Reptile Fight Club - Naturalistic vs. Sterile setups for Reptiles

Episode Date: June 25, 2021

In this episode, Justin and Chuck tackle the topic of Naturalistic vs. Sterile setups for Reptiles.Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comFollow Chuck Poland @-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. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for listening. Hope you've been enjoying the show. We've been enjoying doing the show, so it's been fun. You should have heard last week's episode with the guys from the Moralia Pythons crew versus the guys from the Herpetoculture Network guys. So that was a little jumbled there.

The THP, no, is it THP? Help me out here, Chuck. Yeah, right. Herpetological Podcast Network or yeah, Herpetological Network. Anyway, Justin Smith, Phil Wolf, the THP guys. And then Eric, sorry to those guys for just completely nurturing that one. Yeah. I'm tired. We were up till 4am most nights and then, you know, up to, it was hard to sleep in, but, uh, despite, despite you know having a nice place to stay and ac and stuff but i'm sorry i've heard you're not one to sleep in when you're uh when you're out in the field uh

herping yeah well and now i'm into birds so the birds get up early so you gotta go ah yeah yeah i got you so yeah but yeah it was late nights early mornings and hiking in the 100 plus degree weather so uh that was for my trip to west texas with the guys on the podcast last week so um hopefully enjoyed that discussion uh good topic and it was fun to hang out with those guys they're good guys for sure and you'll probably hear uh their podcast they They're going to release a joint podcast as well. So I don't think I was invited. I'm the odd man out. I'm the fifth wheel.

Yeah. You're the spare tire. Exactly. I'm the peon guy with the new podcast. You're the donut. Yeah. The DHP guys are up in the hundreds of episodes or, you know, a couple hundreds of episodes. And the Morale Python's guys are going on 10 years.

So, yeah, we're just newbies. We're trying to get 10 episodes. I was just glad to be invited and find snakes for those guys. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Nice. No, I'm just teasing. We all put in a lot of work, yeah. Nice. No, I'm just teasing. We all put in a lot of work, though.

I think we walked at least 60 miles last week. So a lot of walking, a lot of hiking. But, yeah, really cool country and cool stuff to see out there. So we did pretty well. Found quite a few species in West Texas. We mostly focused on the areas around Sanderson, including like Fort Davis area, down into the national and state park, a big band national and state parks, and just kind of hit a lot of areas. We drove like 3,000 miles over the week. So a lot of driving, not much road

cruising. It's technically illegal down there. So you're not really allowed to road cruise like you would in other areas. But most of it's driving between cuts and then, you know, walking along the cuts and seeing if you can find snakes crawling up them. And, you know, I guess some nights it might be going off and stuff. But between this trip and the last trip, I mean, you know, you were finding maybe one or two snakes on the cut a night. So it wasn't, you know, there wasn't a boon of animals around. And I mean, we put in the hours there, there was a gray band that was found on one of the cuts, uh, west of, or east of Sanderson the night before we got there. So, I mean, people were finding Alterna, but it's just, you know, the luck of the drop. Yeah. Hit or miss here or there.

Yeah. Somebody found one crawling off the cuts, like in the grass, headed for the road, you know, right as they pulled up to the cuts at dusk. So, you know, you see stuff, but mostly we saw, you know, night snakes on the cuts. We did see see a couple nice rattlesnakes i think my favorite find of the trip was a blacktail uh crotalus ornatus you posted you posted that up yeah posted nice yeah beautiful nice yeah i love that mask they have and kind of that gray tones they're they're cool looking yeah for sure yeah that thing was you know lit up he was not settling down yeah and uh we got some pretty good pictures i'm excited to see rob rob brought the professional equipment all my pictures were just iphone shots except for the pictures i took of birds with my zoom camera so um and a couple lizard pictures with the zoom so

i'll be putting those up over time on instagram or facebook so cool yeah come out yeah we'll have to see bob rock's uh photography oh he's he's a skilled photography man he'll take you know a couple thousand pictures on the trip and that's that's that's me anyway i take a thousand to keep to you two or three right yeah they can't all be bad yeah exactly you have to get set up with the the external flash and stuff like that so yeah so i'm excited to see those and um you know we had a blast like just pretty much constant laughing and uh good times so nice yeah So nice. Yeah. Those, those, uh, her trips, you know, those are, it's a way to get, you know, to know somebody really well. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. But yeah, we had a good time. So I was, it was nice to get to know, uh, Justin Smith and Phil Wolf.

I'd done a trip with Eric and Rob, so I kinda, you know, knew what to expect with them, but it was a little different with Justin and Phil. So it was good to you know, knew what to expect with them, but it was a little different with Justin and Phil. So it was good to meet them. Just great guys all around, you know? So that was a lot of fun. Who drove? Not me. So, yeah, you know, I'm a driver, so it was a little hard to be a passenger, especially when you're telling them to stop five minutes for him to stop.

And then you got to run. That's why you got your extra steps. But yeah, he drove the whole time. So it was kind of nice. And, you know, we had a minivan. So that was the other frustrating thing is trying to get the doors open. I guess there's probably a way to disable the child locks, but we probably should have Googled that. That should have been the first thing we did.

But, you know, we had to wait until he put it in park and then he unlocked the door before we could get out the door. So you're like, come on, rattling the thing. I think it's just a commentary on all you adult children in the back. For sure. Probably should have been strapped into a safety harness or something safety seat those kiddie seats whatever they're called it's been too long since my kids were in those i've forgotten what they're called yeah car seat oh there you go yeah see imagine that's the whole name right

yeah well the girls say to tell you to say hello to chip pants so ah yes we're we're at the narbc in anaheim back in the day and i brought two of my daughters and they were pretty young you know like 10 12 somewhere around there and they were messing with chuck and put some chips in his pockets on his cargo pants. And then they called him Chip Pants after that. So that stuck. You're forever Chip Pants. So for better or for worse.

I hope you like the nickname. You don't get to pick your call signs, man. You get your call signs. And they're generally not the most flattering call sign, you know. Especially from, you know, from you know 10 year old girls and exactly if if a bunch of adult military individuals give you a call sign it's it's it's far more degrading so i'll take chip pants uh any any day all right they'll be happy yeah yeah yeah yeah they think highly of you yeah nice we were we were very disappointed we didn't get to go herp with you that weekend.

Yeah, that was a bummer, man. Love to just come down again. Well, we'll do that. We need to do that for sure. For sure. I'm due to get out of work and get and do some camping get away so i'm you know man i'm using up all my time with that trip to california trip to st george trip to texas i don't know how i'm getting away with all this yeah i gotta head back yeah i gotta head back to indy for a little while i haven't seen my family

in in uh in a year so a couple years now i guess going on guess, going on three. I'm due to head back, but I don't get them. I don't understand them. I live out in San Diego and they want me to travel back to Indiana and I'm like, what? Okay. All right. Why don't you come out here? All right.

It's good. I got friends back home and stuff. Yeah, that's cool. It looks like you always have a good time when you, I got friends back, back home and stuff. So yeah, that's cool. Yeah. It looks like you always have a good time when you head out there. So yeah, it's nice to be at your old stomping grounds and stuff. For sure. For sure.

