Reptile Fight Club - Natural diets vs. Artificial diets

Episode Date: October 29, 2021

In this episode, Justin and Chuck tackle the topic of natural diets vs. artificial diets.Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comFollow Chuck Poland  on IG @ChuckNorriswinsFollow MPR Network on:FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQMore ways to support the shows.Swag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

Welcome to the MGR Network. All right, welcome to another edition of Reptile Fight Club. He's always Chuck Bolin. The man, the myth, the legend. Hi-da-lee-ho there, reptile friends. Got a lot of little Ned Flanders there. I diddly-dooded. Well, Owen will be delighted if he listens to us, but we'll find out if he listens to us. Well, you're fine and dandy like sour candy i i assume oh i like that sure sure yeah yeah all right well locally dokely anything uh new and exciting going on no no not really yeah yeah no just same old same old yeah yeah um maybe i'll hit a few of

the highlights of the the herp trip tell me yes i know i don't want to spoil the whole recap but you know well it'll probably be released before this anyway so yeah ah we'll we'll uh we'll pretend like it's uh this is you know after the recap so i'm sure you heard all the wonderful things about the trip if you're a patreon on uh marilia python's radio if if not go uh sign up as a patreon and you can hear all the juicy details of the show or the the trip but basically it was uh rob stone uh it was you know he planned the trip and and uh planned all the places set up all the arrangements and it was we stayed in some really cool places so the first uh half of the week we were all camping or no it's he does airbnb oh gotcha gotcha i'm more of a camper guy so i I got there a day early and I, um, was planning

to, you know, sleep in a tent the first night and I went to get, get ready for bed and, you know, I'd, I'd herped all night and hadn't found much of anything aside from a red spotted toad. It was a cool looking toad, but, um, and then I, um, go to get, you know, get ready for bed, get set up the camp set up or whatever. And I couldn't find my sleeping bag. And I'm like, did I leave it at home? And so I just, I just put the, my sleep, I had my sleeping pad. I had the tent. I had like a, a cot, all everything I needed except my sleeping bag. I even brought my pillow and usually I forget my pillow. So I was like, gosh, dang it. So I just, uh, slept in the back of my truck

on top of my sleeping pad in the back seat, you know, and, and it was okay. Like I, I got a reasonable amount of sleep, maybe four or five hours. And, uh, and then, you know, and then, um, later in the trip, like Keith wanted to get one of my nob tail books, Keith McPeak was on the, on the trip. And, and I'm like, I, I forgot my, I, I, I think I left my books in one of the rental places and I'm like, crap, you know, I don't have the books either. Where did they go? And I'm looking all over for him. I thought I had them with me. I thought I'd brought them into the first place and I couldn't find him. So finally I'm like, gosh, dang, I guess I lost him somewhere. I'm going to have to call up the, you know, Airbnbs and figure out where they went.

Yeah. Some rando Airbnb person just came up on some gecko books, huh? Right. Right. And so, so I get home and I'm cleaning out the car and I lift up the seats and there's my sleeping bag and there's the Gecko books. I put the seat down on top of them. So I had a, you know, an uncomfortable night with it. It was a little cold too. It got, you know, down in the forties that night, that first night. So I was sleeping in my car in the forties and no real blanket or anything.

I just had like my cot, the cot without all the cot without the, all the bars and stuff in it. That was my, um, my blanket. So it was not the best night's sleep I've ever gotten, but it wasn't too terrible. But anyway, I survived. Tough man status. Yeah. So, so that was, I, I drove down. I was, I, you know, was basically the vehicle for the trip.

And so I picked up the guys at the airport the next day, um, picked up Keith first and we recorded a nice little reptile fight club and had a, had a fun, uh, chat with him and Keith's just an awesome guy. Really, uh, really cool guy. It was a pleasure to herp with him and, um, get to know him a little better. And yeah, it was a lot of fun. So I, I really enjoyed our conversations and stuff. So, um, definitely hope to herp with him again soon. Um, also, uh, Owen, the famous Owen McIntyre of, you know, Morale Python's radio fame was, was there. And, um, he was actually the last one to arrive. So we, I picked up Keith and then we recorded a podcast and we were sitting in this park and all these cool birds flying around. So that was kind of neat. I know, dude, I was like, geez, this is,

this is a reptile. This is a reptile podcast. People remind you, birds are reptiles technically. So I understand that they're flying reptiles though. Yeah, that's right. And so, you know, you, you share the sentiments of Rob Stone and Owen McIntyre who could give a crap about birds. Um, and then we had, uh, Tom, his last name's failing me. Um, he works at the Denver zoo and he's Rob's buddy, uh, from way back. And so he was the other, he made the, uh, our fifth. And so, um, you know, we had a pretty good crew. It was a lot of, a lot of fun. We had a good time. Who took the best pictures? Oh, Rob. Yeah. Okay. All right. Rob takes a lot of pictures in it. Yeah. It was kind of funny cause, um, Owen found, uh, a banded rock rattlesnake, right? The clobber eye. So that was pretty sweet. You know, we're all excited. It was kind of funny because, um, we were, you know, could hear it rattling. Well, he flipped, he flipped some artificial cover and it was under there. He's like rattlesnake. And, you know, he didn't have a hook. So we come running over, you know, just to kind of make sure we could get pictures of it. Yeah, I shouldn't. Um, anyway, we, we, uh, we, it kind of disappears. So we're trying to uncover other stuff to get a, get a glimpse of it and get some pictures of it and stuff. And so, um, and we could hear it rattling and we're not seeing it, you know, and finally I looked down,

it's right between my feet, like just coiled up there between my feet rattling away. So we were able to get pictures of it. And that's the nice thing about rattlesnakes is they don't really try to flee. They're more kind of stand their ground and rattle and be defensive. So that helps when you're trying to get pictures of them. So we got some, okay. You know, Rob got some great pictures. We got some okay pictures, but you know, I,

I've kind of resorted just to using my cell phone for photos. Like they do a great job. Was that a pucker factor when you looked down and it was right there between your legs? I think if it was any, this was a smaller animal. So if it was any bigger, it would have been a little intimidating. Might have bit you in the junk. Yeah. That was kind of getting ahead of things.

