Reptile Fight Club - Is there Scientific Strength in Herpetoculture? w/Zac Loughman

Episode Date: September 2, 2022

In this episode, Justin and Chuck try to answer the question, Is there scientific strength in herpetoculture? w/Dr. Zac Loughmanof       Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comFollow Chuck Poland  on IG @ChuckNorriswinsFollow MPR Network on:FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQMore ways to support the shows.Swag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

Welcome to the edition of Reptile Fight Club. I'm Justin Julander, your host, and with me is always, or mostly always... I am more always now than mostly always that's true that's true it's only been a couple times yeah i'm back all right wow you fall off like one or two times and just become mr undependable to justin i see i got you hey you gotta you gotta earn that man you gotta i mean it is fair you've covered for me more times than i've covered for you so but but i always say that's why you're the host and i'm the co-host well and we are joined today by another uh master

of podcasting dr zach lofman hi y'all it's going well welcome welcome back i mean we've had jack before so we're trying to give him a better topic this time. It's a little easier to pick either side. So last time we discussed UV light, and he got the con side of that, which is kind of a little harder to define. Yeah, I had to give myself 50 lashes later that night when I got home. Fair enough. Fair enough And the Co-host of the podcast Kluberids and Kluberid Radio

Yes, that's correct Part of NPR Just like yours Yeah, we're all under the same little family Just having a little family reunion here And a busy hurt man of science Yeah, I try We'll see how this goes tonight Just having a little family reunion here. And a busy hurt man of science. Yeah, I try.

We'll see how this goes tonight. Yeah. Well, I got faith. Yeah, I think it'll be a lot of fun for sure. Yeah. Well, my last clutch of snake eggs hatched. I got 20 hypo brettles. God, the boatload of brettles. We can do those. Yeah. I'm waiting for him to shed. There's some nice looking ones in there, but yeah, they look kind of shiny and different

until their first shed. So yeah, I saw, I saw Dr. Zach's son, uh, also posted up some brettles too. Ah, yes. Little baby Lucas. Lucas. That's Lucas. Yes. In case anybody didn't catch you, Dr. Zach's son is. Why are you following his son? Oh, no. Come now. Yeah. Lucas is doing some good stuff with Brettles. He's doing some good stuff, period. And Aspidites. Apparently he's buying up all the Aspidites in California, all the Womas. And yeah, he's got a few blackheads. So he's going to have a problem soon.

He just doesn't realize it yet. Yeah. Yeah. He knows what he's doing. So you have. Oh, yeah, for sure. No, no. Most definitely. I mean, you can see you can see the the success that he's having across the range of of different reptiles that he's keeping and see that he's top notch. He knows what he's doing. Yeah. I guess perhaps the biggest news in my life right now is finally getting a copy of the more complete Carpet Python in my hands. So that's really nice to have that gigantic book you got there sir it's it's a little large yeah yeah i can say so seeing it and in person

i was kind of like jesus this thing's a toe right yeah yeah and just in case anybody wondered when dr zach and i came on he was reading it in front of us. Just to be a bragger. Yes, just to be a bragger about having a copy in his hand. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And it worked. It worked.

It was well done. Well done. Yeah. Well, yeah. I'm glad it landed. But yeah, Bob sent Nick and I both two copies each. So it's not – can't do much with those, but you know, it's, it's fun. Did you find yourself, I saw that Nick was emotional.

Did you find yourself emotional when you finally got to it? I wept for hours. I was pretty excited. I was pretty excited. I can't say that I was too emotional. I, I don't know. It's, it's kind of one of those, one of those things where you've worked so hard of it, had at it and studied it so much. And you're just staring at the thing for years. And then, you know, you just kind of want to like get away from it a little bit. So, but

you know, holding it in your hand is a different thing. That's really exciting. And seeing it on the printed pages, there's just something different than looking at it digitally, you know, to hold it. It's, it's, it's the, it's, it's the, the breadth and scope of the work versus like the, the reward of the final product, right? Yeah. You, you do a paper or whatever it is you're talking about and you just want to get away from it after you're done. You're like, oh my God, I'm exhausted. Get this away from me. But, but, but gosh, to have, you know, a book that, that will go out and anger every australian carpet python fan over in australia what could be better you know are you already got that i was gonna say i was gonna say i saw i saw some uh some some hate fair already from uh

yeah from i think it was just over the poster too it wasn't even though they haven't even read the book yet well the poster shows that yeah shows the kind of the genetic layout that we we went with because the data supported that you know that's the best thing we could come up with the data so you know it's it's not necessarily we can just kind of push the blame to the data isn't that what you do it's not us it's just what you do. that one i want to see that we can defend what we've come up with here i guess if we lose the coin toss maybe we'll have to argue the other way but well i mean i i guess you know i that the question becomes like uh okay so you disagree so where's where is your you know where's your evidence to support the your disagreement of this and a lot of it is from what i was reading based on old physical you know phenotypical uh ways that they were previously classified so people are just kind of holding on to the old uh in spite of of

what the new says which is which is kind of leads us into our topic a little bit you know i feel like it'll it'll it'll fit well um yeah how how well do we roll with scientific changes in in the hobby or change yeah change in general right i don't know i i love that uh sunny in philadelphia bit where they're talking about science bitch and they like you know slap it over newton's face or whatever he was wrong and he was the leading scientist of his day yeah uh good stuff well i i was curious about that zag you know as a an actual in the flesh taxonomist you know what do you think what subspecies like what do you need to call something a subspecies or even a species i'm more on now i'm gonna get murdered oh but i'm. Dragging you down, man.

I'm drowning and I'm just going to pull you down with me. I can take a stand on this. I know a lot of people are pro-subspecies, but I am definitely... The data that's coming out of the world of evolution and molecular phylogeography and zogeography and molecular phylogenetics, systematic, all of it just points more and more and more towards subspecies

being somewhere between like barely legitimate and absolute hot garbage. And there's, you know, that's the continuum. So I'm on team. I mean, I looked at the poster, and I believe that you were promoting more species level stuff. Is that correct? I mean, we tried to retain some semblance of what's been proposed and what's been utilized and things like that. So, you know, it's just our take and just kind of how we parse out different different groups but i mean if if it were if i were you know if i were a real taxonomist i would probably know what i was doing in this and and maybe we would be confident in

saying these are species but i think there's definitely some breaks where you could say this is probably a species and i mean they they always kind of go back to that well if it can interbreed you know if populations can interbreed they're not full species but when we look at i don't know. That's not the case in the bird world. It's just not. Like that whole idea of you've got to have reproductive communities that are isolated from each other and there's no interbreeding at all

and it's, you know, it's that kind of Ernst Mayer view of what a species is. There's just so much evidence now that we actually have the ability to get a genome like in rapid time. And it's not we're not just looking at one gene. We're looking at like the whole thing. And then you end up looking at, oh, this closely related taxa. We've got a genetic influence of it in here. And then there's another taxa in here.

And I don't know, I I just am leaning more and more and more towards either getting rid of subspecies for the most part or just making it a case-by-case-by-case basis. Now, I will say this. I come from the world of invertebrates with the crayfish because that's where I'm the systematics guy. And it's definitely a different type of dynamic. But I also have looked at the herp world of taxonomy recently and read papers and everything. With the book that I was writing on the South American guys, I did deep, deep, deep dives into systematics. I think there's going to be about 12 people on planet Earth that are going to enjoy reading that part of the book. But I enjoyed writing it and I can say like I just think that there's something to be said for some of these

taxa that in the past couple decades have been put out into the ether and everybody just trashes it because it's new if you you know but then again you got to look at the genes and you've got to understand what the genes are saying. And you've got to also, as a science guy or naturalist or just breeder, what they don't teach you in school is that everybody's kind of allowed to have their own definition of what constitutes a species. And as long as you produce the evidence to support your definition, you're good to go. And that's what leads to all this trouble uh i hear on podcasts and i hear people talk about all the time like this should be a consensus there should be a magic

percentage difference with genetics and you know yeah that that's just never going to happen um yeah i don't see how that makes any sense no yeah so um and i can tell you the first crayfish tax i described was in 2009 um and my definition of a species back then compared to what it is today in 2022 it's different uh in fact i have one i named that i am actually now kind of like so do i get another paper when i get rid of that one like literally i don't know what to do because that's science though it's not static it's dynamic yeah yeah and a lot of people don't like that they they they learned it this way and that is the way and that's not really being scientific so yeah yeah and and i mean it's it's it's hard when you go and find your favorite you know group has been reorganized and you don't agree with the way they did it.

