've got at least at the species level,

which one you're working with. So to say, oh, you know, we don't know for sure where they came from. Well, yeah, you do, because you can see that in the animal, unless you're blind. And generally when you buy them, they're like three times the price of a locality animal. So that's a good indicator. Well, and tell me where you can find locality animals anymore. Well, they're like three times the price of a locality animal so that's a good indicator but well and tell me where you can find locality animals anymore well they're out there i mean there's still there's still there's well i don't that's not there's very few that are available you can find them as pure species most of them are designer hybrids right sure so yeah well and and and to my argument nobody's batting an eye at that

uh in in i am well you are who are you man who are you you're not even a condo guy i guess that's the problem is you know where can you find i mean you say you can find them but they're very hard to find you know the animals that are kind of locality pure or or tried you know tried to uh keep uh locality pure collections you just don't see those as much more more more people are chasing the you know the color and pattern uh projects rather than the locality pure projects. So I don't know. I mean, I do have a pair of, uh, Maruki, uh, condros and, and, uh, and try to, uh, I definitely will be keeping those as, as pure as I can, you know, keep breed breed with only Maruki locales. But, um, anyway, that's, uh, that's the, that's the problem is as, as these things

get popular, especially if morphs are involved, that's kind of what drives this, uh, crossing indiscriminately is, oh, I've got a, you know, a morph in the Centralian Python and I've got a morph in the Darwin carpet and I want to bring those two mutations together. So I'm going to breed my brettles with a, you know, with a Darwin carpet and, and then you've got a hybrid Spoloda brettly. And so that's, uh, that's kind of where, where we run into issues because then, you know, but do we, but do we, but do we, well, I mean, if, if that's, what's driving it and everybody wants that mutation and there's no, you know, a lot of times it devalues the wild type, right? It devalues, oh, we need this more.

How does it devalue the wild type? Because people want to chase morphs. Okay. They want to chase morphs. That doesn't devalue the wild type because people are interested in the morph. And the only way you get that morph is by crossing those species. That doesn't devalue. It maybe takes the attention away from the pure species.

If you've got a morph that's worth several thousand dollars and the wild type's worth a couple hundred, and people are going to try to chase that morph, they're going to want to go after the money in a lot of cases, right? There's very few people that are going to say, no, I'm going to stick with the wild type because that's what I care about. And that's, you know, even if it's worth 10 times less money, you know, money talks a lot with most reptile keepers, money talks. And so you're going to dry that. That's that's what I'm talking about when when I say devalue the wild type of parents. And so they're going to chase those morphs and do whatever they can to bring those mutations together, you know, including hybridization. And then but as as the morph prices drop, all of a sudden you're left with a bunch of byproduct or or, you know, whatever you want to call it, these, these hybrids, these integrates. And yeah, I admit some of the most

spectacular carpet pythons I've seen were a mismatch of everything imaginable, right? My friend, Troy Kuligowski produced a carpet and I think it had like five different subspecies and species in there. And that thing glowed in the dark and they couldn't even tell that, you know, if it had the jag gene in it, you know, that was kind of back in the early days of the Jaguar in Australia, but that thing was spectacular. And I guess my point is if you, if you bring all those subspecies or species back together and, and kind of reunify the genome you you kind of get this this potential for for a lot more kind of phenotypical or different phenotype looks from from across different you know subspecies and even the species i yeah yeah

and i and i freely admit that and that's i guess that's the point is when those things become more popular than the wild type appearance, then that drives just more people down that alley. And then you run out of stock in a lot of cases, especially where it's not imported or it's from somewhere like Australia where you're not getting new stock in anytime soon or, or very easily or readily. Right. And, and most of it's kind of questionable to begin with. And so, um, you know, then you're stuck with a bunch of mismatched, uh, carpet pythons and yeah, they might be beautiful and they might be cool to look at, but you've kind of lost what you had in regard to that, that, uh, pure subspecies or locale or whatever you want to call it. And to me, that's, that's tragic. And I would hope, you know, people would agree with that, you know? Yeah. So, so to kind of, to kind of back up onto the show a little, what we're talking about is integrates made from morphs, right? So what we're not talking about is those guys like Nick out there who are still doing pure species, right?