That was kind of towards the latter end, but I thought that was a fitting story for that. Yeah, that's a good story. Yeah. That was kind of getting ahead of things. That was kind of towards the latter end, but I thought that was a fitting story for that. Yeah, that's a good story. So anyway, we started out, they flew into Tucson, so I picked them up at Tucson. We went and visited Dustin Gran. He was on Morale Python's radio and gave an interview. And really, he's a great field herper. He does quite he's does quite a bit of field herping younger guy. He's got a great collection too. So he showed us his collection. We got to see, you know, his animals and stuff. He has some cool stuff and really nice setups for him. And so we visited with him for a bit because I'd picked, you know, I'd picked up Keith. We did the podcast. I picked up, um, Rob and Tom, and then we went to Dustin's house because Owen's flight was delayed. So we had to wait for Owen. And so we, uh, um, after we, uh, hung out with

Dustin for a bit, uh, we went and grabbed Owen and then we just drove to, uh, cave Creek, Arizona, which is kind of on the Arizona, New Mexico border. So on the Eastern side of the state. So we kept crossing time zones, you know, back and forth from Arizona, New Mexico border. So on the Eastern side of the state. So we kept crossing time zones, you know, back and forth from Arizona, New Mexico time, actually in the first Airbnb, it's, it's called Cave Creek Ranch and it's a fantastic spot. It was really cool. I mean, if you like birds or cool mammals, it was, I mean, if you're a naturalist, it's a great spot. So, I mean, I just went out in the morning and just sat and I mean, they come out and put seed in the feeders and rub peanut butter on the trees and stuff like that. So all the animals are coming out.

There's deer everywhere. We saw javelina, like just right in the, on the grounds and all sorts of birds. And I mean, it's a huge bird spot. like there's a ton of birders that come there um so really a cool place and i i was just you know over the moon just out there every morning with did you up your bird count oh yeah i added another you know 10 or so species so that was so what are you at now 247 245 245 yeah or 24 good, good. Uh, you're keeping track, man. I give you crap, but I pay attention, dude. I do pay attention. So we, you know, we'd go out from, uh, cave Creek. We, we did a few hikes up the canyons, which were really cool looking, you know, just for whatever we could see and enjoying the

landscape and stuff. So the, the, and there was kind of a cold front coming through. So things got a little chilly. The nights would cool down really fast and even got down into the 30s one night and so obviously road cruising at night is not the the best if if temperatures are down around the low 40s or 40s you know you're not going to see too much but yeah we did see quite a bit one windy night we saw several species of snake and desert king snake that was probably a highlight for me it was the first first desert king snake in the wild i'd seen and then um we found a couple uh uh mojave rattlers and a western diamondback so so cool so owen got a lot of his rattlesnakes. Yeah, yeah. Got to see his rattlesnakes.

I know. I remember him saying that that was what he was really excited to go and find were a bunch of rattlesnake species. Well, and Arizona is a good place for that. Absolutely. I was surprised we didn't see a black-tailed rattlesnake. That's one of the more common species down there, and we didn't see a blacktail rattlesnake that's one of the more common species down there and we didn't see any of those i was kind of bummed out because i really but i can't complain because we saw the two kind of main targets that rob had you know put us in the right habitat for so we found the banded rock rattlesnakes and the ridge nose rattlesnakes and that ridge nose was really nice oh yeah that was cool nice yeah and it was a good score um i was just walking along

the stream bed and and you know when you're herping for rattlesnakes a lot of times you hear them before you see them yeah sure yeah and that's the nice thing i mean they're very polite snakes you know they let you know they're right there and you can take some nice pictures of them and let them go on their way yeah everybody's happy yeah so that was kind of a thrill to to see those um we found two two of each um so after we so that was um so we were they grouped together or were they just random different random spots or were they you know like um the the clouds were in the same spot and the ridge noses were in two separate different spots but we so after we that was all in in the hu spot and the ridge noses were in two separate different spots. But we, so after we, that was all in, in the Huachuca's.

So we left Cave Creek on Wednesday and we got to go over to Bob Ashley's place. Oh, nice. Yeah. He's got a really cool place, neat museum. And I mean, it's dangerous for a herper to go there because he's got all the books and all the shirts and hats and all that kind of stuff. So it was really fun and, um, had a good

time checking out his place. He showed us around, he'd just gotten back from Tinley. So he was like, Oh, I bet he'll warp speed. He had a lot of stuff to do, you know, but he was nice enough to take the time to show us around. So that was cool. Cool. Yeah. Really? Bob's a great guy. Yeah. I haven't seen Bob in a while. It's been a long time since i've seen bob that not since like old narbc days yeah pulled the narbc out of southern california so yeah he's a nice guy oh yeah he's he's a true pioneer and he's doing a lot of good stuff for herpetoculture and herpetology and all sorts of stuff so yeah it was really fun to listen to him talk about you know uh rattlesnakes he knows quite a bit about rattlesnakes so and showing us around his amazing museum is the geronimo museum was really amazing as well and really cool so um a

lot of fun but unfortunately you know he didn't have a ton of time. And the weather conditions were a little cool. So not many of the animals in the museum, you know, in the outdoor pits were out. Were out, yeah. The indoor stuff was pretty cool. He had one of the vine snakes on display that you can find down in southern Arizona. So that was cool to see at least. Is he got a pretty big big collection there or well um so on in the museum there's there's you know it's a fairly good size room and there's two separate rooms with you know a bunch of different native animals on display so

that was that was cool and then he took us back and showed us some of the off off exhibit stuff yeah um some of the projects he's got going they've whittled down the collection quite a bit recently just because it's too much and they i think they're uh one of his uh keepers had to leave and took another job somewhere else i mean the hard thing is out there there's not much going on like there's a diner there's not even a gas station within you know a half hour drive or something. So you got to, you know, no grocery stores, anything like that. So he, I think he employs probably half the people in that area. Right, right.

So that's, that's hard to keep somebody permanently down there. But I have heard there's like a ton of, you know, retired PhDs that live down there. So I'm surprised. Is that where retired PhDs go? That are into reptiles or birds or whatever. Well, I mean. Great spot to live. Yeah, it makes sense to me.