And you're like, but then again, that's also science to not have to be forced to agree with something just because somebody published it. Like the children's fight on paper. Yeah, that's a great example. My favorite. Yeah, I don't know taxonomy is is kind of a fun thing i guess it's uh you know self-perpetuating like you said you can describe species and then undescribe it you know 13 years later yeah that's a good yeah uh it's kind of like uh outbreaks you know pandemics and virology you know anytime there's a pandemic we're

the only ones that get excited that means more funding for the work we're doing. You know, it's like sad that that has to be the case. Yeah. Well, I guess I'm still kind of scratching my head about taxonomy. I still don't get, you know, what kind of benchmarks that are important? And I guess group to group or it can differ. And that's just frustrating, I guess, because you want it like this is the rule and this is how you do it. Well, I think that's what people want, right, in general, right?

They want that. No, this 5 percent genetic difference means it's a new species and it's just like you can look across one species and uh or one genus uh or or you know one family and see something different than in another family so what the the mark and the measure for one is not the mark and the measure for the other and people just have a hard time with that, I think. And it's like, because it makes it very nipper almost. Everybody's doing their own thing. And it's like, oh, this is totally arbitrary. And you have to be a taxonomist. And I'm sure if you're not a taxonomist, people are like, well, that's just taxonomist scientists making up their own bullshit to support their

own bullshit. Right. Like that's, I mean, that's how people who don't agree see it, you know? And for the record, when the taxonomists get together, I, I, I think it's funny because we totally look at each other and go, you're, you know, that's totally bullshit. I've, I've done that. I've been on the receiving end of that. Um, and you just, does it ever come to blows? It doesn't come to blows because normally, I mean, okay. So you're not as bad as herpes virus scientists.

Exactly. If you think like snake, really? I did not know that. They're molecular people. Molecular people are next level. There's some crazy stuff that goes, yeah. Some of these groups are like, just like so emphatic about their ideas. It's come to blows at some point. I was a witness of that. Like herpes simplex one. Yeah, yeah.

Herpes simplex one and herpes simplex two. I've heard stories of fist fights breaking out at conferences because they didn't agree with each other's conclusions. That is the most sexually transmitted awesome thing I've ever heard. Oh, my God. That's hilarious. Fighting creepy nerds. Crayfish nerds aren't bad. We're not aggressive.

No. I could agree. I could emphatically disagree. Well, the other thing is there's also four of us on the planet. There's literally four crayfish taxonomists right now that are working in North America. And you all have different ideas. I am by far and away the youngest. So the running joke is that soon when the others retire, I'm just going to inherit this kingdom that is all my own because there's nobody else that's freaking doing it.

So that's when I'm going to really write new pages, man. You can make it all yours. Can we call you the crayfather then? I don't know about that. You have to wait until they retire. I know. Well, I'm waiting. I'm waiting.

I'm trying to pump out grad students on the crayfish side that can do the systematics. I have two currently, and I had a third that I was like, you want to get a PhD? You're doing taxonomy because we desperately need that. There's this whole thing called the taxonomic impediment where basically it's very difficult, like taxonomists are endangered species because there's no money in our work. Ironically, snake taxonomists are one of the few that can get the funding with venomous snakes because there's an evolutionary link to the venom and with snake bite across the world, snake taxonomists are one of the few that can get the funding with venomous snakes because there's an evolutionary link to the venom and with snake bite across the world understanding

who evolved you know what venom system is allied with what which clade and and how to create antivenin and all that kind of stuff you know there is some funding that you can get uh for that but uh crayfish nope that's That's, that's the, that's the tricky thing too, is, you know, so much of this depends on funding and why is it not important to understand the world?

Yeah. Biodiversity, you know, classify things to identify species at risk and things like that. Yeah. It's crazy. Cause we're destroying it. Yeah.

Yeah. That's true. It's probably the big companies are like, don't fund them. We don't want new species to have to impede our exactly exactly what money making no i i have to spend a hundred thousand dollars to mitigate a fucking new endangered species i'm not doing that yeah no i i actually was was working on a taxa that was going to – it ultimately became listed by Fish and Wildlife Service. And we were saying the entire time, like, this could be two species.

This could be two species because we had geographic evidence, genetic evidence, but we just literally didn't have enough animals in hand to do the morphology. And it wasn't until we got the money to go and do this thing called a species status assessment, which is when you go out and like create the big document that's necessary to to list the taxa. That's what that was the first time I got the money to get to the museums to get the animals in hand. And then we got, you know, we measured them. And sure enough, during that process, we I ended up with some collaborators describing a second species. And holy hell, you want to talk about pissing people off. Midway through the endangered species listing process, you take the tax and split it even more.

So you get a twofer out of it. But I'm still to this day defending that description because people think that i had some kind of motive or just carving it up to keep it protected longer and all this kind of stuff and it's not i mean the science is as sound as sound can be so anyway yeah i mean i guess if you couldn't back it up like that would be one thing but i I mean, like, no, it's totally repeatable. Whatever. Anybody in a freshman or sorry, like a sophomore junior genetics class in biology can get the date off of GenBank and literally do the exact same analysis that shows that they're two different taxa. So how many species of crayfish are there?

There's about 700. When we're all done naming them oh my goodness we'll have probably between eight nine hundred but what's really funny is like that seems like a lot but there's like 2500 species of snake so it's actually a really manageable uh a group of animals and that's worldwide seven seven now in north america we have about 400 so we really do kind of you know yeah okay hog the species over here. Is that just because more work's been done over here? To a certain degree.

Or it's harder to get funding to study? I mean, I'm sure there's plenty of cryptic species out there. Australia has a genus. Australia is the other area, the other part of the world that has hyper. They have some cool ones, colorful. We have a bunch of brown ones uh and we've got the diversity they have species that are like the size of footballs covered in spines that make you bleed when you pick them up like they're much

much that sounds very australian yes it is yeah i tell everybody including scott eifer like the first time i get to australia i'm gonna have a stroke and die in the middle of a rainforest. Because if I, if I can see in one plane of like one view, a carpet Python, a monitor, and one of these giant crayfish, my brain's not going to be able to take that. I'm just going to stroke out now, right then. Like I can't imagine. Let's hope they don't all make an appearance at the same time.

They have to come individually because I just simply can't imagine seeing it. The statistical odds of hitting the trifecta may save your life. That's cool. Anywho. No, I have plans to get to Australia, but I've got plans to go to other places. So I have to kind of put that one in the bucket, like in the back back burner because it's one of those places i know that when i inevitably get there i will be going back time and time and time and time and time again so uh because there's just too much there so yeah and i don't even want to talk about new guinea because new guinea has a genus of crawdads

called carax and there's a guy who every time he goes into new guinea and comes out he comes out with like six new species. And these are the species that are in the aquarium trade. They're like purple and neon blue and red. And they look like they came from like some alien plop them down. They don't look like crayfish at all. And I also can't imagine, you know, the probability of like a crocodile monitor, a maruki or, you know, a blue-tongued skink, one of their taipans, a green tree python and a carax. Just too much.

