Reptile Fight Club - Multiple Species in Large Cages vs. Single Species in Smaller Cages

Episode Date: October 4, 2024

In this episode, Justin and Rob discuss the Multiple species in large cages vs single species in smaller cages.Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comIGFollow Rob @ https://www.instagram.com/highplainsherp/Follow MPR Network @FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQSwag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

all right welcome to another edition of reptile fight club I'm Justin Julander. I am the founder of Creativity Inc. apparently, according to my... With me tonight is Rob Stone, my faithful co-host here. How you doing, Rob? I'm great. Awesome. I am as well. This has been a pretty hectic week, but good times. So I am just very anxious and excited to get to Australia. That's the main thing that's been on my mind. And a lot of mental energy has gone into thinking about and planning and getting everything ready for that trip. So I'm very excited for it to get here. Yeah, absolutely. It'll be a ton of fun. Yeah, for sure. About time we got together over in Australia.

We've done a lot of trips over here, but haven't hooked up over there yet. So I gotten done, done some herping together there. So that'll be fun. Yeah, absolutely. And going, it's the, uh, well, it's kind of a nice mix, right? Of places that we've been, new places as well. New spots within old places, all that different stuff. So yeah, I'm learning all these things. So I'm doing an extra week beyond what Rob and Eric and Keith and Teresa are doing. And so I'm headed down to or over west to the border of Northern Territory and Western Australia in the Western Australia side. So and I'm finding that things close down there. So I'm a little concerned that I'm going to be stuck different places. But there should be plenty to do even with the areas that are closed.

So I should have a good time down there. So we'll see, see what happens. Yeah, absolutely. It'll be interesting. I found out there's a couple herpers living in Kananura. So I may be able to go out and herp with with people who know the area a little better and you know have found clowardy in the wild so that's kind of the main goal is to see one of those around there and at least photograph it especially if we've seen them already in northern territory get the because i imagine those yeah i imagine those are going to be split into two different

species i mean if they did it with pilbarenensis, they're definitely going to do it with Clowardiae. Yeah, those are much closer together. Hammersliensis and Pilbaraensis are much closer geographically. I'm just shocked that it hasn't been done yet, because it seems like there's been, you know, Sam Sweet and some of the others have studied. Looked at them really closely. Yeah, you'd think they'd have collected samples and submitted them for dna work or something by now yeah kind of crazy but absolutely

yeah there was some really weird looking ones in you know i'm doing my uh research for the trip like kind of uh on the northern territory side, what's the area? Anyway, there's one that almost looks like a lace monitor. Like it has really bizarre, like dark patterning and stuff. So, yeah, there's some, and that's kind of a known phenotype from that area. So really weird looking Kimberly rocks from that area. So kind of a cool diversity and yeah. Yeah. Um, uh, hopefully I'm, I'm kind of looking for this to be kind of a goanna trip, uh, you know, add some new species

of monitor lizard to the, you know, the has have seen column of my list there. So get up, you know, over, over 20, uh, species. I think I'm, I think I'm like at 16 or something like that. So get up over 20 species. I think I'm like at 16 or something like that. Nice. It should be nice to add a few more. One should be a slam dunk. If I don't see Mertens on this trip, I probably don't deserve to see

them. I was talking with Alex on Messenger and he's like, I heard on your podcast that you haven't seen Mertens yet. So that should be pretty doable in a lot of different areas, you know. So, yeah, I'm like, yeah, if I haven't seen them by the time I get to Western Australia, I probably don't deserve it. Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

Oh, that's pretty good. Exciting times ahead. Hopefully things will go well and I won't get stuck in the outback somewhere, you know, all alone, all by myself. So should, should be good. Should be a fun adventure either way. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, um, how are, how are things going reptile-wise for you? All good. Had a litter of Puerto Rican boas born earlier in the week. You know, fit with the same timing. A couple of interesting things with that.

Timing is usual, kind of that end of the first week, end of the second week of September. That's her normal timing to go. It's amazing how willing to or willing to fit into a routine they are. And I don't know whether that just reflects my particular conditions or reflects them. It's probably the nexus of those two things. But as I've talked about several times, the thing that I've come to learn is in terms of if we're keeping stuff that really suits the conditions and how we keep within those conditions, that nexus, it really transitions from, hey, I'm trying to get these things to breed to you see in the animals, this natural inclination and willingness to do it on a specific routine. And I've seen that

particularly with the Puerto Rican boas, where it's just, oh yeah, every other year, you know, come April, the female swells up, you know, starts developing these massive follicles coming out of the sort of the year of bounce back. And then the cycling, which is all the things, right? It's lights, humidity, feeding, all are pressing all the buttons that I do in my room. But then with those particular conditions, as they come out of that in April, the males start going crazy and the females start getting massive. And it becomes one of those things where as something that you can't sell, right, that has no commercial market to them at all. It's like the last two times, if not three times, it's been a function of, well, I might as

well pair her up because otherwise this male is going to spend the next six weeks driving himself crazy. And she's probably going to, you know, develop and throw slugs anyway. So that reproductive effort might as well be maximized rather than minimized and i do think i mean we've seen it in captive reptiles right the more that they go through unproductive reproductive events it does seem to have a negative health impact for them right the komodo dragons ultimately that they wind up spaying those for the most part they'll spay those female komodo dragons so that they stop throwing, you know, bad eggs or retain throwing some and retaining some and all these different things that it seems like there you're more likely to run into complications by sort of rejecting that natural cycle that has come on so strong that it's so obvious you can't miss it. And you just say, OK, I guess I need to abide. Right. Rather than sort of trying to repress this, especially in the

context, obviously, if you had that as a singular pet animal, it is what it is, right? But in the context where I have a male that's going to drive himself crazy for the next six weeks, I might as well sort of put that together. And then it's just, okay, who would like some free babies? You know, unfortunately, it looks all set up and good to go for this year. So I think we're good on that account, but yeah. So, um, you know, I don't know how excited Dustin is, but Brandon is certainly excited. And so between the two of them, they're going to, I'm going to send a whole handful down to them and, you know, amongst other people that, you know, expressed interest or whatever. So yeah, it's, uh, it's really good. It'll actually, you know, it turns out well or whatever, maybe that's the benefit of biannual breeding, right? It's harder to overproduce the non-commercial market form. the fourth time in eight years, so split every other year each time that she's had four.

So in 2018, it was 14 live babies, no slugs. 2020, it was 14 live, two slugs. 2022, 14 live, two slugs. This year, it was 15 live, no slugs. Wow. Totally wild. So consistent. Yeah.

And for Jeff's stuff, they have that uh great west indian boas website each time uh when i have a litter he says hey can you weigh and measure those babies you know and give them the those details for to to inform the website you know and i think some of that stuff is still stud book involved and whatever so um it's you know the the details around that is more important than they are sort of, it's not just, you know, for my own note card someplace or whatever, it actually is going to something. And the, the interest of that is, so I did that for this litter and save having, well, so it had one more on average, they were smaller, uh, both in length and weight, but the entire,

if you took the weight of all the babies from this year compared to the weight of all the babies from 2022 it was only four grams less so the collective mass at like i think it was something like 208 grams collectively whereas in 2022 it was something like 212 grams it's just wild yeah that is incredible yeah just just total consistency there was one more you know live offspring so you just see it dissipated i think it was basically one baby short of the length so i did also look at the cumulative length in centimeters or whatever it was like one baby one average average babies less, you know, in terms of the total length of babies that she had produced. But functionally it's exactly the same. Each of these, you know, over those four reproductive cycles over eight years, just a consistency is amazing.

The timing is amazing. All those litters are within, um, within two weeks, uh, you know, when they're being dropped. Um, and it's it's just uh it's really impressive and amazing it speaks to an amazing snake you know and i do think it says something for consistency of that animal if not that species within my room of saying like okay obviously you know i was talking to uh dustin smith who i hope to have on the podcast he's out at the north carolina zoo and they do a lot of west indian boa work you know including species that aren't otherwise in captivity here in the states um virgin island bows things like that and uh he was asking me hey you know what does that look like and are they you get good

babies healthy babies are you trying to induce breeding and i was like no you know they they want to get you know yeah this is this it's very clear it's not but so often right so much of our conversation is about well how do we induce them to breed and it's like i think that over the i know we've been talking about it over the trips to the last year to 18 months of saying like i've seen it of saying work with the things that work in your conditions however you make those and that might be minimal inputs or it might be a lot of inputs, right? If you're keeping condos in Colorado or whatever. But to me, the part that's so instructive is that it's like, if you're working with things that naturally fit into your situation and the way you want to keep them, right? Because the amount you're feeding them, what you're

feeding them, how often you change them, clean their enclosures, do the water, all these things, right? There needs to be a nexus between all those things. But when there is, it really, you know, I don't, I'm not claiming any, it's almost like claiming no credit, right? In the sense of saying, it just so happens to be that these species work really well with where I live and how I like to keep snakes so that, you know, I know Nipper, you know, has worked really hard to try and produce Jamaican boas. Very similar.