Well, you know, and it's funny too. My mom and all of my aunts and uncles, they love the Anza Borrego Desert. And I think it's just older people like those warm, dry, you know, kind of desert climates. Uh, um, and, and so they're all, you know, I'm like, mom, why don't you, why don't you try Palm Springs? You know, there's shopping. Oh no, no, no. They just, they, and I'm, which is cool with me. I love, I love the Anza Borrego desert. So I'm, you know, I, I like going down there, but, i i like going down there but uh i just think it's i just think it's funny it's funny that you you say that that the retired phds go uh to the arizona

desert and it's like yeah yeah that sounds about right it's kind of like a convergence of a couple different desert systems so you get a lot of variety in a small area yeah um we were you know looking for montane rattlesnake species one day. And then the next day we're looking for Gila monsters and, you know, tortoises and stuff like that. And, you know, just, uh, you know, half, half an hour up the road. Um, clearly more going on than with my, with my mom and my aunts and uncles. Yeah. After we left, we left Bob's place, we drove up the road towards the more lower desert stuff and saw a freshly hit Mexican hognose on the road. It was such a bummer. So I was so disappointed that that was my first time seeing that species in the wild.

That had to be that way, you know, just barely clipped on the face. So I was pretty sad about that. And I think everybody got sick of me being sad about that. Yeah. Stuck with me for a while. I hate seeing DORs. It's not fun. So anyway, we, um, had a nice time there, but like I said, there's a cold front coming through. So other than that one really good night of herping and a few, uh, DORs during the day, and then a couple, um, scoloporous, uh, that were pretty amazing looking animals. Uh, not much else, you know, going on there. It was a little slow other than the bird and mammal life.

We saw like, uh, the javelina, the, um, a coati. That was cool. They're, they're pretty interesting mammals. And there was one just like sitting in the tree. Owen looks over, he's like, there's a coati in the tree. And he has some, some negative interactions with him when he was during his zoo career. And so he gave them a wide berth and then, you know, they were like every night you'd see skunks cruising around, they'd be hanging out on the property. So a lot of cool animals in the area. So, yeah, the bird varieties were really cool too.

Didn't see any trogons. That's kind of one of the major draws down there is the elegant trogon, which is a kind of more of a tropical bird, but it makes its way up into that part of Arizona, New Mexico. So then we headed over to the Huachuca Mountains primarily. And we were, we stayed at another Airbnb kind of north of the Huachucas and spent the rest of the week there. Nice. Yeah, very cool. Found some horned lizards, great basin, or not a great basin, but a snoring gopher snake.

The horned lizards were the greater short horned lizards, Hernandezi. And then the two species of rattlesnake. And yeah, it was. Not bad. Not bad. Yeah. Especially for, you know, the weather conditions. Yeah.

Yeah. It was, it was pretty cool. And it sounds like a fun time was had by all oh yeah yeah and you coined some new terms uh yeah and you were driving so you couldn't complain you couldn't complain about the driving issues and i stopped pretty quickly and i you know diverted traffic around me so they wouldn't hit the snake did anybody else complain about your driving i don't think so keith was very nervous when we were driving up mountain passes and on dirt roads that had you know a steep drop off right you know on the edge hadn't quite gotten gotten comfortable with the justin justin well i don't think it matter was who was driving. He was just uncomfortable on those roads. Cause these are like windy, steep,

bumpy, you know, rocky road, dirt roads, certain, certain death on the other side of the guardrail. I got exactly. So I can't say that I was completely innocent of driving a little closer to the edge, just to, just to mess with him a little bit. You gotta let him know he's alive, you know? Sure, sure, sure, sure. But that was, I mean, that was really cool. Cause I mean, Keith just come, you know, he had a battle with cancer and he beat it. So, um, it was great that he's out there,

you know, keeping up with us and, you know, or exceeding our, our pace in some instances, like he, he, he was not slowing us down. That's for sure. That's awesome. That was cool. That's awesome. Um, um great to great to herb with him yeah um but i uh you know yeah it's hard to encompass a trip you know for sure pretty funny things we we coined the term smitty tears to rate trails because he had such a rough time in west texas of those trails. So we gave a Smitty tears rating. Oh my God. Is it, is it, what is it? Just like a one through five or is that good?

Like a five Smitty tears? You go from like, yeah, tears or buckets of tears. If it's a really bad one, Smitty groans, if it's not so bad. Oh, I got you. Oh, okay. We had a good laugh on his expense there. I got you. All right.

That's pretty funny. I have yet to hear his feedback on that one, but we'll see what he has to say. Yeah, always good. I mean, I think Keith and Tom were maybe getting a little sick. I know Keith said, I need to binge The Simpsons so I can understand half the conversation because Rob and Owen and myself are big into the Simpsons. So I think your huddly doodly was well received here.

Was well receivedly? All right. Yeah. So, yeah, that was a lot of fun as usual. I diddly do my best, man. Yeah. So it was a great trip fun, as usual. I diddly do my best, man. Yeah. So it was a great trip. Cool.

All right. Enough. Yeah, no more reminiscing. Yeah. Let's get on to topic at hand. What do you say? Okie dokie. Sure, sure, sure.

All right. So today we're going to talk about the ethics or the pros and cons of switching animals over from a natural diet that they would eat in the wild to, you know, maybe unnatural, you know, lab rodent diet or prepared food diet, those kind of things. So we'll discuss both sides of that topic. So are you going to call it this time, or do you want me to call my own? It doesn't matter. No, I don't care. I mean, I just wanted to see what would happen if you had to call your own. I'm just saying we could save a lot of time and just give it to me, you know? Yeah, see? Exactly.

All right. Exactly. Okay, well, go ahead and call this one. All right. It's tails. could save a lot of time and just give it to me you know yeah see exactly all right exactly okay well you go ahead and call this one all right it's tails it is heads my friend i i hate your quarter i i just am astounded like it would be funny mean, it wouldn't be as funny if I was cheating, but it's funny because it's legit every time. You're like, Ashley, she's always calling the wrong gender on all my snakes. Anytime she says, oh, he looks good, I'm like, Ashley, it's a female. So you've got the Ashley look, I guess. All right.