And that's out there. It's still out there. And there's a large cross section of people who, like yourself, are interested in that. And not to say that you're not interested in morphs, right? And if we could make morphs cleanly with no, you know, unwanted byproduct across species, then I'm sure that would be a preferable thing for us. But but we just can't. Right. So so we're running into an issue around, you know, kind of the the ethical or or the the the worth and value of animals that are created as a byproduct of of you know mixing subspecies to get certain morphs and my argument is is probably more based in how we view those animals that are integrates like there's something wrong with that and as you said as i've said there's some fantastic animals that come out of that but because of the way we name and because of the way we look at things those are less desirable animals so so so they get tossed off

for cheaper people wholesale get them out of here i I don't care, you know, and, and, and so they're devalued for the animal that they are rather than valued for the uniqueness that they have. Um, and you know, I don't see integrates hurting, you know, that I don't see them hurting the morphs. Uh, morphs are still valuable. I don't see them hurting the morphs. Morphs are still valuable. I don't see them hurting pure species. Now, listen, you could say, oh, well, yeah, right. People misrepresent those all the time. Well, you know what? Somebody took somebody's word at the beginning of a deal for something pure.

And nobody, you know, and you hear people say all kinds of ridiculous stuff like, well, I got it from this guy who said he got it right out of the wild and it looks like it's pure. So it's pure. Really? Okay. Sure. Okay. You know, so in the end we are always taking somebody's word for something unless we go get it ourselves. And there's very few people than the, in the carpet world that can be like, oh no, that's pure. I know exactly where I got that from. Yeah. And yeah, you're going to have that, but to, to further that and to drive it, you know, to a worse place, that's going to, you know, I don't see how that's going to help anything or, or make, make that better. Right. So clarify that. Let me clarify. Yeah. So, you know, we talk about how, you know, what, what is the word sib convey? Right. It conveys an image of by-product, an undesirable animal because you didn't get a Jaguar right and so people feed them to their king cobra

or they you know yeah yeah they're blackhead right garbage snakes right to to some people and i and i agree with you that should not be the case they should be valued as as much as a jaguar but the reality of this is is when you have a high dollar, and this kind of goes into our last week's topic, right, of high dollar animals, you automatically devalue the either wild type or the intergrade that doesn't contain the gene. And to me, I think that's an ethical concern. To me, that seems like something that we should be moving away from not not running towards well and i think i i think to to your point um there's a lot of people you know podfather being one of them who doesn't doesn't work with jags anymore i don't work with jags anymore i know

a lot of people who don't mess with jags anymore because they're just derpy and and it's it's rough to watch when you get a bad one. But you know what? Those coastal sibs that, you know, in air quotes, sibs that they create, the regular coastals, they're fine. They're normal. They're just normal coastals, right? So we value this tweaked out neuro animal because it's got a messed up gene and a lethal super over, you know, a potentially normal coastal. And we even give it, like you said, a Sib, like a, you know, a brand, a negative brand,

a name around its byproduct status, so to speak, which is absolutely ridiculous. You know, I mean, you're making my point you're, you're helping me win here, Chuck. Right. I mean, that's, that's the issue. That's the problem is when we include these morphs and we start chasing morphs, we devalue the either wild type or the, or the byproduct. Or, or we devalue the the the inner grade which there's nothing wrong with um and and so you know the example i gave was was of something that was probably from a pure coastal if we were talking jag something but you know a lot of those have different subspecies mixed in there. And I don't, I, I'm not going to

change my argument there for that. It, the, the only reason people feel like, oh, uh, an, uh, an IJ, you know, um, jungle jag, you know, byproduct, uh, integrate is, is because it's got three different names to it, you know? Sure. And so, you know, and you don't know what that animal is going to necessarily look like when it grows up. You might have some inclination, but, you know, if you cast it off and you write it off as a trash snake or whatever, however you want to, however you want to categorize that it's probably going to go somewhere where somebody is going to kill it because they don't value it or take

care of it. And it didn't get the, the cred that it deserves and nobody will ever see what an awesome snake it turned out to be. So, you know, I mean, giving credit where credit is due, you know, to the animal, not, not, not to its value or not to its perceived value. And I think that's a, that's a, uh, uh, a mental, you know, construct that we've created as, as, um, as breeders and keepers and, and reptile enthusiasts, um, that, that, you know, if, if you don't come from a pure thing or you're a by-product of, of something across something, you're, you're less than something. And that's, you know, And that's where we're at. Right. I mean, if you look at the,

