Reptile Fight Club - Mimicking Nature vs. Simplistic Approach with Keeping Reptiles.

Episode Date: July 19, 2024

In this episode, Justin and Rob tackle the topic of keeping reptiles by collecting weather data and trying to mimic them as closely as possible vs. approaching keeping in a more simplistic approach.Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comIGFollow Rob @ https://www.instagram.com/highplainsherp/Follow MPR Network @FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQSwag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

Welcome to another episode of Reptile Fight Club. We've got me and Rob again today. So we're getting through the holiday season. We got the 4th of July today, so we figured let's get a show out. And so, yeah, how are you doing, Rob? I'm doing great. Yeah, I know you got some travel and things coming up. So, yeah, it was great to say, hey, let's put in one more.

There is a topic that arose on social media that we'll address in a future episode. But we wanted to make sure we give that one enough time to digest properly and we'll be ready to go for that one. So everyone can look forward to that. But yeah, excited for today. Yeah, I'll get it. Yeah, it should be a good time. I'm a little worn out. I've been up all night trying to do some construction around the house, replacing my flooring and stuff.

So hopefully I'm not dragging too much this morning, but happy 4th of July. I'm sure it's a little belated for everybody listening to this in podcast land, whenever you, when is when or what is when, whatever, how you want to look at that. But so, and you know, if you're not in the U S you don't probably care about the 4th of July more than any other day. So this is just going out to our U S peeps, but, and I apologize. There's some construction in the yard next to me. So you might hear some hammering and sawing and things. I'm not sure what they're doing back there, but it's pretty close to our window.

So hopefully it's a nice little structure they're putting up. Right. Seems all right for now. I don't really hear it, but yeah, hopefully we'll be all good. Maybe they're just paying you right seems all right for now i don't really hear it but uh yeah hopefully hopefully we'll be all good maybe they're just paying you back for last night yeah probably so yeah i was up till about 1 1 30 uh finishing my bedroom floor so uh it's uh taking shape i just have a few finishing touches and then we should be good to go. So I, I hate carpet. I'm, I, you know, which is strange cause I'm a big carpet Python fan, but I don't like carpet in my home, especially with a lot of pets. It's not a good mix, but you know, all right, well, how's your season going? You got some, I saw you had some eggs recently. I don't know if you want to talk publicly or if you're saving that.

No, that's all right. Yeah, I did get some good rhino eggs, which is exciting. You know, effectuation on the transition to those display cages and all that. But kind of the surprise was how many. So it was an older female, and she wound up having 13 small to medium eggs generally speaking they'll lay six or seven large ones um and if there are a few more you know they can it's not the most i've had previous i have had 17 in one clutch before um so not not the highest that i've had but they all look really good it's it was interesting i don't usually get uh you know that look where they have strings between the eggs like the real tiny filament

it's on it almost looks like um dental floss style uh so a couple of the eggs had that feature which is um something i hadn't i don't think i've really seen with them before so that was interesting and we'll see how they go yeah well. Well, that's cool. Congratulations. Uh, I, uh, I, I've thought about that a little bit cause I remember when we were writing the first edition of the carpet book, we were talking, uh, Ben's chapter was talking about, you know, some, sometimes females will have, uh, fewer, larger eggs and sometimes smaller and more numerous eggs. And I can't remember the impetus like what what promotes one over the other or how that works so it's kind of an interesting thing and especially you said that you saw a smaller clutch from her in previous years as compared to now so that's uh and you know

any changes that you've made other than the caging maybe that's what the yeah i don't know no um i would have to well so i think the thing that i've been doing more has been offering more quail um so that's kind of interesting that that would probably be the biggest distinct change yeah um and as i said i've had you know large cl I said, I've had, you know, large clutches before from other ones without, you know, without those manipulations and things just sort of interesting that yeah, for this iteration, she went with more smaller eggs. Yeah.

I don't know which, which I would prefer. Do you like the smaller baby? I mean, I assume that translates into smaller babies. Oh yeah. They'll be, they'll be quite small for sure. Um, no, probably not, but, uh, you know, it is what it is. So you just gotta be happy about that. For sure. Yep. I guess we deal with challenges either, either way, but, um, it's kind of nice to have more, uh, sometimes at least, um, depending on least, depending on how many you already have. You're trying to sell or something like that. I guess doing things responsibly. I haven't put my brettles together because I still have some babies I need to sell from previous years.

I try not to flood the market, as you might say. It's hard to flood the market in the U.S. with a clutch or two, but you'd be surprised on some of these things, I guess. But it seems like there's a few brettles. I mean, they're really cool snakes. So, you know, I understand their popularity, but I guess they do have fairly large clutches in comparison with other similarly sized snakes. And so I imagine it's easy to produce quite a few. And then you've got some full-time breeders that, you know, that's their favorite project. So they've got lots of brettles and producing lots. And in the name of morphs, you know, you even have a higher production rate if you're trying to hit specific uh combinations and

mutations and things so yeah it seems like there's a lot of brettles available but then again i don't really advertise mine very well so yeah but they're they're really cool snakes yeah absolutely did you see on instagram the guy goes by the handle FNQ underscore herpetology. He had posted from several years ago. Like, I think that trip was several years ago, right? He'd gone to Alice or he was in the Ronald Ranges or whatever, but he's got the picture and then the little GoPro shot of finding a Brettles in the morning after seeing a DOR and he was kind of nonplussed and then he put in a bunch of work and there it was.