Well, I'm going to take the pro side, I guess, of unnatural diets. Okay. For captive reptiles. All right. Sure. You can take the, defend the using a more natural diet, I guess. Sure. Okay.

All right. Well, I'm going to go ahead and defer to my good friend Chuck. That's fine. To have the opening statement. That's fine. All right. Well, I'm going to go ahead and defer to my good friend Chuck to have the opening statement. That's fine. All right. So, I mean, obviously, you know, any animal kind of evolves to eat a diet that is, you know, native to where they're at. I mean, uh, you know, it, it, you, you certainly can find geckos that, uh, in different areas that will eat different diets. Right. Um, so, you know, in, in, in, in, over time, those animals will, um, you know, they'll, they'll grow, they will create a complex diet so that they get all of their nutritional needs, and they may not necessarily get it all from one place. And so,

you know, I think that the difficulty in, you know, giving a captive, you know, bread animal or a captive born animal or a captive animal, a non-natural diet is that you're kind of directing them to eat something that they're not used to eating one. So it's going to be difficult. You're going to have a potentially have a hard time, you know, getting them to accept that food. And you don't really know what the, you know, what the, always what the makeup of their diet is and how that would look as far as a nutrient profile for that animal. So we, you know, we, you know, feeding, um, let's say rodents, um, you know, we know what that nutrient profile looks like. And so I think as we feed those animals, you know, we could be doing all kinds of, you know, they'll still eat, uh, they may eat it, but they, you

know, we may be creating a diet, which grossly throws their nutritional, their normal nutritional intake out of whack. So I think that's probably the big, you know, the overarching for me of like why you would want to try to replicate a, you know, a natural, a more natural diet. If you could,

if you knew, you know, how complex or what that diet consisted of. Gotcha. Yeah. Um, yeah, I can see, I mean, animals evolved to, to fill different nippers or niches. Um, so, um, I, I, I was watching a nature documentary once and they had like talking about, you know, animals that had adapted to, to feed on different, uh, food sources. And they were talking about, you know, flowers and different animals that had co-evolved with the flower to, um, eat, you know, the nectar from that specific flower. And there was this weird flower somewhere out in the jungle of New Guinea or something. I can't remember where it was, but they had this, uh, we had a really super long, um,

tunnel, basically the flower part to get to the nectar. And so they said, well, um, if this flower has evolved this way, there's probably something that is co-evolved to feed specifically from that flower. And so they set up cameras and they waited and waited and waited, trying to figure out what the animal was that was going to feed from the flower. You know, was it going to be a small insect that could crawl inside and get the nectar and then, you know, get the. Help pollinate the flower. Yeah, pollinate all its way out or whatever.

Yep. So all of a sudden this moth comes rolling up and it's got this super long tongue that it unrolls, you know, and sticks into the flower. And so this moth had developed mouth parts that were long enough to reach to the, to the nectar and, you know, feed from the flower. So I definitely would agree that, yeah, animals specifically evolved to take different food sources. Now, I guess the question is, is it, is it the competition that drives that? So say if other food sources were easier to, you know, there was less competition for that nectar. And that was the, you know, that was the only moth, is the only game in town, you know, just for argument's sake, would it continue to maintain that long giant tongue if there wasn't a reason, if there wasn't that competition? When we take something into captivity, we're taking away its competition. We're giving it an easy meal. So even though something might

evolve to feed on a specific prey item, as long as we can kind of meet their nutritional demands and give them something that's not going to be unhealthy, I think there's no real reason not to feed it, you know, something unnatural. I mean, we're putting it in an unnatural state. We're altering most likely the gut flora, you know, that may aid and help in digesting that specific prey item. When we breed them in captivity, we're selecting for them, you know, who they're going to breed with and, you know, that kind of thing. So we're kind of taking the nature out of the animal to some extent when we breed it in captivity and somewhat semi-domesticated. So I would argue that, you know, once we take it out of the wild, you know, that kind of, and we select what it's eating, we've kind of gotten past that maybe requirement or need for a more natural diet. Yeah. I mean, I definitely think that that's, I mean, we do that. Yeah. And, and we,

you know, we, we got animals that are alive and don't, you know, necessarily eat the prey source that we're feeding them in the wild. But, you know, I mean, I think there's been, you know, studies about, you know, gut flora, at least in humans, uh, that, and, and some of the findings were almost, um, so, so groundbreaking towards, you know, your gut flora having impacts on disease, um, and, and, and, and overall human health. So, you know, not to anthropomorphize and say that all, all, you know, fauna, uh, behaves that way, but, you know, we, we develop similar systems. Our digestive system is, comes from earlier animals, you know, so, so there is reason to say that, um, you know, that, that, that may work in other animals the way it works in us. And so, you know, well, yes, you're right. We can feed different prey sources and potentially meet those, you know, those dietary requirements. But what does, you know, ultimately what does changing that, that microbial comp, uh, you know, composition, what does that do? And I think that, I think, you know,

to the bigger point I'm making is we really don't know. We don't know a lot of times what a complete, uh, diet looks like for a lot of animals in the wild. So it's, we don't even have a complete picture of what they naturally eat, much less how to support, you know, if we, if we could say, okay, you know, this is this, this, this sphere is what comprises X animals diet. And this sphere is what we feed them in their, you know, in their native and in their native habitat or in their captive habitats, you know, and here's why they're comparable. And I think we do that at some level. I think you can look at, you can look at geckos and you can look at, you know, the way we use powder diets and things like

that to, to kind of, you know, figure out what the nutrient profiles need to be and what the things they need and, and they'll eat them. And, and, you know, we know how to supplement some of that stuff and do that in a way that's, that's relatively close, but I don't, I don't think that you can point to one like, like, uh, you know, gecko species that we know a lot about and say all, um, I think, think you know there's definitely uh areas where we're making best guesses and and i think that you know i i i do think that potentially some of the problems that we have uh around why some animals don't do well in captivity could very well be dietarily based i, maybe they'll eat what we feed them