Oh, I hear nothing. I don't know if it's still recording, but this is a, we were worried about this. Ra was having connectivity issues before we started here. So he can probably hear me. But I don't hear him, so I don't know if anything's recording. I guess Eric can cut out dead air if that occurs. But hopefully Rob will be back here soon if he's not hearing me talk over him.

Good old challenges of modern convenience, right? Yeah, I guess I can kind of fill the void here with some chat about my own reptile room. I'm getting a bunch of anteresia babies going, and that seems to be progressing pretty well, especially for the eastern stimpsons. They take off pretty quick and easily. The western stimpsons are a little bit more of a challenge, but they're not too terrible. And then the pygmies are, you know, they're a challenge for sure. And hopefully I'll have a few of each of these species ready to go here soon. Unfortunately, I lost my children's and spotted python clutches this year,

so that was kind of a bummer, but what do you do? So I don't know if any of that got recorded, but we'll see. We did lose Rob. He's not on the screen anymore, but it says it's still recording, so we'll keep going here. Oh, here's Rob back, so let's see if we can hear him now. But you're back. Can we hear you?

Can you hear us? Can you hear me? I guess there's no us here. Hello. Okay. Now there's a bit of a delay between your video and audio but uh it's a little yeah hold on one second okay here it looks like you're back going but yeah i was just talking about uh how things are going in in my reptile room and and what's uh what's up but yeah things are things

are moving pretty well um and uh i got some new c set up, and that's been fun to give some of the animals quite a bit more room and area more naturalistic keeping type things. Hopefully, that'll make a difference in the quality of their clutches. Mostly, I'm speaking of the Womas, but I've also set up some jungles and inlands in some of these larger cages. And I plan to get a few more of these here soon, get them set up as I'm able. But I'm liking the larger cages. The more I can see them better, they're more visually, they're out and about in their cage. I've kind of given the womas a little more naturalistic setup where they have kind of a underground burrow system type setup in their cage. So I

put a corrugated tube into a Rubbermaid container and then kind of filled it in a little bit with some foam and fake rock so they can kind of climb around in there and have an artificial burrow, nest chamber type thing. So we'll see how that impacts the success of this next season of breeding and egg production and stuff. So I've got lights for heating in there. So they're heating up more naturally. So they'll have kind of a cool down here pretty soon but um we'll see see how it goes but um it's kind of exciting when you switch things up but you never know if it's just gonna tank everything and you're gonna have worse outcome than you did previously but that's where we're at. So I had a question for you regarding the boas, the consistency of the Puerto Rican boas. Are you keeping things need a meal and, and not really have much of a schedule or, or, you know,

a certain amount that you're feeding them just more of a, how they, yeah, no, yeah, that's fair. No, it's, I do think it's consistent in that I haven't changed my approach over that time, but it's not consistent in the sense of the amount or the intrinsic amount, right? It's not sort of, oh, every week I feed a max. Not at all. It's all responsive to how they're acting, how they're interacting, what I happen to have on hand. But it is the same style of like, what is the prey size that I would feed? How, how am I probably reacting? I do think there has been good consistency on that aspect, at least,

you know, from 27, 2018, 2017, whatever it is to say, I've kept them basically the same way and interacted with them the same way of saying, okay, this is the signals you're giving me. And this is how I'm responding accordingly. I don't think I've dramatically changed what I'm doing over that time, but yeah, it's, it's interesting for sure. I always wondered how that, you know, works out and how, uh, if, yeah, just intake and kind of things like that. I, I think, uh, it was Gavin that you haven't bed for that lookedford that looked at intake of how many mice it takes to keep a python doing its normal duties. And for like a Stimson's python, it was like 20 mice a year or something like that. I'm like, okay, that's only a couple of mice.

Yeah, less than two mice a month. So it doesn't take too much. And I'm sure part of the year. And, and I, I kind of wrote that down as a future topic, like, should we be trying to replicate hard times, you know, and if that has an impact on longevity or, or overall health or things like that, you know, on our snakes, if we're just giving them optimum conditions all the time, you know, optimum food all the time, you optimum food all the time you know if that's how that's impacting them but i don't know well and maybe to that point right part of um part of this is uh well to finish the the thought before my you know problems with the internet of the last day um cropped up uh was just gonna, you know, to complete the circle was,

you know, these discussions with emperor is working really hard to try and produce those Jamaican boas. And it's like I on the one hand, I have lots of advice. And on the other hand, I have no advice because I effectively don't do anything. They show a clear willingness to produce. And I guess I'm visualizing that and then responding accordingly by pairing them up or whatever. to produce. And I guess I'm visualizing that and then responding accordingly by pairing them up or whatever. But it's all those underlying conditions in my underlying conditions that are making it

make sense and making it work for me. It's not that I'm, it's not some specific, necessarily transferable underlying condition that I'm, that I'm doing and could recommend. It's okay. What would my answer be? It would be okay. Move to Colorado, feed them the way that I'm doing and could recommend it's okay what would my answer be it would be okay move to Colorado feed them the way that I do and you know put the lights on that I do you know the way that I do and whatever and to your point that you know to bring this into the conversation that that you were just highlighting there I would say that like for most for everything that I have there's probably six months of the year where they don't eat. It's not a straight, straight, you know, straight bake, but, and it's not an entirely completely shut off because, you know, the amazing thing is, you know, I am just, again, with room natural conditions and things in, you know,

starting in November through February into March. And it can, you know, same as Utah, we can have a random drop day or whatever is, you know, the room can be in the mid 60s. And the the amazing part is particularly when they're not not being fed, all of those West Indian boas, frankly, everything that I have will come out. We'll be sitting out at 65, totally ready to nail something. Yeah. You know, they'll sit there every night, you know, seeing if something will come by. And it's only after maybe two weeks of nothing, you know, within those two weeks of hunting with no success that maybe they'll tuck away for a week or two weeks. And they won't come out. And then they'll try it again, you know, and you'll run through another week or two weeks.

And sometimes within that cycle, then it'll be, okay, I'll toss some amounts, which, you know, for a four and a half, five foot snake is hardly anything. You know, an average some amounts which you know for a four and a half five foot snake is hardly anything you know an average size carpet you know like it which is functionally you know sort of the niche that they fill yeah it's like that's basically nothing and okay i'll toss someone and then maybe the next day i'll give them another you know maybe i'll do five days in a row and then it'll be six weeks before i do it again you know or whatever but so i think maybe it's i guess what i'm saying nothing has changed is i'm not responding differently to their body condition and things like that but yeah it's definitely not tracked it's not on a schedule of any kind um it's not even a hard okay i absolutely don't feed them between x and y it's

just what are they doing and trying to respond what is what are they doing what is the room doing what seems appropriate what do i have to feed them and you know go accordingly but yeah in general they mostly eat in i would say april through mid-june and mid-july through now more or less and other than that they're not getting all that much, you know, it'll just be based on how they react and how they look. And it's like, oh, okay. Yeah, sure. We'll toss you one here or there. I've seen it. The crazy part is, and I was thinking about this today. So one, I don't know how much it's been noted because I'm mostly off of Facebook, but so this year, Travis Wyman has gotten two litters of Solomon Island tree boas,

which other than the litter that I had, and maybe the litter that the, uh, fellow who's up in the mid North Midwest who worked, uh, now has his own deal, Ryan McVay. I'm not, I'm not sure whether that litter was a grab of female that had come in. I'm not sure what that litter turned out in terms of like healthy babies that started and did well or whatever, but neither here nor there. But the point would be other than mine, certainly I haven't seen a genuine U.S. captive bred litter after mine, which was in 2019, I believe. So, and Travis had two females go in the same year. And it was really cool. So throughout the process, you know,

he was kind of asking, I could be a resource to him in terms of, because I didn't have a resource. There was no, like how long do they even just stayed for? And we're talking on those. Mine came up just short of seven months and his dates were similar, but at least the first one,

which is the one I had date, I think he told me it was maybe 10 days short. So it would be like six to six and a half months, something like that. But totally incredible. I mean, he's, I think he's sitting on 20 to 25 of them across two litters, which is going to be some work for him, but you know, pack a lunch. But nonetheless, you know, it's like, wow, you know, the, the incredible thing that I saw with those and that I'm even seeing with the ones that I have now is those females, they just sort of physiologically, and I'm sure it represents their natural conditions.