And just the palpable excitement was pretty cool. Yeah. I'm excited for that day. I hope that day comes sooner than later. I'd love to see a wild brattles for sure. I guess, you know, it's a little bit of luck, but, you know, putting in the time, getting yourself in the right location, definitely you can't do it without doing that. Absolutely. Next year's trip, we'll hopefully make make that happen we'll have to see but that's going to be a big focus i think for me

is finding a brettles in the wild that'll be knock off another python species and absolutely if we can get a few uh this coming trip that would be nice to a few new ones. I won't say the name, but you know, you guys can say it cause you've seen them. But now that was one of my, uh, buddies. He, he wouldn't say Owen Pelly Python because he thought it jinxed him for seeing him. Oh, that's funny. Yeah, he went several years without seeing any, and then all of a sudden he saw like three within a couple weeks. It's like they just come out of the woodwork all of a sudden. Why? And why so infrequently? And that's kind of a crazy thing. It seems like that was the year you guys saw one was similar to that, where a lot of people had seen on separate –

Yeah, that's kind of what was just coming to my mind as you said that. It does seem like there are years where you see them more often and you know kind of before our trip i was then wondering if that was a bad sign a bad sign in the sense of you know they're all all the ones that could possibly be seen are getting seen or whatever with a handful yeah as you say, within two or three months beforehand, but seemingly not. I need to look and see our people probably not right now, but as we get a little as we inch closer, it'll be interesting to see whether this seems whether we see that same. You know, rate of incidence that that we saw in 18 and 19. Yeah. Yeah. I, there was a publication, I think on, you know,

trying to correlate increased findings with different environmental conditions and things like that. So I guess that. Interesting. Feeds into what we're going to be talking about today in regards to temperatures and you know, natural cycles and things. But yeah, so yeah, hopefully we get lucky and this is another big year for them and they're out and about. And if not, hopefully we get very lucky, even more lucky and see one on a difficult year, but, um, I can't remember the frequency or kind of the cycle that they were talking about with how, you know, how frequently these increased observation periods

occur if it was like every three years or every five years or something like that. But I don't recall. Right. I guess this would be five years. That's kind of crazy. Yeah. Isn't that weird to think about? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. When I was doing my first trip in a long time last year, it was like, you know, 2023, and I hadn't been since 2016. So, you know.

Yeah. Isn't it crazy? It was fun to get back there. I'm excited to continue that on, get back again. Yeah. Crazy. It was fun to get back there. I'm excited to continue that on, get back again. Yeah. I've been spending a lot of time setting up Antaresia and washing out Antaresia caging and such. So I have a few more than I thought I did. So I filled up one rack and making some progress on the other rack.

So I can't remember a count, but one of the clutches had 15 babies. So, you know, I have four or five clutches and there's still one in the incubator. So yeah, it's going to be a fun little challenge here soon, but all my other, uh, groups or types crashed. I didn't get any carpet eggs that that made the you know the distance i missed that clutch of inland eggs and just kicking myself over that one and then the asperity's eggs all crashed so i'm i'm thinking it's caging so i'm moving you know towards uh and and maybe temperature regimen which which again, feeds into our discussion

today, but, um, I'm planning on switching up their caging to try to improve that a bit. So see if that helps. Absolutely. Yeah. These, uh, it's, it's kinda, it can be frustrating sometimes when you think you've got to figure it out and then you get thrown a loop and you think, how have I not figured it out better by this point? I guess I have my attention going in a lot of different directions. So at least the entries are pretty straightforward and not really throwing me for many loops. But yeah. So yeah, there's some really cool ones.

I've got this really weird kind of aberrant striped eastern stimpsons python that i'm really geeked out about it's really cool looking so i'm excited to see how that one will turn out and see how this pattern uh will will develop as it matures but really cool looking snakes so that's great yeah Yeah. And these are probably, I think they're my third kind of selective breeding generation. Oh, okay. So these Easterns are getting nicer and nicer. They're fantastic looking. So I got one clutch of the really nice, you know, red, uh, crazy looking Easterns. And then I got a, another clutch of this, um,

black eyed morph, uh, Stimson's Python that I'm working with, uh, just kind of randomly popped out. I, I think I've told the story before, but I had a, uh, an animal that I sold. And then the guy who bought it said, Hey, you know, this thing looks weird. It's getting, it keeps getting darker and darker and with each shed. hey, you know, this thing looks weird. It keeps getting darker and darker with each shed. And, you know, I don't really, I'm kind of moving these on. If you want them back, you know, you're welcome to buy them back or whatever. So I bought that male back. And then he produced, I kept a few of his offspring, females, and then bred them back.

And a couple hatched out with black eyes and similar to the black-eyed stimpsons and then they had like pied marks on their tails and so i'm like oh this is interesting and so this is the third year of her third or fourth year of producing these weird uh pied tailed um black-eyed stimpsson's python. So it's kind of a fun little dinkler projects, as they say. We'll see how they develop. I'm hoping to maybe look at breeding a black-eyed to black-eye and see what happens. My efforts with the children's line of black-eyes hasn't really yielded much fruit. I don't know.

It's kind of a weird thing that it popped up in both species, but yeah, I guess maybe they are closer related than, than I'd like to admit maybe. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I, you know, I don't know that that necessarily, you know, you think, well, did they just breed the Stimpsons and the children's back in the day you know they mixed and matched or whatever and that's possible but i've tried my best to you know try to find uh yeah you know barker lineages or whatever for whatever that counts uh um to try to get back

and get those pure eastern stimpsons or children's lines or whatever you want to say but yeah it's somewhat difficult in in the captive setting especially since all anturesia were kind of looked at as the same thing back in the day everything was just children's pythons so but i you know at least since the late 90s they've been kept separate kept in whatever form they they are so it's still a little bit wild right that uh prior to being anteresia or at least you know and i don't know the whole history of how it goes down through but if you're looking at books from the 80s they'll reference them as liasses which is interesting uh-huh yeah right in form and function not not really liasses yeah not really at all yeah it's it's funny

and apparently they were at one time morelia as well so wow yeah i when i imported some um Wow. as Morelia stimsoni. So they held them. And then actually we had to get the papers from the England side reissued with Antaresia stimsoni before they would release them to me. It was bizarre. So I don't know. That's wild. Yeah. Yeah. But they're very cool little snakes for sure. I'm, I'm having fun with them and, and enjoying them quite a bit. So, um, I don't know. I, I see them as just an important part as people's, uh, domiciles get smaller and, you know, they're a little more difficult to keep a retic or even a carpet python in some of these settings, but Antaresia fit in nicely with the apartment or, you know, smaller homes.

So they're the python of the future. Well, anything else of note to discuss this week or are we ready to start battling? I think I'm good. As ever, there's a ton of exciting stuff to see or whatever, but I'm sure I'll just bring it up next time. Or we can talk about it at the end. I like to throw in there at the end if we've seen anything cool in herpetoculture or whatever. I guess we can save it for then. So today we're going to talk temperatures, you know, humidity, those kind of things in regards to keeping in captivity.

