Reptile Fight Club - Longevity & Self-policing in the Hobby w/ Franklin Erickson

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

In this episode we catch up with Franklin Erickson and talk about Longevity & Self-policing in the Hobby.Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comIGFollow Rob @ https://www.instagram.com/highplainsherp/Follow MPR Network @FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQSwag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

All right, welcome to Reptile Fight Club. I'm Justin Joolander. Happy to be here and happy to talk, have a little fight tonight for you guys. We've got Rob Stone here as well. Say hello to the people. Glow them kisses. No, we did that last week. Oh, well.

it's a good episode it's a great one yeah all right tonight we're are you laughing at my car um simpsons you gotta love him uh i guess if anybody isn't a simpson's fan they might be scratching their heads once in a podcast um tonight we're joined by franklin ericsson how you doing franklin i'm doing well thanks for having me jason nice to see you both yeah Thanks for coming on. We appreciate the topic and the chance to have somebody new on the podcast. So good to have you on. It's always great to get those listener, you know,

recommendations for topics. And we love to hear your input and have you on the podcast. So thanks for doing that. Yeah. So I don't know. We had Utah, I guess what, Founders Day celebration today. so I had the day off work, just been hanging out and holding a few reptiles. I took out a zebra jungle that I held back a couple years ago. It's like this weird stripy thing. It looks really cool. I'll have to put up a picture on Instagram or something, but looking cool.

I don't know. All my jungles that I hatched out this year are eating, most of them on rat pups already. So that's a nice headache to have behind. me so I just got to get the inlands and then the antiregia feeding I guess the broom stimpsons took to pinkies really quick so they're pretty bulletproof but the pygmies they're a different different story altogether yeah but yeah things are moving in the right direction I suppose looking forward to getting out herping again I guess we got a couple months here but yeah that'll be

fun. Rob's been doing some really good research, so that's exciting and excited to get back to Arizona. Yeah. I don't know. How's your, you're going? Do you have many projects that you're breeding this year, Franklin? No, no. All of my snakes are still too young, too greed. So I'm in the, uh, enjoying the, uh, OCC phase of keeping and, uh, awaiting the result of each shed and seeing how, uh, bright and all the color and pattern become on each one. And, uh, that is a joy in and of itself and getting, I'm acclimated to my room and getting them, getting an acclimated to a set up. And yeah, I have one picky, picky diamond that I'm working with, but it has an awful tendency.

I'm sure you're aware of it of wrapping and dropping, dropping, dropping. We call that DAS or D-A-S syndrome? I think that was the name back on the Morelli of Python forums back in the day? Yeah. Brutal, brutal to come back in every hour and a half or so and see that it's on the ground and try again. but finally got it to eat a day-old quail yesterday, and he kept it down. So it felt good, but no, no, no breeding for me this season. But I was curious, what do you try to start the piggies on in terms of getting them going?

Yeah, I mean, I've, a couple times I've started up lizard colonies to try to get some feeder lizards, because that's kind of what they're looking for anyway. But I just, I don't know, I get, I get to like the lizards too much. And so I've just done the traditional, like, assist feeding until they take pinkies on their own. And it's kind of interesting. Like, you'll usually put something, just kind of put it in their mouth, and they'll finish it. You know, they'll eat the rest of it. So I, you know, I don't know.

Like, that's kind of been the way I've gone. The only downside is you've got to kind of stay on top of it while they're in that phase or else they crash pretty hard and fast. So that's the downside of keeping pygmies is either you got to feed them lizards until they're big enough to take rodents or you got to assist feed. So that's kind of the – I do try tricks as well. You know, I'll wash the pinkies or brain them or scent them or things like that. But I don't know, not many tricks or really work very well with pygans. So, yeah, what do you do? They're just so cool.

Yeah. Keep trying. I suppose, yeah, but they are just awesome. some little snakes. Yeah. Yeah. And once, I mean, that's the only challenge. Once they get going, like, they're solid. Like, they're easy to breed, easy to keep, really just cool animals. It's just getting those babies to start feeding is a little bit of work. But, I mean, there's a lot of cool reptiles that are like that. So, you know, gray banking snakes, some of the milk snakes, like, they can be challenging as well. So I wouldn't say this is a unique species by any stretch.

Black-headed Bithons are a pain in the neck, too. Like, they also want to eat reptiles or, and so they're a bit of a challenge as well. I'm doing the same thing with the black-headed hatchling from this year as well. So, good times. So the one that made it, I remember listening to an earlier episode, and only one made it must be kind of brutal when that's the outcome. But that one that made it is still going strong? The pygmy or blackhead? Black-headed?

Yeah, I had two that. that made it and are doing great. I mean, they're taking rats very readily now. So, yeah, they're growing pretty quickly. And yeah, they were the ones that had the mis-the incubation issues and have little tiny eyes. So I figured that was just because of those elevated temperatures. And I wanted to kind of see, you know,

if they could produce off. and if those offspring would be normal, you know. So that's kind of a little bit of an experiment. I didn't want to really sell, you know, sell an imperfect animal, I guess. And might as well just hang on to and see how they do here. So, yeah, have a have another pair kind of in the wings. Yeah. But, you know, I guess there's, there's a lot of cool reptiles out there.

I guess I just wish I would stop learning the hard way sometimes, you know. Like, just seems like if something. can go wrong. There's, you know, good chance that it will. This year's going well so far, so fingers crossed, it continues that way. Absolutely. Yeah, I do love watching stuff grow up and I kind of envy you with, you know, with that. I wish I was, had just a couple animals I was growing up so I could get out herping more. I'm kind of transitioning into that phase of life, I guess. My herpeticultural life It's less interest in breeding and producing a bunch of stuff, more interesting getting out in the field and seeing him in the wild.

But it's a, I guess, a double-edged sword. I feel bad for the guys that are professionally doing it and they don't have time to get out into the field. That seems like it would be rough, too. I'm happy with the opportunity I have with the collection size I do have that I can sneak away. yep and we got some announcements of funding coming through so that's starting to move again so hopefully I will have a job that I can rely on to allow me to use my reptile money as you know a fun travel money instead so yeah but yeah so that's a good sign that things are moving forward I don't know

hopefully that continues yeah fingers crossed yeah well why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself franklin where you fit in to herpeticulture and a little bit about yourself yeah it's a great question uh when i've been thinking about just listening to the show and knowing that that that question would be coming and i think i'm still trying to figure that out um you know i i know i love uh marilia uh carver pythons for sure all right fascinated by a bunch of yeah fascinated by a bunch of other species but when I get into a hobby or when I get interested in something, I tend to dive all the way in and try to learn and consume as much information as I can

before making too many big moves. And so it's the last year I've really been a process of learning and digesting information and listening to podcasts like Ropt-Py Club and more than a Python radio and trying to hear where others have erred and trying not to repeat those same mistakes myself, but invariably I'm sure I'll repeat some of them at some point in the future. But yeah, I think right now I'm just still in the just loving the experience of watching other people hatch clutches and breed new and interesting species

and talking to people about the different ways they keep and husbandry and just an understanding of the natural history of the animals that interest me. And I've been kind of on a chameleon cake lately, not from a perspective of wanting to keep them. In fact, the more I learn about camillian, and more I learn that I really don't want to keep them. But I find them just to be such fascinating animals and the people that do keep them in captivity successfully,