Right. And so the females get much larger than the males. And I think they eat rodents in the wild, whereas the males, I don't think ever in the wild get beyond sort of a lizard eating stage, which is why when they fast, they can be harder to get back onto mice because they're programmed to eat lizards their whole life, as opposed to the females that gain size and are ready to transition at some point in their life. The part that's wild is seemingly those females will have years where they basically aren't interested in food. It'll just be a season of like, oh, yeah, just not super into it. You know, and what I've seen is that they'll have sort of that off or fallow year where they might eat less than 10 mice over the year. And we're talking about not small snakes, you know, four foot, maybe two and a half, three inches, you know, across something like that um and they

look none the worse for wear which is part of the part of the thing that's incredible right we talk about the the perpetual matt somerville you know idea of like oh it was fat you know the brown snake that was fat on three mice a year or whatever um but uh yeah so they they look none the worse for wear they'll have this fallow year And then the next year you can just see it in them that they're ready to eat. And it's like, I think that certainly the year before I produced them, two years before was a fallow year. I think she probably had less than, certainly less than 10 mice and not even like jumbo adult mice, you know, maybe like hoppers to large hoppers, something like that. And then the next year she ate, I want to say like 60. So she went from having like eight one year to 60 the next.

And then that was, then she was cycled and ready to go. And, you know, I'm kind of seeing it in their reactions this year of saying like, okay, I think this was kind of a fallow year for them. And so I'm wondering if next year they'll have a boom year and then they would be ready so not they're not ready to cycle this year ready to start that nine month process basically um between the start of breeding because that's seven months post ovule after the post ovulation shed um in my case so it really is a long time and they don't eat at all during that time. So it's yet another basically a year where they don't eat. And the crazy part was, so when she did have those babies, man, they look rough.

Because at that point, it had been 11 months without eating, basically. She wasn't eating while being paired in the start of pairing and then through that whole process. And then she didn't eat until she had shed after she had them so it's just you know true truly wild um and so in the wild i would think they probably are producing every four or five years you know especially given the apparent density that that species lives on those islands yeah i mean they're probably breeding every four or five years to have the resources to have the boom year. The fallow year is probably the normative condition. And then they have the boom year, you know, and then they go and it's going to take four or five years before

they're even in the state to take the boom year and be ready to go. Yeah. Yeah. That's just incredible. Like kind of just blows your mind thinking about all the complexities and things that can go into this and, you know, how how can we best serve the animals and, you know, also maintain maybe a productive collection, things like that. But, yeah, that's really interesting information. And I think that as far as I remember, because it would go kind of further back, right? A part of this is it it's easy to lose track of stuff. But I believe that Travis had expressed the same thing of having previously seen sort of fallow years or what, you know, what I would call a fallow year in terms of their willingness to feed. And I think at least for one of them, he had expressed, yeah, this seemed like a boom year. And it's like, well, that's I think that's that's the cycle, right?

Is it's mostly fallow years. Then if you get the willingness to take a boom year, that's, that's when you have a shot at it. Yeah. Yeah. That's a, that's really cool. And, and I mean, you need to pay attention to your snakes. If you, if you weren't keeping a close eye, you wouldn't notice that behavior of, Hey, feed me, you know, and then, Hey, feed me again. And, you know, and compared to before where they were just kind of like, eh, I don't, I'm not hungry. You know, you have to be able to read your snakes and know your snakes or else you're not discovering these things.

You know, you're not seeing this pattern and the consistency and stuff. So that's really interesting. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. So many, um, things we, we don't know, you know, that's, I guess that's really interesting. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. So many things we don't know. I guess that's the exciting thing is there's a lot to discover and a lot of neat things we can find, even as lowly keepers in a captive collection, private collection. i i've been thinking about zoos a little bit lately i i watched uh mj's tour of reptolandia just to kind of see an update and he you know he went through pretty much the whole whole place and man what a what a cool facility that is and how excited i am to get

there at some point you know i i'm honestly i'm kind of waiting a little bit to tell everything's – Right. Not everything is done right at this point. There's like – they have multiple buildings, and it's kind of like this one's now done and whatever. And then they'll move into the next one. But, man, those enclosures are really cool. And that was kind of what maybe spurred the topic of today's debate or fight, whatever you want to look at it as. But we were MJ kind of made the comment like, you know, they few animals in it versus, you know, 10 single enclosures with an individual animal in it.

And, you know, what kind of discoveries or what kind of hardships or downsides there would be for, for each of those, um, ways of doing it, you know? So I thought we'd, we'd kind of talk about that today, if that, if that works for you and, and, uh, talk about kind of benefits of, of keeping the same, you know, even, even keeping different species together or, or, uh, you know, multiple species exhibits like they have at Reptolandia, you know, large enclosures with several of the same species and maybe a couple different species in there as well versus keeping individually in smaller manageable-sized enclosures. So let's flip a coin.

What do you say? Okie dokie. All right. Let's see if your luck is back on a coin. What do you say? Okay. Okay. All right. Let's see if your, uh, luck is back on this week. What do you got? I got tails.

It is heads. Sorry. Sorry to tell you. Regret to say. Yeah. I, I think I'm going to go with the, the big like zoo type enclosure with a room, room sized, um, enclosure with,

with lots of the same species in there. I think that's got a lot of cool, uh, aspects and something I've thought about a long time, even though I don't really have an enclosure like that. So I don't have personal experience. I don't know that many, many people do. And, um, but I think, you know, that's kind of a goal for down the road. Maybe when my kids all move out and I have a lot of extra rooms and maybe my wife will let me take one of those rooms, or maybe if I thin out my collection, I'll, I'll devote half the reptile room to a single enclosure. But, um, so, and, and I'm going to go ahead and kick it off, I guess. So that's, uh, um, you know, kind of a, I guess a dream maybe all of us have as reptile keepers is like, I want to have a room that I can walk into and have like a bearded dragon and a frail

lizard and a skink or, you know, something like some of these mixed, mixed type enclosures that I've seen, you know, in, in different zoos or, or even private, um, uh, collections. But I think one of my favorites was in the West, uh, zoo in Perth in West Australia. Um, they have a big kind of, um, open top, you know, they just have glass sides, but it's this huge footprint, you know, of, of enclosure. You can look at pictures online or whatever of the Perth Zoo reptile house, but they have this big enclosure in the middle of the room that it's, it's really long and it has like Western blue tongues and, and Eastern, or let's see, Centralian blue tongues, Western blue tongues, shinglebacks, um, frilled lizards. I think a few bearded dragons, uh, different species of dragon

in there. Um, and you know, you could just kind of walk around and just watch the behavior and the activity and cool things like that. So, and I, I think too, with, with certain species, you know, that maybe cover lots of distance in a day. I mean, when we were in Western Australia, we followed tracks of shinglebacks for, you know, several hundred meters or, you know, a quarter of a mile or something across the desert. And then you'd finally find the pair chasing each other down or something. So they're moving quite a bit and, you know, I'm sure certain times of year, they're not moving all that much, or they're staying a little more stationary or, or brumating or, or hibernating or something or estivating, whatever they're doing. But, um, times of the year they're moving quite a bit.

So, um, you know, that, that wouldn't be a bad thing to give them that more space. And then, um, you can kind of watch the interactions, uh, between the different animals and between the different species and things like that. Now, you know, obviously that comes with a increased responsibility to, to pay attention and make sure that things aren't going downhill. I, when I was in, um, central Australia at the Alice Springs reptile zoo or reptile park, um, they had a, an enclosure with a couple of shingle backs and man, these things were just going at it. Like they were attacking each other and you could hear them crunching on each other's, you know, uh, those, their bony plates, uh, the big, big scales that they have.