You know, do you try to match what they're experiencing in the wild? Do you get on the weather apps and try to figure out, you know, what they're, what, what's going to, and look for patterns in, you know, the weather, weather to try to figure out what's going to help them breed more efficiently or better or whatever. Or do you just kind of go with the care sheet, you know, set, set it and forget it, you know, give them, give them an 85 hotspot. You know, the room might go up and down with your seasonality, but you don't, don't really worry about it too much and kind of keep it simple, stupid approach. So those are kind of the two, two sides of what we'll be discussing today. So, um, let's see, I guess we'll give it a coin toss and see where we see where we land. All you want to call it tails it is tails nicely wow all right which side would you prefer um

i guess i will i'm curious to hear what you have to say about really digging into native habitat stuff. So I will advocate for taking a simplistic approach. Okay, sounds good. And would you like to kick us off or defer? I will defer. I will check this. You'll check me. All right. What up, Chuck, if you're listening? We appreciate the Chuck-isms that we've received over the years. All right. So I think one, you know, really nice thing about the technology or, you know, the advances that we've had are these, the fact that we've got weather stations in a lot of different areas now and that they're collecting weather data from many different areas.

You can even get on and go back in time. I've stumbled across this weather underground site and you can actually go back to 1930. I don't know how accurate or how great those are. And I guess that's one of the caveats is that sometimes you'll get these things that might put, you know, they'll have a weather station at the airport and that weather might not tell you a lot about specifically the jungle that your snake came from, you know, it gets you closer than, than just looking outside and looking at your thermostat in the house or something. But, um, you know, there is some, you know, question whether or not, you know, how accurate they represent what your, what the snakes in the wild are experiencing, but it's definitely,

uh, move in the right direction, gives you, conditions where they're found. And more and more, they're getting more and more accurate. You can actually look in small little towns or locality cities for the species you work with. Now, the, I guess, benefit that I really saw was during writing some of the books, I was trying to make some weather graphs, you know, of min, max temperatures, average temperatures through the month. And kind of plotting those over the course of a year. And you kind of get a general idea for what these snakes are experiencing. So, you know, surprisingly, you know, I looked for the Green Tree Python book, looking at the weather and where they're generally found, it's pretty stable. It's pretty consistent, you know, so for some species, it might, weather might, or temperature might not be that critical, but for the rainfall, you know,

precipitation, that graph went off the charts, you know, in certain months and was baseline and other, so very little rainfall during part of the year and a whole heck of a lot of rainfall during certain months. So I think, you know, in regards to determining what's important in the environment for a species you keep, these weather apps can be very useful to see what they're actually experiencing and the conditions in those countries. So I kind of lead out with that. Yeah, absolutely. And I do think from a research perspective it makes a ton of sense like it's you know basically obligatory from uh coming to understand the creatures and really get a sense for get a sense for them right beyond sort of the care sheet uh care sheet knowledge of

that stuff that we're keeping right certainly you as an author you obliged to take those steps, you would think, you know, at least maybe nowadays, maybe not a TFH book from, you know, it just changed the pictures or whatever. So and certainly when you're talking about it in that Kondro book context, what it reminded me of is I'd done the same thing looking at, I think it was two years of daily data associated with Halmahera when I was trying and failing to read the Halmahera script pythons, thinking, okay, is there some, what can I learn here? And then I even went, so I guess part of my taking this position would be to say that I actually then plotted on a calendar and tried to make an equivalency as – let me stop and go slower. So there was very, very minimal temperature.

The min-max temperature variation in Homa Hara was very small at the weather station, but a weather station that seemed pretty accurate relative to where certainly i naturalist records are the barker story about where they had found home the home air python um it seemed pretty accurate but the min max range was like the mid 70s to upper 80s essentially the entire year there was like% of the days fit within that paradigm. There was volatility in terms of precipitation and presumably then ambient humidity. But it wasn't a plain wet and dry season. It seemed like maybe there were two or three different spikes throughout the year, spikes and valleys relative to precipitation. And because they're absent a clear pattern that i could deduce from looking at these two years of data what i then did was try and essentially say okay how much misting relative to itself it's not that i can mist an inch of water you know

equivalent to an inch of precipitation falling. But if I could essentially look at the amount that had fallen, be it zero or whatever these increments were and say, okay, well, if it's in this range, I'm going to spray for, I'm not going to spray at all. If it's this range, I'll spray for five seconds. If it's this range, I'll spray for 10 seconds. If it's this range, I'll spray for 30 seconds. And I, for a year, literally plotted it out according to what had happened the previous year and sprayed this, again, not saying that it's the equivalent amount of water, but it was a possibly equivalent rate of change, right? And certainly a stimulus that was associated with that. So there was

sort of this incrementation to it. I did see some positive activity, but ultimately, you know, it did not yield, you know, viable eggs. And so I guess the, all of that is sort of the counter narrative that would serve my point of saying Chuck did none of those things and successfully produced them several times. Whereas I put in tremendous effort, overthought, you know, not not even necessarily overthought it, but thought through it very intently, came up with this scheme, you know, based on what I had learned. And that didn't make the difference, whereas Chuck was not doing those things and certainly did have success. So, Chuck, I don't think Shane's doing those things either. I certainly don't think Oklahoma City Zoo is doing those things. So, yeah, it's interesting. So those experiments were happening before anyone had produced them. So all of this is precedent to any of those successes.