how they do it, and how they meet the needs of the animal and make it feel secure and just yeah so for so many different species that's been that's been my joy and my sort of identity right now is just like a student and eager to consume as much information as I can to be a good keeper yeah awesome student of the serpent I love that phrase and yeah it's a good way to good way to be just learning. I kind of fall in the same thing. I think there's so many cool reptiles out there that, you know, I don't have to keep every kind to enjoy them or to learn about them or to geek out, you know, that kind of thing. I love chameleons as well. And Rob and I were actually

talking about chameleons, you know, a little bit. And he turned me on to a chameleon podcast that, well, I'd listen to the podcast, but he said listened to one episode, an interview with Peter Nacus, or Nekus, and Nitchis, yeah. And he was talking about, you know, the whole chameleons kind of breathing their water instead of drinking. And that kind of was a huge paradigm shift. And hopefully that's, you know, I think that's kind of making its way into chameleon care and people that keep them. I mean, if you have a fogger and all that kind of stuff, your chameleons are going to be a lot better off. I just find that really fascinating. I think maybe someday I'll keep a

chameleon species just to try that, you know, kind of the new way of keeping them out. But for now, I just enjoy learning about them or seeing them or learning about new species or whatever. So yeah, there's a lot of cool stuff out there. There's no shortage of cool things you can learn about reptiles. And yeah, so exciting. Well, cool. And you lived in Namibia for a while. When was that? And what kind of experience was that for you? yeah that was uh from 2015 to 2017 okay um and uh was out there with the peace corps um teaching english in a rural village in the north of the country so right along the border with angola there's the okavango river and so i lived just about a kilometer from the river in a thatchroof hut

uh for two years so whatever was happening outside in terms of weather was happening inside I had pretty much the same with some buckets for rain and catching the drips that came through the thatch and trying to keep the critters out so I guess I shouldn't say no herping when I was in Africa

because I was visited by various geckos and skinks but unwanted herping incidental yeah right right getting ready to go to bed and skim still goes across the floor it's not necessarily yeah the traditional version of herping

I suppose but did see some skinks and geckos and things nonetheless, but yeah, a fascinating country, a beautiful place, just a super old place, you know, sort of getting to visit the oldest desert in the world, getting to see, you know, where the sand meets the beach and creates these foggy deserts and getting to some other really cool animals just in daily life. You know, and deer crossing are pretty frequent in this part of the country, and I'm sure where you are, too, Justin. But, you know, when you got to be cautious at elephants crossing, you know, it's a different game.

Different game, yeah, hitting an elephant is a bad day. Yeah. Yeah, hippos in the river and wild zebra and rhino, saw rhino in the wild. wild as well, which I feel like I'm probably one of the rare folks in the world to see a rhino and not in a safari park, but, you know, out just in the wilderness of Africa. Yeah, I wouldn't trade for anything. And yeah, but unfortunately, no herping at the time. There's just, for people that have been living there for so many thousands of years, you know, there's a very traditional way of living and traditional way of doing things. And there's not a lot of

thought to, you know, what kind of species of snake might be slithering across, you know, the area in front of my house or in my homestead, more, you know, snakes are associated with danger, and so they are pretty much killed on site universally, which is a shame. But, you know, there was a Peace Corps volunteer before my time who went to go use his oven one day and found out the hard way that there was a spitting cobra in the oven and we got to touch that and had to be had to be men of act out of the country so uh yeah dichotomy of living within near dangerous and venomous reptiles right yeah i guess we can't necessarily fall up the locals for you know having concern about a venomous snake when you know snake bite deaths are a or a real

life for currents out there and they don't necessarily have the option to be medevact, you know, from areas and a lot of people resort to traditional healers or remedies that, you know, just don't work or may not work as well and and find themselves in a precarious situation. So yeah, that's a sad state, but I guess I can't fall them for that I suppose but man what a one an experience I that's a bucket list place for me for sure sure I'd love to make it out to maybe at some point I still remember a nature episode when I was a kid of Namibia and showing like the the beetles you know running across the the fog dunes and then the Namaqua chameleons coming out and chasing them down and you know chomping on them and stuff and

all the different adders and bipers out there in the sands. Just a cool place. Yep, that'd be a cool place to visit for sure. Yeah, we'd kind of recommend visiting enough. I think if you're going to visit a country in Africa, especially for wildlife, it's one that's not terribly hard to get to and from. Flights tend to be reasonable, especially if you're willing to withstand a layover. Sure.

almost always necessitates a stop in South Africa conveniently, so easy to spend a day or two in Cape Town on your way in or your way out, and then English is the national language of Namibia as well, so you'll find that most people speak it well. They have a relatively advanced infrastructure, so it's easy to get most places and run a car. Yeah, so I would say, yeah, it might not, I would say there's probably less of a barrier than getting to Australia.

Really? Okay. That's cool. Yeah, that'll definitely happen at some point. Yeah, I don't know. Relatively safe, no issues there. Yeah. No instability.

Yeah. No political instability. No, it's an extremely peaceful place. The country is about twice the size of California with only 2 million people living in it. So it's a pretty, pretty empty country for the most part, which is why it's so great for wildlife, because there's just so much understripped habitat. Yeah, the Saan, Desaun people are native there, which are, I think, you know, trace, we trace our sort of earliest humans back to the Saan in Africa.

So there's, there's, you know, nomadic people in several parts of the country that are living, you know, the way their ancestors lived millions of years ago with very little change. That's just a unique, unique place. Yeah. How about opportunities to like camp and stuff? Or do you, I mean, I imagine that's got to be a little dangerous with elephants and lions and stuff cruising around.

But is there opportunities for that? Do you know? Did you get out much and do that kind of thing? Yeah. You know, we did a 120 kilometer. multi-day through hike at one point in our trip where we would essentially hike

somewhere between 12 and 15 maybe a little less than a couple of days kilometers per day and then you'd sort of hike to a shelter but it was just a shelter it was a tin roof a zinc roof with a half wall so you really just be protected from the elements

for the night and then you could lay out your sleeping bag and it would be a flat area so I think there are opportunities to camp and be out in nature, but on that hiking trip, you know, there's one part we have to go through a colony of baboons that sort of live and congregate around a giant baby tree.

So they have a really strong food source, and so they, you know, hundreds of them live in this area, right? It's undisturbed. They only let one group of hikers into the park per day. So you never see anybody else while you're there. So the baboons never really become accustomed to seeing people. and so they congregate in the hundreds in this fig tree area you know you got to walk walk through them and they screeching at you from from the hills and yeah you know trying to intimidate you

so you know up close interactions with wildlife a little little national geographic like in its in its own way but but yeah i think there's definitely opportunities to camp primal camp Camping maybe isn't the best, but I think if you had a tank, you'd be good in most instances. And talk about a night sky. Yeah. Sure, in Australia, you can see it's the same thing. Oh, yeah. Australia, but where you can actually see the galaxy, right?

Yeah. You can see the Milky Bay. It's fantastic. Yeah. That's probably what I miss the most is just looking up and being able to see satellites and every single star in constellations. Right. Yeah, we were in a dark sky this last weekend and saw those the Starlink satellites that just kind of like 12 of them in a row along the same path.

It was like kind of creepy or something. I don't know. It was kind of crazy. I hadn't seen that before. Like they just follow each other at intervals or whatever, but kind of cool. Yeah, it's neat to see all the stars. Feel a little humbled by doing that, you know. We're tiny specks on a spec floating through a lot of specs, I guess.

Yeah, good stuff. All right, well, we're going to discuss a little bit in regards to longevity of reptiles and whether or not, you know, we should be selling reptiles to, like, you know, that'll live 50, 60 years to, you know, a teenager that may not know what they're getting into and kind of educating buyers and things like that. So we'll be, that's, that's the topic that Franklin brought to the show. And I thought it was really an interesting thought process, you know, to kind of work through that. So we'll be fighting about that tonight.