I die. Another strokeable moment. Nice. That one seems a little less likely than the Australian one even. So you're probably safe. Yeah, there's too much going on there. Yeah. Well, and yeah new guinea's

a little sketchy very sketchy going there yeah you could die you could die from getting killed yeah never mind self-death yeah watch out for those machete wielding you know folks that yeah set up roadblocks well yeah that's uh that's, I mean, taxonomies, it's really an interesting thing. And it was kind of fun kind of doing a deep dive for this book into all the different biogeographic barriers and, you know, drainage basins and all this stuff. And then looking at the genetic side and there there is a pretty good data set by uh c of aglia's group that puts out a bunch of different you know uh shows shows some differences at least i you know i don't know how significant the differences are and that's kind of difficult to to to for a lay person to understand i guess but um i mean it looks like oh this is a different fork than this one so that

must mean they're different you know that kind of thing so it's hard to know how significant those differences are the issue with those trees that i don't think people understand unless you're in this world which when i learned this a couple years ago my mind went like boom is that as you add more samples to the tree, you're adding more variation to the tree and the trees shape, topology, architecture, whatever you want to call it. It can like, you can literally add like one more sample and everything shifts. And so what, what my group does with the crayfish is when we get the tree and it shows

like this taxes over here and this taxes over here and it's all supposedly one thing. And we might be working with a new species or not a new species or whatever is that we then always vetted against geography. So like, and that's where understanding what our planet's done for the past, like three, five,

10, 50 million years. Kind of important. Yeah. Um um but if the if the geog if the if the clades that's what we call the groups clayed out in a way that matches like a historical geography or in my case river systems that are here there and everywhere uh and then you get a little bit of morphology that little trifecta that's like done like that. You know, and I've also learned through doing this, you'll drive yourself crazy if you try to find like perfection. You just have to call it and accept it and move on and then deal with the repercussions when the paper comes out.

So, yeah, yeah, that seems to be the tricky thing is like, yeah, figuring that out. But yeah, I mean, it was it was in some of these how they kind of laid out and see a Baglia's work. You know, it didn't really make sense just looking at it. But then you get into some of the biogeographical, you know, ideas or hypotheses. And you're like, okay, maybe that could be a reason for that, or that could explain that. So I don't know. Hopefully the book covers enough of our, our rambling thoughts that, uh, you know, that people can see why we came up with what we did.

I'm looking forward to it. It's all fun. All right. Well, appreciate that. Yeah. We've gotten a pretty huge response. A lot of you know people putting their name on the list for a copy and stuff so that's been that's been nice to see

it's well received um and we'll hopefully get the bulk of the shipment in october so we'll start shipping out books in october but yeah right now i i'm me and nick are about the only ones that have copies and i think bob i don't know if bob's getting some himself or not he's kind of he's Yeah, right now me and Nick are about the only ones that have copies. I don't know if Bob's getting some himself or not. He's a man of few words. So we send him an email and he'll send us back a single sentence. And you're like, well, that answered one of my five, six questions. But yeah, it's good working with Bob.

But yeah, the brevity of responses is a little, That's maybe the downside. You're underwhelmed? Are you saying you're underwhelmed? Oh, no. Who's got a book in their hand right now, Julender? I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear it. Yeah. My whining is falling on deaf ears.

Yeah. For sure. And I'm a bit out of it. He dropped off my daughter at the airport to go to Costa Rica. She's going to go teach English out there. So nice hoping to get over and visit her so I can go chase some snakes out there. But we her flight left at six. And so they said, you know, three hours earlier or whatever.

So we we left our house at one thirty and then we got there and sat around for an hour waiting for the personnel for American Airlines to get to their station to check us in and stuff. So by the time we sent her on her way and got home, it was like 5 o'clock. So I got very little sleep last night. So hopefully that won't mess up the fight tonight. I spent all day in pre-semester mind-numbing meetings so i'm there from a different way oh yeah yeah i had the our department retreat yesterday it was yeah my we me and my colleague like dragged over a couch we had it up at a ski resort but you know of course it's summer so it's not no skiing going on but we dragged over

a couch in the lodge and it was a nice comfy couch and so we sat on that and everybody else was on these nice you know the cafeteria benches but my colleague fell asleep as soon as he started snoring i kind of like shook him awake but yeah the the department head was giving him a hard time about falling asleep during her spiel. So it was pretty entertaining. Yeah. The redeeming quality of the meeting was they had the cornhole. Oh, nice.

So we could throw the bean bags in during breaks and stuff. It was pretty fun. Well, all right. Anything else going on? I'm good. Should we get to the fight here? Well, tonight we're talking about, yes, does herpetoculture have scientific merit? Is there anything, you know, going on that's useful to science in general?

Or are we just kind of playing with snakes in boxes? So I think it'll be a fun topic to discuss. So, yeah, we'll go ahead and I guess Chuck and I will flip the coin to see who gets to fight you. So go ahead and call it, Chuck. Tails. It's heads, buddy. Nice. So, yeah, I'll take this one.

I think it's a fun topic I've been thinking about for a bit. So, all right, Zach, your turn. Let's see if you can get this one. Oh, okay. I don't know which way I want to go with this. So for the record, I went against my instincts on my flip. Look, I'm just telling you. It's always easy to cut.

Of course. Listen, believe me, don't believe me. I don't care. I'm just giving Zach time to think whichever way he wants to lambast you. I'm going to – I was really hoping I didn't have to choose. I'm going to take it does have scientific merit. It does have scientific merit. And we'll see how I do.

I'll go with the concept. All right. Sounds good. Okay. So can we throw one qualifier in there that I want to know? Sure. Are we talking about, like, when we say herpetoculture, that includes, like, zoos and universities, you know, and fish and wildlife?

Or are we talking about private sector herpetoculture? I don't know. What do you think? I mean, I kind of of had in mind as private i think that we should do private and take out because i think it's a much stronger argument if you yet if you add zoos and that kind of thing that makes it very easy and i might have chosen the wrong side but that's okay all right no all right well you you choose the most the more positive side you know giving uh you know herpetoculture credit for where credit's due.

Where credit is due. Maybe due, yeah. All right. And as the winner of the coin toss, would you like to go first or would you like to defer? Oh, I always defer. Okay. You're pulling a chuck, huh? All right.

Okay. Well, so, yeah, I think for, you know, the most part or the majority of the time, the herpetoculture is focused on probably making money. So people, and I think the biggest evidence of that is the morph craze. Morphs have maybe a little bit of scientific merit associated with them and some of the things that they can help us identify. But for the most part, morphs are just variants, pretty variants that make people more money. And so they get excited when they hatch an albino or find some albino in the wild or something then they'd like oh they get the dollar signs in their eyes and they take it back to their collection and breed them out and and uh you know i think one one evidence of that was the the uh mojave ball python where they they didn't do their due diligence and breed it out to to the completion you know to see if there was a super, which is the leucistic or kind of patternless

ball python. And so they started selling the Mojave as a single gene or just a single phenotype type animal. And then once they realized there was a super, they tried to go back and say, no, we want more money for the Mojave. And they're like, yeah, no, that doesn't work that way you can't put pandora's uh box back together so isn't that what you isn't that what you get for not doing your i guess so yeah yeah you do your due diligence or else you you're gonna lose out but um so i i think i'd maybe start out that way that uh the morph craze

is kind of evidence that there's not much scientific merit to herpetoculture so i i am going to agree with you on that 100 and i i'm going to give a couple caveats here to cover my butt because yeah i definitely am on team private sector if we really want to be taken seriously in the scientific community, needs to really reevaluate what the hell we're doing. And I can tell. And so I am acknowledging that. And I could argue both sides of this equally. But what I'm going to do is basically say there is a facet of the private

sector, albeit the minority, in my opinion, not the majority that has looked at herpetoculture and uses it for good. Not that people making doublehead, purple hippopotamus, whatever the hells, are not doing is for good. But that aspect's the hobby. I hear people talk about the hobby all the time. And when I hear people talk about the hobby all the time. And when I hear people talk about the hobby, that's what I think.