Cool. Well, you got anything else going on with you? Um, no, not really. I got another egg out of, uh, the Felsuma Grandis. So I've got five eggs now uh in the incubator uh yeah yeah they just they just keep keep going so um so that's good uh everything else is pretty pretty good you know just plugging away nothing nothing super new so i got some uh more leaf-tailed gecko eggs so nice i think the first clutch i took tanked i i didn't do i did something wrong so i'm hoping these ones might

go the distance but i think i already put them off on the wrong foot so we'll see what happens but i did hatch out some uh centralian nob-tailed geckos so that was a nice yeah yeah to those they were just sitting there waiting for me in the eggckos so that was a nice yeah yeah to those they were just sitting there waiting for me in the egg box so nice nice nice that's a good that's a good coming home present oh yeah they're so cool just better than all those work emails and stuff that's waiting for you oh yeah the mountain i've been putting in extra time just to catch up. So good times, good time. All right. Well, we ready to get into this fight here?

Sure. Let's fight. Okay. So our topic today, we're going to be debating the pros and cons or goods and bads of naturalistic setups versus kind of more sterile, you know, clinical setups. So, um, we'll go ahead and flip the coin and you want to call it? Sure. I'll lose again. Yeah. You'd think I'd rig it or something, but yeah, it's legit. You don't need to. I lose all on my own.

Okay. Here we go. All right. Tails. this is legit you don't need to i lose all on my own okay here we go all right tails it's heads see what i'm talking about all right well this is why i don't go to vegas i don't gamble i don't do because i'm a loser at that stuff good idea man yeah don't get it yeah all right well i work too hard for money anyway I don't want to give it up that easy. I got stuff to spend it on that's not giving it to some poker dealer. Exactly. Yeah.

There's better ways to lose your money. Yeah, for sure. Well, I'll throw you a bone. I'll take the sterile caging. Caging lets you have the naturalistic setups. All right. All right. I was fully. I was. I was. let you have the naturalistic setups alright I was fully I was

no no no I don't want to do that you won I'm choosing I've got some good arguments I think so yeah no I know that was kind of go for it alright I'll take the sterile caging

do you want to go first or second? Actually, I won the coin toss, so I'll let you go first. Okay. What you got? Yeah. So, I mean, I think, you know, if you're kind of talking about it if you kind of uh had tuned in for um the previous episode on um on how zoos can work with uh private hobbyists you know there we were talking a little bit about you know animal welfare and animal care and uh how that's become a focus and not just, you know, in zoos, but, you know, kind of the talk around.

So, you know, I think a naturalistic environment tends to, you know, lend itself to, you know, better enrichment for the animal, uh, oftentimes better security. Um, you know, you're, you're, you're getting them in, um, you know, uh, uh, a more comfortable environment. And then I, I think, you know, also if you're doing more naturalistic setups, you're, you're using, uh, plants and I mean, obviously plants will require, uh, the the the proper type of lighting and and humidity so you're you're you're having to consider things that you know maybe in a sterile environment that's that's just something that's not not necessarily um as big of a consideration so you could probably skimp with you know sub, subpar lighting and, and, uh, you know,

your, your misting will be more forgiving. Um, and so you, you kind of really got to dial in a little bit harder when you're doing a more naturalistic setup. I think that's probably how I'd lead. Yeah. Well, I, you know, I think that's a point, you know, for, for my side is that, you know, you can, when you're keeping a lot of animals and, you know, you may It takes a lot more equipment or materials. You know, you got to worry about keeping the plants alive or getting the right mix of the soil or keeping the soil moist. You know, the right moisture consistency. If you get it too wet, you know, you got issues and you might have skin blisters forming on the animals or, you know, the plants might die and you have to replace plants all the time. So you're spending the plants might die and you have to replace plants all the time. So you're, you're spending more money on plants than you want to. So, you know, there's

kind of a lot of downsides to, to naturalistic setups. Whereas, you know, with the, with the ease and, and availability of materials for, you know, kind of the more sterile setups, you know, you don't have to worry about those things. You can go in, switch out the, you know, kind of the more sterile setups. You know, you don't have to worry about those things. You can go in, switch out the, you know, bedding or the paper or whatever you're keeping your animal on, depending on the species. And it makes, you know, cage cleaning easy. It makes things kind of standardized. So, you know, I think there's a lot of benefits to that aspect of it. Yeah. I mean, I hear what you're saying. I, I mean, I, I, I kind of disagree with you. I certainly think that your initial cost is, is greater, you know, buying

plants and, you know, buying the lighting and, and, uh, you know, probably a misting system. Um, but you know, I think if you set it up right and you're, you're competent in what you do, I mean, you know, if you, um, don't have a green thumb and you kill every plant you touch, uh, and you don't understand, uh, how to grow plants or, or, or the requirements of the plants that you're putting in, you don't build your caging, you know, you don't build your setup correctly and you have, uh, inappropriate plants to pair together, then that's probably not going to work out very well. And yes, you're right. You will lose plants. And, you know,

to some degree, I kind of think, you know, figuring out where things work sometimes, I know this happens in my garden is, you know, not everything grows great and where you put it. And so you got to kind of figure that out, but, you know, not everything grows great in where you put it. And so you got to kind of figure that out, but you know, in the, and, and maybe you are spending more money in the initial, but you know, in a sterile setup, you're changing that setup constantly. You're, you know, if you're using paper towels or whatever, you're, you're, hopefully you're changing that every three, four days, uh, because otherwise, you know, you, you, you know, mold will still grow in, uh, paper towels if you, if you're not on top of it and you're still in there changing water

and changing, you know, so if you are replacing your plastic water bowls and you're just doing the, I want to be as sterile as possible and you just throw them out and you're doing like little, like a deli cup type you know water things then you're spending that kind of money over the much longer haul and and consuming more resource um whereas i think in a naturalistic setup you're you know you're you're not throwing all that soil away and um you know if you set your cage up right uh and you put a drainage layer in there you can go in there and if you if it does over water you have an issue you set your cage up right, uh, and you put a drainage layer in there, you can go in there. And if you, if it does over water, you have an issue, you can siphon that water off and,

uh, you know, you just shut off your, your misting system and, and let the cage dry a little bit. Um, I, you know, I think there's, um, there's definitely ways to correct stuff like that. And certainly if you, if you don't, um, you know, it'll, it'll lead to problems. And, and even if, you know, you use a sterile setup and you're not, you're not on top of a sterile setup, you can have problems too. I mean, you know, bacteria will grow in, in all environments. So yeah, that's, that's what I'd say to that man. Well, you know, I would probably disagree, you know, just for the one fact that if you're having to replace those UVB bulbs on a regular schedule like you should, you're going to spend a lot of money.

Those things are pretty pricey. So, you know, I don't have anything against the naturalistic setups. They're just a lot of, a lot of work in a lot of cases and it can be very difficult to get, get them right. And so in a natural environment where the animal comes from, you know, like in a, in a given soil sample, and this of course depends on the area but like in just an average soil sample you're going to have 10 to the 10th bacteria per per square or per cubic centimeter you know that's a that's a tremendous amount of bacteria and you know if you're getting your soil from home depot or from you know lows or something you don't know what what you know that's not the proper bacteria for for their environment and you're probably going to put pothos in there and that's not necessarily a native plant that they're

going to experience or be around you know so you know i think a lot of times if you, if you wanted to do a real naturalistic setup, you know, and you're using plants from their region and, you know, maybe even some seeding, some seeding the soil with soil from the area or using a similar soil and, you know, promoting growth of those natural beneficial bacteria that would then in turn potentially go to populate, you know, potentially populate their gut microflora and things like that. You know, I could see that, but who does that? You know, we're typically just getting whatever dirt is available and whatever plants are at Home Depot or whatever. So I guess I would argue that's not necessarily naturalistic at all. It's, it looks like nature, but it's not necessarily what those animals would be experiencing in the