the coastal market, um, coastals are kind of a mess and, and granted we may not have known what their origin were, you know, back in the day. And so maybe it was hard to have a lineage, uh, pure animal, but you know, that that's kind of the, it's just a big, big mess, um, with the, the jag gene thrown in there and, and just kind of, um, really mess things up with, uh, coastal carpets as far as, as I can see. And I, I, you know, I don't know what the answer is. I guess the answer was to bring in different localities from Europe. And so now we have maybe some Brisbane localities and some, you know, I don't know what the answer is. I guess the answer was to bring in different localities from Europe. And so now we have maybe some Brisbane localities and some other locale specific animals. But, you know, it could have easily have gone the other way, especially in the climate of today where US is not allowing Australian animals to be imported from europe to to kind of but i mean how does but how does even bringing in brisbane's or

locality you know animals how does that change the the conundrum of making you know integrates or or or or hybrids uh from mutations you know what i mean it really it really doesn't because now you have that option where you didn't have that before to have a locality pure animal, to have somewhere, something that you can say, this probably looks like what I'd see in the wild. And you lose that opportunity. We lost that opportunity with the whole garbage that ensued after the jag gene was introduced. I don't know, man. Oh, I do. I know. I watched it. You watched it. I mean,

we, we saw that happen. And I don't know, frankly, I would, who saw that happen? I didn't see that. Oh, we all saw it happen. I mean, the jag gene caused a lot of problems of course, but that's, you know, that's the morph gene and the way and the way and the way it's inherited and you know the the the the problem people have with everything to a cloaca i hate that that statement that you so fondly like to repeat but um yeah it is a little weird but i just i mean i i don't know i'm not saying i don't understand where you're coming from. I just think that you're trying to pivot this argument to almost like a pure species argument. And it's not. So people are focused on morphs. And in carpets, morph because, you know, they're across subspecies,

plain and simple. Um, and so, you know, I, I think if, if we were so less focused on the name and, and more focused on the animals, it would be a lot less of a big deal. And I don't think integrates take away from, you know, obviously anything misrepresented is potentially not good, right? Even somebody who mislabels a Brisbane because it, you know, is a halfway crappy looking caramel and they call it Brisbane. And now all of a sudden you're misrepresenting a pure, you know, is a halfway crappy looking caramel and they call it a Brisbane. And now all of a sudden you're misrepresenting a pure, you know, a pure locality animal. Um, and, and, you know, there's certain people who I do believe when they say, oh yeah, this is a Brisbane. I got it from this person and I'm like, okay, yeah, sure. But after a while, you know, things get muddied up and animals change hands and people misremember things. And so in the end, you know, it higher priced animals lead to better outcomes with animals,

but I also think valuing the animal for the animal and not necessarily just, you know, slapping a label on it like a sib is also a way to value the animal, you know, promoting and even going back to a previous is promoting the animal for the animal, you know, promoting and even going back to a previous is promoting the animal for the animal, for the amazingness that the animal is not sensationalizing it negatively for the byproduct that it is. Right. Right. Yeah. Well, but the problem is that's where we're at. Nobody cares about the byproduct. Right. Everybody wants that gene. And, and as the gene price falls, so does the value of, of that, that hybrid or that cross that even has the genes, right? We have, we have lots of what used to be high-end morphs that, you know, we're, we're triple and quadruple combinations that are now,

you know, worth a, you know, worthless in a lot of people's eyes. And, and so when we're, we're triple and quadruple combinations that are now, you know, worth, uh, you know, worthless in a lot of people's eyes. And, and so when we have, it's, it's just such a, such a hard thing for me. And, and I think a lot of people feel this way that when you place value on an animal, especially in regards to a simple thing, like it's, it's phenotype, you know, it's color or pattern or whatever. I think it just does a disservice to the animal, like you're saying, right? I think you're making my point beautifully. No, I don't think I'm making your point beautifully because, you know, I had a really nice pair of hair jungles and there was all kinds of accusations about the impurity of those animals but you know what when those animals were were hard and kicking nobody gave a shit about how pure or impure there