because they don't want to die, but maybe, you know, the secondary outcome of that is, is, you know, deteriorate. Oh my God, I can't speak today is detrimental to them, you know? Well, um, you know, I, I, I really got fascinated by the gut microflora stuff. We were doing a project with applying for a big program grant, you know, which is a huge, um, conglomerations of different scientists in different areas, looking at, you know, one factor on different aspects of, of that, you know, and how the gut microflora, um, uh, contribute to that or whatever, excuse me. And, um, so, you know, I, uh, but I question, you know, once we take it out of kept out of the wild, how are they getting access to that natural gut flora. I mean, we're not importing soil or food items or wild, you know, snake or lizard poop to allow the juveniles, you know, a lot of juveniles will eat the feces of their, of adults, of their species to get those gut microflora. But once

you've brought something and we've seen this in people, so I, I, and I do agree that, you know, you can kind of make those parallels with other, other animal species. But once you alter the diet, you do alter that. And so if you're going to take something out of the wild, there's no real way around disrupting that balance or that gut microflora. And yes, it could contribute to negative effects. Um, but I mean, a lot of changes are often neutral, right? As long as you've got beneficial flora, they may not necessarily care if it's the correct bacteria that they have in the wild, or if it's just something similar that plays the same role, um, in that, um, gut, you know, in their gut content. So, um, while, you know, I,

you know, it might be helpful to have the, the actual, you know, gut components and thing. I just don't think that's realistic to maintain. So you don't think, I mean, you don't think like, so, so, I mean, just to go back, like you, you talked about basically the, the flora and fauna interplay between form and function of, of reproduction and, and food between plants and animals, which happens, you know you know, through a form of co-evolution, right? But, but yet the, the, the gut, the gut microbe and the, and then the food content would be, are completely disconnected from each other. You know what I'm saying? That doesn't, it almost doesn't play, like, it doesn't make sense that, that, that the, the habitat that, that they need to live or, or that they co-evolve with that they're

highly coupled to and and the the food sources that they get which help dictate the the the microbial content of their gut have you know are decoupled from each other like i don't i i guess that's hard for me to put my head around and say that that there is and and you know look are decoupled from each other. Like, I don't, I guess that's hard for me to put my head around and say that, that there is, and, and, you know, look, I'm not saying there that, that, that you, you, you can't be, you can't possibly be right with this, but, but to say like, all right, you can take something and put it wherever it does not matter that it's its situation or its food intake, as long as it meets some basic needs. And no matter how it changes that, that, that gut microbial content there, there will be no, it should there, why would there be anything bad that happens?

And I just don't know if there's a, I mean, I, I, I don't know that, that we could say that one way or another. I don't, I don't think I'm saying that necessarily. I'm saying that if you take it out of the wild and you remove it from its natural environment, you remove it from those sources of, of flora and fauna and it's in its natural environment, you are altering it just by removing it from there because you're putting it in a different environment and the bacterial, you know,

flora and fauna around their, their new environment, which is most likely severely diminished compared to a wild, you know, because people are cleaning their cages and, you know, they don't have dirt in the cages, you know, they might have shavings or newspaper or something that don't have those beneficial, you know, bacteria. And plus it's, you know, different environment anyway. So if you got dirt from outside, you're not, it's not the same dirt. You know, if you're animals from Australia, it's not the same dirt as in Australia and it's not the same microbiome that's in Australia. So once you take it out of the wild, you're, you're altering that anyway. And so, and also the, the, yeah. And the food also drives the microflora and we've

shown that, you know, if, if, uh, animals switch diet, they'll switch gut microflora and that can have, you know, it's not, I think, I think that was more good or bad more the direction I was driving at. Yeah. Yeah. And so, I mean, I mean, I mean, I don't, I mean, you have a lot of different profiles in humans, right? And here's an example, right? So just using humans as an example, if you have a high fatty Western diet, you know, you might get some gut microflora that contribute to, um, different, uh, health issues, you know, and, and, uh, you know, that's been demonstrated in people. But then if you have like a high fiber plant diet, you can also get different bacteria colonizing your gut that contribute to inflammation. So you might think, oh, I'm eating healthy. I'm eating

an all plant diet or something. I don't eat meat or I don't eat this or that, but you know, maybe those bacteria that you're promoting are actually going to contribute to an inflammatory state within your gut. Or, or it's, or it's the percentage of one type that you're eating. I think the problem that, and, and at the root of that, what you're talking about is a, you know, a high protein meat diet and all high protein meat diet leads to inflammation, just like a high, you know, a high, you know, plant low, you know, so it's that lack of variety, which kind of takes me back to the whole idea of having, um, a more complex, um, you know, dietary, um, makeup. Uh, and, and so, you know, when we do take animals out and

it's not to say that some, that some people don't, uh, do a more complex diet for their, their captive animals. Um, certainly that that's the case, but I would say by and large, you know, people are not replicating the variety that some of these animals, uh, feed on in, in, in their, in the wild. Right. So, um, that's where that's kind of where I would draw the concern and say, you know, maybe, maybe things are lacking that way. Yeah. Is the variety a necessity though? I guess that's the thing is unless you say, you know, maybe, maybe things are lacking that way. Yeah. Is the variety a necessity though? I guess that's the thing is unless you're, you know, you're eating all baby rodents, which are high in fat.

So you're going to increase the fat content. I can see that having a negative effect on an animal, but you know, if you're, if you're feeding like 10 different rodent species, is it really better than feeding, you know, a single rodent species? I don't, I don't know if it's going to make that much of a difference. Or if you're eating birds or you're, I mean, I think, or if you're even possibly taking other reptiles or, or maybe some amphibians, I think, I think in those cases, you know, the difference between other reptiles and fowl and, and, and, and amphibians. I think, I think in those cases, you know, the difference between other reptiles and fowl and, and, and, and amphibians, that could be a, it could be a fairly, you know,

significant or relevant difference. Yeah, definitely. I mean, if you're trying to force something that's used to eating, you know, vegetables, you know, a vegetarian reptile, and you're trying to feed them mice, then yeah, maybe. But, but at the same token, like, I think we have it in our minds that, you know, tortoises are always vegetarian. I was listening to Ryan DeMoss on a, on a different podcast and he was on our show a while back, really cool guy, but he was talking about the, their tortoises, like Galapagos tortoises will be raised up. And if something goes under them for shade, like a bird or something,

they'll drop down and crush it. And then they'll, then they'll eat the bird, you know, you don't think of tortoises as eating or needing to eat a bird, but in the wild, they probably do that all the time. And a lot of tortoises are, have been found to be, you know, almost omnivorous where they're eating a lot of terrian or animals, you know, worms and stuff like that. So, you know.