And so, yeah, we'll, yeah, we'll get that started. I guess we'll have the two sides be, you know, whether we should should we do that or should we not do that kind of idea does that sound in line with what you had in mind? Yeah, yeah, that sounds great. Okay, so Rob and I will do the first coin toss to see it gets the pleasure of fighting you.

Go ahead and call it, Rob. Tails. It is tails. It is tails. My wind streak is broken at one week. At one week. Yeah. I like it.

Um, yeah, I'm happy to chat through this. Okay, let's do that. Yeah, yeah, that'll be good. All right, Franklin, go ahead and call the next one for which side of the topic you take. I'm going to take tails too. Tails? Oh, it's heads. Rob's the double winner this week.

Double winner. But for the form of the thing, I'm happy to take whatever angle you don't like. I appreciate you bringing the fight to us, bringing the fight to the party. So, yeah, whatever you want to, you take the choice. And I will take the opposite foot and we'll go from there. I'm excited to talk through it. Sure. I will take what I felt was the harder side of this, which would be not to sell snakes to children.

All right. Sounds good. And I will be happy to moderate today. So I guess is the winner the coin toss, Rob, do you have the option of going first or deferring? What would you like to do? Just continue the trend. I'll defer. And, yeah, so start us out, and we'll go from there.

Okay, yeah. Go ahead, Franklin. We'll do, awesome. Awesome. Yeah, so I think, you know, as you mentioned, Justin, you know, sort of at the onset is the longevity of the animal, I think, doesn't, I don't think people truly understand the ramifications, especially young people, of what a 20-year lifespan is for an animal,

especially an exotic animal. So I say, you know, even if we were to use an analogy to dogs or catch, but it's also, you know, especially smaller dogs, can have a pretty extensive life span. I think it's different because of the exotic needs or the different needs of the animal. You know, a dog, a cat sort of live the same way you do with the same temperature levels and humidity levels. You're buying a can, you put in a bowl, you know, you, especially early in a dog or a cat's life, teach it, train it to acclimate to your life. And with a reptile, you don't, in most instances, I would say nearly all instances, we're not afforded the luxury of being able to train or adapt that animal to living the same way you do. You don't get to keep your chameleon in your bed.

or at the same temperature that you live and you don't get to get a food from a can from the store and you don't get to put a collar on it and let it roam the house while you go on about herping or working or engaging in other activities. You know, your exotic animal, your reptile or your amphibian or your crocodilian or what have you,

you know, has specific needs, and it will need those needs for the duration of its life. And I think when you were a young person, it is very much a time of discovery, of figuring out who you are, what you like, you know, what path you're going to take, and that path may change multiple times before it reaches its ultimate destination.

I think it's probably healthy for that path to change multiple times. And so I think that it is, something, you know, I think we should encourage young people to follow a passion or follow an interest for reptiles. I don't necessarily think that that means owning them in all cases in the same way that I'm very interested in chameleons, especially Jackson's chameleons. I don't have the bandwidth to bring a Jackson chameleon down to 50, degrees each evening and raise the humanity levels to 75% or 80% and do that consistently year-round.

I have a daughter. I have a job. I have other responsibilities. And so while I love the idea of a chameleon, it doesn't work for my lifestyle. And I tend to think that most reptiles long term don't work for a young person's lifestyle. You know, in the very instance, you have somebody like Stephen Cush, who from a very young age knew that reptiles were his thing and were going to be his thing and has done an excellent job. I think putting a very knowledgeable and experienced face on young people keeping reptiles in the hobby. But I think that that is definitely the exception rather than the rule.

and so I think what invariably happens for most young people that buy reptiles is they are interested in it for a little while and that interest is lost or they just maintains but they leave for college or they leave for the next chapter and that reptile and those husbands who need some necessarily fit in to that next chapter and so either the reptile stays with mom and dad who don't have the knowledge or understanding of that reptiles needs or it becomes re-honed. And I don't think either of those are outcomes

in any of which really want for these things that we care deeply about and breed and try to provide the proper needs for and understanding natural history of and go see in the wild. I don't think it necessarily does the animal justice. So I think that's sort of my starting point. Yeah, I think that's a good place to start. Yeah, fair. So a couple things that jump to mind there

and I appreciate the points that you're making. I do you think there's validity to all of those concerns for sure. I think while you're right that definitely the sort of intrinsic needs of reptiles, right, just as different from dogs and cats, there's less infrastructure to support kind of those things. You need to seek out the inputs more consistently. I would say that in general, especially if we're talking about snakes as opposed to goannas, you know, that they're much different than dogs and cats and you don't have to

deal with them nearly as frequently. Your dog, you know, your dog needs you to need somebody to be there every day, right, multiple times a day. That requires, you know, extensive care. It might be simple care, you know, it mostly is, right? The inputs are not big. big, but it's being a farmer, you know, being a proper dog or cat owner means you have to be present every day. Maybe slightly lefts with cats, but only, only to a small degree. I know that growing up, my mother always framed it. Snake says, oh, quiet pets that are easy, you know, that, you know, don't require that many

inputs. So I think she took that as a positive, again, recognizing that, you know, even turtles and tortoises, lizards, those things are not, don't necessarily fall. into that box, right? And there is a, obviously, a risk on some of these things that, you know, you didn't even really highlight in terms of if we're talking about, especially the crazy temperature light bulbs that, you know, a lot of people are sent home for their Breeder Dragon, right? They get sort of that starter kit and you get this 150-watt, you know, light bulb. And I know folks that, you know, just have that one pet animal or whatever, but the kid almost burned

a hole or burned a hole in the floor by setting the lamp down and, you know, because it was the infrared type rather than the visible light type didn't even click, you know, and then it's the wood floor has, you know, a hole in it, you know, or whatever. So I totally, you know, again, I think it's probably best framed as a mixed bag. You know, I guess is the way that I would take that, you know, but, you know, it's a lot easier to cake based on sort of the daily management needs to care for many reptiles than it is many dogs or many cats. That's, to me, you know, sort of wholly different. And even things that, you know, some people, keep us pets others are you know inputs or whatever in terms of rodents you know rats can be

super engaging pets you we were pet sitting uh someone's rat you know and it was clearly appreciated that daily um input and interaction and things it was you know it lives in the kid's room and stuff and so the fact that that kid who's a constant presence wasn't there for a week you could feel the difference you know and how it interact how it was interacting with us instead of you know this person and it was, had emotions and things that I don't think, generally speaking, certainly you're going out on this is something nice if you start describing those to reptiles. Let's not say it's impossible, but in general, you know, and that's a fight for a different day that I don't necessarily want to have.

But so that was kind of the first thing that jumped to mind. The second thing, just out of what you had said there on the front end, is that I think this is probably sort of a, if we're going to accept this as a responsibility, we need to be more willing to accept it with everyone in the sense that, I mean, paths can change for everybody, right? And I know, you know, I've always conceived of it mostly in the framework of, you know, people buying projects. Oh, they, you know, as you're talking about it, you know, everything's too young to breed,

you know, and it's, oh, three to four, five, six, seven, you know, if you're talking, getting baby olive pythons or something like that, let alone a Colopago store, tortoise, right? Like, we used to say we're going to be in 35 years, you know, not to mention, you know, anything can happen to any of us at any point, right? And so that's, obviously, there's a, this is a continuum. But I guess I would just say that, you know, I certainly understand where you're coming at, you know, framing as, you know, people are, when they're younger, they're more likely to be less stable in terms of their sort of continuity and things. But, I mean, the truth of that would probably hold for everybody and how many projects, you know, that's fundamentally something of the, you know, reptile breeder pyramid or whatever is that, you know, as much as there's the idea that, oh, every time someone's selling something, they're fostering their future competition, for the most part, that doesn't happen, even if the animals live and survive, which can be its own thing, right?