were there was talk about oh well all those things have diamond in them for sure and even andrew hare would never you know wouldn't wouldn't rule that out right because he didn't even know right so but but in the end did that ever stop a snake sale for him no fuck no they they people saw a screaming black velvet looking yellow ass jungle and they were like i want that and and he sold everything he ever had you know what i mean so? So, and I think, again, it's just kind of this ridiculous idea that people want hot, sick looking snakes, right? They want a beautiful, a gamma or, you know, that's what people like. And that's kind of what people are drawn to about morphs is they like the visual. The visual is, and you know, when you become,

when you get into it a little bit more and, and you can kind of see this in the evolution of keepers, I think is people get into it for the colors and the patterns and the, and the, and the animal, and then they get, then, then they slowly start to transition into, you know, the natural history and the species, subspecies and, and the natural variation and, and all these other things that you see become more prevalent in, in keepers who've been keeping longer. So, you know, the, the, the two things, excuse me, are, I think, I think they're coupled to each other, but they're, they're coupled in, in kind of a, a linear trajectory of keeping of carpets, right?

Sure. And so, you know, you don't really necessarily, and that's not to say that, you know, there's not people who get in and are like, oh man, I love just locality style. I love this locality of this animal. It's the greatest thing since sliced bread. I'm not saying you don't get that but what i'm saying is there is kind of a a natural progression for a lot of people and morphs are what hook people in and unfortunately if you're gonna make carpet morphs you gotta make you gotta make integrates to do that and i and i'll go back to my earlier point

if we wouldn't shit on integrates like so many people have shit on integrates, maybe we wouldn't have this problem with all these throwaway integrates, right? Maybe we could just say, hey, this is a carpet Python, like we always used to talk about. Why does it have to be a diamond jungle integrate or an IJ jungle integrate, it could just be a carpet Python. And, and, you know, then people are all like, Oh, you're going to misrepresent everybody's animals that way. And it's going to turn into just this whole, like, well, guess what? If it is, then it is already. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's what it turned into. It was just a complete, like, what is this? You know, how many, what is this posts were there in the old days? You know, what do I have? What is, what's going on here? Nobody knew, but, but people cared, right? People

want to know what they have. They want to have a label. And that's because we like to label things. Exactly. And, and that the idea that the label matters more than the animal is a freaking problem. That's my point. That's part of my point. I get that. But that happens, right? Yeah. That's the problem.

That's what I'm talking about. problem we see here is as you focus on that gene and then, then naturally that's for, for most people in this hobby that devalues the by-product. And so, um, we see, we see that happen every time. Now the other side is, is then it becomes very difficult to sometimes to find, you know, what, what you originally had, you lose that. And, and I would point you to, you know, the reticulated Python, um, scene where, you know, it's all just morphs. There's not really any localities, uh, specific animals anymore. People only have a certain amount of room for, you know, a bunch of reticulated Pythons. And so, you know, there are very few people that it can even find localities or that are working with locality specific animals. And now, you know, there are very few people that can even find localities or that are working with locality specific animals.

And now, you know, there is a shift. And I, you know, again, this kind of goes back to our last topic. But, you know, now the locality stuff is commanding very high prices and people are paying attention to that. And, you know, is that a good thing? Then it just puts it in people's hands that can afford it or, you know, that, I don't know, that's, that's another, I guess that's for last week's topic, but you, you have a very hard time finding the stuff that matches the wild type animals. And that's, that's place for both, but unfortunately, most people kind of choose that easy route of a simple genetic trait that can be bred in a generation or two, and you can command lots of money and money drives so many things in this hobby. I would encourage people to think about that, right?

Think about the things we're talking about and say, wait a second, am I, am I valuing this animal for its, for its potential to make me money? Or am I valuing it for what it is and what it's about? And I, and I, I agree, you know, just because an animal is a hybrid or a, or an intergrade doesn't make it any less valuable than, than whatever you're looking at, because I don't know, look at any morph that's more than five or 10 years old and it's, it doesn't command any high prices and people give those away almost these days. Right. Nobody wants to work with Jaguars anymore because of the, like the issues you mentioned previously, but does that make the Jaguar less, you know, of an animal that should be valued or kept or whatever? I don't know.

I mean, yeah, I certainly agree with that. And I think it's, yes, definitely to your point that money mucks things up in our hobby. And, you know, in the end, everything ends up being priced anyway. Right. And except for that new, new thing that everybody has to chase and that, that people got to sell you on. And, and it, as a, as a, you know, and I think, uh, to be honest with you, I mean, I kind of put, I kind of put the, the poo pooing of, of integrates and hybrids on, on breeders.