wild. It looks pretty and stuff, but that's probably more for us than for the animals, you know? And then people are all excited about the, the different the different uh isopods and springtails and things like that and again if they're those don't come from the same region as your animals is that considered naturalistic i think there's you know potentially an argument to be made that that's not really necessarily beneficial the animal if you're if you're seeding the environment with the wrong kind of soil the wrong kind of with the wrong kind of soil, the wrong kind of plants, the wrong kind of bacteria, you know, that kind of idea, you know, who are you really helping? So is that for you or for the animal? And, you know, I like to go in and look at a nice

setup that has some branches or rocks or things like that. that's, that's fine. But with all the, all the extras and all the costs that, uh, comes with those extras. And if they're not even from the area that the animal comes from, what's the point, right? No, I mean, I don't, I don't agree with that. That's silly. Um, I mean, so to kind of pick this back apart, cause there was several points made there. Um, you know, the, and certainly, hopefully you're not buying your soil from Home Depot. Home Depot is shit. I mean, they, they use the worst ingredients you can find. Uh, and you know, they, they're, they're not selling you a quality soil. And so if you want to do your homework and you want to build a soil that is as close to the naturalistic type of soil that animal comes from, you can

certainly do that. I mean, I don't think that you have to necessarily go to Australia or Madagascar and, you know, take some dirt home with you in order to make it a naturalistic thing. That's kind of a silly. Yeah, 100% you would. So maybe your argument's a little off the table, just from a legal logistical standpoint. But I certainly don't think that the animals say, my mean, certain, you know, like monitors really need a very specific makeup in their soil. And that's about, you know, the humidity that it holds, the shape that it holds, you know, the temperature that it holds. And so, you know, there is definitely some work to be done around those things, but I don't think any of these animals say, this is not a natural plant from where I came from because I was probably born in a deli cup and I don't know any different. Now, do these animals absolutely make their niches within certain plants and certain habitats?

Yes, they do. But that doesn't mean that if you don't provide, you know, the natural plants and soil and mimic their native environment that they don't benefit from a naturalistic setup. And, you know, the idea that, you know, if you don't keep any environment correctly, you're going to leverage bad bacteria. And any living system, whether it's a cage of live system or outside, there's always that competition between good and bad bacteria. And generally speaking, animals stay healthy because good bacteria tends to outcompete bad bacteria. And it's when you make anaerobic conditions where you get bacteria that aren't supposed to be there. And then you start to see negative things happen.

Or when you swing the balance of humidity or things like that way into a bad direction. I think that's really when you'll see issues. But I don't, I mean, you know, and, and, and Hey, if you, you know, I agree with you, if you're gonna, if you're gonna make a naturalistic setup, do it all the way, man. Like try to try to make it as, as awesome as it can be for the animal. But, you know, for those people who, um, may not have access to certain plants, I mean, not all plants from, uh, different areas can be

gotten readily. Uh, so, you know, uh, sometimes you got to deal with what you have, but I don't think that it's a reason not to do it. Yeah. I mean, well, I'm curious where you, where you get your soil mixes from. Cause I see a lot of people, you know, get play sand from Home Depot and mix it with some soil mixture from Home Depot. And that's their and I've used that in my monitor cages. And, you know, what do you what do you. Sure. Well, I mean, you can you can definitely buy single ingredients. I tend to work out of horticultural stores, nurseries, you know, there's definitely places that specialize in certain types of aggregates and, you know, they're probably harder to find. And, you know, I think, you know,

what you're talking about compositionally is just different minerals, different soil substrates, whether you're talking about and and you know it's all it's all comes from mineral basically right and and basically depending upon how decomposed it is is what we talk about whether it's a sandy loam or a loam or you know so you know the composition of those rocks may differ, which in turn changes the soil composition type. Um, and, and you can play with that and, and you can add different things into the, into the mix that, you know, maybe in that natural soil isn't there. Um, but, but, you know, ultimately too, you know, we are sometimes limited, but,

you know, I mean, you can kind of look at now, would I go by play sand? No, I would probably prefer beach sand because if you've ever looked at the ingredients in play sand, I, I'm, I'm really not super jazzed to have that in those cages. That dust is silicate-based and it has other compositional chemicals. I mean, that's more of a chemically-based sand to me than a mineral-based sand. So I would go to a beach or somewhere like that. It's like crushed sand is what like crushed rocks into sand. And it's got the

angular almost like walking on broken glass kind of uh you know so i think a lot of people may not know these things and they're just going with what they what they get you know what they sure we at a home depot and they oh there's sand i'll buy that you know and it could be you know detrimental to the animals so um you know a lot of times when people are pushing, hey, you've got to put it, you know, keep it naturalistic. You got to or the animals are going to suffer. The animals are going to be sad or whatever, you know, then, you know, you can have people that run into problems. And so I think in a lot of cases, especially for people who are doing this for the first time or even, you know, if they've been doing it for a while in a sterile environment and they want to switch over to a naturalistic, there's a lot of work and a lot of education that goes along with that. And now you, you have a background in that.

So, you know, you might think, oh, that's, that's no, no big deal, pretty easy. But you went to college for, you know, a long time to, to get that knowledge. And so, you know, most people may not have that. And most people may not have that and most people probably don't consider the biotic features as well you know they'll think about the abiotic features but biotic features are a different story and certain bacteria you know animals evolve in in different areas and they're they they evolve co-evolve with the different bacterial components of the soil and things like that, that all plays

into it. So it's, you know, it's a little more complex. And, you know, I think in a lot of cases, sometimes we might be better served by not doing that, you know, not going naturalistic and keeping it more basic and easily changed and modified and things. So another, another thing too is, you know, like there uh, there's a lot of places in naturalistic Bavaria for, for prey items to hide and, and then they can come out at night and cause problems for a diurnal lizard, you know, crickets might chew on the animal or, or, you know, different things like that. Or, um, the, the roaches might burrow into the soil and you'll never see them, you know, and then they'll be this gargantuan roach walking around later on that the lizard can't possibly get and it might stress the

animal out. So there's some other factors, you know, when you're considering like, you know, I keep a lot of knobtails and sometimes the dubia roaches will dig down under the sand and you won't be able to find them. Now in a naturalistic setup, that would be a big pain. You'd almost have to go through regularly and sift through the sand to get all the roaches out. Whereas in a simpler setup with just a, you know, kind of a layer of sand and a couple hides, it's quite easy to find the roaches and get them out and clean the feces out, things like that. So I think in a lot of cases, the more simplistic setups can benefit more shy animals or more animals that are easily stressed out by things like an overabundance of prey items in the cage. So I think, you know, there's another argument for keeping a simplistic setup. I mean, I think the other side to that is you just don't put too many prey items in the cage at a time.