I think fortunately we've mostly moved away from things like that where we're talking about wild caught adults of things that generally don't thrive, which is a whole another mitigating factor, right? How many of those 40,000 green iguanas a year, whatever, how many of those turned into mature animals and whatever? And it's a very dismal, disheartening percentage, for sure, is the answer to that, right? So that's, you know, another factor, but I mostly mean it in the context of saying, like, you know, the, oh, you're creating your own competition. Most people, A, don't have the consistency and follow through. You know, I think of Nick Motton, right? It tells so many carpal titans and all these things. But how many years has Nick lived in the same place?

You know, it had a snake building and it's this continued, you know, it's a controlled, stable environment that doesn't change, isn't subject to the whims of moving apartments where you're, you know, You're not even supposed to have the animals. And as you say, you know, you're away at school. You can't have them. You abide that. You don't abide it. However, right? I think that's most folks.

Yeah. The final thing I tossed out there that I do think is sort of a distinction, at least, to recognize between dogs and cats and reptiles. And this feeds into a previous idea. As to me, rather than being pets, I think, were their stewards. They don't seem to, you know, I. I do think there's something to consistency of engagement, presentation, interaction, those sorts of things. And it's possible that particularly on things like monitor lizards and things that there is sort of keeper recognition. But in general, I think unlike dogs and cats, which are not even intentionally produced, right, produced out on the street and brought in and ideally spayed or neutered and all those sorts of things.

but as someone who's had and sold and kept and all these things, tons of different reptiles for, you know, I don't know, 25 to 30 years, I've never had, you know, sure, there have been instances where I bought it for X and had to sell it for X minus whatever. That's pretty rare. And it actually fits into maybe later we can hop into that. A specific example jumps to mind on that. that I don't know if I've talked about on here before, but I've never had an instance where I couldn't, you know, find that animal a new steward that was appropriate to take that animal.

Again, maybe not, maybe it meant me to lose the money and I had to, you know, sort of accept that or whatever. And I do recognize that I'm not a person with one reptile who goes to college, in which case they're probably just situated to turn it into the local pet shop, whatever that may be. be, right? And that's not exactly what I'm talking about. So I acknowledge that I'm not, you know, the average person in that context, but I've never had it where I couldn't get one situated with someone else who could do well with it. Yeah, I think those are all extremely valid points, especially when it comes to husbandry and care and, you know, your snake not missing you when you might be gone for a few days or a little bit of an extended period of time. And you can, you know, having the foresight to set the animal up in advance with water

and making sure you haven't fed it recently, so it's not going to be living in a cage full of feces of urates. It definitely can't just fill a dog bowl or full of water and dog bowl full of food and leave for a week and come back and expect everything to be okay. You know, that's going to require somebody to come and stay with your dog or your dog to go and stay with somebody else and for that person to provide the appropriate not a quick care that the animal needs and the animal is going to miss you even if it is with somebody else it's not going to be the same this is as in your rat example and so I think for for people who do want to own

animals and don't have the lifestyle that affords them the luxury of being home enough for it to be fair to to the dog or to the cat or even to the rat than a reptile is you know a significantly can be better choice. It's really interesting that you brought up sort of the market side of it, the breeding side of it, because one of my points was maybe still will be this idea that if I am a person with two snakes

and one of them happens to be a male and it happens to be a female, I can put those snakes together in theory and make more snakes. And as a younger person, and then maybe speaking in generalities and hoping not to offend anyone, but I think most of us can relate to this idea that as younger people,

we maybe don't have the ability to clearly imagine our futures in a realistic way. And so, you know, sitting on a clutch of 10 or 12 snake eggs and hatching them out might seem like a good idea in the moment and when they're little, and then, of course, they're going to become bigger. Now maybe I have these things that are just, Snakes, you know, nothing marketable or special or desirable by the broader market.

And now what do I do? Because I wanted to breed my snakes and now I have 12 instead of two, or however that may be. But I also do agree that, you know, I think I sort of shoot myself in the foot from the context that if a person is moving around consistently and going. from college to an apartment to another apartment to a home, that that instability is going to make it more challenging to breed those animals with any consistency. And so maybe a lucky clutch here or there isn't the end of the world. As you said, free reptiles or reptiles are not trying to sell for several hundred or even a thousand dollars are going to be more easy to move. So maybe that presents less of a problem, especially as compared to the audience,

where you could have confidence in them, right? I mean, that is sort of an intrinsic issue to that, right? Is that free sounds good until it's, well, who's the market for free? It depends what it is, right? You know, is it becomes sort of an issue. Absolutely. So I think I come back to, maybe we can circle back to that, but I think too of long-term costs and I think of being young

and I think of not having very much money. And, you know, even if we were to consider that the animal is attended to, you know, served, so to speak, appropriately and fed appropriately, and it's kept in inappropriate enclosure. And, you know, invariably as an animal's age, they run into more health problems. And so as a younger person, even I think, you know, for me, I don't, I recall much of my 20s being a financially stable place of my life. Do I have several hundred dollars to see a reptile vet? Can I find a reptile vet?

Can I deal with maybe some of these more minor issues on my own? Or am I just going to, as Owen often says on an NPR, just click the button. A couple more clicks up and hope that the problem goes away or spray water on it. because those are the only costs or the least costly options. The ones that I can afford is a young person with an animal that has, you know, specific needs, exotic needs compared to a dog or a cat that might be easier to get treated for some sort of illness or that type of thing. Yeah, I think that goes kind of hand in hand with the impulse buying that often. happens, you know, where somebody gets really excited about something the first time they see it and

want to own it and buy it and they buy it on the spot, you know, and think, well, I can do, you know, I can, I can get it a cage and I can feed it for the next month, but there's no thought, you know, pretty much after that. And I think that is kind of what we, what we see in youth, you know, that lack of foresight or planning for the long-term future, you know, oh, it's a baby. I won't need, you know, yeah, it gets 20 feet, but that won't be for another 10 years, yeah, exactly. So, you know, they kind of put those things off till tomorrow, assuming, you know, like Michael Scott, they'll be rich and they can, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, the framing that that really does bring to mind,

certainly in terms of drawing in contrast, is I think a Paul Duren, right, getting into snakes much later in life with, you know, the sort of the investment in the infrastructure of a handful of scrub pythons and sort of how cool that is, right? And in the same way, it reminds me, you know, Justin had just mentioned it earlier, the context that for the most part, most people that are really under reptiles, you know, depending on what their pathos look like, go from having less to more to less and to try, you know, to see that.

So, you know, when you're talking about, you know, the kid had two snakes and now he has 12 snakes, that to me that, yeah, there is both truth in that and truth in the fact, or the implication. that that's probably less fun, right? At some point, there's a tipping point, especially if sort of the fun was at two. You know, it's one thing if you've had hundreds and the fun is having less than 35 or 40 or something like that. But if the fun was, fun point part was two,

then 12, you know, could be unmanageable. So it's all about, you know, sort of everyone's expectations and things. You know, the other thing that jumped in my mind just when you talked about that, right, is A, obviously, you know, you might be less successful from moving around and all the variants. thing. It made me think of Dennis McNamara talk and he's been on, he's made the podcast circuit, not with us recently, but he was, you know, talking about how the zoos will only incubate

a certain number on things, the kind of they test the waters to see, okay, what's the market, so to speak, meaning like appetite for those potential animals among zoos and is it a favored pairing or is it just sort of random? Is it a species that, you know, obviously if it's a species that's heavily moderated, then you wouldn't even just be arbitrarily tossing them together. But the context of that is a lot easier when we're talking about egg layers than it is live-bearing snakes. That's certainly true, right? Because in that context, let's call them carpets.