I mean, it's breeders who are coming back saying like i can't do anything with this this thing's not worth anything i might as well i might as well just you know give this away or wholesale it or feed it off to my blackhead right and that's a you know that's a so so if you're gonna do that okay, but don't shit all over the animal for it. You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, that's a fair argument. And I do think that goes to say, let's not chase morphs. Let's not integrate and hybridize things because then in most people's mind, they're not worth much or they become lesser than, regardless of whether regardless of, you know, whether they should be or not. That's what happens.

And so and if you look at the natural progression, like look at somebody who's been doing this for for 50 years or whatever, are they I mean, maybe they have to chase morphs to to make a living out of it because that's what everybody wants. But if you look at some people that are just looking, you know, doing locality specific things or that get out of the thing altogether just to go field herping. Right. I mean, that's the natural progression. Maybe somebody comes in, they're all hot and excited about morphs. And I admit I was in that category. I was excited about different morphs. And and after a while, I kind of thought, you know, OK to, to watch the prices plummet, you know, and when you spend, you know, 10 grand on a pair of snakes and all of a sudden they're worth, you know, 500 bucks because all of a sudden there was some unknown source of that morph that you didn't know about.

And that all of a sudden make their, make their appearance on the scene and drive the price down. And then you're like, oh crap, you know, how am I going to recoup my investment and all that, you know, garbage thought I, it just, it just messes things up. And I, I oh, crap, you know, how am I going to recoup my investment and all that, you know, garbage thought? It just it just messes things up. And I would I don't know, I guess if if I were recommending a course of action to somebody new in the hobby, find something that's cool that you like without a mutation in it. You know, I, I hate that question when you're selling animals at a show or, you know, you're displaying animals somewhere and somebody says, Ooh, what morph is that? I just want to smack them on the side of the head. You know, it's maybe it's the, I've been around too long and I'm, I'm just, you know, tired of that question. But, um, you know,

people would see an Angolan Python and ask what kind of ball morph it was like, all they care about is a morph. Like they're getting into reptiles. Um, and, and do you, do you, do you, do you hate on like albino Darwin's? Um, I mean, not, not for the fact that they're albino Darwin's, but just for the fact that if that's all you care about, like I wanted to get the head albino Darwin's because I wanted Darwin's. I didn't necessarily, and and yeah i paid a lot of money for them but you know who knows maybe i would have no you so okay so let's let's let's let's uh let's do it let's nuance it real quick so if you got albino darwins you would have darwins like you would totally have darwins right but you want to see wild type looking darwins that's what's important to you right so it is kind of it is a

little different because you can totally get albino darwins and have darwins it's just and i have a i have a nice pair of albino darwins that I got from Todd and Carrie. They're the most satanic snakes I've ever owned, but they're awesome, dude. I like albinos. It's a weird – I like the ball python albino. As far as albinos go, it's hard to beat the carpet albino. Yeah, 100%. albino like as far as albinos go it's hard to beat the carpet albino yeah a hundred percent a hundred percent and and you know then you go to like stardust diamonds and you're kind of like

all right that's cool or or zebras right like that that's cool you know it's just when people want to start mixing and matching and and you know that that's when it gets kind of you know yeah a little dicey right and so i don't i don't know man i don't hate on morse and and and i don't hate on the integrates that get made from them i but i do understand the complications that it makes um and and i think largely that's that's again you know uh you know you've made've made plenty of attempts at asking for breeders, keepers, and hobbyists to take a social stand on the way we do sensationalism or a lot of other ideas in the hobby and say, hey, these ideas are, are, are, are us creating our own reality. Right.