It's the morph craze. It's the line breeding things into oblivion. That is not in any way a scientific enterprise. I actually rarely think about snakes, rarely think about lizards, and I go to the turtle people because on many, many, many occasions I have given them props, like the turtle room people and the people that do the Turtle Survival Alliance. Because on that side we have private hobbyists that are part of a conservation initiative. Now, you can argue conservation science two different disciplines i'm going to put conservation into the scientific discipline because there's the whole science of conservation biology uh but you know the private sector in that as far as the turtles are concerned you you get these confiscations there's thousands

of individual turtles collected at once there's no way, given the red tape and the bureaucracy of AZA That North American zoos can take that on And at the same time, I don't know if we want North American zoos That have super rare taxa Bringing into their collections 500 Asiatic box turtles That could have Lord knows what diseases So in that regard, those turtles need to go somewhere. And it's been proven time and time again that the private sector is a good place for them to go. The reason why this works is because there's communication between all the

entities, the agency folks with Fish and Wildlife and the various state level DNRs are communicating with the private sector people. AndRs are communicating with the private sector people. And they're not necessarily viewing the private sector through this light of that they're in this for money, but rather they're a resource that we can use for the animals. But to get to that point, it took an awful lot of trust building. And the way that the trust building happens is by being able to show that you are capable of doing something in a structured organized repeatable way and that's basically employing something like the scientific method so and that you know that particular facet

of herpetoculture which is what i'm going to grab on to with both hands for this whole thing. Hold tight. That's where I feel herpetoculture can do science. But I'm going to flat out say, unfortunately, I don't really feel like we do the best job promoting that part of our hobby, discipline, whatever you want to call it. But it is science when we do it that way. So I went there. I mean, I, you know, of course, agree that the turtle folks do a bit more in regards to that. And yeah, that's a very valid point.

And I think maybe that kind of leads me to my next concept or point or whatever is that there's not a lot of cross talk. You know, we have kind of our little niche nippers. Thank you. Little nippers running around, you know, all these little nippers out there, where people don't really cross over. And, you've, I've got, you know, a fairly wide, um, interest in reptiles and I like to hear about different groups and different texts, but, you know, so I, I get a little bit of that crossover and it's, I think it's valuable because you see what, what the turtle groups are doing or what the, you know, different groups are doing. And you can see,

oh man, they're way ahead of us in regards to their to their care or their, you know, what they're focused on and things like that. Where, you know, you look at the, like the ball python group and they're just focused on pretty snakes with paint jobs. And fitting them into as small a rack as they can get away with, you know, and still get viable clutches every year. And so, you know, I, and, and that's not to say all ball Python people do that because I've heard of many ball Python people kind of setting up their animals and maybe, you know, making some observations of, of ball Python activity and things like that. But for the most part, people just want to look at a pretty snake in a, in a, even in a tub, you know, and I think that's another really good evidence that we're kind of moving away from that scientific aspect and moving more towards just what's what's going to make me money and and how can I get it faster? And just the fact that people want to breed within,

you know, six months to a year, if it won't breed for me, you know, what's the point of it? I got to get rid of it and get make space for stuff that's gonna gonna cash in big for me, you know, what's the point of it, I got to get rid of it and get make space for stuff that's gonna, gonna cash in big for me. So but you know, when you have that lack of crosstalk, lack of sharing of ideas, you you don't foster that, you know, scientific growth and the building of new ideas based on other groups, you know, there could be some valuable things that you could learn from other areas, but you're so focused on one group and making money off that group that maybe you miss the bigger picture of it's not all about money. And there's, there's things you can do in addition to, you know, making money to pay for your collections, feed, food bill or whatever that you can be doing uh within within your the animals

you care for yeah now once again i am grabbing onto my minorities with both hands here but there is a subset of private herpetoculture um where where they do go about this in a way where they're doing records, keeping records, and then making evidence-based decisions. And a lot of times, those lone wolves that are willing to do that are the ones that actually crack the code on how to breed something. And then word gets out from them. And then that becomes the standard of herpetoculture for, you know, the people that are then going to use that to go make money or make the double head stripe purple hippopotamus thing. So, yes. So along that line, that is an aspect of this, you know, thing that we do called herpetoculture i think one of the things one of the aspects of herpetoculture in the private sector that is severely lacking and it

would be wonderful if it could come i don't know if it was ever there to begin with it sounds like it was there back in the 80s and the 90s just not in a kind of official capacity it's like we don't you know we have these big shows we have tinley we have schomburg pomona but we don't, you know, we have these big shows. We have Tinley, we have Schomburg, Pomona, but we don't have what we have in science, which is the whole get together, present your stuff, talk about it. And that's just lacking. And a lot of people will hear that and be like, ah, what are you talking about?

But if people had a sounding board and we had that in our hobby, I think that more people would go to that than we realize. It doesn't need to be a 15-minute presentation like a scientific meeting per se, but like the gecko symposium you were part of before Tenley. If those were more prevalent, we might be able to get – it would be celebrating the scientific side of herpetoculture which would then give people a reason to do it but unfortunately the sounding board we have for the scientific side of herpetoculture is freaking facebook and because we have these groups you get into the group and you promote your idea and then that's you know you get flamed that's also what leads to these silos or nippers or whatever it is you're talking about i think um so there's not really a place for us to promote

our ideas to put our ideas out there we used to have things like the vivarium magazine hell even reptiles magazine in the mid 90s reptiles magazine was completely different than what it is today uh and that's one of the things that's very frustrating for me is like we just don't have a place to put this stuff to have the ability to get it out there. And I think that's one of the reasons why it's not a prevalent part of our – as much a prevalent part of herpetoculture in the private sector as we would all want it to be. But I also think after that little nebulous tirade, that there is a growing portion of herpetoculture that's making decisions to get their snake out of the tub and put it in a PVC tank or PVC enclosure, give it some UVB. And, you know and and that decision's not being based entirely off of economics because uvb's lights are expensive they're they're hearing receiving the science and responding to it uh so i know just in my little friend groups the various chats i'm in

i've seen a lot of people who five years ago, their whole collection was in tubs. And now that tub collection is moving more and more and more towards vivariums. And there's usually some kind of scientific backing behind it. Sure. Yeah, I can one of the biggest anti-science things that you can maybe think of is the idea that there are trade secrets, that you're going to keep information a secret so you can what they consider their competitors they also actively give false information that would lead them down the wrong path and so they're thinking they're getting this wonderful intel from a an experienced seasoned breeder and and all of a sudden you know they're having failure after failure and they try the other way and then they have success and they're like well was that on purpose is he trying to throw me off the sand of, so I won't compete with him, you know? And, and I mean, there's nothing more anti-scientific than, you know, putting out

false information to lead people away from the truth, you know? So that's a, that's one of the biggest evidences of, of non-scientific thought within our hobby is that idea of trade secrets and leading people in the wrong direction. And that doesn't only apply to, you know, herpetoculture. It can also apply to maybe field herping, too, where people are saying, oh, don't look over there. You got to go over here to find them, you know, and they're leading you in the complete wrong direction. And I get it, you know, if you're telling all these spots or you're giving away spots that somebody asked you to keep in confidence or showed you in confidence, you know, keep that a secret. Don't be telling the world about those because there are uns there and using them more as another way to make money. If I keep this secret and I go out and collect from this spot, then I'm going to make it rich. Or somebody told me about this spot and it's a great herb spot, but I'm going to collect everything and

make a quick buck off it. You know, it's just, that's, that's probably the most, uh, disheartening aspect or the most, the, the part of the hobby that just leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. Anytime I see a trashed environment from herpers i'm just like really guys do you really care about the stuff you're keeping or is it just dollar signs you know despicable i'm not gonna like rebut that because it's true you know i mean i'll fully admit you know being a field biologist conservation biologist i've totally i've just recently got back into herping and I love that I can do this again. Um, and I've definitely rolled up on sites that I, uh, I know people knew about and just the, the tins everywhere or, um, the rocks are definitely not

put in the footprint of where they should be. Uh, in that situation that's just not defendable so yeah oh i was reading on that note you know just kind of a side note i was reading that uh rick shine's book uh too many snakes too little time and um there was you know there's a chapter on the broad-headed snakes and they're they're that group uh what is that some i think it starts the genus starts with a b but the broad-headed snakes and the stevens bandits and those guys and um venomous snakes but they were disappearing from these habitats and they weren't sure why and well they discovered that the proper type of rock that they need to thrive in in this environment in sydney kind of where it's more temperate and cold they needed these thinner layer rocks that kind of sat on top of other rocks and gave them a spot to thermal

regulate and to find prey and and they found out that people were collecting these rocks even out of national parks for their gardens and so they were depleting the the correct rocks that the snakes needed to to survive and so what they did is they made a bunch of fake rocks with the right parameters and put a little seal so kind of keep the moisture under there and set those out and then they found that the snakes were coming back and utilizing those habitats and the populations were improving again and then um all of a sudden they found out oh these these rocks aren't being used anymore and And then they noticed, oh, there's trees growing up in front of the sun and keeping the sun from hitting them at the right time of day.