And that goes to my point about having a varied diet where, you know, eating too much of one thing, you know, you think of tortoises as a highly, you know, vegetarian. They're vegan, you know. Yeah. And that's just not the case it's not yeah that's not what a well-balanced diet for them looks like just like you know in humans who all eat meat or all eat a plant-based diet because you know i i i think you know um i guess the point of rounded diet is is and and i guess my question around that is, is, is, is do unnatural diets

for, from what an animal might have as a, as a natural, you know, uh, wild diet, uh, does that lead to an incomplete or, or, or not enough of a varied diet in, in some cases? And, and, and I think the answer in some cases is yes. In other cases, the answer is absolutely not. But in those cases that it does, I think there can be some significant issue, you know, probably not in the short term, but maybe over the longevity of the long term, right? Yeah, I guess, Wendy, if you just give me a chance to respond here, buddy. I know. See, that's what I was doing.

I saw you. You're rolling your eyes. You're like, oh, my gosh, this guy. Come on. Cut it off, buddy. Can I get a word in here edgewise? Yeah. We need a moderator.

Save us from ourselves. I guess my point isn't necessarily that, you know, a varied versus a, you know, varied versus a monotypic diet, but more so a wild or natural diet versus a diet that we can provide in captivity. Because they might be eating, you know, a Norwegian rat in the wild because they're everywhere, right? Right. you know, a Norwegian rat in the wild because they're everywhere, right? You know, they might eat one of those. And, and if we're feeding Norwegian rats in captivity, then, you know, we're, we're approximating some of their, some of the natural species they might eat, but more, more, I guess, to, to the argument, um, if you give a varied diet of, you know, tilapia, that's easily accessible to, to the normal person or chicken, you know, that's, or quail that are easily accessible or, you know, earthworms or whatever, you know, you're varying the diet, but it's with stuff that's commercially available, that's commercially raised, you know,

I think for the most part, you're not going to see much of a difference between those dietary items and a natural dietary item necessarily. I mean, it's like energy in, energy out. Yeah. I think if you're talking, if you're talking pre-source apples and apples, oranges, oranges, yes, you're probably right. You're probably right. I mean- And if you're trying to replicate a wild diet, you're going to spend a lot of energy money, you know? Well, and I think, I think it's unreasonable. And I think that's why, you know, it's almost, it, it, it, it, when you get into kind of what you're talking about, it's almost a moot point because we can't go in and replicate the the wild diets of most of this stuff that we have

because we just do not have access yeah to those animals at that level right so and i think the the best example that is probably the the hognose you know western hognose snakes you've got animals that come out of the egg and they're they accept you know, a pinky mouse right out of the gate. You don't even have to scent it anymore. So obviously they're, they're changing or adapting to some extent from the wild counterparts that come out heavily genetically programmed to seek toads, you know, that's their food item. And, and it's not to say that in the wild, they don't find a mouse or something and go after it or try to eat it or, or, you know, try to eat something else. But, you know, in captivity, we're not trying to source toads to feed our, our, uh, Western hognoses at best, we might get toad scent and rub it on a, you know, a mouse. Now, you know, those have been captive bred and, you know,

multiple generations. And like I said, they're somewhat domesticated now. So I, I'm, I'm not seeing, you know, a downside of, of trying to replicate a natural, you know, prey item for those okay so that that would be a major i guess argument in favor of yeah well i mean and and it's like i said it's kind of stupid because we're not going to really try to do it anyway right so we're you know it's like i can argue i can look is it always going to be better to to replicate a natural diet for something that is you you know, is it going to be easier to get it feeding? Is it going to get, you know, it's nutritional makeup that it needs because of the very diet? Yes, yes, yes. Is it reasonable and will it happen?

No. So it's, I mean, it's, you know, I can still be right, but irrelevant in the argument, right? Yeah. That's, that's a very, very true point that like, you know, there's, there's certain snakes that specialize on blind snakes, you know, are you going to get a colony and breed blind snakes just so you can keep that species? Probably not. But like you would literally have another, you would have a whole other business. Yeah that species probably not but like you would literally have another you would have a whole other business yeah yeah i mean you would literally have a whole other business around selling you know these whatever to feed your whatever right like you

could i mean you would literally have to be the person who you know i breed these and then i sell these so that you can feed your whatever, right? It's, you know, it's, it's kind of a, I mean, kind of an interesting strategy, but, but, but a little unreasonable too, at the same time. Yeah. And I, I think part of the industry, the, you know, the herpetocultural industry is based around that principle where, you know, you've got, uh, Alan Rapashi who goes out and invents all these different diets and tries to approximate, you know, what they might receive in nature in his diets. And, uh, you know, through that effort, he made it so they're

easily kept easily produced. And now, I mean, like we saw at any or not any rbc at the super show and in anaheim show yeah there were so many i know it's hard to get over that i mean how many tables had had crested geckos or you know yeah all the different uh new caledonian geckos or, you know, all the different, uh, new Caledonian geckos, like it's almost becoming like the next ball Python and lizard form, you know? Sure. And so I think that, uh, adaptation of trying to replicate, uh, you know, somewhat natural diet, but make it a commercially available, easily produced diet, and maybe not using the same things they would eat in nature, but similar things that provide similar nutrition has, has worked out very well in, in a lot of ways for both, you know, Alan and his diets, as well as people who are wanting to keep those species because they are really cool species, you know? So it's nice that,

that we have that support and we have a non-natural diet that can support these animals. Uh, I think in the, you know, if you look at it as a, and I, hopefully I think people, at least I think dietarily in a layered kind of approach, um, and, and, you know, especially with geckos that, that, you know, that powder diet is a nice base to work from. And I mean, you know, obviously like we talked to the one, um, uh, man, I don't remember who it was. It was, it was on our, it was on the super show, um, live when we did where somebody was saying basically, um, you know, like they're great geckos. I think it was just geckos. They were great because, you know, you can feed them, uh, you know, an insect diet, or if you don't like insects,

you can feed them, you know, uh, a powder diet and, and they're, they, they're too, you know, they, they have two food bases, which, you know, I tend to think a little differently. I tend to think that, you know, that, that, that powder diet or, or, or, um, is, is kind of a base diet. And then you can add on top of that to get variety and, and, uh, and, and work, you know, work it around, but, but certainly, I mean, what an, what an amazing tool, um, you know, and that's, that's, and I think some of that comes out of the science and technology that we employ around, you know, being scientific humans and studying animals and figuring out some of these dietary requirements and figuring out like, all right, can, you know, can we do this? Yeah, yeah, absolutely we can. And that's a powerful piece of technology.