And, and I would, I would argue that in, in, in integrates and, um, you know, and some of the hybrids that we need to advocate for our own reality and, and, you know, value these animals more accordingly so that they're, they're not looked at as, or talked about or treated like that. They're less than anything that they are. Yeah. Well, and yeah, I think that, I think we're, we're in agreement there that, you know, that, that is definitely something we need to value the animals for the animal's sake, not because of how much money they can make us or what their paint job looked like necessarily. Now, of course, I don't like looking at an ugly snake, you know, I want to see the best example of, of, uh, of a wild type that I might envision. And, and we're, you know,

maybe there is something to, um, you know, maintaining some sort of genetic diversity. I mean, that's what zoos do. And, you know, we, we might take a, take a note out of their, uh, playbook, uh, you know, take, let me flip the script too because that just kind of gave me a you know a thing in my head and and i'm like okay well so like we're talking about like palmerston jungles right like the the palmerstons that nick brought in and and is is he's got people working with like what happens with those ugly ass palmerstons because not all of them are nice not all of them are great looking snakes and what happens with those ugly ass palmerstons because not all of them are nice not all of them are great looking snakes and what happens with those quote-unquote locality pure animals that you know aren't really pretty and and quite frankly you know people are kind of like

you know i mean where do those go you know i mean yeah we always talk about hybrids and integrates like oh yeah that's not worth anything. But nobody talks about the pure stuff that really isn't early days of a selective breeding project. What happens to those? It's kind of like because they're pure, they get a better rap, but they probably get treated just the same. That's a fair assessment. You know, like, like I, I think a lot of people care about what they're, what they're looking at or what, you know, what the quality, you know, if you're going to grade something on a quality scale, you know, you want the, the nicest thing you can possibly get. And, you know, granted that, that occurs

through, you know, maybe selective breeding, but again, that's kind of, uh, chasing a morph in some way because, you know, the jungles that we're producing, although, you know, there are some pretty fantastic jungles in the wild, you can find a nice yellow and black jungle in the wild. They're just very few and far between just like a, you know, black and white, uh, you know, gelatin jungle, uh, maybe out there, but they're, they're more rare than, you know, just maybe a normal looking jungle in that same area. So, um, you know, it, it, it does go back to that human nature. We want to get the nicest thing we can, or the, or the best or the best value or whatever. But, you know, I guess that's kind of what I'm, what I'm suggesting or arguing for is that we focus more on the

animal and it's worth, you know, or it's, it's a bonus plus or minuses, whatever you want to say. It's, it's aesthetics. It's just the fact that it's, it is what it is, you know, regardless of how bright its paint job is, and we appreciate the animals for, for the animals. And so we, we do need to value an ugly Palmerston as much as we value a bright yellow Palmerston, you know, and is that a Palmerston if it's, if it's bright yellow and black, you know, that's the question, but I, but I, so, uh, Oh, go, go ahead.

Go ahead. I do think that paradigm shift of, um, you know, appreciating what's in the wild because, you know, how long has it taken them to get to that point? You know, how, how many millions of years before we see that ugly Palmerston? And why is it? Why does it look that way? You know, maybe if we're focused more on on our the way our cages are designed and maybe they're a slice of Australia in our in our house, you know, we can appreciate that Palmerston because it blends in nicely. You know, it's cool because, oh, I can't see it half the time because it's blended in. You know, I have to sit and look for it or something. That's kind of cool. You know, just like you would in the wild. I mean, we spend hours looking for these things out in the wild and, you know, it's just nice to be able to sit and watch it. Cause that's, you know, most of the time, that's kind of what I want to do when

I find an animal in the wild, sit and watch, see what it's doing, see where it's going, see how it's acting. And if we've, you know, if we've set it up right, we can do that in our, in our homes in some, for some, to some extent, you know. So, and, and, and to kind of, to piggyback off that, you know, I think you see, and, and there's a reason why Palmerston's look the way they do is because they've been selected for in their environment, in the area where they are. Right. And so, so this is like a, you know, natural selection, right? This is a deselection of animals that don't look a certain way and fall to predation because of their differences, right?

And it's natural selection happening. And so, when we come into, you know, what, uh, our, our, our, our private hobby keeping our rooms, our snake rooms, you know, we're, we're making selections as well. And, and, you know, potentially, and it's not a very popular topic, but, but we're also deselecting animals, you know, not, not, um, not everything makes it, not everything is, um, you know, I mean, I had, um, uh, a, um, Tracy, I, that was just the word like it in the wild, it wouldn't have made it. It made it because I was going to make that thing, make it right. Uh, and it did make it, but you know, in the wild, that thing, it had been deader than dead because it had just no no fight for life feeding response it was just