And I mean, they were, they were trying to beat each other up pretty good. So I went and told Rex and he came out and separated them and moved them somewhere else, you know, at least one of them. But, you know, there is some kind of responsibility there, but I think the opportunity to observe those interactions and if they have enough room, if they have a place to get away from each other, maybe that's not the worst thing. You know, that's kind of more naturalistic where in the spring, males probably do a little bit of battle or do try to fight over females. And we see it in all sorts of species where, you know, when you have male combat or something like that, and that helps make sure that the strongest, you know, healthiest animals are that can be a challenge in its own way. But I don't know. I just think that would be really neat to sit and watch that behavior. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, naturally, as an opening statement, there's a ton there. So let me go kind of in the

order that, you know, that jumped out to me from what you had said. I think the first thing, right, you said the Perth Zoo context, and it sounds like the Alice Reptile Center as well. The first question in a if we're talking about a big space is, can you actually see them? Right. And it sounds like in both those instances, the answer was yes at least in general right maybe it has the the board classic board that says these 15 things are in in the cage right it reminds me of being over at the bob ashley's place right in this garden at least at one time at the time the sign was made you could see these 16 things you know and who knows maybe maybe the answer if you can't find that 16th one is oh actually i haven't had those for three years, you know, or whatever.

And so it's not you can't or it could be that. No, it's there. It's just it's habits. And there is the provision of those environments where they can totally tuck away and you really can't find it. Right. So I think that's always kind of, you know, the operative question. Well, even taking a step back, I think the real question is like who's the audience are we talking about a zoo you know context where we have general public people or is this you in your house trying to have that enjoyment right so in terms of i do think the greatest utility for the well on the one hand to me the greatest utility for this would be if it was your personal collection right and you could be sort of sat there and you have all day to take it in. Right. And it's maybe that is your collection. This room is your collection. And it's literally your entire entire effort into the into it, into the pursuit is really just maintaining that room, what the really reclusive thing, you only see them.

Oh, what are the the what are the beautiful little Tribble and Otis type FNQ skinks? Oh, yeah, yeah. You know what I'm talking about? Prickly, prickly. Yeah, exactly. Prickly forest skink. Yeah. Yeah. You know, maybe those in that context. Right. Those are the sorts of things that to see them, you'd only ever have you'd have to flip them or maybe once every six months one is poking out. So you could just barely see it, you know, or whatever. If that's in your house, that's really enjoyable in the context of, you know, those. Well, it doesn't sound like given the constraints of the environmental constraints we touched on before either the the perth or alice setup those prickly forest skinks probably wouldn't do well in the aridity of either of those environments but

you know in in that context put that over in cans like that probably isn't a great addition to that display um because their public might spend their whole time getting frustrated about never seeing them and just saying like oh they don't even even have them or whatever. Whereas being in a small enclosure that might be small relative to sort of their wild type land usage is going to be restricted, really restricted. But, you know, at least you either see them and maybe that even lends itself to a super small cage where there's actually like a glass, I'm picturing a glass tank with like subterranean visibility into some so that they feel covered and maybe it's you got the the one-way glass sort of situation so they feel protected but you can see them you know that sort of thing maybe that's the best way to keep that species or reverse night cycles or things like

that where you know nocturnal species you can see them during the day because you go in a dark room and they flip the light and dark. Yeah, flip them on. Yeah, absolutely. You know, those are the sorts of things that I guess would be a consideration just in terms of what are we putting in the group? Is it going to be something? And what's our purpose as a zoo? I think I know Terry, right, was always a big advocate because he is, you know, pretty much in charge of the collection in terms of what they're working with or keeping or displaying. He had some statistic, you know, and I'll make it up now because I can't remember it exactly.

But it was some amount of time less than, you know, it was six seconds, some single digit amount of time that people are willing to invest looking at a cage to find the animal on average when they come to a zoo so um in those the good the good aspect positive aspect of one of those big communal tanks is that almost certainly there will be something that they will be able to see now if they really hope to see the prickly forest kink then they almost certainly will never see it if it's not kind of narrowly situated to be to be visible um so yeah kind of that's my first thought who's the audience um can you actually see him and it's not you know it sounds like for the most part what you described with you know perth and alice the answer was yes they so they've done a good job of picking things that are out that you can see uh you're not sitting there going oh man i went i know you

i'd really love to see the western blue tongue or, you know, the Centralian blue tongue or whatever it is. Right. You know, I'd love to see that. But you can't see it. I think Alice had Moloch's. Right. And so if those were in a multi-species setup, but in a way that they were being repressed by something else they were interacting with, that would be the biggest bummer because there's no place else really in the world you could go see that. So it's like, man, I hope if you have those communally, you better have designed that correctly so they're not being impacted by other things and they're not out because that's going to be a huge bummer if we can't see the mullocks at the one place you can go see them because they're afraid of the, you know, if they're also in there with sand monitors or something. Yeah. monitors or something yeah well i think that was kind of one of the the things that was brought up on this uh reptilandia tour was the fact that you know what are you know with these huge enclosures

people may not see what you know you're you're trying to the interactions amongst them yeah well or even catch the sort of the thing the very often very subtle right it's one it's one thing if you would say okay in my uh you know non-existent hypothetical where you have mollux in with um you know in with uh flavies yeah that you have a a flavie with a mollic in its mouth right okay that's that's a very clear indicia that maybe we should do something else if on the other hand the um interactions between those two is much more subtle, if you don't have, if it's not your singular, you know, your collection as a singular entity, as a singular cage, then you might not actually be observing that that stress

is even happening. You might be seeing it in terms of, oh, well, they don't seem to be, do it to be thriving, right? Maybe they're not feeding as well as you would anticipate. You're not seeing normal, what you would presume would be normative basking behaviors, any of these different things, or you don't see them at all. You might imply that, but that requires a lot of, A, attunement, you know, they had flabbies in the building, but they were in a separate, you know, walled off section of that large. You know, so like maybe they could see the animals under the bed. They could even be in the same thing, but a little separate. Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, you obviously have to pay attention to which species are going to do well together. And, and I think that was kind of one of the, the conclusions for Reptilandia is like, we put, you know, four or five different species and you might see some in

this section of the cage and others are maybe up higher and others prefer on the trees and others prefer on the rock background, you know, that kind of thing. So they're trying to fill the space with different, you know, trophic levels ofic levels of of species that are filling different niches and so i think that's kind of the answer you know for for a big zoo or a big enclosure space like they have at reptolandia now now they also have a lot of kind of typical you know smaller zoo enclosure type things for species that may not play well with others or that may have more difficult to meet care requirements that need, you know, specific humidity or things like that, that is going to be more difficult than a room size enclosure versus, you know, that's a couple stories high versus a more controlled environment. And that probably goes over to your side. The level of control gets more difficult the larger you get and the more species that you include in that area.

That can be a challenge. And I think there is a lot to be said about previous experience of different zoos and with different species and mixed species enclosures. Like I'm sure they've learned some things the hard way and other things have kind of worked out so they can spread that information to other zoos. I know Steve Sharp was telling me something interesting. He said, you know, there's kind of maybe a push to move zoos towards more of a museum type thing rather than a, you know, self-guided thing. You'd go in and you'd have a zookeeper walk you through, kind of point out things in the enclosures.

So, you know, you're taking away that frustration or that six seconds or whatever it is, and you're actually educating them. They're able to see the animal, you know, because the zookeeper knows exactly where it is or what's going on with it. And, and I, you know, I think treating it more like that, where you're kind of quiet, you're listening to somebody tell you about it. You're not, you know, your kids aren't yelling and screaming and running around and climbing, banging on the glass, you know, that kind of thing. It's more of a controlled, you know, tour type thing rather than a free for all. And I thought that was an interesting thought, you know, to, um, I, yeah, you wonder how people would take that. Cause I'd be like, well, I want to sit and look

at this animal for a little longer than the tour is allowing, you know, and if they, they don't let you in there on your own or something, that'd be of crazy um the other nice thing is is when you know people that work at the zoos you know that will take you kind of behind the scenes or whatever i'm when we were at the alice springs desert park i i met one of the guys that worked there and he took me right to the moloch cage and we went out and he pulled them out of wherever they were and lined them up for me so I could take some pictures. I mean, they weren't the most naturalistic photos, but they're like a line of four Molochs in a row. The only person with that photo in the world. Yeah, exactly. So it's kind of fun to see them, but yeah, it was kind of a little different than the experience I was expecting. But at the same time, you know,

we saw the ones that Alice Springs Reptile Park that were just out in the enclosure on the exhibit, you know, you could see them pretty well and, and actually, you know, put your camera down at face level and take pictures and stuff. It wasn't like they were trying to keep you out of there or anything. And then there were a couple in inside in, in enclosures, you know, I think one was in with a, maybe I'm remembering wrong, but it seemed like one was in with a skink or something like that. You know, it was like climbing on top of it or some, something like kind of cool, but, um, I don't know, you know, there's, there's those, uh, uh, I guess if you have several different species in a very large cage, you have better chance of seeing something out and about. Especially if you're coming at different times of year, different times of day, you're going to see different activity and different animals out and about. So that's kind of exciting. It gives you a reason to keep coming back somewhere. Now that doesn't necessarily play well if you're flying across the

country to go once, you know, or once every five or 10 years. But for the locals, I'm sure, you know, a season pass would be a cool thing to be able to go in there and see different things at different times. Yeah, absolutely. I think, I mean, we've hit on it, right? Really the function of, you know, from a potential negative, potential downside of increasing the number of animals, or even the space, as you highlighted, is just that it increases either the interactivity amongst those animals or the variable, I guess it's variables, right, that are happening in terms of whenever you increase space, there's a positive and negative, right? It's that much harder to change the static point.