Yeah, I mean, well. More direct feeding, you know. And, you know, I do think that you can, you know. Which, again, takes a lot of time, right? I mean, if you're having to sit there and hand feed each animal a certain number of insects, and maybe if they're too shy to eat off the tongs, you know in a more sterile environment. I mean, they can still hide, even if you're on newspaper or paper towel, they can get into the folds and hide under that. And, you know, you don't see it. And then they're chewing on the animal in the middle of the night. I mean, that can still happen. Right. So, so does, so what you're saying is a naturalistic, uh, enclosure

provides more opportunity for that because they might hide a little bit better. But, you know, both instances present the opportunity for that to happen, right? Yeah, but I mean, one is a lot easier. You go in there, you say, you know, shake the sand little find the find the roaches or whatever find the crickets it's it's not that difficult whereas in a naturalistic setup if you got a good bunch of cork bark or plants or something there's a there's a lot of places for the insects to hide and insects hide very well and so you know you might spend a whole day looking through your cage to find missing insects and you know again just a time-consuming thing sure you might use a bowl

or something that they can jump out or you know crawl out of the bowl and i mean you know like i'll throw a bunch of crickets in with with uh my day geckos and and the day geckos tend to stay up high in the in the enclosure and the crickets tend to hide low and when the crickets move around during the day that the geckos are like, ah, got you, bitch. And, you know, they'll go after a delayed meal, you know, not something they took right then. So I don't, you know, not to say that that that's the norm, but I mean, I don't necessarily think just because you over put, you know, prey items in there and it's all context, right? What are we, what kind of prey items are there. And, and then, and then it's all context, right? What do

we, what kind of prey items are we talking about? What animals are we talking about? So it's very, um, you know, it's a little nuanced with what, um, you know, what's okay, what's not okay. And, and I think, you know, if you're talking roaches, yeah, you're, you're, you don't want to dump a handful of roaches into an enclosure because you're right.aches, yeah, you're, you don't want to dump a handful of roaches into an enclosure because you're right. They'll go right for the soil and they'll, they'll bury themselves in there and, you know, they'll sit in that soil forever. But, you know, and, and, and I like to tong feed roaches when I do that. And if they don't eat them, I don't, I don't leave them in there. So, you know, I, I just think there's stuff you can do that is more targeted.

And you have to be a little bit analytical. And you don't have to go to college for this stuff. I mean, certainly going to school helped me understand parameters that nature works within. And it helps me create that in a naturalistic setup, but they're not terribly difficult concepts to come up with. And, you know, if you can do the homework and we have the, you know, the, the internet and, and there's great books out there and, um, people can go find that information if you want it. And, and I would argue that, you know, Hey, maybe there is a place for sterile

keeping. Um, I personally like to keep babies, uh, sterile. Uh, I like at least a lot of my baby snakes and I've had, you know, substrates that just have caused me problems. And like paper towel seems to be the greatest thing for me to keep baby snakes on. Do I keep everything that way? No, all my geckos and stuff are all naturalistic. I like that. I think they like that. I think they benefit from it. So, you know, again, all things in their place. Um, and I don't think there's anything wrong with doing all naturalistic setups or, or, and, and I'll be honest with you. I don't think there's anything wrong with doing all sterile setups either. I think this idea that, um, you know, that if you don't deck out a cage

that an animal can't feel secure or can't feel, uh, safe to reproduce and do those, those prime, um, things that, that really, you know, key, key, whether you're having success with that animal or not, if an animal will reproduce in a sterile cage, then that is not a super stressed out animal. Um, you know, most things that are stressed out, don't do natural behaviors, um, or, or, or don't behave, uh, in a, um, more predictable way. Right. Um, yeah, yeah. That's that's the there. There is some there is probably a good concept of good stress. I think there is a level of stress in animals as well as in humans that, you know, where we need a certain amount of stress or to function properly to, you know, burn different calories or things like that. I mean, there's

been some recent studies that have been done in reptiles showing that some stress is good. I believe I heard Zach Lachman talking about that. So, you know, there's different ideas of that. So, you know, you may not, you know, and maybe a natural environment could stress them out if it's not done properly, you know, if they're getting rained on too often or something and like, what, you know, this is not necessary. I don't need to be rained on every night, you know, that kind of thing. I don't, you know, I always go back to that, that Terry Phillips analogy that, you know, yeah, I've got prairie rattlesnakes in South Dakota and it snows every year, but I'm not dumping snow in my prairie rattle enclosure. And I think a lot of times we look for the necessary elements of keeping reptiles, right?

What's, what's very important and, you know, and, and to have success, you might need to, you know, with some species, some species are easier. And I think the easy species, you may not need to hit on that many elements of their natural environment to have success. You might just need the correct thermal gradient and a water bowl and you're good to go, you know, some of their hard to breed species might need, you know, 10 different elements of their natural environment. You know, maybe security or, you know, maybe biotic factors or maybe, you know, moisture levels or, you know, all these different factors that you might consider. Interesting that you would say that. I mean, when, when I was growing my Tracy eye up, I removed all their hides and I put them in smaller enclosures. So they had no hides. They just sat out. Um, and they got very comfortable doing that. So, you know, I, I think, and you know, I bred them in smaller enclosures. They, you know, they were in 36, 24, 24 enclosures, uh, long until when they were adults. And most people were like, Oh, that is just no dude. That is way too small of a cage for a snake that size.

And I don't, I don't agree with that. I think one of the big reasons I had success is because I kept them in a smaller, tighter cage and, and that cage, they made them feel secure and, and they didn't need extra hides or all this. And, you know, there's, there's a lot of guys that are, or gals that are out there, um, doing very naturalistic, heavily planted, lots of hides. And I'm not telling anybody that's wrong i'm just saying i had success not doing that so you know is that really necessary i don't think so i think having the animal feel secure in you know and i wouldn't recommend everybody do what i did i just did it and i had success um you know but i i like to do things that go against kind of what the conventional wisdom

is of things. Cause I like to question stuff like that. Could they have totally stressed out and all died? Yeah, they could have, but they didn't. So, you know, um, and, and I kept them very natural, you know, very, uh, sterile, uh, the whole time. I, I think that works for me. I don't see the need to go that route. And for me, for the babies, I like keeping them sterile because I like to have that level of control over what's going on. And especially with, so, you know, well, I definitely like naturalistic stuff, you know, and it has its place. So does, so does a sterile environment as well. And I think you, you know, as a keeper, you need to make those decisions. And, and, and a lot of that is, you know, observationally based, a lot of it

is preference and skill level. You know, I wouldn't recommend somebody who's, you know, first time keeper, go jump right into bioactive stuff. That's a lot of information to digest. And, and so, you know, like, like a lot of of the things that I've kind of talked about is it's your trajectory, you know what I mean? And the longer you do it, the little more skilled you become and astute and more comfortable. And, you know, the more you want to dip your toe into a different side of the pool. So. Yeah. Well, did you want to make a point for naturalistic by very or just a bunch of points for my side no i mean i'm just i'm just hey i didn't even want to take the naturalistic side you were the one who was like i'll take the sterile side so i'm like fine dude so you're

gonna hand me the win because I took the wrong side. So maybe I'll make a couple points for naturalistic environments. I would say like – Don't help me out. I don't need your damn help, bro. You just keep going on your tirade. I just want to clarify the secret of your success with Tracy. I was – Oh, first under a clear, simple conditions.