So you have two carpets or corn snakes or whatever it is, right? Then if the kid has sufficient sort of maturity to recognize, hey, maybe 12 isn't a great idea. You can easily enough, I mean, and this is, obviously, I don't. intentionally botched the whole thing and wind up with none of them. We try hard enough to do the best we can and still have things go sideways on us. But, you know, in terms of certainly any live-bearing species, I do think obviously you can't do quite the same thing. And what it entails then, right, is wholly different. So maybe that does speak to advantages of egg layers just as sort of a a first bet, right, or for kids or in that context,

because at least there's some avoidance of the issue, whereas garter snakes, you know, depending on the species, you know, Eastern Gardersnakes or whatever, you know, you could wind up having quite a lot and having no sense for it even, right, of saying like, okay, a big old Nerodia, is that five super large ones or is that 35 small ones? You know, that's a fair question. Right.

And 35, you know, arbitrary neurodia, you're correct that finding, you know, good stewards for each of those is not going to be as easy, you know, and it's intrinsically less simple to moderate for sure. Yeah, and I wonder if, you know, as a market, and I think that the snake or the reptile market is such a fascinating one because the barrier, the entry is so low you don't see it and hardly any other free market where you really just need a dwelling, some tubs, and two snakes, and you can go into business. And I find that so fascinating from a market structure perspective, because if my passion was, you know, opening a chain of car washes, I couldn't just decide to go out and do that tomorrow that would take a business model and a plan, you know, marketing and figuring out who my my customer segments are and a budget and maybe all of my savings and there would be

an inherent amount of risk involved with me deciding to try to do that where there isn't so, there aren't so many barriers in producing reptiles. And so I think you have a lot of just super unique outcomes for the market from that perspective. And maybe not always bad. Maybe that initial clutch teaches you some dialogue lessons in terms of desirability of animals, caring for younger animals and getting them started, especially if it were something like a pygmy python, I think learning how to do that from a young age would certainly provide advantages

to keeping later in life if you could get, get a species that difficult going as a younger person or as a person who maybe isn't in the long, stable part of their journey. So I could see how, again, maybe benefits to both, getting that experience and early and what it might do for you later on if you stick with it. Right. I kind of wish I had the time I had as a kid. Right.

Like, now I have a full-time job and, you know, kids and responsibilities. I have to maintain the home and all those kind of things. It's like, okay, you know, I'm glad that reptiles don't take as much effort as, you know, a mammal. But at the same time, like, yeah, I'm out there late nights and things like that, you know, and it does take some effort. I think, too, like maybe with using your comparison there, you know, you could probably hold up a sign and say, you know, car wash two bucks and you'd have a line of cars that would come to your house and you know get their car wash from you but you're not going to be making much money you know you're not going to be quitting

your day job or opening up a chain of those anytime soon so you know i think i think the same applies to the reptile you know market or or industry or whatever you want to call it where you know there's a lot of people that are doing it in a very sophisticated way who have you know have maybe sell to chain store, you know, pet stores and, you know, they, they send all their lizards to, to Korea or something, you know, there's lots of different, I guess, levels or tears, you know, and so just because you can afford two snakes and breed them and produce them doesn't mean you're going to, you know, you're necessarily a great reptile business. I think there's a lot of, a lot of things there. And I think, you know, bringing that to light and saying, hey, have a, have a business plan,

have a model, have, you know, a long-term. goal, you know, what you want to do with this and how you want to take care of those animals and how much money you're setting aside for vet bills or, you know, what happens if your female dies or, you know, things like that and, you know, gets egg bound and doesn't produce or has to have her ovaries removed because she got egg bound or something like, you know, there's lots of different scenarios. And I think a lot of times, you know, you kind of have to learn that stuff through experience to some extent. So, you know, to say to, you know, somebody young, oh, no, this isn't for you, may deprive them of that experience where that shapes them

into being a better reptile keeper down the road. And I know I've made my share of mistakes and I still make them today, but they're far less frequent now than they were when I was younger. And I seem to be, you know, doing okay with stuff. You know, it's, but, you know, I think, I think there's definitely levels to that. And it's important to learn that too, you know, through through some trial and error, I guess. Hopefully you can learn from others first. Yeah. Absolutely. Sorry, go ahead. No, no. You go ahead. You know, another thing that kind of jumped to mind, right, when we're talking about this conversation, the front end of the conversation in terms of saying that sort of the longevity

and complexity, and this one, there's kind of more complexity on the back end, you know, for the for the trade-off in longevity, but the first thing that jumped to my mind was the braided podium, the dwarf chameleons, the carpet chameleons, things that have like, that only live, you know, one to three, four years, you know, four-year-old would be ancient for a carpet chameleon, would be on the back nine for a dwarf chameon and things. The, at the same time, the reason it re-came into my mind, right, is I do think there's some, I do think it's a little bit pessimistic and cynical. hobby that there's been so much of a push to, hey, yeah, just with your two tubs and your two

snakes, you can make, or one tub and two snakes, you can make more snakes, and this can turn into this whole thing. You know, and a lot of that, obviously, it wasn't invented with the morph thing, but I think it became much more common with the morph thing, right, the transition from kind of the stamp collector collection of a whole, a diverse escape of single animals, having, oh, I'm focused on producing X, Y, and Z, and usually that was in the context of, oh, I want to make the newest greatest color thing or as is often the case to someone with the two snakes in their one tub it you know it's actually it's yesterday's news five years before they bought it but no one told them that you know that sort of thing um the downside and this is what it brought

his mind is when i'm thinking then of the carpet chameleons right the infrastructure to support all these animals that only live that short a period of time is super intense and it actually is more focused, right, in terms of one person, I think Frank Payne with the work that he did with Carpac Millions. And it's like, you know, he's doing all this work, but I'm sure, well, the fact that he's certainly defocused from it, right, it's got to be exhausting because he's, you just continually have to be making more to replace that, you know, and it's, you know, it's sort of the snake eating its own tail in the sense that to have it at all, you have to have it at this scale or they just disappear. And that's what we've seen with Brady Pote, right? They

And people, they weren't taken up in that way. They had come in and then weren't taken up in that way. And then they're gone. And they're gone within like three years of having them readily available because that's how they work. You know, as soon as you lost the champion or a couple champions or even didn't lose them, but they transitioned to doing something else. They didn't want to keep doing that, engaging in that process. Then they're just gone. So I don't know.

Sort of a tangential feature there. But I was thinking, you know, when you brought this up, it's like, well, does everything have to be colubrid, right? We're probably looking at a dozen to 20 years, something like that. You know, at the same time, you know, it brought to my mind being a kid, and I must have been, I don't know, eight or nine years old and got a pet rabbit. Well, that rabbit lived for like until I went to college, you know, and that is sort of, you know, those are marketed in the pet shop as the Easter bunny or whatever, right? Like, that has that same. So maybe, you know, mice and rats that on the long end, you're talking four or five years, and that can be, even then you could be doing pretty well.