So it depends how much the Alice Springs Reptile Park, they don't have to, or Desert Park, they don't need to change to the extent they're keeping red center critters, right? It doesn't need to be all that different, you know, especially outside. As long as presumably the presumptive condition is they're keeping any sort of potential predators out and that they're giving sort of access to the micro conditions that allow them to survive in those otherwise really harsh areas. Right. So that you're kind of taking on that burden of, hey, we got to make sure that we have suitable burrows and whatever other conditions are necessary to get them out to have them survive through the hard part. Right. It's not it's not bringing up to the good part. It's surviving through the hard part right it's not it's not bringing up to the good part it's surviving through the hard part um and just interactivity which naturally brings me to sort of dark frogs right i was just listening to the uh on amphibicast it's an older episode but he was talking to someone who's the focus of the episode is on golden mantellas old school frog guy and ultimately as it often does it turns into a conversation about sort of mixed dark

frog species tanks and how that's generally disfavored amongst the dark frog hobbyists because those are species, at least if you're talking about species that are capable of hybridizing, because then those offspring are really problematic, particularly that hybridizing if you're not willing to sort of ethically deal with what you've then created, whatever that looks like in your context, you know, um, particularly in things where we're talking about, they're the same species, but they're from different, they're different geographic forms and all this stuff. Um, it, the fidelity to that is really important to that community. And that's sort of foundational within that community. So, uh, as such that community so uh as such they for the

most part with mixed species things either they're looking things as you say that are on different trophic levels um tree frogs with dart frogs maybe if they're at a sufficient size where you won't run into an issue with them you know one size consuming the other depending on their sort of life life cycle or life stage or whatever um You know, that's an obvious, you know, potential implication. And just the conditions necessary. It's one thing maybe to be able to keep them in that way, but certainly the conditions to breed them are often quite different. We're talking rain chambers versus just sort of a perpetual high humidity,

high food availability, and they're just sort of perpetually going, you know. Are they seasonal or are they constant based on satisfaction of conditions right those those drivers could make the conditions that you need to have in there and are you trying to reproduce them or is it just visual that being said man those dart frog tanks with sort of all the different color that is a beautiful presentation then brazu for many years had one of those and i i think they were all the things were from different genera um and i don't know that they would even have the capacity then in producing and all those things weren't the the goal was not reproduction so i don't know if they were just even uh disposing of those i don't remember you know what the context would be but um the certainly you know

that that presentation to your point you know it's not as big right we're talking about little frogs and whatever but man just visually stunning and always that was a crowd pleaser yeah you know walking through walking through the area crowded or inevitably people yeah crowded around it because there's just these a rainbow literal rainbow of frogs that are and for you know all these bold frogs that are super you know super willing to display and all these different colors all these things it's truly amazing and if you're talking about engendering uh love and excitement for reptiles and amphibians i mean that to that to me would go to your point of saying like just the visual on that as opposed to saying okay we could be talking about some reclusive obligate egg feeder.

Essentially, it's empty tank syndrome, but this is the rarest frog that we have or whatever, this sort of thing. It's like, yeah, but everyone, the general public cares about that hopping tank of rainbow. That it's just like, wow. You don't need the context. That's maybe the answer, right? Is on those big displaced tanks know, you don't need the context. You know, that's maybe the answer, right, is on those big display tanks. Often you don't need the context. You don't need to know what they are. You don't need to know where they come from.

You don't need to be bringing with you that information. It's so visually stunning that essentially you have to take it with amazement. Yeah. And I think too, that could draw people in to learn more about where they come from and what they are. And, you know,

Oh, did, Oh, they're really cutting down their forests out there. Maybe I should not support, you know, it's things that contribute to that or something. So it's,

yeah, it's, it's kind of a two-edged sword when you have things that are visually appealing in a setting that draws people in and gets people excited. I think I mentioned this on Alan and Ron's episode, but I was in the Berlin Zoo and there was a tank or a pretty good size enclosure, probably a 20 by 20 foot room with a bunch of trees. And they had like 15 frilled lizards and the lizards were running from tree to tree and climbing and interacting and all sorts of things. I sat in front of that tank for, you know, probably 30 minutes to an hour just staring and watching the frilled lizards run around and interact and hunt and climb. And it was really cool. And now if you had that, that size of a cage and you had one frilled lizard in it, you know, he'd probably just be sitting up on the side of the tree and not doing much, you know. And so, and, you know, I think at certain

times for old lizards can be the most dramatic lizards out there, but most of the time they're just being cryptic. They're just sitting still and hoping not to get noticed. And that doesn't mix well with a zoo and, you know, whereas dart frogs are out and, and bold and jumping around and during the day. So they make a really good display animal. So I think taking those things into consideration, you know, housing things like dart frogs with things maybe like an emerald tree boa or something that comes from the same area that doesn't ever move. Just kind of sits there, especially during the day, you know, and then, um, kind of, uh, swapping that and seeing them at night and they're cruising around looking for food and things where the dart frogs are kind of hunkered down and sleeping for the night. So, you know, it'd be interesting to, um, have some of those, uh, dual, uh, or, or multiple species enclosures,

if you could adjust the light cycles there. So you could come in, you know, kind of, uh, or, or multiple species enclosures, if you could adjust the light cycles there. So you could come in, you know, kind of, uh, have the best of both worlds. You come in in the morning and it's, you know, daylight hours, and then you come in in the afternoon and it's nighttime hours or something, you know, you can see the things active at night. Um, one of my favorite zoos is, is Omaha, um, or, uh, the Henry Dor Henry Dorley Zoo, where they have that really expansive, the Desert Dome. And then below the Desert Dome is like the night, whatever, Creatures of the Night exhibit or whatever, where they have like a huge cave with bats flying around. And they have like a bayou with alligators. And it's like dark down there during the daytime daytime and then they turn the lights on at night. So you're able to see alligators,

you know, displaying nocturnal activity and frogs and turtles and stuff, what they're doing at night. So it's kind of, kind of neat that way. Um, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I, it, it really reminds me, you know, I, I think that's a great, uh, a great point. You know, it really reminds me, you know, I think that's a great point. You know, it reminds me of my room where I have, you know, the red bulbs as the fixture in the room. And that it's, you know, half the stuff I keep is nocturnal and half the stuff's diurnal. So, you know, I have the glass displays with the rhinos and stuff. You know, they'll get a little bit crepuscular and even, you know, into a couple hours of nocturnal in like midsummer very hot as part of midsummer but generally speaking a diurnal animal that's out in the middle of the day out doing stuff basking you

know doing their different activities and then essentially all the rest of the room is nocturnal so there's like one half of the room you know the light when the leds above the rhinos turn off then you know now it's everyone else's time to shine you know they're they're all excited and ready to go and with the red bulbs you're not you know throwing off their cycling you can come in and it's amazing that literally during the day for the most part um it's one half is empty cages and the other has you know these beautiful green snakes that are sitting out and then when that swaps all those cages that previously were empty uh you know have snakes hanging down looking to take take a meal and everything

you know the rhinos are hidden away um i have one that likes to sleep out but for the most part they like to hide away um but yeah i mean it's it's amazing and having that i don't have any situations set up right now in terms of space and logistics and all that to have that happen in one space. But I can tell you how magical that is in a room. In this instance, they're not actually exposed to one another. But yeah, I mean, it's awesome that it's like you go in there any time of year, any time of day or night, and something will be doing something. And that is, yeah, what more could you ask for? To me, it's the big bummer of, you know, sort of the monoculture aspect where people, oh, they only have this one thing. And it's,

well, it's not even necessary. I mean, I do think there has to be some sort of knock-on effect to the person themselves. But really, we see the biggest bummer is like, what's a bigger bummer than like, oh, it's, you know, someone who has ball pythons in tubs and someone comes over to their house and is like, oh, I want to see snakes. Like that, that is not conducive at all to saying that person's just, you know, then it's no wonder everyone wants them to be differently colored and painted and whatever. It's because that's the part that makes it fun is you open them and be like, look at this one. This one's white. This one's purple. This one's yellow. You know, whatever.