But yeah, I would toss that out there as saying, hey, I actually really thought about it, tried to then represent that stimuli in my enclosure without success and all the people then who subsequently have had success are not they might they're showing seasonality i'm sure in their care but not to that level of okay literally a year ago on this date in homo here this is what happened and i believe i even offset it by well is that above or below it's below the equator right so i think i even accounted for the fact that it would be like six months in yeah yeah i i think you know that that brings up a really good point you know i i think a lot of times um

these these weather apps have been more helpful for corrective action rather than trying to match and have, you know, I guess I can't think of many examples of where people match the natural environment more closely and had better success other than kind of generally, like if you don't give your colubrids a winter cooling, they're probably not going to breed very well for you or have viable offspring, that kind of thing. But I do know of a few examples of corrective actions similar to, you know, the green tree pythons where people were generally keeping them far too hot, you know, 90 degrees and things. And in their natural environment, they probably were not getting much above 85 or 80 or something. So, I mean, you know, they could still get eggs and they could still have, you know, animals, but they were also having a lot of mortality and things like that. So hopefully, you know, changing from keeping them too hot to keeping them more

similar to what they experienced in the wild would help them. The other example was actually from the San Diego zoo. We were lucky enough to get to tour their Tuatara facility, which is not on exhibit. It's kind of privately funded, held, you know, kind of in the back. I, I even, I'm pretty sure they still have it there, but, you know, I haven't checked back in there since we got to see it the first time. But basically what they had is this, uh, this, um, weather or at least for, for temperature, um, and, and maybe a little bit for humidity, but they, they would adjust the temperature depending on the, the temperature in New Zealand at the time, you know, they might've inverted it the six months to account for the different hemisphere. But what the hell is the Southern Hemisphere? I love that Simpsons quote.

Anyway, they were keeping them kind of based on, you know, zoo protocol, how to keep a tuatara, you know, care sheet, basically. The zoo version of a care sheet, I guess, which is probably much more in depth and things. But then they made the switch. They weren't having much success. These animals weren't thriving and doing that great. So they thought, well, let's try to match the environment in New Zealand. And so they got this app and system that would control the, open the windows. If it was a hot, sunny day, they would open the windows if it was a hot sunny day they would open the windows and allow natural sunlight to come in and the guy said it was like that the keeper that was leading the tour said it was like they they um finally turned on the heat you know and these

things ran to the sun and just were basking and like soaking it up and they thought oh if these things get above you know 60 degrees they're gonna die and they were out there basking and like soaking it up. And they thought, oh, if these things get above, you know, 60 degrees, they're going to die. And they were out there basking it, you know, 90 degrees or something. So, I mean, I think, you know, we have it in our minds that we can control these things. And if, you know, we have these preconceived notions like the tuatars, if they got too hot, they would die. Whereas they were just wanting that heat, at least for part of it. I'm sure if they kept them at 90 degrees all the time, they would die. Whereas they were just wanting that heat, at least for part of it.

I'm sure if they kept them at 90 degrees all the time, they would in fact die. But, you know, having that option to experience some sun and some heat at some part of the day, um, was very important for them. So I think, um, in that regard, it can dispel old notions of how these things work. And I think Frank Reed has talked a little bit about this with monitors where, you know, back in the day, everybody thought monitors were these, you know, sluggish, you know, lazy things that just kind of sat around your pet store floor, you know, the Savannah monitors of old. And then once he gave them, you know, 130 degree basking spot, which everybody, you know, said that would he gave them you know 130 degree basking spot which everybody you know said that would kill them you know it's above their thermal maximum and things like that

but they're not maintained you know sitting in that for for forever you know they're they're moving around and cooling down and things so going into burrows and you know so this is you know, so this is, you know, it's like trying to play, you know, 3D chess in a 2D checker world or something, you know, sometimes where we can only do so much within a cage, you know, like a large greenhouse type enclosure where they had burrows and they had, you know, different ways to escape the heat if it was too hot or things like that. Whereas if you're in a, you know, four by two foot enclosure, you're going to have more limited options and maybe keeping it simple is a better option in that regard. But I don't know. That's that's kind of, I guess, corrective action using natural cycles is probably very important to consider. Yeah, absolutely. And I think you make a great point there in terms of when you're talking about the size and space is the texture of the environment, right?

The amount of different optionality that the size of the enclosure, you know, even that you're just providing, right? I mean, that's part of, as you were highlighting, you know, old monitor keeping, right? It's often not with that, the provision of both extremes right the ability to be under deep underground deep burrowing plus verticality plus you know too hot and too cool you know and then trying to allow them to access both those things the monitor thing is bizarre in the and it must i don't know you almost think it has to have come from observations mostly based on non-odatria because if you look at and see an odatria in the wild that what frank you know yes frank frank was the visionary to perceive that and bring that into captive monitor keeping but it also makes total sense if you've ever seen a monitor in the wild right like so it's almost like how could the it's's failing to understand how that could have been the sort of common belief of how to keep them.

And I would think it has to reflect like big water monitors and Komodos or something like that of like that sort of body form and maybe they're not often getting too hot in the way that you would see in central Australia, you know, with an Achantharos or a Gilani or whatever, where it's like, it just seems sort of wild that what someone would think, oh, exposing them to those temperatures. I mean, heck, even all the lizards we see in Utah, right? If we're talking about lizards, you know, whatever it is that it's like, why would you think these things don't have to? It's not an essential part of their physiology to really get hot and then to to get too hot and then to retreat from it. You know, that's super interesting.

The other thing that I thought that potentially undermined my venture with the recreating the Homlahera uh misting schedule um was going back to our own conversation it's i had no information that that previous year was a great year relative to homohera pythons it was just what happened the year before you know again maybe it's a little less um because there wasn't uh i did look at two years and they were very similar to one another and there wasn't a huge range of variance there. Maybe that sort of cuts the other way of saying, well, presumably it's just sort of, it's relatively average as opposed to being a bumper year or, you know, the opposite. I know we talked about this a lot in the context of Utah and Colorado last year versus this year, this year being far more normal, you know, as opposed to last year

being the weird year. But yeah, I suppose that's the other aspect of this too. And maybe it, you know, it highlights the point that you're making in terms of saying it's more about baselining correctly and making sure we're not fundamentally missing something than it is to say, oh, we got to recreate, you know, Kakadu National Park in 2019 when you're trying to produce home peli pythons, as opposed to just saying, hey, our fundamentals need to look like this. Yeah. And I think too, you know, this can be very instrumental in regards to herping, you know, putting yourself in the place or, you know, especially if it's, you know, somewhere close where you want to go explore your own state or your own, you know, putting yourself in the, in the place or, you know, especially if it's, you know, somewhere close where you want to go explore your own state or your own area. And you're, you're looking at previous observations and trying to see what the weather was at that time. And so sites like weather underground, where you can go back historically and look at, okay, this animal was found in 2018 on June 3rd,

and I want to see what the weather was doing at that time. And you can look at the weather a few days before and a few days after and say, okay, if there was a rainstorm two days before, and so maybe I target a time when there's been a rainstorm and I drive out there and if the temperatures are over 80 degrees, I'll have a better chance. You know, that kind of stuff. You know, I think that can be very instrumental. And I've actually been using it a bit that way to try to maximize my, I guess, efficiency or the time that I'm spending out in the field. I don't want to waste too much time and gas, that kind of thing, where I'm going away from my family to go look for snakes.