No, I said that was what I felt was a contributing factor. I actually think that the caging size was a bigger. So rather than planting it out and having all the hides in the cage, having a cage that makes them or an enclosure that makes them feel secure, regardless of how the inside of the cage is, is what I'm saying. I went for a smaller enclosure and I didn't feel like I needed to plant it out and deck it out and put a bunch of shit in there to make the animals feel secure. I just noticed that the animals really didn't seem to mind. And, you know, I, I had them in smaller tubs when they were younger. Uh, and then I put them in smaller cages when they were older. And, and that seems to be something that works really well. And I think that, you know, just as a, as, as a general statement, that's that now, you know, um, so I think, you know, that, that does speak, yeah, maybe a good, good topic for a future discussion. And this was suggested by one of our Australian friends, Darren Boswell, but he, um, suggested that we talk about

anthropomorphism at some point, because that's kind of a, you know, a cool topic. There's a lot of anthropomorphism that goes on, uh, with reptiles. And so, you know, we, we, uh, tend to do that and think, oh, this, you know, the snake will want to crawl around and have a giant cage. And, you know, that's, that's in our minds. But what, what does snakes do when you let them loose in a giant room, they crawl to the darkest darkest tightest corner they can squeeze themselves into because that's where they're secure now you know of course there's limitations to that and you need to be careful but i mean pythons are designed or have evolved to be ambush predators they sit in one spot for a very long time until a meal comes along if if meals came to them and mates came to them would they move would they just sit in that small dark tight space maybe they'd come

out to bask once in a while and you know there can be arguments for that aspect of of python husbandry but you know there's there they're built to sit there. And a lot of snakes will come out to bask, but they won't come right on out and go trucking around. They'll come out, they'll bask, they'll go back. They're not exposing themselves. So it's a risk versus reward for me in my mind with them. And if they don't have to go searching for a meal, they're not, they're not rolling out. That's, that's why their metabolisms optimized like it is so that they, so that they can let it come to them and just sit back and not have to

expend a lot of energy. And, and, uh, you know, now does that mean that you feed them more off? No, it probably means they need to eat less often because they're they're let they're expending less energy to go out and get food. So, you know, I mean, you got to keep it all in context. But, yeah, I 100 percent agree with you that anthropomorphism is a huge issue that we have. And, and I think that, um, you know, a lot of the pitfalls that we fall into, um, around, um, setting up, you know, animals, establishing wild caught animals in captivity, breeding wild caught animals, anthropomorphism plays a definite role in that. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So yeah, I do think you made a good point about, you know, the level of control. When you have a more sterile environment, you can monitor animals. So especially if you're getting a new animal, putting it into quarantine,

having an appropriate quarantine, you know, period, you want to watch the animal. You want to, you know, make sure you can check out its feces to make sure there's no, you know, worms crawling in it or, you know, that their water bowl stays clean and things like that. So when you have a sterile environment, you know, checking on an animal in quarantine becomes much easier. You know, you can spot a mite crawling across the paper towel a lot easier than you can spot a mite in a naturalistic enclosure. So I absolutely agree with that. If you're getting a first time,

you know, animal you eat or you're getting a new animal, you want to monitor it in a more sterile. You don't want to deal with a mite infection infestation in a naturalistic environment that would suck oh yeah yeah for sure i mean that's almost not doable like it's you're you know i mean that that's not a so so you know like i said before all things in their place um but but you know i mean that then it gets into and I don't really have the answer for this, but, you know, is keeping in a sterile environment, is that the most beneficial thing for the immune system of these animals? I hear a lot of talk about the immune system and, you know, and people too.

And people don't know what the crap they're talking about when it comes to the immune system. And that's why I'm not making definitive statements. Yeah. You know what I mean? And how much research has been done on the immune system of reptiles. There is actually a researcher at Utah State that's looking into that and, you know, corresponding or correlating the immunity and sun exposure and temperature. You're always looking to plug yourself, man. What a. My university to plug yourself, man.

What a... My university. It's not me, Matt. Wow. But it's Dr. Susanna French. And, you know, she, man, she's got the dream job. She gets to go to the Galapagos and study reptiles there and stuff like that. So, you know, pretty cool. That is pretty cool.

She has done some studies with the immunity in reptiles. And I wonder if she'd come on the show, that'd be kind of fun to have her on here and talk about that, that aspect, uh, hook it up. We can settle this argument, right? Yeah. So maybe we'll, I'll see if she's willing to come. But I mean, I do, I do think that you see, you know, certainly, you know, a reptile's immune system is very different from ours in some respects, right? Like, you know, but at the same time, you know, we, when we're cold, we become a little bit more susceptible to things, right? Like, obviously, you know, my wife's so funny. She's like, oh, cold doesn't make people sick. Germs make people sick, right? And that's true. But the temperature your body's operating at has something to do

with your susceptibility, right? Because when you're at temperature. But, I mean, that's a good point. If there's no pathogen present, you're not necessarily going to get sick, you know, get an infection and sick from that. You might have some, you know, you might be at a homeostasis. You might have some physiological disease that manifests itself. You know, and that, you know, the diet we eat, the lifestyle we lead, those kind of things definitely contribute to things like heart disease. You don't need a pathogen to have heart disease or diabetes or things like that. And there's some genetic components that fit into that as well. You know, we've got sickle cell anemia.

People who are heterozygous for sickle cell anemia are resilient to malaria and the malaria pathogens have a hard time infecting their red blood cells if they're heterozygous for sickle cell anemia. But if they're homozygous for sickle cell anemia, then that is another issue. You know, they have that disease based on that genetic trait and and the sickle you know formation of their red blood cells which is not a great you know state to be in so you know there's different uh well but there's and there's also a correlation between people who don't have healthy oral hygiene and you know uh and heart problems, because that bacteria gets into the bloodstream. And you're having, you know, so, so there can't Yeah, absolutely. And so it's, you know,

not necessarily like, hey, man, you don't brush your teeth, right? You're gonna have a heart attack. But if you're not eating, like, like you said, there's other other things. And here we are anthropomorphizing, you know, disease in reptiles through humans. But I think that there is definitely, you know, something to be said. Every night I brush their teeth just so they don't get heart disease. That's, that's, see. If that happens in humans, it must happen in reptiles. No, I think, you know, and, you know, we don't know a lot.

And that's the hard thing. When you're ignorant on different subjects, you can draw a lot of possible conclusions. Absolutely. In herpetoculture, we do a great job of drawing conclusions from very little data and making that doctrine, right? How many times have you heard these different, you know, things that you do or don't do in herpetoculture because somebody had that happen once and, you know, and there's some different ideas about that, but I, you know, it's a lot of, it's not scientifically based, right? They haven't done proper controlled studies to definitively show that that contributes or doesn't contribute. So a lot of people talk a big game.

No, and it never. Yeah. I think we're kind of running afield of the topic, but, you know, I think it all kind of ties back into that. Like we think we know, we think we say, oh, if I, you know, give them plants and give them dirt and I give them some, you know, some duck bill isopods, then they'll be just fine. And that's, they'll, they'll be happy, you know, then we'll, we'll set them up. But I think, but I think you do have to set up the enclosure correctly and, and you do need

isopods to help break down some of that waste. And,, you know, I mean, I think there's just some, some reasons why you have them in there that, uh, aren't necessarily, uh, you know, they're, they're just kind of, uh, uh, how a natural environment works. I mean, you have decomposers and then when you don't have them in there and you have animals that shit, like you're going to get a, a, a buildup of, of fecal matter, which, you know, can have bacteria, bacteria will feed on that. You will get a certain type of, of dominant bacteria in there. So, I mean, I definitely think that, uh, that, you know, isopods have their place and, and I do think that, you know, bacterial competition is, is, um, something that happens in a naturalistic setup. And I don't think that the, that in a properly balanced naturalistic setup, that that's a negative thing for the animal. I think you see very, very healthy,

very thriving animals and really, really well done naturalistic setups. So, you know, again, that's the lighting, that's the type of moisture that's in there. It's the, you know, the overall health for the animal, the security for the animal, the enrichment for the animal, and the diet that you have the animal on. So, you know, I, I think definitely a naturalistic setup provides opportunities for a more robust, uh, life for that animal. Now at the same time, can you get that animal down the road with a sterile setup? Sure. Sure. Is one better than the other? Well, I don't know know that's debatable you know you can obviously the point i was trying to make was that if if you don't set it up properly there's a lot

more avenues for issues there's a lot more avenues for problems you know say you you don't have sufficient amounts of isopods and you're just like oh you know they'll clean up all the poop but you got you know an eight foot python in a giant enclosure taking giant turds you know because you feed it every week um yeah that that may not be sufficient you just need to pull those out of there or or get some dung beetles or something yeah yeah no i mean if you're yeah if you're dropping horse-sized deuces in there, that's probably more. You got to have an isopod army to handle that. But yeah, I mean, like I said, you know, a lot of it's situationally based. You got to use some of that common sense and some of that information that you glean.