They have to be different because that's the thing that, you know, makes them different. And all of it involves like opening a tub and taking a look. And I'm not, I don't mean to knock that. I'm just saying to recognize the the contrast of like, you walk in and depending on whatever time of day or night, something's doing something. But there's never a time when try to spot them amongst the leaves. But then when you spotted them, that's kind of the end of it. They're not going to do really anything or do much, you know, while you're sitting there watching them or while people are walking past. You know, they might move around at night or, or you might catch them crawling around. But so, um, you know, having the opportunity to, to see them, but then also see other things,

maybe interacting or moving around them or climbing over top of them or something would be kind of a neat thing too. Uh, um, but you know, the fact that you have, and I guess, you know, the way people keep green tree pythons in captivity is kind of conducive to just having them sit on a stick in front of the, you know, right in the middle of the cage. And, you know, they don't really have to move or do anything to get fed pretty consistently. So they don't really do much, you know, whereas in the wild, they're climbing up a tree and down a tree. You know, I always thought it would be really cool to have a spiral staircase that went around kind of a tubular enclosure with a big tree or two or three in the middle of it, you know, where the green trees could climb up and down and move from tree to tree and stuff and see kind of what they did and where they went and that kind of thing. See the whole, whole life cycle and maybe glean some information on what they might be doing in the wild, you know, cause there's still a lot of stuff that's not known.

So, um, if you're giving them those more naturalistic setups, maybe the availability or the opportunity to observe those naturalistic behaviors increases. Whereas if they're in a two foot by two foot by two foot, you know, what what are you expecting to see? It's basically just kind of a production cage or or or a cage for ease or or ease of maintenance and you know not a lot bad may happen in that cage system you know you're not gonna have them fall out of a tree or you know i don't know hide away somewhere where they can't get out or you know things like that that might occur if you're um doing something for the first time in a big enclosure yeah yeah absolutely i mean so this raises to me the um the other uh sorry um raises to me another issue that you brought up earlier right in terms of the context of giving those bigger cages it can facilitate sort of those

species that cover longer distances right and that, what that looks like in terms of, okay, how, you know, you're giving them, it's still not a hundred yards, but at least it's a little bit closer or whatever. And so I do think there's some aspect of that, that, that, that makes sense. The, the thing that jumps out to me when we were talking through that is I just listened to a couple of different podcasts that kind of hit on this topic and, and just more so that's not to say there aren't species that where that's the case, but just the variability in that. And again, maybe that speaks to what you're, what you're putting where and how you're keeping them is that,

um, so I was listening to the herpetological Highlights podcast where they talked about essentially moving fidelity to home ranges in dart frogs, dart frogs again. And so they were moving them, what, 10 meters, 20 meters and 40 meters. And these are they're not thumbnails, but I think, you know, they were a tinctoria, something like a couple inch long frogs. And they were then trying to induce or seeing what would happen if they then put inducements into the environment, either pseudo alternative males, actual like actually those other potential stimuli or inducements really made much of an impact. But the point was that it was something like, I think at 20 meters, 98% of those that they sampled all wound up back where they started within a day, something like that. And even the 40 meters, it was still 90%, something like that. It was incredibly high, was only it was still 90 something like that it was incredibly high you know and with this very defined small range well that that fits as being well kind of cuts both ways right if it's as being something that would probably do well being being

loyal to that small space um fits as something that would do well in a smaller environment at the same time as i'm saying that right in the context of the hopping rainbow that might not be great right if we're talking about something that's that loyal to their home space the idea of kind of crowding that space with all these let alone other species whether they're from that especially if they're not exactly oh they're all from columbia well sort of but that that means a whole lot of different things right what that actually looks like um you know so what does that do? Is there a stress impact? That's where you're going to have to be super responsive to how they're actually acting and interacting.

But yeah, so I did want to bring that up and you had actually sort of re-brought up the topic. So I really appreciate that. The other one that it reminds me of, and I'm going to get this mostly wrong. Maybe you can help me with some of it so the new gecko related podcast um gecko time gecko time is that maybe i don't know that i've i've listened to it yet i guess that's nipper has pitched it uh you know he had been listening to it i hadn't heard of it he put pitched it in the the smaller chat right he had sent it and said hey you know or he he'd sent it out of saying hey what about you about, you know, this one was great or whatever. And I was like, I

wasn't even familiar with it. And that was probably maybe eight or 10 episodes in. And now they've, you know, doubled that or whatever. But, uh, they were talking to the person from, I believe it's the online magazine, exotic keeper magazine. When we were in Vegas on the back end of the trip, we were listening. This is the fellow who had gone to New Caledonia to try and find crested geckos in the wild. So they were talking to him on the one that just came out. And as part of that conversation, there was a discussion around – I think he'd spoken with a scientist. And I could be getting this wrong wrong i could be conflating this with some other podcasts that i'd listened to today but i don't think so because of this

the second piece was um they mentioned in there right that they were mentioning phil as a friend of theirs which is great and and talking about how he's friends with the researcher in australia tracking nephroris and how they're you know put little backpack track tracker backpacks on them and they were going 100 yards a night or whatever so i am pretty confident this show um but there was a mention made there of saying there was some scientific study where literally sort of year after year oh you can find this animal in this tree you know this sort of so again talking about uh fidelity and tight range versus species with more expansive ranges and all those things and you know so again fitting into

maybe one um i guess it really just speaks to amenability to be into sort of singular smaller cages or to be in where there is a benefit yeah a frilled lizard i mean it's hard to imagine you can make a cage big enough that you would over overexert them especially on an adult right an established adult that's comfortable with your routine and hard to imagine you could over overdo it yeah sure you probably wouldn't want to touch toss a hatchling in a 40 by 40 cage in your backyard yeah that probably won't end well um especially not acclimatized to your setup what you're doing how you're trying to encourage it, all those things. But, you know, just in terms of potential for activity, exactly what you said, you know, it could use that whole space. But if it was sitting there by itself, it also probably is just going to sit on the sit on the side of a tree.

And if there's, you know, bird flies overhead, then maybe it'll turn to the other side of the tree. Yeah, that's about it. Yeah, it is. It is kind of hard that that balance between wanting to be I hesitate to use the word entertain, but that's kind of what people are looking at from a zoo perspective is they want to go see animals and see animals do crazy things or, you know, that kind of thing. So in that aspect, you know, a frilled dragon is probably not a great display animal. Although, you know, unless there's a way to get them to be on the right side of the tree where everybody can see them kind of thing, you know, like, I don't know if you have like a. That's where the spotlight is or there's some. Yeah, exactly.