Sometimes I'll bring some of the kids or something, but usually it's me going out with friends or on my own. And so I want to maximize those times and be able to find the targets that I'm looking for. And so I think the weather apps in that regard can be very instrumental and helpful to try to gather data, to make some general assumptions. And I guess, obviously, reptiles don't always play by the rules. You might find them doing some strange things that you wouldn't anticipate at times that you wouldn't think were optimal for that thing to be out. And I think we've had experiences like that on our field trips where we see things or it's, you know, cold.

But, you know, we could just say, oh, let's just hang out in the Airbnb or no, let's go out and look and see what we can find. And I think, who was the guest on NPR that talked about that, where everybody was just kind of hanging out in the hotel, and he said, well, I'm here. I might as well go out and look out in West Texas. And he found a gray band when nobody thought they would be active. And so I like the idea of being able to understand and, you know, what they're doing in the wild and their seasonality. And, you know, obviously, as the temperatures get hotter, snakes will typically turn to a nocturnal lifestyle because the temperatures they need to operate are occurring at night. You know, whereas in other times of the the year they might be more diurnally active

so learning those patterns and learning when and where to look um that's part of the fun i think of field herping yeah absolutely i mean the the well so i have several several thoughts out of this the first is just man we gotta export some data and start running some SQL or Python against this to try and like all these data sets. It's still massive. It's one thing, right, if you're looking at Olimpeli Python records where there's, you know, on INAT, there's five or six of them on Atlas Living Australia. I think the taxonomic changes have caused that to be a little bit problematic in terms of using some of that functionality. Like, I think some of those records have been lost associated with sort of the nomenclature changes there.

When I was last looking at it, maybe it's been corrected now, and I did reach out to him about it. But it's a whole other thing, right? If we're talking about if you're looking at Atrox records in, you know, Arizona or whatever it would be that it's like, man, to plot all of that, then we need we need the capabilities of SQL or Python or, you know, a language to really kind of visualize all that or it's just overwhelming. But no, I totally agree. And then obviously the other hard part is if you're pre-planning the trip and we've defined the dates, you know, six months out, then then you have to hope for the best. You probably will as long as you don't let it. I think the key is always, as you highlighted there, you know, referencing the the Grey Band story is saying, like, you got to persevere and keep looking, even when you're the background information and the knowledge that you have maybe makes you not particularly confident in what's going to happen. That's when you need to stick with it. And showing that resiliency is probably the most important thing. I think too, some, some species are just more broadly adaptable or can function under more broad situations. Like, you know, you go out in Utah, you're probably going to see a gopher snake because

they are found throughout the state. They're active at a lot of different temperatures and conditions. And so, um, I think, you know, that's, that the idea is these ones that are maybe more difficult to find, like an Owen Pelly python. You're probably not going to need to plot out all the information on Western diamondback because they're not difficult to find. And you can go out and see one pretty much, you know, whenever you, that's the one species you're almost guaranteed to find in certain areas. Whereas something like a mountain king or, you know, milk snake or things like that, maybe have a little bit more sensitive or not sensitive, but like a narrower window of activity, especially surface activity where you're going to be able to find them.

So I think those, those kinds of tools are probably more useful for those, those types of species. And I think that's what you're, you know, you're getting, getting. Yeah.

And I, I think too, you know, I, in regards to keeping, I always like Terry Phillips comment about, you know, well,

I'm not shoveling snow into my, you know, rattlesnake cage at the reptile gardens or whatever and i mean i think he you know uses that kind of humorously you know there's some aspects of of conditions in the wild and so i guess the thought is there is you know is barometric pressure more important or is the actual water, you know, the precipitation? Because a lot of times you'll spray animals and they go hide and they do not enjoy it necessarily. And I don't know if it's giving them the stimulus that, you know, that we may think it has, or if it's that barometric pressure that's triggering those changes.

So, you know, sometimes when there's a snowstorm, I might go in the reptile room and spray down the animals because they're not, you know, at snow temperatures. They're still much warmer than the outside conditions in northern Utah. But I might utilize that barometric pressure to kind of stimulate, you know, with a little a little bit of simulated rainfall in quotes in their enclosure. So they're getting both those stimuli just to hopefully increase my chances, I guess. We're kind of shooting in the dark with a lot of this stuff because we don't have a great idea.

And I don't know how you would determine that if barometric pressure, but, but I think a lot of observations have been made in that regard where, you know, people see storm fronts rolling in and all of a sudden their, their pythons are mating or, you know, the, you know, these kinds of things, or they're, the babies are born when, when the storm rolls through and it's like, well, they didn't get rained on, they didn't get snowed on, but they still felt something, you know, in the environment that stimulated that change. So, you know, is barometric pressure more important than the actual rainfall? It's possible in certain situations that that's the case and likely that that's the case in certain situations. So, yeah. So the thing that jumps to mind, right, talk about Terry's comment about the snow is like, well, of course, you can't shovel in the snow because the the cage is not San Diego Zoo and this entire structure to support this, then maybe you could shovel the snow in at the right time of year and encourage that estimation in that way.

You know, presumably the temperatures themselves would also be encouraging that behavior from the animals and all that. So, yeah, the sort of multifactorial nature of all this is is super interesting the other thing that jumped to mind in terms of as you mentioned in terms of how do animals react when they're sprayed it does remind me of our first australia trip where it was we had a cyclone owen coming uh came through you know oh and it stayed home and so he sent a cyclone and cyclone in his stead um that uh the only so beforehand right and obviously we have lots of barometric pressure things before it had made landfall in the day or two beforehand we saw two gelatin carpets um that were out and about once the rain had actually made landfall then um the only snakes that we were seeing out were scrub pythons. And it seemed based, my experience would suggest that scrub pythons don't seem to care if it's actively raining.