Like, that's, I don't know, I don't know, what you make of them. Well, how do you think that a carpal chameleon breeder just has to feel like sisyphus, the sisyphos of reptile brewers, you push the boulder to the top of the hill and it rolls right back down and you've got to push it back up or no more bolder, I guess. You know, it's, you know, and there's just, there's just, yeah, so I imagine, you know, it's a shame, too, because the carpachines are stunningly beautiful and interesting. But, yeah, I can see why you want to move away from the Sisyphus model of reptile breeding, where as soon as you raise one to adulthood, the one that produced it is dead.

And that one has to breed. And if it doesn't, then, like you said, no more. but I yeah I think shorter lived reptiles certainly I think are a remedy for a lot of these concerns around the long-term welfare and husbandry concerns that present with the instability of young adulthood that that clashes with reptile keeping and certainly you know me and my two snakes and one tub are competing in the market with Mr. Nick Mutton and I'm certainly not stealing any business from him with with my pairing of, you know, whatever snakes that I happen to have and breed together. And just as, you know, my two-dollar car washes are competing with any of the major gas station companies with car washes available. And I can see, too, you know, we're having those experiences. and being honed by those experiences younger in life prepare you and maybe induce less panic later on when you're keeping more animals or keeping more challenging animals.

And so without that earlier experience, maybe those harder to keep higher need, larger animals become an impossibility because if you only get comfortable working with a monitor at the age of 55 or 60, are you really going to have the capacity to see that animal to the end of its life? And so starting earlier, I can definitely see the merit in providing the foundation for advanced levels of keeping. So I think there's validity to that as well. Yeah, I mean, but you highlight it there, right?

Who's in the context then to be given? So the example of the thing that became that was difficult to move wasn't really from the desirability. It was more about finding the proper steward. I had been out at Bushmaster and this would be 12, 15 years ago, something like that. And he had gotten in a beautiful captive hatched crocodile monitor that was maybe 10 days out of the egg. It was just totally gorgeous, still gave you the, still looked at you like a velociraptor, you know, head tilt up at you. through the cage and all that. And I paid him a pretty penny, as you can imagine, for that animal.

And I think I ultimately essentially gave it a way to give it to a person who was actually situated to take on the responsibility of that animal. Because the nexus of that price point and the right person wasn't, I couldn't find that that nexus at that point in time, right? So I think there's something to that. for sure. Now with social media, you'd have no problem finding somebody that wants to take on the crock monitor, right? Well, he's fine plenty of people, but whether they're the correct steward, that's exactly right. Yeah. That's probably with a lot of those large monitors or crocodilians or

probably tortoises as well. Like, you know, you need to have somebody that's really special in tune with that kind of stuff, yeah, that has the means, the money, the, you know, Capabilities. I mean, honestly, the, you know, the biggest violator of this stuff was really stuff that would come in, you know, quote, formed, whatever that looked like, right? In terms of spur-thigh tortoises is the thing that jumps to mind of saying, like, it was hard to do, particulate pythens, Burmese pythens, things that came in in quantities that far outstripped the number of people qualified or interested in keeping them, right? That was Nile monitors, you know, same context. Green iguanas, yeah. Yeah.

definitely a very valid point it was interesting I had a visitor recently and when I told them I had a snake they actually said oh well I don't want I'm scared of snakes but if you had an iguana I'd want to see it

I thought I don't I don't actually think if you would think you would have a less enjoyable experience with the iguana but maybe to each their own. But I think that that maybe misconception about iguanas continues still for a lot of people that aren't into reptiles, that they make good pets and that you can sort of keep them in your house like a dog or a cat.

I think anybody who's actually kept iguanas probably can speak to that being not the reality of the situation. For sure. And I think, too, the, you know, the whole, I guess, I don't know if you'd call it a revolution, but the kind of the pyramid scheme and the morph game and all that kind of, you know, rack keeping and making people think they can keep thousands in, you know, a small reptile room or something because they can just stack racks to the ceiling, you know, and have rows and rows of rack systems. That's kind of the, I don't know, that was kind of the big thing in the, early 2000s and, you know, talked a lot of people into thinking they could be a professional breeder if they just bought enough rack systems. And, you know, there's a lot more that goes

into it, I think, than having the opportunity to house the babies you produce and to, you know, give them a good home and to understand that you might not sell them in the first week after they hatch or you might be sitting on them for a couple years or something. That's, it's important consideration too I think the other big part of that that bumps me out is the normalization of sort of that that advancement perceived advancement in their keeping almost as like a mandatory step right and I think of that mostly in the context of ball pythons but really the thing the terms of mine is leopard geckos where it's just sort of there's all this normalization of oh you know I didn't have a big year I only produced 50 clutches of all that's a lot of

snikes, you know, or, you know, even that same number in leopard geckos. Well, that's 100 geckos. That's a lot for just someone arbitrarily starting today. And invariably, it turns into a business, right? Because you can't just sit on 100 leopard geckos indefinitely. And then it's, you know, that's turning into going to shows and doing this stuff. And what it usually turns into is by three years later, they don't have any reptiles at all. At least that's been the experience i see overall you know they always would get a kick there been a variety of leper gecko podcast and tim was involved with one you know and and these things and it's like man they're so into it and with a notable few exceptions of folks that are more um you know kind

of on the have the infrastructure ron tramper um steve sykes these sorts of folks that are up in uh the folks up in wisconsin garek demire you know unless you're sort of at that level of infrastructure for the most part it's like if someone's talking to you about you know being super excited and you know they just started and now oh but they're still normalized on 50 clutches the leopard geckos um i don't know just to put pull an arbitrary number to make it sound specific and factual i would say you know three out of four of those people probably aren't keeping reptiles at all in five years because the whole thing will have burned them out they'll get you know they'll develop a mealworm allergy they won't you know and they won't keep anything

And it's just like, when did this become the ideal, the platonic ideal? Like, oh, this is what it means to be serious as opposed to, yeah, just having, you know, the idea. And I do think it's tied into the morp thing of not just making a beautiful animal to look at in the most beautiful context that you can instead of saying, you know, no, no, you pair this with that in the, you know, in this tub. And you too can be a reptile businessman or woman. And it's like, I just, I think to your point, right, of self-policing or, you know, policing within the industry, I do think we've let ourselves astray to the extent that that becomes the ideal. And to that point, and something that I think I find that I've always found really fascinating about the reptile hobby is that there never, there's never been a point where it's felt like maybe, Maybe this is more for the snake community because maybe more specialized care and husbandry has been identified and applied in the monitor community or in the community where if those standards and norms weren't applied, those animals would have died off or been kept in properly.

We've seen this, but there doesn't seem to be meaningful standards or norms in terms of husbandry. I think when somebody gets a dog, they understand for the most part, or at least maybe this is optimistic thinking that the dog is going to need to be walked and it's going to need to have enrichment, you know, toys, and you're going to have to play with it,

and you're going to have to be affectionate, and it's going to have to have lots of experiences at a young age so that it's adaptable to different situations. And from my understanding at looking at the reptile community, there seems to be hardly any agreement on how any animals, or at least snake communities, should be kept. Big enclosures, small enclosures, multiple hides, litter for moving around and detected and being cryptic, what temperature to keep at, how much water to give.