And to your point, it works, you know, but I think you do have to be careful because you, you need to pay attention. And, you know, one of the, one of the things that, that Frank Payne will always say is, is that he, he attributes a lot of his reproductive success long-term. It was how he supports, how he feeds his feeders and how he supports his animals and the diets that he uses as to why he has prolonged long-term reproductive success with his animals. And I think that's absolutely a hundred percent right. you're not gonna and and you know you're not gonna just feed a you know powder diet to to geckos and expect them to you know breed like you know forever and ever and ever and never need that it's it's it's you know you need to probably do more than that and i'm i'm you know

i'm not i'm not trying to speak unequivocally cause I'm sure there's somebody out there who's like, I've done it and that's fine. And you know, um, sure. But, but to his point, right. Yeah. And he, you know, he's not using necessarily now he's using commercially available insects, but he's maybe gut loading them. He's sure he's concerned with nutrition and things absolutely i mean to your to your point um you know we need to understand their natural history because i imagine some of these geckos are are heavy insect feeders at some points of the year and other points of the year they're licking sap or or you know flowers or whatever so you know we need to be aware of the animal's natural history what they typically eat in the wild and if you you know if

you don't know that it makes it very difficult to i think be successful with a lot of these species so to your to your point we need to understand what they eat in the wild yeah and and it's it's yeah it's a heavily heavily multi-faceted thing because it's yeah like like you said you know it's not it's not just what they're eating it's what they're eating is eating thing because it's like, like you said, you know, it's not, it's not just what they're eating. It's what they're eating is eating and eating. It's a, it's a, you know, it's a food web. So, you know, how that food web is fed has a lot to do with, you know, and, and, and it's easy for us to boil stuff down. Um, and, and, you know, when you get high enough on a food web, you know, a lot of the, the, the, the, the, the not great stuff that are in animals that you eat, uh, you know, bio we're, you know, as, as apex predators, we're bio, you know, we eat bio accumulators. And so, you know, we're as, as humans, like we are, you know, stand the, um, the worst chance of, of eating just bad stuff because we eat so high on the food chain. Right. So there's all kinds of that, that, that play

at work when you're, when you're kind of talking about this stuff. So it's, I, you know, I, I do agree with you, um, that, that, that you can, you know, you definitely can make that pivot and keep healthy animals. But it is highly complex. And like you said, you know, the way it may work from, you know, season to season with what these, what animals are feeding on, their diet might change, you know. And so might the target species that you're talking about. So, um, it's, it's a, it's a lot, it's a lot to kind of take into account. Well, and, and also, you know, in nature, uh, things are rough, like you mentioned, you know, bioaccumulators, you know, we almost lost condors because they were eating things that were eating things that were eating things that were eating things that were bad. And they were accumulating those toxins or whatnot.

Same with eagles and any meat eaters at the top of the food chain. Raptors specifically were really fascinated by that. We definitely wouldn't want to replicate something like that that, as, as a result of human interference and human manipulation. And I think, I mean, I, I do think, you know, um, to, to, to your point, you know, in a captive setting, when we're controlling what we're feeding to our feeders, um, that, that helps control some of that, that natural bioaccumulation that that can happen um but obviously like you have to understand what's going into those food sources and and and what they're comprised of like the uh you know like the uh the the the friend you had that was

feeding his skinks uh dog the the bad dog food i mean how would he know and and it's not you know if you feed it to dogs it's not at a level that it's you know um you know lethal to to a dog horrible that you're feeding that but like you would never find out that you're feeding your dog other dogs unless you killed your skinks with it like so it's you know it's it's a dirty game folks it's a dirty game, folks. It's a dirty game. You got to be careful out there. It's rough in the streets. Yeah. And I think we do our best to avoid that. And I guess the other side of it, in nature, they're getting parasites.

They're getting ticks. For sure. They're getting different things like that. And that all can be a negative impact on the animals, or it could be a neutral impact. You know, there's, there's a lot, most wild reptiles probably have some sort of parasite or something that's living in harmony with their natural balance. And it's not till they're, um, stressed or, or something that, you know, negative effects occur from that. So, you know, it's hard to, to say what's, what's critical and what's

not critical, you know, uh, how things interact. I don't think we know enough to, to really, you know, comment on all those kinds of things, you know, the bio. I think we know enough to make it look like we know what we're doing, but we don't understand at a, at a, at a complete level, at a, at a, at a whole picture level, we're nowhere close. We know nothing. It's hard too, because like a lot of, like myself, you know, I go up to iron range to try to find a green tree Python. Cause I'm interested in those and I want to see, you know, what they're doing in the wild, that kind of thing, you know, see them in the wild. But I'm only going when it's accessible to, to drive there, you know, during, during the end of the dry season or, you know, during the wet season, you almost have to take a boat or a plane to get there. And so it's very, um, you're not seeing the whole picture.