Those just go about their business. Whereas carpets seem like they don't, which probably fits, right? If we're in this context of saying, what do captive carpets do if you spray them with a mister? For the most part, they try and hide away from that. Scrapbythons seem a little bit, a little bit less, more resilient to that or a little bit less impacted. And so it's, it's pretty interesting. And that was sort of the thought that jumped to my mind when you, when you made that comment.

What's funny is the first carpet I found in the wild was during a rainstorm. It was out on the road, you know, getting rained on. And I mean, maybe frequency and time, like if it's the first rain of the season, when we were herping in Darwin area in 2011, we were rolling in and it was the tail end of the dry season and some of the first storms. And we saw this storm front rolling through and we're like, this is going to be, and it was an epic night. You know, we saw all sorts of things out on the road. Now the rain wasn't very long. It wasn't very, you know, it wasn't raining while we were herping. It just kind of came through, can imagine that, you know, the beginning of the wet season, they're going to be much more active than, you know, most of the way through the wet season. They're just like, OK, enough rain already. I don't know what they're what they're thinking or if that's, you know.

But I imagine they're a little more excited at the first part of the wet than the later. It's more of a stimulus than something to be yeah i guess that the the thing that had come to my mind was okay we and i think you know here uh being doing a lot of desert herping right the association is generally that oh rain especially like as you say a rain that either at the beginning of the season those first rains or a rain that comes through but then passes on right so put some moisture into the environment but then even ideally like it's still not at the end of the day it's not right in tonight it's like there's still a little bit of time to be bring some warmth to that those are often great nights right um

but like when we went to florida in the fall the day that it rained, you know, and I forget who it was. And, you know, I understand the idea, but it was like, oh, that must have been helpful. And it was like, no, it was the rain was exceedingly cold. It was dark. And then, you know, it's like, no, rain doesn't always mean good. You know, like, oh, that must have helped. And it was like, no, absolutely not. It was nothing was coming at maybe some toads, you know, that was about it. And the other thing was just, you know, that I meant to mention there is so I think rain in the desert is a stimulus, whereas rain in a rainforest. It struck me as being like, well, this is just something to be endured, you know, especially like in the middle of the season, as you say, like if it's not if it's not that first rain or the transition point into that season, it's I think those rainforest animals probably view it as something to be endured rather than, you know, it's essential. I'm not saying it's not essential, but, you know, in terms of their engagement with it, it's probably to endure rather than to celebrate it.

Yeah, well, it's like snow. I mean, the rattlesnakes aren't laying in the snow. They're going deep underground and you know is it are they doing that just because they live in an area where it snows and so they you know they have to get away from it of course or else they're going to freeze although certain species can freeze and ask on the set well yeah those pictures the the alligators with their noses out and they're frozen all around them i'm like that is incredible nature right there you know that they can survive that or or turtles you know frozen in a block of ice under the water it's incredible um so obviously you know adaptations and things

will dictate where where they spend their time and what what's uh tolerable to you know like you said the scrubs are out crawling. They're like, well, I live in a rainforest. There's going to be a little rain. It's not a big deal. Whereas other species, and I think too, you know, like you mentioned, the frogs come out with the rain. So heavy rains can mean a great season if you're really into amphibians and, you know, you need to know that that's going to correlate and that's important. We had a lot of rain around here and I was driving. I think I was taking one of my kids' friends home or something.

And then I noticed all these frogs jumping across the road. So I'm like, well, I'm going to go out herping. And I found, you know, tiger salamander and a bunch of northern leopard frogs and things like that. So good times. A few snakes were out as well and maybe chasing their prey. Yeah, exactly. Right. So, um, it just depends on, it depends on a lot of things. It's very complex thing. And to try to boil that down into a four by two enclosure can be challenging

for sure. So you do need to, and maybe this is going to your side, you know, you do need to kind of boil it down to what's critical and what's important. And I think, you know, that's, that's kind of what, what is, is the impetus for a care sheet or, you know, here's what the basic requirements are. This is what you absolutely fundamentally must hit on, or else you're not going to have success with the species. And I appreciate that. But I guess as we look at it in regards to herping or in regards to maybe increasing our cage or, you know, room size or greenhouse caging, outdoor caging. Yeah.

Absolutely. And I know, you know, I had a couple conversations with Burt Langworth and I was kind of new in at least the breeding side of the hobby and things like that. And I talked to him on the phone because I really was into Australian water dragons. And I was thinking, and he's like, oh, you know, I'd really recommend keeping things outdoors. And I'm like, I'm in northern Utah. I can't keep anything outside. He's like, what are you talking about? There's this species and this. And he's like rattling off all these different species that would do well in my climate.

Half of them I hadn't even heard of or knew. Right. You know, if they were even in the pet trade. Are these available in the U.S.? Exactly. You know, and so and so, I mean, I just saw that passion of like, no, you live in a place where there are reptiles and reptiles are around the world or found in similar environments to your state. And so, you know, with a few modifications of an outdoor cage, you can be very successful at keeping, you know, just make sure you throw a tarp over it when the snow is coming. You know, things like that where it's doable. You just have to put in the work, put in the research, put in the effort to design a cage where they will be successful.

And he said, most certainly you could keep Australian water dragons outdoors in Utah for the majority of the year if you design their habitat appropriately in your yard. And so that's always been in the back of my head, you know, because it is kind of a fun thing to have an outdoor caging. And I'm always jealous when I go visit my friends in Australia and they have all these outdoor pits and monitors outside and stuff. But of course, there's also the challenges that are associated with that. Absolutely. Weather is extreme and nature is brutal and it's very difficult. You know, maybe I'm a little more of a control freak when it comes to, you know, my precious animals. Right. You know, that can be a challenge as well to keep them outdoors.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think the question with that really comes down to, so if we're talking about keeping stuff inside and trying to replicate those conditions, highlighting again my, you know, again, I wouldn't call it misadventure with the Horme-Harris. They did fine. You know, they did great. It just didn't have the success that I was hoping it would. But in terms of just successfully managing them, it seemed no different than when I was just sort of arbitrarily doing it. I just didn't notice a different change there. But obviously, the limitation, we have a resource limitation in terms of the products that exist. You know, when we're talking about indoors and how can we do that, right? Do we have the capacity to, you know, modify the barometric pressure? For the most part, no, right? In terms of an average person in their house, probably not. We can, as you said, sort of what we can do