You have the shadow puppet on the backside of it to the backside. Yeah, there's probably a plenty of examples of, you know, that I looked it up. I think the podcast is the Gecko Exchange podcast. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, pretty new. But yeah, I need to check that out. I'll mark that as a favorite and start listening. But the other, the other thing I think I wanted to mention in regards to range, home range and that kind of thing. I was, I was watching a nature documentary on cats, big cats in Africa, and they were talking about leopards. This, these leopards, they found that they spend 40% of their time maintaining that range, like going and scent marking different trees and just making sure that nobody's coming into their range

and marking that range and letting other cats know this is my territory kind of thing, which was kind of interesting to think about. Like 40% of the time is spent monitoring the range. If you don't give them a an area big enough you know or they're not gonna do that you know i i doubt they're doing that in captivity where it's almost like uh okay i'm i'm in this place and i'm with this other animal either i'm gonna get along or i'm not you know there's no right no sense trying to maintain a range because we're just overlapping and you never know what kind of stress that puts on, you know, different animals where they're programmed to maintain and monitor this area

that that's theirs, you know, and if something else comes in there, that's either fight or flight kind of, kind of time. So maybe something like a dart frog, you could do that in a captive setting with a large enough space, you could have different, you know, colonies. And I always thought that would be really cool to have. Um, even, you know, you could even do this in your house, have, have like a fairly large potted tree, um, and then have another one across the room and have, you know, baled or, or Panther chameleons or something where they can see each other. Maybe the males up on top are displaying towards each other, but they're all kind of contained in this one tree. I don't know if that's even feasible, you know, if, uh, but you know, that'd be kind of a cool thing. And, um, I'm sure there's plenty of different species that would be more conducive to such a thing

where you could let them, um, establish a range or have multiple males in a given area that typically would just kill each other if they were in a small enough enclosure. But given enough space could actually have more naturalistic behavior. Right. The argument of beneficial stress. Right. That especially there is some right that there's some level of that that is natural and actually the the removal of that well it's kind of killing with kindness right or the potential for that if we're saying okay we're diminishing their capacity um by never exposing any of that stress at all right it's still you know zebras don't get ulcers because they're not worried about stuff beyond sort of the imperative moment but you know in the absence of any imperative moment,

is that actually diminishment in itself? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's, there's such a thing as good stress. And I think those kinds of things keep them driven to, to do certain things, you know, whether it be battle for mates or, you know, like if they're just given mates, protect their territory, whatever it might be. Yeah. They become a lazy fat, you know, breeder or whatever they don't, they don't do as well or something. They have all the food they need. There's no drive. There's no competition.

There's no anything. So, and, you know, of course, that's a hard thing in captivity because we want is so much, you know, cruelty and death and destruction and 15 percent, somewhere around there of babies make it to adulthood. You know, and that's that's a lot of dead lion babies. You know, it's kind of sad to think about, but that's that's the reality of nature, you know, and especially for, you know, a lot of the reptiles, I sure 90 or more you know anything with big litters right yeah like that for a reason exactly it's like and and the ones that are kind of weak or not doing that great they're going to get picked off very first and fastest and you know that's just the way it goes so sometimes i wonder you know if we're limping these wimpy, uh, genetic, uh, uh, animals along and, and that's, you know, kind of anti-nature, but oh, well, that's what we do. We like the, the struggling, uh, the one,

the, the, the, what's it, the underdog, I guess we root for the underdog to survive and, and do well, but yeah, I, I think, uh, think uh i don't know i still i still like the idea of someday having that walk-in enclosure where i can just go sit on a bench and watch a bunch of lizards interact you know that kind of thing um then again maybe maybe i satisfy that in my herping adventures and and try to increase the size of the caging and, you know, to a more realistic, uh, or closer to, you know, ideal for the animal. Um, well, um, not giving them my entire house to have the run of, or, you know, um, and you know, there, there are definitely challenges with, with some of these larger setups and outdoor setups and things like that, where,

like you said, you know, half the time you're trying to probably protect them from the environment that they are adapted to, because if they're enclosed in a smaller area, rather than just given the lay of the land, you know, they may not do well in that area and they're going to cook in the sun or, you know, not have a place to escape like they need it. So I think the more we know about their natural history, the better we can try to solve those problems or meet those concerns and keep them successfully. But, uh, I think a lot of us are, or it's just, it's, it's difficult. It's hard, you know, to keep them in those larger naturalistic setups as compared with a controlled tub or, you know, a two by two by two cube. So absolutely. I don't know. Did we anything else you you're dying to hit on or did we kind of cover the topic? No, I think we covered it pretty good. I think there were a lot of, honestly, I think your opening salvo was great because it really tossed out all the ideas that I think we came through and discussed. An excellent thesis statement. I thought they're, you know, they're persuasive points to either side. It's really, as ever, people will be disappointed. It's all about context. And I think there's a compelling case for either side, depending on your utility, you know, what's your planned utility and who's your planned audience and all that. Yeah, good stuff.

Well, thanks. That was fun to discuss. I don't know. I'm excited to go see more stuff in the wild. I think when it comes down to it, you know, it is a cheap imitation that we have going in our captive environments, cheap imitation of nature. And it is really cool to see them out. The more I see things in the wild, the more I want to up my game, I guess, in captivity and do a little better, you know, keep them. So, you know, they maybe resemble their wild counterparts a little better, you know, keep them. So, you know, they're, they maybe resemble their wild counterparts a little bit more, but yeah, that's the dream, I guess. But then again,

I'm kind of, I don't know, you get busy or lazy or whatever, and things you're not moving as quickly as you'd like sometimes. And I, and I guess, you know, that is maybe a point to say, do it up front, you know, start out with, you know, you love it when people say, well, how small can I keep them in right now? You're like, well, that attitude is going to get you into trouble later on, you know. But I've fallen into that, too. You know, that idea of the 90s, keep 50 million reptiles in a, in a warehouse in, in Iraq system, you know, and, and that's the ideal of success, you know, and I think we need to get away from that. And I still think there's maybe a little too much of that rattling around in my head, but, you know, racks serve a purpose in a lot of ways. And,

um, especially with baby snakes, you know, if you're hatching 50 baby snakes, you're going to run out of room real quick if you're trying to keep them in room size enclosures. But yeah, absolutely. Cool. Well, any other really cool things on your mind this week in regards to herpetoculture or herpetology in general? Yeah, so, well, I received gifts from both Phil and Nipper, anonymous gifts. I got one. So Phil sent The Explorers by Tim Flannery, which is a book. Essentially, it's a collection of, can I make this work, Australian sort of anecdotes from explorers who visited Australia, you know, from when Europeans started going there forward. It's really interesting uh so i've just sort of dug into that that's pretty cool

um and nipper sent a book that he so this was interesting so he had uh found a an old zoology of colorado which he i guess this was the book that he had uh purchased and he had highlighted as being notable as being older than he is um and also included was the book that he had purchased and he had highlighted as being notable as being older than he is. And also included was the first edition of the Amphibians and Reptiles of Colorado. So I've only ever had the second edition of this and the Hammerson book. And so I had assumed that that was the intended item or and that maybe the zoology one was the toss in or whatever. But apparently it was vice versa it was just sort of optimism that i would like the reptile book based on the receipt

of the zoology book and uh certainly you know yeah both have been it's you know the freebie you couldn't get a better freebie for sure and uh the zoology one's super fun especially man the someone was just mentioning this but i think there's a lot of truth to it is um you know the utility of being and i know you you're always more this way than i am but the being a general naturalist rather than just being into snakes let alone reptiles or snakes and monitors and you know that's basically it or whatever and geckos or whatever and that's it um you know i know when phil and i were in texas man so many mammals going and then that made the second badger

that i had seen in six weeks or whatever and like yeah just man mammals are pretty cool too you know i'm not turning into owen over here but you know nonetheless it was pretty cool too so yeah really cool they're just kind of always trying to keep an open mind, learn more about it, you know, see how there's so much amazing stuff. And I think all too often we get in our own little boxes and even then we carry all those preconceived biases with us. Oh, that's an inexpensive reptile. It can't be cool. And it's like I was looking at my, you know, 14 year old leopard gecko just going these things are really cool you know i'm hearing you know the guy the guy i think his name is tim right who you know went to find crested geckos in the wild and he's talking about it you know and i'm like that would be really cool to go to new caledonia isle of pines go find a crested gecko yeah that would be that'd be pretty

darn cool you know whereas you know if you if you go see him at a reptile show it's sort of you know a dime a dozen you know not not notable and whatever but like um me you know yeah just sort of the visceral response that was creating me it's like man that's really cool and that's a you know a nothing burger of a captive reptile or whatever but it's just like wow like that that would be amazing so yeah i i can't remember where to hear this. So I'll probably get in trouble with it, but there was somebody talking about, um, the, the fact that leeches in the wild live on, maybe this was still at reptilandia, but they were talking about leeches in the wild live on smooth, smooth bark trees, but you know, everybody keeps them on

cork bark because that's what's available, you know, and that's what's easy to work with. So they were talking about, you know, if you have a gecko that's designed or evolved to live on smooth bark trees and then you're keeping it on cork bark, what's that doing to the gecko? And no wonder they're always on the glass. On the glass. I think, where was, yeah, because I heard the same thing. Might have been a podcast. Yeah, I just heard the same thing. Yeah, so it must have been some podcast because I heard that same sort of commentary.