You're seeing a snapshot, you know? And so unless you're in their environment or if there's a, you know, a scientist that's doing a study on them and looking at their dietary components over, over time, you're not going to have a complete understanding of their dietary preferences, you know? And that stuff might be out there, you know, somebody might've published a paper back in 1982 and, you know, you just didn't know it existed. So, you know, that makes it tricky too, is, is accessing the scientific literature and finding those works. I'm still finding, you know, pythons in Western Australia. And it talked, you know, there, it was kind of old. I think it was listing, uh, you know, just different, different names for, for things, uh, a little outdated in some ways, but in other ways, you know, it's very, very helpful, but you know, I, I've intensively searched for papers on Morelia pythons, you know? And so it's interesting to find one that I missed that was published a while back. So, you know, it's, it's hard to get all the information that's

necessary to, to, to know what we don't know or, you know, but it's also good to ask questions. And in that deep well of information that we have we still haven't really scratched the surface yeah uh of finding how deep the well is you know um so i mean yeah yeah what happens if you include you know bird occasionally in the galapagos tortoise diet you know are they is that going to help them or you know and then you get to the point are're feeding too many birds and you're impacting them negatively because they, they did find a lot of the early diets where they were feeding them green leafy vegetables was, was, you know, they, they mature very slowly, they grow very slowly. Um, and so wasn't, you know, until it was very apparent the, the negative effects and how to reverse that or work that out, that might not be possible to reverse it. And so they have, you know, have to build some wheels or something for the tortoise

to wheel around on, you know, so it's kinda, we, we do, um, make a lot of mistakes in what we're doing. And I think that's kind of how, you know, sometimes you have to make mistakes to know what you don't know, you know, we don't need to do that next time. Let's fix that. I'm a good gardener because I killed a lot of plants to get there. Yeah. Right. I mean, and, and, and gosh, man, you know, you never want to say that. And, and, you know, um, but, but it's true. I mean, I, I, I don't know any reptile keeper who's never had an animal die on them because of, or has never made a mistake that, yeah, absolutely. Exactly.

So, and hopefully those mistakes are your best teaching tools because something had to, you know, suffer, uh, you know, because of it. And it's, you know, it's not a great, it's not a great thing to talk about, but it's a reality, you know what I mean? Yeah. And I think a lot of times we tell ourselves, well, hopefully if I've learned something from it, it wasn't in vain or, you know, a lot of times we try to make ourselves feel better by saying, well, in the wild, you know, they probably would have been eaten by something

a long time ago and died a miserable, horrible horrible violent death at the hands of a butcher bird or something you know right well and i mean this i mean but i mean isn't that true yeah it is i mean and not you know not to not to say that that it there is just let it happen willy nilly. Yeah. Not to say that there isn't a place for not making that excuse, but that is a reality that, you know, nature is far, far less forgiving than we are in captivity. And bringing it back to topic is, you know, when we were able to keep these animals in in in a captive environment we can provide them you know different food sources and maybe we don't have the exact thing

they co-evolve to eat but we have something similar that can fill the same role and and give them the nutrients and the protein and whatever they need to grow and develop properly but we you know that's not to say once you find something that works, you've got it all figured out and it's good to be intellectually curious, you know, keep, keep digging, keep looking, keep figuring things out because you know, there's, there's important things to be found. So I don't know. I, I think, uh, I don't know if I, I think, uh, I, I don't know if I have any other, uh, hard hitting

topics or, or points to this argument, but I do think, you know, I would, I would summarize with, you know, we, we need to do what we need to do in captivity, you know, but I don't think we could with them. Yeah. You got the. You got the shirt on the stick. You got to win a coin flip once in a while. Listen, man. I don't know. But, you know, as long as you stay intellectually curious and you're trying to improve the way you're keeping your animals or finding better methods, I think you're on the right track. Yeah.

So, I remember, who was it? Maybe Harlan Wall was, I thought you were going to say Burt Langworth, but no, I always feel like that's a safe bet for me to throw out there. It was like, no, it was Langworth. That's awesome. Harlan was talking about, uh, giving probiotics, you know, he was like using these commercially available probiotics to, and I'm thinking, but he was talking about how, oh, the, you know, the, the soil that we give them in their environment doesn't have the proper bacteria, but then I'm like, well, you're giving them probiotics that don't, that aren't the bacteria that they're experiencing or getting in the wild, you know? So if, if probiotics are, are a good thing,

then, you know, and and and they replace that need for the natural flora that they're getting in their natural soil then what are you worried about their cage environment as much for so i i just thought that was kind of incongruous but it was kind of funny anyway we we have a very limited understanding about a lot of these things. And it would be good to build that experience or to, I don't know what the answer is, because it's really hard to get funding to study reptiles in the wild. For sure. You know? Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, it's.

More power to those people seeking that, you know, it's often why we end up talking about the way things are in relation to humans, because that's where the money goes to is is studying human disease or, you know, human advent proved in humans to say like, well, like I said, you know, animals evolve, you know, uh, their, their, you know, their evolutionary, um, history, you know, we're, we're, we're towards the end of that. Right. So, you know, the things that, that, that, that the, the, you know, the organs, the, the, the functions, the forms that they evolve are in us as well. So, yeah, I mean, that's about as close as we can get sometimes. And, you know, I think for a lot of human disease, like that's my job is to model human disease in different systems. And a lot of times, you know, a mouse is not human.

So a lot of times you get something that works in a mouse that does not work in a human and vice versa. So you've got to keep that in mind that, you know, just because it's happens here, doesn't necessarily mean it happens there, but sometimes it can and it can model it appropriately. So tricky, uh, complex things, but, uh, definitely worth a thought. So hopefully we've gotten some good topics to, to mill around in your brain. And, and hopefully, uh, we can all work together to increase our knowledge and figure out more about

these cool reptiles that we all like. So, yep. Any, any other things you want to bring up or have we had a decent fight? This has been a decent fight. Maybe. I don't know.

Let other people judge. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, as always, if you have any topics or, uh,

you know, we've gotten some great feedback and we, we've had, we have some fun guests lined up, uh, here soon that, uh, have thrown down the gauntlet and challenges to a fight.

You know, we're happy to have, have anybody on to come and come and fight with us. Yeah. Where is he? Don't hesitate to. He hasn't responded yet, huh? Uh, yeah. not yet well all right one of our guests will be he was talking he was talking some smack man and i thought it was going to go down and it's going to be a good one it'll go down

it'll go down eventually all right all right thanks for listening and again, we'll encourage you to listen to all the NPR, um, podcasts that are out there. There's a nice array of, of cool information out there. So educate yourself, keep listening. And thanks for supporting us and listening to reptile fight club. We'll catch you next week. Fight on folks. Thank you.