And so they cut down some of the branches and showed, oh, the snakes come back when the sun hits the rocks. So they kind of made an artificial environment. And so nobody's going to collect this fake, ugly rock. They're going to leave it there because it's not the real thing or whatever. And, and then the, you know, the, the, um, their information led to wildlife biologists or park, park rangers, keeping, you know, people from collecting, uh, rocks out of the, out of the parks and stuff like that. So really cool, uh, studies, uh, by shine's group to, to demonstrate that. But I thought, I thought, you know, that know that was cool so um yeah that's that's

not necessarily uh very exciting considering the ecological damage that you know unscrupulous herpers can can wield on the environment but uh you know it's something that kind of shows that maybe we can help some of these now i'll flip side using herpers which we're kind of we're under the umbrella of private herpetology now i guess i don't know is that yeah there are plenty of field herpers that work alongside state wildlife personnel and you know do volunteer uh volunteer their time um to go out with people to look for animals i mean here in in the mid atlantic region there's a big effort right now to just simply document box turtles it's citizen science yeah and i know my crew uh we did a field trip in kentucky for crayfish and i set the

location on my phone and every flipping box turtle we saw, which they're not, they're doing fine in that part of Kentucky. Um, you know, we took the pictures, we got the coordinates, we uploaded it to the website, um, or I uploaded it to the website, but in that regard, that's an example of where I can flat out tell you as a field biologist, I don't care who finds the animal I'm looking for. As long as someone finds finds the animal i'm looking for as long as someone finds the animal that i'm looking for i can get the data i do care if that person that finds it is gonna like treat it with respect and not run away with it that's that's the that's the problem and i think yeah that that is an area where the you know fieldpers, as long as they're not being shady, bagging everything, taking pictures, doing it with ethics, there's definitely a group of biologists that are going to look at those individuals as a resource and not a threat.

Great example in West Virginia. I'm going to plug one up plug a guy named jared kane um here in west virginia uh corn snakes were known from a single county from a single like from two specimens that were dead on a road and one of our herpers who doesn't keep anything super ethical with his his collection you know methods he had to prove himself to our DNR, but he went out and laid a board line where these snakes are supposed to be, and I got to go with him to the board line. He has found more corn snakes in West Virginia than anybody ever will.

He's fanatical about it, and I can flat out tell you, in a state like mine that doesn't have large amounts of money that can be put towards conservation jared literally has quite he's writing the book um uh on on corn snakes and now their distribution has expanded a bit but due to the intensity of his effort he also confirmed the perceived rarity. Uh, and if we don't have Jared, who's not getting a paycheck, doesn't have a biology degree, he is a herper 100%. We don't have that data on that snake. Um, and I know that that's a great example with Jared of the West Virginia DNR, the, the, the state herpetologist, um, he values and jared's time and effort uh just as much as my time and effort

um uh on the same token this week uh west liberty received nine box turtle or sorry wood turtles not box turtles that were confiscated from some guy's backyard in new jersey uh because they were heading to china as part of the black market trade in turtles. There's two sides to this coin all the time. The question then is just I think there's an ethical thing that we

as herpetoculturalists, field herpers, whatever, you have to just make a judgment column and decide which side of that coin you're going to be on. Because it's very tempting to produce a whole bunch of snakes that probably aren't going to live their best life but are going to sell for fifteen hundred twenty five hundred three thousand dollars like great example with me um i have a false water cobras are my snake i have a lavender i have two het labs and i just sit there and think am i going to ever make these things

um because the normal falsies that i have i went to great lengths to get as diverse genetics as i can get and the animals that i'm producing right now can you know they're they're relatively healthy um they're they get huge they do everything a false water cobra is supposed to do based off what we have data for. And then I look at the lavenders, which everybody wants a lavender. I get more messages about, are you going to make labs than my, my normals? And there's this part of me that doesn't know if I want to make them or not, because when I do make them, I'm not keeping any of those things.

I don't want them. You know? Yeah. But I also, as a biologist, understand that the quality of life of that animal is probably not the same as the quality of the life of the guys that are more heterogeneous. At the same time, I could be talking out my ass because I'm not a false water cobra. So you know what I'm saying? But these are the things that I think about when I'm making my decisions. At least there's more to it than, wow, I get a clutch of 20 of these and they sell for $22,000 apiece. I just made $40,000. I never – that thought doesn't come across my mind. In fact, there's even a part of me that's thought I might make them and sell them for like $100 just to see what happens.

So – but that's that. That was actually brought up on, uh, on carpets and coffee. Oh, and said, you know, they want to debate, uh, would find, you know, having a more for rare species or less commonly kept species. Is that good for it or bad for it? You know, are you bringing more, uh, of uh of that uh money aspect into it versus i kind of had this uh disagreement with uh dr warren booth on on the npr chat over um there was a there was an albino uh tracy a that was posted up and um you know i just kind of said like ah get get it out

of here you know like what like what good is going to come of that? And, you know, Warren probably rightly said, like, well, it's not going to really mess the whole species up. And I was like, well, it's not going to do any good for it. It could mess the whole species up. I mean, there's so few of them bred. You know, there are enough around, I suppose. You know, his point is taken, but I just don't see the benefit.

You know, I don't see the good that comes out of it. Is somebody going to start breeding albino tracier and then all of a sudden get an onus to be very scientific about how tracier are treated in bread because now there's an albino in there or are they going to say, oh, there's money here to be made because it's a weird big snake that's normally brown and nobody cares about. But now it's white and, you know, it's like, cool. OK, I like that. You know, I just I don't know. I. Yeah. One one other, I guess, negative aspect of that, you know, line of reasoning there is, you know, a lot of times when people are doing citizen science, they might have, like your friend that you mentioned, they might have insights into local populations or new populations or abundance of animals. Like, just for example, we were a part of a herp group in Utah, and we were looking into how abundant milk snakes were in the state.

Milk snakes and mountain king snakes. Because they're perceived as very, very rare and, you know, that kind of thing. But it turns out they're not as rare as they thought, and it's just a matter of being able to find them. Because they go underground when it gets dry, and it gets dry a lot in Utah. So you don't see them very often except during, you know, periods of rainfall or, you know, the correct weather conditions will bring them out. And so, you know, you could, you could kind of look at it as a negative attitude of be like, you know, the biologists don't know what they're doing. They don't know what they're talking about. And I've been out here and I've seen 30 of them. So why should I respect their laws?