It seems that anything, any given aspect of husbandry is up for complete an entire debate. Maybe that speaks to the plasticity of certain reptile species that are bred in mass and in the hobby. But I think it also just speaks to people keeping reptiles in conditions that are less than ideal and justifying it because they will breed or they will eat. eat or they will perform these basic functions. But is it doing the animal justice? And I think specifically of the large Python community, reticulated python keepers, Burmese Python keepers, and having a breeding project with animals like get to be that large,

and unless you are operating in a massive facility with an extensive budget, how can you really provide an environment or, or a life for an animal outside of ensuring that it's fed and warm effectively. And I think as a young person, the challenge of not having a North Star for husbandry, for keeping, for, you know, just beginning and starting down a path, there are so many options that I think you eventually just choose one works for you and then for most people if they're presented with our argument counter to the way they're keeping they want to argue that that's wrong or they challenge it and so we have

this constant disagreement among keepers that devolves almost always into you know personal attacks or you know mudslinging and I think as a as a impressionable young person and back can be a really big challenge in terms of who do I follow and who do I listen to when there's so much information and so much of it inherently contradicts itself. I think, too, there's some difficulty in, you know, we have a kind of a old mindset of how reptiles are, you know, they're not mammals. They don't have those kind of feelings or, you know, and so therefore we can stick them in a box and they're okay. But there was a recent study. that came out on tortoises and they found that if they were kept in an enriched environment, that they

would perceive ambiguous actions, you know, towards them as optimistic. Like they would look for, you know, an opportunity rather than like kind of hiding or worrying about something showing that they can perceive, you know, their mood depends on their environment. And so, you know, this was a, I believe they used a cognitive test that's used in humans, like to determine, you know, their welfare state or their mood or whatever. So tortoises, at least, most likely other reptiles are going to, and, you know, that makes a lot of sense when considering how integrally tied a reptile is to its specific environment. And so thinking that you can keep them on newspaper in a dark box and they're going to be happy or they're going to, you know, it's probably, probably not a good assumption, you know, and keeping them into more elaborate or at least stimulating for their state of mind.

I mean, that's not to say that all things need to be kept in a room size enclosure, but you know what I mean, like having some enrichment or having some form of something that they recognize from their environment probably goes a long way towards their well-being and that we're learning more and more. I guess that's the point here is that we're learning that they're not just simple, you know, hey, if they're breeding and they're eating, they're fine kind of animals, but that they're much deeper than that. And we should probably give, or we should definitely give them better than maybe what we have in the past.

Sorry, was that a mood killer? Everybody got really quiet. I just wanted to give Rob a chance to respond if it was interesting. No, I agree with you. I mean, honestly, as you're talking, so two things jump to mind. The first, Franklin, to the point that you were making, is I do think it's kind of who's the champion voice out there and what is the message that they're pushing forward, right? As Justin talked about in the late 90s into the early 2000s, the idea of being able to keep

and produce lots of snakes. That was sort of the champion voice that was winning. the day um nowadays i think and not that i've watched that much of the content certainly the camellian uh what well the uh chameleon breeder podcast changed to the chameleon academy podcast right and kind of reflected a shift towards um you know trying to keep keep better right and we've seen that with other communities as well i think i was going to toss out there right is um in terms of YouTube stuff, right? Brian, even amongst himself, had shifted kind of from showing his life and experience in the context of producing tens of thousands of snakes to trying to build

a facility where people could come and see them in a more naturalistic environment and really appreciate them as the snakes themselves. The snake discovery folks do a good job with talking about sort of snakes as snakes and trying to engage with, I think, some of what you're detailing there. So, yeah, I mean, that's sort of what jumps to mind, right, is saying, okay, well, who's your champion? What's the message that they're championing? And again, fitting into, you know, the same box of saying, honestly, I think we, with maturity,

get to a point of wanting to enjoy the thing without having to open a tub to take it out to interact with it, right? So it's figuring out how to make an environment that we can enjoy it. And often that intrinsically needs to be enriched to have them do well. So there's an interplay amongst those two things. So I'm with you. I think there's validity to that in terms of saying, hey, actually it's a benefit to us and our experience of them when we have fewer that are in that enriched environment because we don't have to,

we can see more natural behaviors, right? We couldn't see in a tub because every time you open the tub, then they have a response to that, whatever that response may be, and that can vary wildly by what it is and the individual personality of the thing, right? Any folks who've kept snakes and tubs undoubtedly have the experience, well, I have the one that comes out,

assuming things are food, the other that immediately shoots to the back, the third that just sort of lay there, you know, unsubesely. seemingly uninterested, right? But in each instance, we've had to, none of those are there, the behavior they'd be displaying absent us being in the room because we, you know, we don't even have that as a variable.

We had to open the tub so they're aware that we're watching them. And that's a great point. And I am curious just with both of you having been around in the hobby for much longer than I have and seeing a change and evolve over the years, do you see a time or do you think we're moving closer to agreement on some foundational aspects of keeping or do you think there will always be this battle between tubs and

large enclosures and bioactive setup and there will always sort of be these two camps that have to sort of coexist and tolerate each other and whatever side of that coin you're on you're going to think that that's the right side. Right. I mean, we've talked about it a few times on the podcast in different forms, I guess. But, you know, I think there's always going to be kind of that dichotomy.

And, you know, I think the purpose of what you're doing definitely dictates a little different situations. Like if you're mass producing for the pet trade selling to PetSmart or something, you know, like, for example, Alan Rapashi and his, you know, crested geckos and other related forms, you know, he basically boiled it down to a science, hired workers that would come in and maintain the animals for him. It became a business. It wasn't like he was out there interacting with the animals and each day after a certain point. Like, I'm sure that was, you know, in the beginning. But then, you know, the animals got taken care of and well taken care of.

It's not like they were suffering and kept them in reasonable, you know, enclosures. Those, the guys who do it right usually do it right, you know, they're successful for a reason because they understand the natural history and provide to meet the needs of the animal. But, you know, I think, as I mentioned before, you know, we got this idea from those big breeders that were producing for the larger scale pet trade or having giant booths at the reptile shows and things like that. that they were keeping, you know, for convenience sake and in tubs with newspaper or shredded as, you know, aspen or whatever, but that, you know, they had fewer kind of more display type cages. And I think everybody had the idea, oh, I want to be a professional breeder. And we

kind of lost that wonder of, hey, I just want to keep these cool animals because they're cool, not because somebody told me there's a pyramid scheme that I can jump in on and breed. And I think there is kind of a pendulum swing and a move back towards, you know, enriched environments and keeping with proper lighting and all these kind of things where we have advances partially due to the folks that were mass producing for the pet trade, but, you know, we're finding these needs and things as a kind of a maybe an unintended consequence, but a good consequence that we're having better caging systems, better lighting, better care requiring, you know, we're understanding more about the reptiles now than we did then.