And, you know, there's people out there doing it. You can go find them, hit them up. And, you know, we live in an information age where we're all connected at the, you know, at the touch of a button. So, you know. I think there is kind of that, we're going through a phase right now where if you're not doing it naturalistically, you're being shamed, like you're not doing it right. And I want to make that make that point that yeah that's how i feel like you are you're like oh everything should be natural i like natural caging i don't like all these guys who are using tubs that was you i heard you say that just so we're clear well i i i'm saying i want big cages but i'm not keeping i'm not keeping

naturalistic cages i'm keeping larger enclosures with, you know, I'll put some pine shavings, but I do that in my rack systems with the hatchlings and things too. So not a large, but a large enclosure. Mine is savings. Isn't like, isn't like, I mean, I guess, I guess you're right. It's not, no, you're right. I guess you didn't say it was naturally. I remember you saying you know large more natural engaging enclosures for my snakes you think that's appropriate you know and that might not be for like you said i just thought you were backpedaling a little there

maybe maybe i'm wrong maybe i'm wrong maybe i'm wrong he is so consistent here all right attention that's hey that's what i say about you. When I talk about you, you're consistent, dude. So, you know, I think if, but that push to, to have people go naturalistic and, you know, and, and then if they don't have the, the, the proper knowledge or they're not doing the research and they just say, Oh, I just need isopods, dirt and some plants. And they throw all in there, and, you know, buy a bulb from, you know, Home Depot or whatever, and it may not be the right thing, may not be the right setup, and they might actually do more damage than good for their animals if they're doing it improperly. So, you know, there's more avenues for error if you're setting up a naturalistic setup improperly versus keeping them simplistically.

So, you know, I would definitely say that's it. I agree with that. I mean, I agree with that. There's a higher level of skill that is needed to set stuff up correctly. You need more money. You need more resource. Yeah, I agree with that. But but at the same time, you know, you can still screw up a sterile set up to, you know, there's you know, it doesn't it doesn't necessarily. Now, is it more a little more forgiving? Does it, you know, cost less? Is it probably a better avenue for somebody who's just getting into it to to have the animal to keep it you know yeah but like i said you know um i keep all young snakes on that on on you know very sterile setups so you know all things in their place and i agree with that man like uh you know um now you know not what's that i said you'd be a fool not to agree with me oh yeah

okay i'll keep the ego out of this right can you can you do that you're supposed to laugh i did i'm laughing on the inside right now okay okay now i'm laughing on the outside yeah well you got any more points for the benefits of I'm laughing on the inside right now. Okay. Okay. Now I'm laughing on the outside. Yeah. Well, you got any more points for the benefits? I mean, you know,

other than they're just pleasant to look at, you know, I think that, you know, if you're going to invest all your money and resource and keeping an animal in your home and, uh you know it's it's it's out for display you make a a positive representation uh for people who maybe not into you know uh reptiles or or or whatever and and um you know they come over to your house and you cook out and they're like oh man, man, that's so cool.

Like they become engaged by something that they maybe didn't care as much about when they first, you know, uh, just a nicely, uh, a done setup that has potential for positive benefit for the animal enjoyment for the keeper. And, uh, you know, um, just kind of, uh, uh, uh, an appreciation for somebody who maybe didn't appreciate before. Yeah. Um, I would, I would also bring up the point in favor of kind of the more simplistic things is we're in a morph driven society. Herpetoculture is kind of more. Did you just take this to morphs? I did. Wow. I want to hear this now. I want to hear this. Yeah. I may not, may not be down that Avenue very far, but I do have a couple more. Right. I mean, it's true. Nice animals, of course. So, um,

and I think, uh, the, the Eric Burke kind of made this point and, you know, on one of our discussions on the herb trip that, um, if you've got a morph, you want that morph to pop, you want to be able to see it and have it, you know, everybody be able to do an hour have it, you know, everybody be able to do an awe over this cool looking morph. So that's, you know, when we go to the reptile shows and there's a line of these crazy looking ball pythons that have all sorts of different paint jobs, it's, it's visually, you know, appealing and stimulating. So if you, if you're

setting yourself or setting your stuff up fairly simplistically where somebody looking in the cage, they're going to see that really cool looking animal, really cool looking more. So I think a more simplistic or basic setup can really bring out the animal and make the animal pop. So, and, and, you know, there, these morphs aren't surviving in the wild, you know, there, there's not a population of albinos anywhere i mean you might have one or two pop up here or there but if you're if you're wanting to stare at your albino you want to look at the paint job on the snake not necessarily look at you know a well-planted terrarium and try to search for the snake because it's going to stand out like a sore thumb anyway so what's the point

yeah i mean i don't know if i i mean you know Don't, don't, don't go against the podfather. No, I'm just saying, like, if, you know, if the Mona Lisa was in a really shitty frame, you know what I mean? You'd be like, man, that's a beautiful painting, but what the fuck, man? You really pulled up short with putting it in a frame. Like this thing's janky, right? Like, I don't, I i don't i don't know no i'm just saying i don't think that like a basic setup necessarily accentuates a morph i think

having a beautiful setup with a beautiful animal accentuates the whole thing um that's just me i i i kind of see what you're saying. I just don't necessarily agree with it. I mean, I think you could even take an animal that isn't spectacular looking. And if you do the setup right, you can let that animal camouflage. You can almost play off its natural environment where people might see like, oh man, I totally see why that animal's colored that way. That's the environment that it blends into. Oh, that makes so much sense. So you can actually help people draw conclusions about, you know, natural history of animals based on a well-done naturalistic setup. But, you know, I see what you're saying. I just think, you know, you know,

nobody wants to see the Mona Lisa in a, in a, in a rickety frame. Well, you're again, I mean, the frame is such a small component of it, just like a, you know, you might have a nice, you know, plastic cage or something and it's got, you know, it's easy to clean or it's got all the bells and whistles you know the nice lighting and stuff but people are not looking at the cage going oh wow look at that cage they're looking at the animal right sure yeah i get that i understand except you're you know unless you're some you know dorky reptile nerd i guess like we all are

to some extent but they're looking at the animal not not the cage. So, um, I, I, you know, you want that animal to be brought out. So, you know, putting it in a kind of a more plain sterile environment, they're going to see the animal and be able to appreciate the animal a little better. Um, you know, personally, I, I agree that, uh, uh, a wild type animal in a natural environment where you might not even see the animal because it blends in so well, you know, like those leaf tails I've got, you know, I sometimes I'm sitting there looking for them in the cage and they're right in front of my face. They just blend in really well. So that to me, I really like, you know, and a lot of, you know, I feel bad for zoos because they have to kind of walk that tightrope between having people be able to see the animals and display animals that may not necessarily be out during the middle of the day. And I really like kind of those nocturnal houses where you can go in and see them active, you know, like they'd be active at night. And that's kind of cool you know that requires a little trickery to reverse the day and night schedule and to have a dark room where you're not letting light in constantly so

some challenges there but it's you know cool that way um so i think that's what zoos are that's what zoos do though right i mean well i mean that's what you would hope zoos do is is is trying to open that right they're moving towards bigger um naturalistic cages where you can see the animal because you know they're kind of moving towards that attitude it's not necessarily our because they've already agreed i've won this argument well that you know who can do the zoo you know who can do what a zoo can do not i i don't have that kind of room to to make a naturalistic cage for a troop of baboons or something. I was going to say, your yard isn't big enough for a herd of elephants.