Because they're based on falsehoods, you know, so they'll collect or, you know, do things illegally that way. And actually, that's how the work group came to an end is one of the members got arrested for poaching Gila monsters and kind of, you know, almost justifiably watching their habitat get paved over and going, well, they don't really care, you know, and there's plenty of them around and I've found, you know, five this year. So I'm going to keep a couple because their habitat is going to be gone tomorrow, you know? So it's, it's kind of a double-edged sword in a way, but you know, you do have, you could go that way, and that could be a negative aspect where you're saying, these biologists don't know what they're talking about, so I'm going to disregard the laws. And then you get busted with wood turtles in your backyard because you know of a healthy population of wood turtles,

and you're not harming the population, even though it says they're vulnerable or threatened or whatever. You're like, well, I've taken five or six a year and sold them to China for good money. I think it's the population. But I think it's that part you just said that I exported them and sold them to China. That's the – that's kind of like – yeah. But yeah, I guess that arrogance of saying I know better than all the professional biologists. And so I'm going to disregard what they are saying and do what I want to do with these and make money off them if I want to. Just because – again, it's not anything scientific.

Don't you feel that somebody who's interested in doing that is going to – they'll find the justification somewhere to reinforce what they're doing. I guess my point is that they are doing the work. They're learning about the population. They're out there. They know them probably better. But instead of contributing – and maybe that's the fault of the fish and wildlife. They're not working together with citizen scientists as much as they should. And, I mean, obviously citizen scientists are a great resource. And we've got different databases

based on citizen science, like iNaturalist and things. And you know, there's always pros and cons to those databases. But for the most part, I think that's good information. If you know where something is, regardless of who found it, and you can kind of do population studies or figure out where the lines are drawn or where populations exist based on people. Now, granted, that might skew it towards where people go more often. And, you know, you have kind of dead zones where nobody's going. There's no roads. And so you don't have a good picture of a complete, you know, data set. So that makes it a little difficult, but then that can allow the biologists maybe to

focus a little more in some of those lesser studied areas or private land or things like that. With the citizen science stuff, there has to be controls built into it for it to be valid. And when you add the controls and you add data management to the, to the endeavor, you are, sometimes that is viewed by the participants as you're questioning my knowledge, therefore you think you're better than me, and then that leads to that whole arrogance thing. But when it's done, when the communication is open and the biologists involved are openly communicating with the people.

They're letting them know why. And you have a receptive pool of people that are participating to understand why we have to do the data management the way that we have to do the data management. That's when it is as good as it gets. Now, how often that happens, that's not helping me with my point. But at the same time, though, there are plenty of examples of where that has occurred. Once again, a lot of things going down with turtles, because I really look up to the turtle side of herpetoculture, and I don't feel like we pay enough attention to the, to the model they have created of how private sector can get along with

agency folks and can get along with scientific community and can get along with zoos. And they, they kind of, at least a subset of them have, have kind of cracked that code. So what, what has to happen, though, is there has to be communication on the side of the scientists, and the scientists can't come off as arrogant assholes.

And as a scientist, I can flat out say I understand the people who get mad when they're trying to do good. You've got the best of intentions. You're giving up your time. You're got the best of intentions. You really are. You're giving up your time. You're spending your money to get out there because you're passionate. And then you reach out because you just want to help this animal that you really, really appreciate, love,

respect, whatever. And then you get shut down because you don't have the degree or you don't have, you know, Dr. Dick. Exactly.

And the thing that is, is I can't say this because I am privy to the meetings and I have to do this with the endangered crayfish I was talking about. That is changing quite a bit. I think that we are finally understanding that there are not enough conservation biologists out there and that as long as you have – the public is willing to take the guidance so that the data that's being collected is good. That's what people don't understand is't blast that out on the internet. So then the people that are lurking in the shadows can then swoop in and catch the turtle. So that's where having the biologist oversee the effort and you as the participant following their guidance that's the only reason why that's there it's a quality control issue um and why is that there whether we want to admit it or not because herpers have a tendency back in the day to put things in bags and buckets and then drive to the reptile show and sell it so uh and and i i've heard lots of people get really upset and they you know they

lash out and they get on social media and this and that when it comes to this aspect of the hobby but the local show that i went to and still go to i was there this past weekend the the show in columbus the it's been busted so many times and they just shut the door down, kick everybody out and the fish and wildlife biologists walk through. And it's not so much an issue now, but back when I was in college, early 2000s, I distinctly remember walking through the door there and looking at all the fox snakes that were for sale for $30 and asking, I was naive as hell as a 20 year old. And I was like,

Oh, are these captive bread? Yes, they're captive bread. And then I bought my pair for $50. And on the way home, I found ticks on them. I'm like,

Oh, they're breeding the ticks too. And putting them on the captive bread snake. And I remember, um, seeing landing turtles on tables and you don't see that now. So there is a nice change. Uh, yeah, but you know, see that now. So there is a nice change. Yeah.

But you also sit and think, well, it could also be because they're not putting the Blanding's tables on the table because they're just taking those and shipping them straight to China. So what's going on on that front? Do you think that's a shift in ethics, or do you just think that's a regulatory – I think it's both. I think for – it depends on the person. I think some people don't want to get busted and they don't want to go to prison and they don't want to get fined and they understand these things. People are actually paying attention now and these rules have teeth. But I also – to give credence to my side of the argument, I think there are plenty of people that want to do this right now.

That's the thing that I like. There's just in the short window since I came back to herpetoculture in 2014, when I came back in was like kind of the apex of the morph craze with lots of things, not just ball pythons. I was listening to lots of podcasts back then trying to get content, and there were a lot of conversations justifying racks. Those same people that were justifying the racks are now justifying PVC enclosures and talking about the good of PVC enclosures. And that's a result of a seed change with a particular facet of herpetoculture. There will always be the people that run out and grab every collared lizard and take them to the local show. That's never going away. I think it's disingenuous to think it's going away. And there's always going to be the morphs but i can say one of the things that's been really interesting about our podcast with colubrids is that matt and i don't keep the classic

you know morph crazed uh colubrids and colubroids we're just gonna say colubrids now um and we've been doing episodes on vile snakes and uh you know asiatic rat snakes and these obscure things and when we look at like the um trying to because i'm a scientist i look at the data so i go into like apple podcast and see how many people listen to that episode and that the the episodes that are getting the most traction are either the episodes where we pick something totally obscure so you would think it would be like no one's going to listen to Filesnakes. So many people listen to our Filesnakes episode. And then we do these nerdy episodes where it's not that different from what I do in my herpetoculture class.

Like we did the Brumation Bonanza. We gave it that name. Yeah, that was a great one. But that was like a lecture with swearing. Like that's basically what it was. And that got thousands of listens. So that's showing that herpetoculture is hungry for that. There's a facet of our discipline that wants that treatment.

And so that's why I think there is hope. Now, whether they will outnumber the others, I don't know. But they're there. And they may not have been there in the numbers that they're currently just half a decade ago and I would agree I mean I think that

the more complete carpet python that's another evidence that people are hungry for information and they're going to spend money on a book everybody says print is dead but I don't think print is dead. I think, you know, there's plenty of people that want to have that book in their hands. And, and, and I think, you know, we had that, like you said, we had that big push for, you know, breeding in racks and we're kind of

shifting more towards larger caging and we're shifting more towards information and obscure species and things. And that's really encouraging. I really hope that continues. I just had an off the side question. So Zach, you were talking about how, how, you know, agencies, DNR, Fish and Wildlife work with citizen scientists. What, what really drives what they're interested in? Is it science? Is it science that's pushing new papers, new research of where these agencies should be concerned? Is that ultimately where – because obviously there's probably more areas that – of citizen science concern that these agencies could possibly manage. So where does that come from? Well, every state has different drivers, for one thing. So, like, I can speak specifically for West Virginia because I've done a lot of work here, obviously.

And I'm also talking more about, like, understudied animals. So things like crayfish or uh frogs are a great example um if you think about like all the biologists that we talk about you never hear about the frog guy if you think about it so there's there's few people that are dedicating their careers to you know frogs but at the same time we need to know about them. There are canaries in the coal mine, all that kind of stuff. So in that regard, it's very difficult for a government agency to dedicate a biologist completely to frogs. But frogs are attacks that lend themselves to citizen science projects because unlike

all the other herps, they sit somewhere and scream, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here. So you don't have to go out and actually find them, you have to be able to listen to them. So there's like this initiative that's called Frog Watch, it's been going on for over a decade. And you USGS is the group, I believe that came up with Frog Watch, but they came up with, you know, the approach of setting it up was very scientific. They basically randomized the entire United States, came up with a tic-tac-toe board of, I don't know what the grid was, but something like 50 square kilometers all across the country. And then they looked at where all the frogs were.