is try and align it and take advantage of when that happens, right? Which is what you're highlighting, totally. And in the outdoor context, I think it is like the point Bert's making there is like, hey, I think his vision was a willingness to support, to utilize and support that sort of the natural resources that exist, natural resource conditions, right, that exist. That was really his vision was saying, OK, how can I make these things work in this space? What can I do to based on the conditions that i have here how what's the

directionality of the cages as you you highlight right like okay if we're we need to account for where the sun is and i probably don't want to be putting them on the back the you know what for us would be the north side of my structure right because if i if i'm trying to give them active basking then for the most part that's that's not the ideal place, right? You know, instead, a south face, a southern exposure would be preferable. I presume in the southern hemisphere, it's inverted so that actually the northern exposure is the ones that you want. Whereas, you know, that southern one would be the disfavored position. So just making sure we're thinking through all of those complexities and making sure we're supporting it. Absolutely. Then I do think, obviously, the ability to utilize the sun,

just if we're talking about fundamental heating questions, right? Like the ability to utilize and maximize what we're getting from the sun. The sun is the ultimate, you know, overdue, you know? So it's like the question is always, it's more about utilizing it but moderating it, again, depending on where you live, right? Certainly at Elevation, for us, it's very much we have to utilize it but make sure we're not overdoing it. And it even reminds me of the old Sancturus with the – Diamonds. Yeah, the diamonds, where it's like – and i'm sure the same would would have been true you or i probably could have followed his method and actually done okay because man it can

be an ambient temperature at 30 degrees but in the sun it'd be 65 70 that's sort of like we both experience that constantly every year you know there are weeks of that sort of weather where um you'd be out i'll be out in shorts you know when it's 30 degrees out and feel great and then the sun goes down and it's like oh man it got chilly it got chilly quick you know whereas when i lived in michigan and would do the same thing you know i was the crazy person because you're not at that elevation the sun isn't the same way let alone all the cloud cover and all that so it was very different but uh yeah i don't know i do think you make a great point there and i think if we're it really is about resource availability and if we're keeping stuff inside obviously then we're confined to the universe that exists and is feasible you know is practicable and feasible um outside i think that expands our options just

the sun but then just we have to put in so much thought and support and that's before you even get into other you know raccoons trying to eat your water dragons and whatever you know that story that alan rapashi told about his shinosaurs you know he had like in the outdoor enclosures and a raccoon just came through and bit the heads off of all, like what a tragedy, you know, what a crappy deal. That's a bad day out. Yeah, for sure. But yeah, I mean, I, I remember Ron saying too, where, when he built those monitor cages that he, that he planned it based on one month, you know, where the sun was. And then all of a sudden they're shaded by this giant tree that he's not going to cut down the tree but like now he's got

these permanent structures in in a shaded area for most of the year and he's like why didn't i you know and so yeah there's a lot of uh time to go back to the old drawing board when you're keeping outside i remember frank rita said when he put, um, Odatry outside that all of a sudden they got really wary and they were very shy because, you know, they could see the, the Hawks flying overhead and all of a sudden predators were back, you know, in their, in their mind. Uh, whereas in, in, inside and indoor enclosures, not a care in the world, you know, they were very bold and you'd see them all. Now they all of a sudden, you'd call them, they went crazy, you know, because they were wary of predators and hiding more and things, which that's what they do in the wild. You know, they're not.

Right. So they've got to be careful of those things that in an indoor enclosure, they don't need to worry about it. I've noticed, you know, those noticeable changes when I would take, like, say, a Rankin's dragon outside, put it in the sun for a few minutes. And all of a sudden it's like, you know, flattening out and gaping at me and trying to, you know, thinking I'm a predator because it got a little sunlight. You know, it's kind of crazy how that can flip their personality. Kind of along the same lines with the early monitor observations that oh no these are great pets they just sit on your lap and you know they're but yeah give them their appropriate thermal regimen and they are lightning fast a whole different thing yeah they're not going to put up with your nonsense of putting them on they're

going to chew on your lap rather than sit on your lap. So, yeah, we need to understand what the reptiles need. And I really think that, you know, understanding them in their natural environment, why they are doing the things they do, definitely adds to our competency of keeping them in an enclosure, even if we're limited in the resources. If you understand, okay, they come out this time because they need this temperature or because the rain stimulated them or whatever, you can hopefully account for part of that, at least in the enclosure, at least the part that helps you keep them happy and healthy and, you know, potentially reproductive if that's the way you're going. So there's a lot of things to be gained from understanding the thermal and hydric,

the conditions in their natural environment. Absolutely. One little anecdote, or, you know, back in my day, tell me about the war grandpa. During the load-in for the Daytona show in 05 or 06, so it would have been like Saturday morning, I'm standing in the loading bay, and there was someone there who was holding a very large croc monitor on their shoulder, you know, sort of just like this, and it was like, He's a puppy. Okay, he's a puppy okay he's a puppy and as we're standing there for longer and longer waiting as the load-in goes the clouds are parting the sun's starting to go and it's like oh this is gonna turn really interesting

yeah he might want to find some shade before that thing takes off or rips him a new one i was like i don't know if you're thinking this through that that is probably the ultimate example of what we're talking about right of like oh yeah you that animal seems like one thing at what is you know a sub suboptimal operating temperature that thing is an entirely different animal when it's running at 100, let alone 110, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it's hard not to put, you know, see things from our own perspective to try

to see things from the reptile's perspective, because a lot of times that's very foreign and hard to understand for us. You know, we want to anthropomorphize and we want to say, oh, he likes this or he likes that or whatever, you know, where they could either be freaking out or, you know, just in a state of torpor because they're too cold, you know, so they're not making proper decisions. So, you know, it's easy to kind of go down that anthropomorphism or, you know, seeing things from our own perspective rather than the reptiles perspective. And, and, and again, I mean, as we learn more about what they do in the wild and where they're found, the majority

of their time is spent. Um, that's kind of been a little bit of a paradigm shift for me with Woma pythons is seeing some of the new data that Melissa Bruton is publishing and getting that information and trying to incorporate the things that I'm learning from that and seeing if that's going to improve their condition in a captive setting. You know, that's definitely worthwhile efforts, I think, to try to improve the way we're keeping these things and, uh, and hopefully make us more successful herpers as well, you know, and by the same token, the better you understand them in the wild, better you can find them in the wild. And also the, hopefully the better you can keep them in the, in captivity, if, if that's the route you're choosing.