Yeah, right? Yeah. It's close. But we like to view these animals and we like to be able to see them. And if you kind of go to somebody's collection and you can't see anything, it's maybe a little disappointing. So, you know, having those more simplistic setups can, can be exciting for people to see animals, get them excited about that. So there is, there is an aspect of that that's, that's, that's beneficial in that way. So, well, you got any closing statements? No, I, other than just zoos agree with me. Um,

I think I'll finish it up there. You know what I mean? Fair enough. Well, I think, you know, if to be able to, to monitor new animals, to be able to, um, accommodate larger collections, uh, simplistic setups and easily, you know, cleanable setups are definitely going to win out over naturalistic setups. That's not to say you can't have one or two really nice naturalistic setups where you can enjoy a wild type animal in its natural environment. But overall, you know, it just makes a lot more sense to have simplistic setups um so that would be my closing statement there i think space is tough for for a lot of people i mean you know unlimited space is not something most people have so i definitely get why people need to you know keep keeping rack

systems or keep more sterile you know uh easier to, easier to keep stuff. But I think, you know, like I, like I said, you know, a really well planted couple of cages in your house that just really show off the, the, you know, the, the, the potential of keeping an animal, um, you know, in, in a naturalistic environment, you know, really pops for your room. It pops, you know, it becomes a conversation piece. There's, there's a lot of, of plusesistic environment, you know, really pops for your room. It pops, you know, it becomes a conversation piece. There's, there's a lot of, of pluses to it, but, but I agree in most cases, you know, keeping a, an entire collection of animals that way is, is almost cost prohibitive for a lot of people.

Yeah. That's your dart frog reader. And about all naturalistic aquariums, I think that's kind of a cool way to go. It is. It looks expensive to me when I see it, though. Yeah, but it's not bad. Like you said, once you get it set up, it's pretty straightforward. Yeah, definitely a good discussion and one that's kind of needed. Again, there's that push towards naturalistic barbarian. And while that's not bad on its own, if you're shaming somebody for not having a naturalistic setup, then I think you're moving into dangerous territory.

Because not everybody may be able to do that properly or have the means to do it or may have too many animals to do it. And so if we're having some standard of, oh, you've got to have giant naturalistic setups for everything, or you're a monster, probably we should take a step back and say, okay, what's, what's the real motivation here behind that sentiment? You know, are you doing it for you to make yourself feel more important because you have a couple animals set up in really nice naturalistic enclosures? Um know, that's not everybody's MO. So, you know, let's kind of live and let live. Not to say that we don't want to put more information out there about naturalistic setups. And there's a lot of good information. I mean, when I was building a dart frog terrarium, I, you know, had, there was some really great information. Josh's frogs has a

wealth of information. There's a lot of different YouTube videos or papers on, you know, care sheets or whatever to kind of walk in you step-by-step through important aspects of setting up naturalistic enclosures. So, you know, the resources are out there, like you were saying, so we need to do that. But yeah, definitely a good discussion and something that, you know, we need to consider both sides and not just say, if you're not, if you're not doing it this way, then you're not doing it right. You know, cause there's a lot to keep these animals happy and healthy and, and, you know, not necessarily, not necessarily from an anthropomorphic view, but, you know, from try to look at it from their perspective as well. Sure. You know, simplifying with your, how Mahara is that, that kind of what you attributed, you know, some of your success to, because you kind of read those animals and realized, you know, maybe their stress levels were a little higher in bigger cages, even though they had plentiful hides. And you saw that I had a jungle carpet python in my early days of keeping that

was refusing food for months. You know, he went about six months without a meal because he wouldn't eat. And so I, I was cleaning his, his large spacious enclosure one day and put him in a, you know, a smaller tub to clean his big cage. And when I opened the tub to put him back in his cage, he was looking at me like, feed me, Seymour. And so I threw in a couple rodents, and he took them right away and ate to his heart's content. So he was telling me, this big cage is stressing me out.

I don't feel comfortable enough to do the basic function of feeding. And so, you know, that smaller enclosure, uh, helped him kind of, uh, kickstart. And so I, I kept him in, uh, that smaller tub enclosure for quite a while until he was regularly feeding, aggressively feeding. And then I moved him into the bigger enclosure and he, after that, so you gotta, you gotta be a student of the serpent. You gotta read your animals and, and, you know, consider their, their needs from, from their perspective. And that's a difficult task because, you know, it's, it's hard not to anthropomorphize because we're people. That's what we do. That's what we know.

Yep. We make our own stories up for whatever we want to do. So, well, sometimes it's easy to see what you want. You know what I mean? If you're really not looking for what it is and you want to see what you want to see, it's always there to see. I promise you people can find what they want to see when they want to see it. You know what I mean? So it definitely takes some patience and just kind of a really neutral opinion about things to a lot of times to really kind of hopefully make a successful insight.

And, you know, I'm not even sure any of the insights that I've made are anything. They just maybe I just had success because I've had them for a long time and and nothing that I did leading up to this would have made a hill of beans either way. It's just they've been with me long enough that they're just kind of like, all right, we're going to do this, you know, like this. captivity for wild caught stuff has a probably one of the largest factors to reproducing something. If, you know, short, short term stuff, you know, animals don't make long term decisions off a short time, you know, evaluation. So yeah, sorry, go ahead. No, being consistent with an animal is, you know, very important, especially if you've identified something, you know, a need in the animal from the animal's point of view. So, but yeah, I, you know, people have complained that we're not, you know,

tough enough or mean enough on each other. Maybe we need some kind of wrestler persona or something. Meet your grandchildren. I will go down to TJ and I will get us some Libre masks. And we can come up with wrestling names and insult each other and have a very grandiose personality on here. I'm down for that. That's fine with me.

There you go. I'll do that. All right. We'll develop our – I guess I never was into the professional, in quotes, wrestling. Yeah. So maybe that's hard for me. And you're my buddy, so it's hard to get into it too. Well, I mean, you're not going to catch me putting on a Speedo and and knee high leather boots and trying to wrestle you.

So, um, I, I, I think, yeah, you should feel safe. You don't got to worry about that with me, but, uh, but if you do need a, uh, a, a Mexican wrestling mask, I'm your guy. I guess the, you know, the overall point to all the discussions is there's two sides to every story. There's good aspects on either side. And we need to consider both sides. We need to think about both sides. So that's kind of the main goal of this is to get you to think about something that you may not have considered or you may not think about if you're in the, if you're in one camp, just strongly and dogmatically, you know, maybe you need to

kind of step back and think about why people keep, you know, things simplistically or why they keep them naturalistically, you know, because there's, there's some people that are just so firmly on one side or the other that they can't see the forest for the trees. You know, they're just gonna ridicule others for not doing it the way they're doing it. You know, it's, it's bizarre, but that happens quite a lot. And that's, that's missed opportunity. You know what I mean?