So I think that pendulum is going to swing back and forth to some extent, but I think it's moving now towards more intense and better husbandry, larger caging, more naturalistic setups, things like that, which is kind of encouraging, I think. I like it. Yeah, and I would say too, right, just for clarity, it's not that there were no champions, of that previously, right, as much as, you know, in the early to mid to late 90s, right, Alan is going to that commercialized scale. One of his best buddies, Philippe, right, is putting out a ton of publications

talking about the beauty of making, you know, natural context, the art of making natural context to allow these animals to thrive and to be sort of integrated into our daily lives in a way that, you know, a dog or cat can't, right, as we talk through. So there definitely have been champions for this. It's just sort of which is the champion whose voice is winning the day, right? Ultimately, Vybarium was incorporated into Reptiles Magazine, right? So it's sort of what is the voice that's winning well? And when did that happen, late 90s, early 2000s,

when sort of the messaging around being the breeder and keeping lots, and that was the sort of championed message that was being more widely received. So I'm with you, Justin. and I think that there is a natural ebb and flow to this. And I do feel like we really are there. And I think some of that is just born out of people's lived experience with it, right? No one to me looks more bummed out at a reptile show than the person who only has Krusty geckos, leper geckos, ball pythons, whatever, and all the things that they have are not unique to them, right?

obviously the individual animals are unique to them in their own intrinsic way but they're you know it's all the same stuff that people could see online at any point or whatever and it's like those are the tables that it's one thing to say i'm not stopping by they don't even stop by each others and it's just got to be so uh so such a cynical experience right and so i don't i think that people are at least very quickly getting that message of like oh yeah this how people take that how they respond to it what they do next right all those things are going to vary by the audience but um it's just and maybe it's who i'm exposing myself to but i don't see that sort of being the champion message nearly as much anymore and honestly some of i even think old reptile radio right

Kevin McCurley, uh, being on with those guys and him saying, well, his ideal would be to have one, uh, one rack with a, you know, maybe it's a rack of CB 70s with 11 tubs, you know, and to just have the coolest possible 11 ballpipes. He was like, if his, his, that was his ideal. If he could be, you know, situate with none of the constraints that exist and all this stuff. And, you know, he said that 12 years ago or something, you know, at this. point. And I think that's a lot more probably fair and honest expression than what we mostly hear about. Well, have we hit the, hit the topics? Anything else you wanted to cover?

No, I think we've hit it. What, you know, one thing I'll say is just to provide some clarity is, you know, I think a really important aspect of getting into a new hobby or learning about a new subject or doing a new thing is to never be too attached to one view or one way of doing things or one way of seeing things. So the thing that I've challenged myself to do most is somebody early in their, you know, understanding of their place in her pediculture and what they want to do in the hobby has been recognizing that just because I do something a certain way, it doesn't make it the right way, and learning as much as I can from others and whether I take everything from every person, that that's a different story, but giving space and being able to balance that multiple perspectives can exist and be true and multiple ways of doing

things can exist and be true and be effective and be and be good for the animal and good for the person exist and so so few things have to be mutually exclusive so few things have to be black or white that that all of the different shades of gray I think are what make the reptile hobby really unique and really fascinating because because of the plasticity because of our understanding of the animals growing and our ability to dial in care requirements more effectively over time and keep things today that, you know, we wouldn't have been able to keep 10, 15, 20 years ago. And so I think it's, I think something I try to remind myself of constantly is that maybe as a young person, so to speak, at least a young person in the

hobby despite my age, which isn't, I don't think, terribly old either. But regardless of that, I think keeping a mindset of there is so much to learn and so much to gain from people you might not see eye to eye with on everything, but they can still provide incredibly valuable insight on things that you haven't thought about or you haven't considered. And so, but that's my goal. I just wanted to, I guess, clarify that because I just wanted to, I guess, clarify that because I do recognize and do try to practice humility and how I think and how I speak about the hobby and the reptiles and the people in it because I have such a just profound amount of respect for those who have come before me and those who have put in the work and the time and the effort to establish the animals that I find fascinating and caring for and observing and just just watch. the behavior and so I think

yeah I think that that is I think if anybody knew in the hobby can do those things I think age is not really that important you know and who is anybody to be the arbiter of truth I think we breed these animals for

enjoyment and keeping an open mind and being willing to listen to the other side would allow us all to come out as better keepers and probably better people for sure well that's that's good to hear because that's kind of the philosophy of this podcast right he's kind of investigate every aspect and avenue of a different topic and trying to put in the work

the effort to research and find out what what will work for you and what's going to be you know the best chance of success for the animals you choose to work with i think that's the key right and um that's uh sometimes a tricky tricky way to find your path and you get distracted or you fall for the wrong things and that's okay too, you know, as long as you make your way back to the, you know, the, I guess the right, right way for you to do things and to keep things happy and healthy. So, well, very cool. We appreciate you coming on and bringing such a fun topic and discussing it with us here.

So good job to both of you guys. Yeah. Great. Yeah. Well, is there anything cool that you've seen in herptoculture or herpetology in the last bit? I'll throw it out. They discovered that pythons have a different kind of cell in their intestinal lining that allows them to digest bone. And that was previously unknown, I guess, that, you know, most, well, I guess I shouldn't say most,

but a lot of predators either avoid the bones, just eat the meat and eat around them, but they found out that Python, and they found this out by feeding them like bone-free meals and meals, bone-free meals that were supplemented with calcium and then full, like, bone-d spray or whatever, and showing that these certain cells in their intestinal tract would make these kind of calcium globules

and also iron globules, things like that. So kind of a cool thing that we, you know, you think we've discovered everything. But there's a lot of stuff that the more you learn, the more you learn, the more you realize you don't know very much. So it's kind of cool. Some of the cabining that you're describing there is, right, is probably a reflection of the limitation of the study to Python's, right? As I mean, I think in terms of those digestive processes, right, I would assume that it would be

more wide voids you know calubrids it's not like we see uh sure you know calubrid's doing that stuff so i wonder right some it's being framed as pythons because that's you know that's where the study was conducted yeah they did study yeah they did kind of branch out to like fish that eat bony fish or um birds that eat you know i guess we know owls kind of regurgitate the bones and fur but uh you know which which uh what what's the big uh vulture that eats the the bones, like crushes up, crushes up the bones. But, you know, there's, there's a lot of cool, uh, cool thoughts behind, you know, there's a lot of cool avenues for further research there. Absolutely. That's super cool. I hadn't heard about that. Yeah. That's good. And also that

also that osteoderms are more prevalent in monitors than we thought, like most monitors have osteoderms and that they could be used in, uh, thermal regulation as well. as protection and, you know, just kind of an overall tough, tough skin, but also that they could be used in thermal regulation, which was something I hadn't considered, kind of a cool thing. So lots of neat, neat discoveries out there for us reptile nerds. Right. Yeah. I don't know.

You guys see anything cool or anything catch your eye these days or any podcasts lately that have been worth listening to? for me i've uh i kind of got down the rabbit hole with scrubs um i think that uh they're an amazing animal and i think the more we uh establish them in captivity and uh you know start really uh nailing their their captive care requirements those are an animal that that fascinate me and so i've been watching a lot of Krish's Corner and Steven Krish's videos on keeping the

scrub pythons and consistently amazed by way he handles animals that have a reputation for being not the nicest or most enjoyable to take out of their cages. But I think that they're especially cool and

yeah, I think for me at this stage, so much is new and getting to find out new information all the time that um yeah i probably couldn't choose just one thing but uh scroll pythons and the the need to drop your jackson's coming down to the 50s each night and fog it out uh the people who do that regularly i think it's just uh amazing right yeah yeah absolutely cool um awesome thanks again guys no nothing for me just thank thanks for having me and it's been a pleasure uh can to chat

with you both and looking forward to future episodes of Reptafi Club and continuing to have thoughtful conversations. Right. Where can people find you? Do you have kind of social media presidents or you just? Yeah, they can't.

No. No real social media presence. I do have a Facebook. If you looked up my name, you'd find a picture of a snake, but I don't post anything. A little bit of a doom scroller on Instagram, but yeah, I am more absorbing than posting or doing much these days, just still wanting to understand the culture side of her pediculture and do more listening than talking

right now. So really nowhere. You can find me right here on rooftop cycle. All right. Well, we appreciate that fresh view. You know, that's really great to hear from you. and to get your insights into the topic. So thanks again for coming on.

And we'll thank Eric and Owen and the Merlea Python Radio umbrella for hosting us. And we'll say thanks for listening. We'll catch you again next time.