it was horrible right so and and i guess what i'm saying is that you know there's and it's not popular to say this but not everything is destined to go to somebody's collection if if snakes get deselected in a private hobbyist for whatever reason, they have birth defects. They, quite frankly, just aren't going to go anywhere. And those animals are used in a positive cycle of life. I know people don't want to hear that shit. I get it. Everybody wants every animal to live and everybody to be happy and everything to be valued. But if you go out into nature, nature doesn't think that way. Nature doesn't care about that stuff. It is a big cycle of life and death that must be fed. And so, you know, maybe we advocate

for positive, you know, looks on all animals. But we also understand that not everything is destined to be a pet in somebody's house. Sure. Yeah, that's becoming more and more difficult to go out and see those things in the wild. You know, if they're chopping down the forest or they're clearing out their habitat, the only, the way that you might be able to enjoy that is in your living room. You know, that might be the be the, the last remnant of, of being able to appreciate that animal in, in a wild type setting. And so that's kind of, you know, where, um, I, I feel like this, this argument leads to, you know, we need to focus on, um, keeping that option alive, keeping that option open. And if we're chasing morphs and we're hybridizing and we're forming integrates, we're kind of losing sight of that goal to appreciate

the wild for, for what it is, you know, for where it's come and how it's, how it's gotten there. And, and I really think that's, you know, kind of the natural progression. You might get in for the flashy morph, but we stick around because these animals are incredible. They're amazing, right? They don't need a flashy paint job to be appreciated. So I think that's kind of what I would conclude with, you know, let's, let's focus on the, the value of the animal for the animal's sake, rather than what kind of money it can make you or what kind of paint job you can give it. Um, you know, let's appreciate those wild types and let's, you know, hopefully enough people will have that mindset that when we do have this flash in the pan morph that comes in and, and, and makes big waves and then everybody, you know, hopefully not everybody chases it. Hopefully we've got some people that just kind of stay the course and go, well, I'll let those, those guys have fun with that. And I'm going to appreciate the, the wild type animal for what it is. And I'm not going to follow that, uh, that crowd down the, you know, the, the race to the bottom kind of aspect.

Yeah, I got that. I got that. I got that. Yeah. So, I mean, I think, you know, when you're kind of talking about humans and our effect on the planet, you know, we're changing the planet and the landscape that we live under in such a way that we're making it kind of under our own image. So, you know, the idea that we should definitely appreciate wild types and natural nature as it slowly disappears from our man-made transformation of the planet, a hundred percent, a hundred percent. But at the same time to say that, you know, we shouldn't embrace integrates and hybrids because, you know, they're just not valued or whatever. They are a construct of what we do as human beings is we create new and different things that were not there before. And so, you know, and, and, and, and it's a lot of how we talk about and how we interact with those things that form the value and worth of those things. These are all live animals. They're, they're all deserve. And hopefully, you know, if you like carpets, I hope

an integrate has your respect. I mean, I hope, I hope you like, you know, I hope you like, uh, all carpets because they're, they're all fucking badass. Um, so, you know, I think, I think in the grand scheme of things, um, all things in their place and you cannot, uh, going back to my original statement, if you, if you like carpet morphs, you almost cannot make some of these looks of carpet morphs without integrates. It's just, it's, it's just not going to happen. So again, it kind of goes back to, is there anything wrong with integrates? Well, no, there's not that some of them, as we've already talked about are fantastic looking animals. And it's only how that they're talked about that is really the big issue. And so I think, you know, in closing, I would say that advocating for the worth of all carpets, whether they're integrates or pure, you know, pure species, subspecies or, you know, non-integrated morphs, they're all have their place and they all have their worth. And so, you know, we just need to look at them in that way and value them in that way. Okay. Well, hopefully, you know, we got the two sides of the coin and hopefully this was a worthwhile topic and that maybe you considered something you hadn't considered before.

I guess that's the whole goal of this is to let you make your own decisions and hopefully, you know, change some paradigms along the way. And hopefully everybody realizes that it isn't necessarily representative of each and every one of our views. I think I fall a little bit on both sides and, and, you know, quite frankly, I try to argue as hard for the side that I'm, I'm on, whether I agree with it or not. So that's the whole premise of the show, right? Absolutely. Agree with what we're arguing and,

and that can be difficult sometimes because you're just like, Oh yeah, I agree with you, but my heart's not in it. Yeah, exactly. So, but you know, this, this one, um, I think the common thread was appreciate animals for, for what they are, you know, uh, even if they're an integrate or a hybrid or whatever, they're still living animals and we still need to appreciate those and, and care for them like we would, you know, a pure or a locality specific animal. So yeah, appreciate what you've got, appreciate those animals and, and, uh, treat them accordingly. Word.