And then they basically generated different specific localities or different grids that needed an effort and if they could get volunteers to sample in these different grids all the way across the country in effect you end up doing a census of frogs and you're doing it annually but here again built into the system were quality control mechanisms so like if you hear if you would listen to the frogs calling if there was a you first had to identify the frog so in that instance instance they created all the learning materials to give to people so there were all the frog calls um then you had to come up i i saw one sorry i saw one in australia where they you have an app and you just it's now and it will

tell you oh yeah no that that's how it's done it's pretty cool yeah and then it was okay when the frogs are calling there's three different density metrics so like if you hear one frog calling by itself you would note the species and then put a one and then if you can hear enough animals where there's a space in between calls you put the species in a two and then if it's like a deafening chorus, you'd put the species in a three. And then you turn in that data. So in that regard, there's lots of reasons why USGS wants to do that. One is they want to get the data. Two, whether we like it or not, and we have a tendency in herpetoculture to vilify the state biologists of the world,

which isn't fair, I don't think. They are also wanting to do some kind of outreach. They want their citizenry to be engaged with the animals because if you care about the animals, when a regulation comes up to preserve them or protect them, you might be less likely to get your pitchforks and torches out. And at the same time, they need the data. So here we have a volunteer workforce of potentially hundreds, maybe thousands of people that are all going to be going out the same time of year. And if you can just make the data quality good, and you can actually pull that off as biologists that that can tell a lot. And since Frog Watch has occurred, they've been able to show with Frog Watch data.

I don't know if it started in the late 90s or the early 2000s, but I did it when I was in a herpetology lab as a grad student. I've had my students go out and do it, but they've been able to show like, you know, we talk about climate change, spring breeding amphibians are a great group of animals to see if climate change is really impacting them because they historically would call the junction of spring and winter. And if that's creeping earlier and earlier and earlier in the year, you can show that winter is shortened. Spring is longer, you know, whatever. And through frog watch, they've been able to clearly demonstrate with really common species that the time of reproduction for these animals is is much earlier than it was just two decades ago that's an example of where it's all working um so so can i can i ask a follow-up question uh this this will definitely go to you and and I'm sorry for this. So in examples like

we mentioned USGS, we talk about fish and wildlife. So USGS was notorious in kind of the community for releasing that study about large constrictors, you know, sweeping across the United States and then fish and wildlife recently down in Florida, you know, and I think we had Ron St. Pierre on and he kind of talked about, you know, it's really a funding issue for the agency. And so here in both examples, I feel like you see government agencies in at least in Herper's eyes, vilifying them to fund their own agencies. So how do people reconcile that? I'm very happy you brought up the Burmese pythons because I have a very unpopular opinion that goes against everyone. A lot of USGS funding is internal. So they are given a pot of money at USGS field

biologists jobs. If you get a PhD and you can land one of those gigs, they're kind of the Holy Grail. Like I like teaching more than research. So I'm at my prime institution, but I can flat out tell you lots of people who had my academic background you know when they go out to get the position they want the usgs co-op unit gig uh and and so they were just simply they were tasked initially with just just because it's funded science you have a certain amount of money the money i don't want to give the impression i don't want this to be misinterpreted as you got all the money in the world. You absolutely, as those biologists, have to apply for funding. But if it's an initiative that co-op unit wants figured out, there can be some funds given towards it.

Gotcha. So your funding is more fast-tracked. And what was done with the pythons is what's called a MaxEnt model. Maximum entropy model was done where you basically go and you gather all this data in the field, where the pythons live and you have to go and catch the pythons. Then you get that coordinate we're talking about. Then you look at the annual climactic data there.

Then you go to where berms are native to, you get the annual climactic data there, and then you pump it in you produce a model and the model shows the potential range of uh burmese pythons and the thing is that paper is not garbage the way that it is portrayed the model that was created was created with the algorithms in that software and and that's it now the interpretation of the model that's where you can kind of go meh but everybody talks about how the science was bad it was not bad science the interpretation of the science is where we run into some problems um

the other thing with the burns issue as far as science is concerned and i know that i'm like totally going against my side of the argument right now by the way but um no i think this is just good information i think this is great information so the thing is rock on anybody that says that berms are not impacting the everglades doesn't understand basic ecology there's an entire subset of mammals marsh rabbits raccoons possums bobcats the coyotes the coyotes, the gray foxes, what we call the metamammals. They're in the middle part of the food web. And it's standard issue exercise. Field biologists have been doing this for years. We drive cars. We kill animals with our cars. You drive down the road of your park, if you're a park biologist, and you have your little field

notebook in your front seat, and you note every mammal you see dead on the road. And when the pythons showed up, those numbers started to decline. And now today, they're just not there, the same numbers they used to be. The new kid in town is the python. All righty. So the pythons are eliminating that like the data shows pythons show up metamammals go away okay no pythons metamammals there what do pythons eat metamammals okay so um that's another thing where i've i've heard people say oh it's a conspiracy it's out to get it like i don't think that's true. I was in the Everglades in March looking for, on a herping trip, I went down to Belle Glade and Clewiston, the cane fields,

to look for Florida kingsnakes because I had an idea for a project. And we were road cruising up there. Marsh rabbits were freaking everywhere. I had to weave and duck with the car not to hit them. Okay? There's no berm up there. Marsh rabbits were freaking everywhere. I had to like weave and duck with the car not to hit them. Okay. There's no berms there. We went to the Everglades and no marsh rabbits. Didn't see a raccoon. No possums. So like that is there. So denying that, that is also when the biologists that make these regulations look at our community and go, really? Like we got the freaking data and you're just denying the data because you think there's a conspiracy here.

Now, I'm going to flip it before everybody gets mad at Dr. Zack, because feral cats do far more damage across our country than pythons do. So there is absolute like that's where the where when I look at it that's where i kind of go what the hell like the pythons are not the yes they are bad for southern florida should we be bringing big constrictors into southern florida probably not we got one that escaped and it's established itself. Devilify big constrictors everywhere is the penultimate invasive species. When we literally have cats that are eating millions to billions of small vertebrates everywhere they live. And feral cats live from the Keys to Alaska. I mean, they're everywhere.

That should be public enemy number one. And ignoring that data. Yeah, and that's where I get. And taking on something that's – that should be public enemy number one. And ignoring that data. Yeah, and that's where I get – And taking on something that's – So when I teach conservation biology, that's literally – like this is in my lecture. But it's – I think we do damage when we totally – everybody goes straight to the pitchfork and the blowtorch when we bring up the berms. But whether we like it or not, those metamammals are gone are gone okay now there's another there's all kinds of arguments here because it's complicated it's not black or white um yeah uh the uh there was just the paper that came out

i can't remember how this works i think it was it basically i'm gonna butcher this so i'm sorry but like i think it said so the python showed up and they knocked down the raccoon and the possum populations, which were the main egg predators for the crocodiles. So now the crocodiles don't have the egg predators. They're an endangered species. Now the croc numbers are going up. So like you got to acknowledge that as well. But are croc numbers going up worth an ecosystem going into turmoil? It's just complicated.

And that's the thing about this stuff. It's not black-white. It's complicated. And you just have to take a step back, look at the data, and interpret it. But I'm totally on team cats are way more deleterious than pythons ever could be. Sure. than pythons ever could be sure well and i mean you can still have you can still have a bad invasive large constrictor and still have an agency that's there to fix it or regulate it or help it or whatever still not necessarily be all anti-reptile right like like we can have those two things and i

think i think some of the issue has gone around because they've put out things that are very you know anti-large constrictor in the everglades that that that means that they're anti-reptile and and and you know i guess i see where some of that where some of that comes from with the way that they're starting to regulate you know know, the capacity that those agencies want to be able to start to regulate species without all the red tape. And that's what they're looking for is they're looking for bigger muscles and they want to regulate stuff. And, you know, to everybody who's invested in that, in the reptile community,'re like, oh, my gosh, that now they have, you know, they they've got a double barrel shotgun on us. And I I totally understand why people are upset with the regulations the way that they're going down.