And it made a ton of sense. And simultaneously, so in the same episode, the New Caledonia thing, I guess the observation has been or was in this context that they're utilizing not only for the crested, they're using, you know, unsurprisingly thin, small branched, smooth branched stuff, but horizontally, right? Because that was the big thing, right? Is always this perpetual conversation of um most i think all of the wild caught ones that they had were the stub tail right where they lost their tails and those sorts of things and i don't know if this is still an issue but on those that don't lose their tails in captivity there can they can get deformity in it based on how they commonly rest or whatever if they're

resting on the glass that this could could cause issues and, you know, sort of progressive malformation, these sorts of things. And so when I heard that line about, oh, all the ones that he was spotting were actually lying on a horizontal branch or on some angle of horizontal branch. And I don't even know if it was all of them or whatever, but certainly, you know, some amounts of them were in that position. It was like exactly to that same point of not only is it cork bar versus glass, you're then in a space of like if they're because the glass situation, they're then vertical rather than horizontal. What is that doing? Literally the pressure on their structures that could cause that malformation over time. All just fascinating. fascinating yeah just things you don't really think about unless somebody's making those observations and if nobody's going to look for them or you know very few people that don't talk about it or looking for them then you're going to wind into those you know those misconceptions or yeah what was i remember alan rapashi telling a story about the first

generation of those crested geckos when you know the ones that they bred initially he said like a cat got into the gecko warehouse or whatever and just the cat you know meowed or something and all of a sudden he heard a rain of tails like they just dropped their tails and it's like that was the first generation of you know crested geckos and it's kind of bred out of them because people like them to have tails. But like the majority of crested geckos in the wild don't have tails. So it's kind of an interesting thing that way. And if they drop them at the meow of a cat, you know, then that's probably an interesting defense mechanism that only works once because they don't regrow their tails i just thought that was really curious you know especially where they're a little bit prehensile where they're using them to hold on

and you know i think the question was kind of well that that became the question right is there actually like a hidden utility to dropping it so despite is the prehensile nature is that a retained feature rather than a you know a developed feature in them based on their common ancestry and actually it like i think you know there was some discussion around like does it actually help their physiology either their structures or their ability to jump you know their their sort of form so to speak by not having a tail is their actual preferred state the absence of a tail the fact that we all the ones in the wild and there's have the super willingness to drop them we love the look it looks so clean and whatever to have oh they need to have their tail oh this is imperfect it doesn't have its tail right we've seen plenty of that but if actually the the evolved state is the propensity to drop it because it

actually makes them more uh more ecologically fit relative to their form super interesting i don't you know obviously this is almost an unknowable but it form super interesting i don't you know obviously this is almost an unknowable but it's super interesting to sort of invert the idea right we have this preconception and actually the the you know the evolved state might actually be a propensity to drop it because it situates them better to move about their environment yeah yeah. Yeah. It's, it's really cool to think about and to, you know, kind of, um, see if, if we're in need of a paradigm shift and if we should start, you know, keeping horizontal branches that are smooth in our, in our crested gecko enclosures and things, you know, those kinds of things. Um, that's the, the beneficial part of this that, you know,

when people make these observations that we take that into account and try to change up what we're doing. Now, again, if you're keeping 50 pairs of crested geckos and you have a hundred lizards in a, you know, and you have to read, redo all the enclosures, that can be a bit of a challenge. Uh, so, you know, I guess that's the, that's the, uh, thing that we're in. I, I guess I think about Ron, I guess I think about Ron St. Pierre, where he's having to redo enclosures all the time because, you know, he miscalculated something or didn't think about something and it didn't work the way he thought it would. Or the animals weren't using it the correct, you know, the way he planned. And so he has to redo them and start over again. Or there's a big tree blocking. So he has to move and build somewhere else.

You know, those kind of things. And that's just the nature of the beast. If you're trying your best to do what's right for the animals, you're going to run into that. You're going to be changing things and evolving and, you know, improving as you go. So, yep. Well, I think I'm going to announce this and if anybody's still listening, you get to hear this first, I guess, but, um, uh, Nipper and I have been working on a field guide to the reptiles and amphibians of Utah and we're nearing completion there. So, um, I, I, uh, yeah, I'm, I'm pretty excited. I, it kind of came about, um, I'm pretty excited. It kind of came about a little bit that way where Nipper was coming over to Herp in Utah.

And he's like, why isn't there a Utah field guide? And I said, oh, there is. And he's like, no, there isn't. I'm like, oh, I didn't know that. And so he's like, well, why don't we write one? Okay, let's do it. And so we started writing one kind of i guess naively a little bit because you know i still haven't seen everything all the species of utah i still have a few snake species

and a few uh amphibian you know frog and toad species that i haven't seen in the wild and then one lizard so i'm almost there with the lizards but the the uh others are and a couple of turtles mostly invasive stuff i think i've seen all the turtles, which is like a whole two or three. So that's a little easier. And I've seen all the salamanders of Utah. I have done that several times. I've got quite a few cool localities to add to the book. So this is kind of going to deviate a little bit from the typical one picture range map, short description and done.

You know, it's a little more involved. It talks, you know, has a description, but Nipper and I are including three or four or five or six pictures, you know, depending on the species to show kind of diversity across the range. So I always hated when they just show one picture, like this is what they look like. No, there's quite a bit of variability in reptiles and amphibians a lot of times. So I want to see, you know, the, the range of what they could look like, you know, depending on where you're finding them. So that'll be part of this. Um, we'll have, you know, a section on how to find them. So, you know, if you're in Utah looking to photograph some native wildlife, uh, maybe it'll give you a few hints and tips to, to find the different species. So, um, hopefully it'll be

well-received. I know, you know, every time you, you write a book, you hear, uh, uh, or you hear from others, oh, I I'm working on that too. You know, like I'm writing a book too. And, um, you know, and I think there, there are probably a lot of people who could write a better field guide than I can. But, you know, I'm going to put something out there. And everybody's definitely encouraged and able to write their own book. And I think I would buy, you know, a different field guide than the one I wrote. So I think there's room for multiple books in the same area. I mean, I'm anxious to get Scott and Ty's new Snakes of Australia book, even though I've got other, you know, field guides to the reptiles of Australia.

And I may not take it out in the field because I want to have all the species of reptile and, you know, reptile at least to be able to ID stuff in the field. But, you know, I definitely have a lot of different Australian field guides and books on different reptiles from Australia. So, again, there's always room for more books. So don't hesitate to write your own and get it out there. But hopefully we'll have it here towards the end of the year. We're about to the photo layout stage, so we're gathering photos. And so if you have some photos of more rare reptiles and amphibians in Utah, then reach out and let me know. And maybe we can include one of your

photos in the guidebook. I prefer that the photo was taken in Utah. That would be preferred. And you know, the county, at least the county locality. And then we'll kind of select photos from there. Once I have, you know, a number of photos, I can kind of pick the top, you know, four or five that represent the different phenotypes across the range or whatever, or at least show individuals from different parts of the range. That's kind of the goal. So we're short, mostly on frogs and toads, have less pictures than I might like. And also of the turtles. We have a ton of, you know, snake photos for the most part. Maybe a few like the thread snake were a little light on photos of thread snakes.

But other than that, you know, like I think milk snakes. Man, Rye Jones provided a ton of amazing photos from all across the range. He's probably found more milk snakes than any. Yeah. Maybe Brian eager might give him a run for his money. Uh, but, uh, so cool to see, you know, from eight different counties, different, you know, milk snakes from eight different counties. It's pretty cool. So, um, I don't know, excited to have another project, uh, close to being done, wrapping things up.

Absolutely. And hopefully it's worth people's time to check it out. I know it's going to be published under ECO by Bob Ashley, so that's exciting. He's got some contacts with the national parks and state parks and things. So that's always been a dream to have a book, you know, in a national park in Utah. Next time we walk in, yeah. Yeah.

So hopefully that'll be the case. But, yeah, so I don't know. Hopefully we'll get this done, you know, by – I'm shooting kind of for Christmastime, but that might be a little ambitious, especially with leaving for Australia in a couple of weeks. That's getting close. I'm getting very excited and anxious to get out there. Yeah. Cool deal. So I don't know. Reptiles and Amphibians of Utah field guide should be out hopefully soon.

Awesome. Good times. All right. Well, I guess that does it. We'll thank Eric and Owen and the Morelia Python radio family. And we'll catch you again next week for another episode of Reptile Fight Club.