Right on. Well, another, uh, fun discussion. Another great topic. Thanks again, Peter, for, uh, suggesting this. Next time, next time it's in person though, Pete. Yeah, exactly. We got to have you, you on here sometime. And, and if you, if you guys out there listening, have any topics you want to hear us discuss, or if you want to get in on the action and, and throw your hat in the ring for a little, uh, fight club action, uh, let us know.

We'll, we'll try to get you on. And I'm sure Justin's tired of debating me. He'd love to debate any one of you all. Well, and you know, we'll get some other people on here to get some different voices in the mix as well. Yeah,

definitely. Definitely. I, we, we are having some guests come up. We actually recorded one and, and it didn't, we had some technical issues, so we're going to have to do that again. And, uh, so hopefully, uh, round two will, will, uh, go well and, and we'll have a nice topic.

Um, so look forward to that. I'm hoping to record from the field, um, get the, get the THP guys versus the Morelia Pythons network guys and get some discussion going there. We'll see who can hold their own. Yeah, I was going to say Owen and the Podfather better bring their A game. They were talking about switching up, man. Did you catch that? They wanted to host a reptile fight code.

So we're down to do an NPR interview if you want to come over here and, and leave some, uh, some, some vocal bruises on people. That'd be a lot of fun. Yeah. We got to get, get this, uh, get this broadened out a little bit, get some more cool topics on here. So thanks again to Pete for suggesting the topic. And, and, um, I guess, uh, I, I, I forgot to mention at the start of the show, I got some really cool, uh, books, a set on Burt Langworth and I saw that Burt Langworth is, um, he's, he's one of the true pioneers of herb to culture. I mean, this guy had some innovative stuff and he, he produced some really amazing species and, um, his, you know,

passing was a huge loss to the reptile world. So if you don't know who he is, check these books out. I mean, you obviously haven't listened to reptile fight club. If you have, you know, who Burt Langhorff is. Yeah. We've mentioned him a couple of times on here, but, um, the, uh, Russ Gurley, um, wrote these books or, or compiled these books. A lot of them are, um, so one's a history of Bert, kind of his, uh, life and adventures of, of Bert Langworth and, uh, goes over, you know, his life from, from early childhood on. And then the second, uh, um, part of the, part of the two book series is the articles that he wrote. And there's some in there that are in Dutch and some in German and even a couple in French and a bunch in English. And there's some overlap.

So if you don't speak Dutch or German or French, then you can enjoy the similar article in English, but he pioneered. I mean, he's one of the few people that has bred have bred sungazer lizards. So pretty, pretty cool. I read that article last night and I really am enjoying these. So hit up Russ Gurley on Facebook and he can send you the link where you can purchase these books. But really cool. Facebook and, and he can, uh, send you the link where you can purchase these books, but really cool. Um, it's, it's nice to see kind of that honoring of, of those, uh, pioneers of herpetoculture and, um, he, you know, if you've, if you've ever purchased a super worm, is it one of the Zephobas

that's from Bert, he was the one that kind of pioneered how to breed those and produce those. So, um, we can thank him for super worms. He, he produced a ton of Australian water dragons. Um, he's, he was one of the people that just bred that, that species and provided a lot of people with, uh, with those. So a lot of cool stuff came from Bert. Yeah. So check those out.

Um, anything else? No. Check out, uh, Moralia Pythons Network podcast. Uh, uh, there's some good, good stuff out there as we talked about at the beginning of the show, some great content being put out by these guys and, and, uh, thanks to Eric and Owen for, for their tireless work. I mean, I don't know how, how they do so much, but, uh, uh, more power to them. Keep it going guys. This is, this is a lot of fun.

So we're enjoying it. We're trying to, you know, follow in your footsteps here and try to record some, some good content that can potentially have a benefit to reptile keepers. So thanks for listening. Uh, get in the fight. Uh, let's hear your, your ideas and your thoughts on the Facebook page. And, um, we'll catch you next week for another edition of reptile fight club. Thanks everybody. so Thank you.