I'm not I don't want this to be interpreted that like I think that this was done well. I do not think that this is done well, but I don't think it was be interpreted that like I think that this was done well. I do not think that this is done well. But I don't think it was done well on all sides. I think that at the beginning of this whole conversation decade ago, if lucid heads would have prevailed, would have been great. Now, the agencies, I don't know if you two have been to South Florida, but South Florida is an invasive herp wonderland. Like you can literally see invasive, just invasive everything. Yeah, I almost killed a van full of students driving to the Keys. There's the last red light before you get to the Keys.

And I was sitting there and I don't know what it was, but mina birds. And they're well known for this site. They came down or landed in the middle of the road i was like that's mina that's a mina and in miami if you don't like go when it turns green you die and sure enough like there's cars everywhere kids are screaming so you know there's an asiatic bird so i just i just think that like it the whole thing's just a hot freaking mess. I think that's the benefit of having something like USARC. They are representatives and they should be the ones that have clear heads and can talk about, hey, let's think about this aspect of it. Is it a problem? Yes. Let's fix it in a way that's actually going to do something about the problem

and not just restrict and keep reptile enthusiasts from enjoying their hobby kind of thing. So just kind of a plug for USARC there. And that's probably to your side that USARC is a great example of good things for the hobby and good things going on to partner with fish and wildlife agencies to make maybe common sense laws. And frankly, I mean, if you're not going to be responsible or the herps pose a significant threat for the environment, should we be keeping them there? Do you have to have a tegu if you you know that kind of thing like i mean yeah it's great to have stuff but at the same time what's more important the environment around you or or your right to have a have a big conservation is all about compromise you you have to compromise yeah tegus are a great example uh

tegus really are whether we want to admit it or not, they're kind of an ecological disaster waiting to happen because this is an animal that has the ability to jet. Like it, they're semi endothermic where they live in Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay. It gets cold there. And these are generalist omnivores. Like a python is not a great invasive, but a much worse invasive is one that can literally eat plants, eggs, garbage. Like, you know, you're not going to there's there's all these different filters that filter and determine whether an invasive can take hold. And when you have that generalized foraging capacity those filters kind of go away and i i've seen you know as soon as the the tegu ban happening in florida where people's lives and income are derived from those animals and they've obviously gone to great lengths to maintain them

i do not think it was right to just take that away like that's not cool um yeah so i'm not in favor of that but let's say you know we got these other more northern states where they're found in the wild like this is these agency biologists are not i i've literally seen where people are like oh well they took the south carolina dnr let them go so then we can get rid i don't really think that they did that i know some people that are dnr biologists in south carolina they got a hell of a lot of things to do they're i don't really think they're driving around with tegus in the bed of their truck chucking them out turning around and be like look um but if like tegus were to get out that's going to do so much more damage to herpetoculture

as a whole once they become established and they're wiping out everything and then people have four foot dragons in their backyard because that's the way it's going to be interpreted if we were to like put a control mechanism on the tegus but then compromise and say everything else is fair game and then you know we get all upset i don't know if that's the best optics yeah like you're you're basically showing you we're gonna take all or nothing um so yeah and maybe that's a point for my side we don't do well with compromise we want to have everything and unreal and that's an american thing that's i mean yeah well that's you know it's an american thing that's guns that's fast food that's ice cream that's i mean at the same time stop me stop me when I run out of stuff.

You can make the argument that there's a slippery slope because the regulations were passed in Florida. And now all these other animals are slowly but surely being added to the list. And so there is some fact in that. I know I'm – but at the same time, calmer heads can prevail. So like one example that I always use. I tell people this all the time west virginia put out herp regulations and um i didn't know they were doing it i'm on i go to meetings i don't want to give the impression like i'm on some council but the rdnr has a herp

meeting just the people that do herpetology professionally in the state and i have grad students doing it so i count um and they didn't really they just mentioned that herp regs were going to be changing in West Virginia. That was the extent in the meeting. And then I'm sitting at my desk one day and then sure enough, holy hell, they changed. And one of the things that changed was you are not allowed to have any native species of reptile amphibian in West Virginia period um and they like yeah but you know and and so I looked at that and was like I mean I laughed because I know the the people that have to enforce this and I was like you just you just banned corn snakes man that's the next of all pythons and lord knows what that's a common snake they're in every freaking pet co across the state. And so I had calm head. I didn't like rant and rave.

But I called up the biologists who are field biologists. They're not herpetoculture people. And I explained, as a herpetoculture person, you don't know what you just did. Because, you know. You just turned a five-year-old into your life's gonna become hell because you're gonna start acquiring all these corn snakes maybe yeah you put in there something like what i think it was new jersey one of the new england states has no i think it's new jersey because they have corn snakes there you you can't have a natural

phenotype corn snake but you can have one that has like albino eyes. So here we can have our cake and eat it too. If you really like Okatees, you're out of luck because that's a normal phenotype. But if you like Snows or Motleys or whatever, OK, we can have corn snakes. So – and I was – I talked to them and sure enough, they've – it's been changed now to where with corn snakes, mutants are OK. You just can't have the normal phenotype. Like that is the way this should work. But it worked because I didn't come in like a freaking freight the side of the coin i used science and herpetoculture to you know to get that and threw in there the rare way that a morph can unfuck something yes

yeah there you go there you go and the other thing was it was also kind of interesting to give this argument of like i'm also lightening your workload because you're the guy that has to go out and get all the candy cane corn snakes. And so and there for a little while they were they were doing that and they kind of realized, oh, no, we can't do this. And so, you know, it has changed that that I think is a model for how this could happen. Whether that's going to happen or not remains to be seen. And unfortunately, we live in a world of all or nothing. And compromise is very, very hard to achieve. So, yeah.

Yeah, support USARC so we can get compromise in our hobby. Good compromise, yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't know. I think this is a good compromise yeah yeah well um i don't know if we i think this is a good uh discussion we've we've brought up some good topics we i mean we haven't hit on a lot of things and maybe we can do part oh yeah this could have like up to part 30 yeah oh yeah yeah there's a lot of a lot of pros and cons in in the hobby for sure and And, you know, hopefully this has given the listeners something to think about. And, you know, I would definitely suggest that you really think about your actions and how they're impacting our hobby.

And if they're just plain selfish or if you're using the hobby to promote reptiles and and get people excited about them and and the knowledge out there um and you're protecting the environment and being responsible herper you know it's good things it's a good look if you're if you're not in lined up with that then probably rethink your actions you know like try try again try again. Try, try better. But, um, yeah. Cool. Well, uh, that's, that's, uh, we really appreciate you coming on. It's always a good, I'll come on again anytime you have me. Yeah. Great stuff. Okay. Sounds good. That's, that's impressive. Considering you've got your own podcast, a bunch of students, your, your family and your captive animals.

This is like an hour and a half out of my week that I can, this is why Matt and I do our podcasts because it's just like two hours of focus on one thing. So, you know, that's kind of, it's therapeutic. It's needed. So there you go. For sure. All right. Well, um, of course, as always a big shout out. Well, except last week, Big shout out to Morelia Python's radio network and for all the great podcasts, including Kluberids and Kluberoid Radio for hosting us. And thanks to the almighty podfather and the Mackinwookie for all they do. Check out all their stuff on social media and check out the other podcasts that are on the network. All right.

Well, thanks again for listening, and we'll catch you again next week for another edition of Reptile Fight Club. Until next time, this is your neighborhood. We'll be right back. Outro Music