You know, for growth. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, my friend, this has been another good, good discussion. So thanks. Thanks everybody for listening and we'll hope to have some more good discussions here

in the future we've had a lot of good suggestions so if you're coming to us with suggestions be prepared we're probably going to ask you if you want to come on the podcast so have somebody in mind that you want to do battle with and debate the topic you have now it's hard too if you're on one side or the other do battle with and debate the topic you have. Now, it's hard, too, if you're

on one side or the other of the debate to debate the other side, because frankly, I like the idea of naturalistic cages. So I thought, well, I'm going to stretch it a little and take the other side on that. I kind of like the idea of sterile cages. So this was definitely an instance where we we got you you flipped the script on me even though you won the twinkot the the oh my gosh the coin toss so yeah yeah no uh people need to uh to get on here and uh duke it out with each other that'd be great man we you know i i enjoyed uh i know, all, all when guests come on and to hear them kind of go at it. I, I kinda, I kinda know where you sit. You still bring good points. I like to hear the argument from fresh perspectives. Yeah. We know each other pretty

well. So we kind of know where each other is. i guess i'm a little surprised man i still fight you oh yeah yeah we'll go the rounds no i was i was a little surprised you were uh you were on the sterile caging side i thought you were into the naturalistic so i mean i've just just, I, I, I've just, I don't know, man, every time I start to use substrates or like the more, you know, that it, it can definitely add a layer of complication in and, and I've just, you know, new, uh, like, like, um, paper towel and, and, uh, a plain water dish and, and, you know, all plastic, a little plastic, uh, perch and, and, and a plastic tub is very, you can sterilize it

very easy. It's very quick. It's great for young animals that, you know, you, you, you just, I just, I've had a lot of success with it and I think that it, it has its place. And, you know, if, you know, if we were trying to reintroduce animals back into the wild, I guess I could be like, dude, you need to set that up. So that animal doesn't freak out when, you know, hide and find a good hide. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, let it, let it kind of do some of its natural behavior before you try to re-release it.

But that's not what we're doing. So, you know. And, I mean, if you go behind the scenes, I've gone, you know, you and I have gone behind the scenes in the zoos and we see, you know, what's going on behind the displays and it's pretty simplistic. Sure.

I was shocked. Well, I guess I didn't have a very good understanding of gila monsters and we went behind the scenes of one of the zoos and they had a bunch of gila monsters in a rack system that looked like absolutely cramped and and from from an anthropomorphic point of view these these were suffering animals in tiny cages and i said what's the deal why are you keeping them these and they believe us. We, we kept them in much bigger things, but they did so much better in these simplistic cramped setups that, you know, that's the only way we could have success with them because that's what they do in the wild. They go in a burrow and they stay there. They

come out, you know, maybe for a month or two out of the year, the rest of the time they're holed up in some small area. And you know,, that's what they want. That's what they want. Well, and I remember the, there were some tree monitor cages, uh, and one of the zoos was breeding tree monitors and these cages were not very big. They were vertical, but they weren't very big and they were having great sex success breeding tree monitors. So, you know, it's, I mean, you know, conventional wisdom being the root of all evil or something like that is the same you know you you just gotta you know kind of get out of your own preconceived notions about stuff and i certainly was surprised in some of the things

that i've seen that that has led me to be like i don't know shit yeah yeah that's you know that's always the if if you think you know something you know you or you're you're very dogmatic on one issue you probably don't know a lot you know and you need to be more you're more thinking about it and you know i i guess it you know if you can you know once they explained with the helas why they did it that way it's like oh that makes perfect sense yeah of course yeah that fits with their natural history it fits in with what the animals do and you know in their natural environment so of course that makes sense so yeah you know you can see that that anthropomorphism creeping in right yeah if you just judge it based on face value and you don't realize oh they probably put a decade or more into figuring these things out or, or, or they, or they went to a hobbyist that was successful with

them and asked them, how, how do you do this? You know, how are you so successful with these things? Oh, keep them in small tubs. Oh, okay. We'll try it. And it works. And so, yeah, of course, but you know, they have to display the animals. And so they have different, and you know, I don't know. And you know, how, how bad, even, even in a zoo, I would, I would point to the sun gazer

exhibit that you see most sun gazers in, they have them in a desert environment with rocks and high heat and sand. No, they come from like a meadow they come from like a from like a cow pasture and they're digging burrows in the dirt and the temperature's dropping like down to the 60s and 50s at night and getting up into like the 90s during the day you know they come from a very different environment that but you look at them and you think, oh, spiky lizard equals desert lizard. So a lot of times we make those wrong assumptions. And that's frankly why a lot of people didn't have success. Whereas somebody like, I think as far as I know, the only ones that have bred them outside of their natural habitat, you know, just keeping them and, you know, not counting keeping in outdoor pens in South Africa was Bert Langeworth.

Because he went to South Africa and he observed them and he watched them and he said, okay, I'm going to try this. him and you know not counting keeping in outdoor pens in south africa was burt langworth because he went to south africa and he observed him and he watched him and he said okay i'm going to try this and he put him in a pasture you know and he let him dig burrows or he or he made burrows that were similar to the ones in the wild and they extended those or used those and he took temperatures and he made sure they were experiencing the right temperatures and then he like thought oh the grass is growing too high so he'd mow the burrows so they could see each other from their burrows. And he got, he got some, you know, reproductive events from, from his sun gazers. So, you know, if you consider their natural environment and you do your research, you're

probably going to do a lot better with those animals. And how bad would the public freak out if they saw rack systems and you know that's that's not what you know and and you know that's that's that goes to the whole animal welfare pieces is people who don't understand um they they think that you know uh something that looks natural is where that animal is most comfortable and they're they're kind of maybe possibly missing some nuance in that idea. So. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, natural in, if you're, if you're, if you're unaware of their natural history, you might have the wrong natural environment. So. Well, and, and, and I, I feel like, you know, it's not beneficial if it's done improperly or not according to their natural history

yeah and and you you kind of see in in keepers um a lot of them kind of get in for the morph right and and then they get interested in the natural history and then that they get interested in that natural history then they get interested in stuff like naturalistic enclosures because they start all that stuff starts to churn in the progression of of the keeper and they're like oh okay i'm i'm connecting dots here i get it i get it okay so you know i mean i think it's a you know it's a good thing but like all things in their place right yeah for sure well man, man, good topic, good discussion. Thanks for your insight into this.

And we'll try to get some more good topics coming up here soon. Some more guests as well. We've got some good ones lined up. Yeah, I don't know if you have anything that you want to say at the end here. Check out the Merlion Pythons Network shows. that you want to say at the end here, check out, uh, the Morale Python's network shows and, and, uh, you know, we've got some good, good content coming out soon from, from our, uh, the other podcasts within the umbrella of the Morale Python's network. So check them out. I think we've mentioned those on, on most of our shows, you know what they are. So go listen to them and,

and keep supporting Morale Python's network. There's also, you know, an are. So go listen to them and keep supporting Moralea Python's network. There's also, you know, an opportunity to become a patron. If you go to patron and support Moralea Python's network, I, I'm kind of ignorant on this. I'm not sure how to, I tried to do it and I kind of got lost. Maybe it's cause I'm a boomer or something. I don't know. I'm an old man. Don't know what I'm doing, but, uh, yeah, I, uh yeah i uh i'm sure uh i'm sure the podfather will straighten you out exactly he needs to show me how to do it right yeah i think i think he explained it to where i can do it but yeah go to patreon look up morelia python's radio or morelia python's network and you can become a patreon and support the podcast. And that, you know, goes to help building this podcast umbrella.

So good stuff. All right, Dr. J. Always a pleasure. Thanks, everybody. Yeah. Thanks for listening. Catch you later. so Thank you.