Well, anything that we didn't hit on that you were itching to get off your chest or did we kind of cover the thing? I'm sure there's a lot of layers to this discussion and a lot of things that we could potentially talk about. I'm sure after we hit stop on the record, we will think of all these cool things and maybe we can revisit this topic in the future. So if this is something that's, uh, you get excited about listeners, uh, you might want to, uh, chime in and see if there's an aspect you want to come on and talk about as well, but fun discussion for sure. And fun things to think about with reptiles and And I don't know, hopefully you got something good out of it. Yeah, absolutely.

I would hope, yeah, as you say, that this is really, I think more than anything, we hit on a bunch of jumping off points that can go in a whole bunch of different directions. So I think going forward, that's, yeah, if people want to hear about specific aspects of that, or better yet, come on and chat through it. That's certainly welcome. Definitely.

Definitely. All right. Well, now comes the time for anything cool in herbiculture that you've seen recently. So the thing that jumps to my mind is Keith just had a litter of hog island bows born um which is very cool they look awesome and those but he has these beautiful animals from vin russo that you know when we were out his place maybe three or four years ago out of keith's place we had seen him and they were just totally incredible kind of heavily flagged all the different hog island bows are so neat both both based on how they change colors sort of seasonally throughout the day.

But they have, you know, these pinks and almost greens and blues. And then, you know, they have these dark pattern inclusions of browns and blacks and all this different stuff. They're truly amazing and all in this small little package. So those, those kind of fit a buddy of mine when, um, when I was first getting, well, when I was in high school, I guess, um, had a pair of hog Island boas and he had gone out of town and I had to go, uh, the, the female was grabbing and was going to have babies, uh, while he was away. So I had to go, go check in on him and all that. And so it kind of, maybe it just takes me back to that, that point in time and all that. So that that's definitely a particular form that appeals to me. I don't never had one myself. Maybe, maybe that'll change. We'll see. But, uh, yeah, definitely there's a, um, nostalgia to it for me. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. I, I, um, I, I had a boa as, you know,

growing up, of course I, like every, most people I had a boa growing up, of course. Like most people, I had a boa constrictor as a kid and enjoyed it for the most part, but not as much as the pythons. So I think that kind of shifted me towards the pythons. I still appreciate boas. I really like looking at them. And sometimes I'm almost convinced, like, maybe I do need to keep a boa or two. But then I see that slimy mess after they give birth. I guess the pythons crawl out of the egg kind of slimy too. But I don't know. For some reason, I've just always gravitated towards

pythons. But yeah, Keith has some, he's got some animals that kind of changed my mind on that. But I'd love to see him in the wild too i was really hoping on a the trip down to costa rica that we'd see a boa in the wild and and same with mexico i'd love to see one of those little desert boas out little angry desert bows exactly that would be very cool and i guess not so little and some of those can get pretty good size, at least where we were looking. Further south or whatever. Yeah. But yeah, very, very cool. I got some, shout out to Dustin Grahn. I got some ciliares from him as well as underwoodosaurus millii.

I'd never kept millii. And now that I've seen them in the wild i guess i can justify it so he sent me a couple of each and they are just very cool the ciliaris are so cool what do they call i don't even know what their common name is what's their common name the spiny-tailed gecko or northern northern spiny-tailed something like that yeah but very cool species very um they they like their branches so i just loaded their cage up with all these different branches going every which way so it's kind of fun to try to play find the gecko you know there was yeah there was i i couldn't find one of them and i'm like oh no you know did they get out or is it stuck in something or something? So I put some food in the little insect bowl or whatever and all of a sudden she comes flying or he or she comes flying out and nabs a bug.

I'm like, oh, you're right there. I was looking right where they were. Now they've kind of set up kind of their preferred spots and stuff. It's really fun to watch those. So they're in my office at work. So that's kind of distracting when I'm trying to work. It's been very fun to have those. Uh, so thanks again, Dustin. Yeah. Awesome. And he's, I think he just hatched out some more. He's doing really well with them. Um, he's, he's, uh,

quite the keeper for sure of, of lizards and also he's having success with snakes too so yeah quite a not not just an excellent filled herper but also very good herpetoculturalist as well so very cool and an all-around just decent guy so he's he's the whole package sorry ladies he's bacon yeah um i also got some eggs i don't know if i mentioned that on here but i got some eggs from my leaf tail geckos the amnicola riverine leaf tails so hopefully uh they'll they'll hatch and i can add another species to another notch in my belt or however you want to see it. But I'm really excited. Hopefully I would love to see little baby leaf tails hatch out.

They're such cool, cryptic, weird little geckos. So very fun. Absolutely. Yeah. I need to bring them down in my basement, though. I think my herb room is just a little warm for them. Sometimes I'll find them just kind of hugging the substrate, like, you know, like it's hot. So spray him down a bit and I have, you know, fans kind of going through their cage and stuff, but I think it's just a little, gets a little too warm. So I'll bring him down my

basement. It stays nice and cool throughout the year. And, you know, the fact that I was finding those leaf tails out and active at like 50 degrees, 55 degrees, incredible. Just crazy. So, I don't know. What an amazing group of geckos and i think that's you know part of their problem with you know increasing temperatures and climate change and things is they're they're at risk because they're kind of island endemics to some extent they're just kind of um stranded i don't know what the best word is but they're they're only found that kind of these higher mountain elevations as high as you can get in Australia, I guess. But yeah, they're potentially at risk if the temperatures get too much warmer.

Fun stuff. Well, anything else? No, I think that's great. Quick and dirty episode. Yeah. We'll thank Eric and Owen and the NPR crew for hosting our little podcast and hopefully you guys enjoyed it and we'll catch you again next week for another episode.