Reptile Fight Club - Pet shops and big species w/Mitchell Hodgson

Episode Date: February 11, 2023

Justin and Chuck tackle the most controversial topics in herpetoculture. The co-hosts or guests take one side of the issue and try to hold their own in a no-holds-barred contest of intellect. Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!In this episode, Justin and Chuck tackle the topic of Pet shops and big species with Mitchell HodgsonWho 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

All right, welcome to another episode of Reptile Fight Club. Thanks for joining us. I'm Justin Julander, your host, and with me, as always, Chuck Bolman. What's going on? Hey, yo! Oh, not much. How are you? Doing all right. Yeah, I can't complain. Nice. We've got a special guest from down under today, so Mitchell Hodgson. Did I pronounce that right? Let's see.

Yeah, that was pretty good, yeah. I can't complain at all, so well done. Most people either overdo the E or... Welcome to the show. Thanks for being here. Yeah, thank you, guys. It's always a fun challenge trying to get all the schedules aligned, especially when you're half the planet away.

So, yeah, thanks for making the time. Yeah, no, thanks again. Yeah, it's a good reason to get up nice and early on a Sunday morning. Yeah, that's what everybody likes to do, right? Get up early on Sunday morning. I feel like you achieve something in a day, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's another, you know, another thing why I can't sleep in is I just feel like

I'm wasting a weekend. You know, like if I sleep half the day on a Saturday, it's like, oh man, it's already over. And now I got to go back to work. So I don't know. I like to maximize. It's weird though. As I get older, my mind says yes, but my body says no oh man it's fun getting old yeah yeah well what's uh what's going on uh reptile wise you guys having any uh i guess you're you're kind of on the on the downside of the season right uh in australia mitchell oh no well mine's still going, I guess, ballistic, for lack of a better term. I've sort of intentionally, what's the best way of saying it? Like I've sort of not wrapped up, but I've definitely scaled back the amount of things I'm intentionally breeding. So I've still got lots of animals that I'm keeping as pets and, you know,

I still like animals that just want to hang around and things like that. But I haven't actually been intentionally breeding but i've had a lot of things that have bred um either like particularly geckos so i've had um uh golden tail geckos so strephorus um some boyds forest dragons um oedura geckos like a heap of geckos that haven't actually incubated but they've hatched in the tank. And so I found babies running around. Oh yeah. So I've been dealing with a lot of those unexpected things. Cause I was like,

Oh, I knew she was grabbing. I thought the eggs were just gone. Yeah. Gone off. But, um, that's a good sign of a good case.

Good enclosure, right? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, it's been great. Especially the, um,

uh, the golden tails. I've had four so far hatchet in there um and same with the boys of i literally had no idea that the eggs for the boys were viable um and i have the small hole or had a small hole i should say in the top of the cage um and i found this baby boys running across the floor in the room with a tank. So I was like, Hmm, where did that come from? Yeah. But no,

other than that, I've had a few live bearers that I knew were going to go as well. So Cunninghams and Lightfolder skinks. So yeah, it's been, it's like, I used to breed a lot more, but just with work and like,

particularly, I guess trying to find, like, I don't have the time to find good homes for stuff. So I just don't intentionally breed it anymore. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's a tricky thing. It's just too much of a challenge. Yeah, we're kind of facing the same thing here. We always have those market fluctuations of when times get tight and people aren't spending their extra money on reptiles, they're spending it on food or gas.

You don't have much of a choice. You just kind of have to scale back or or keep you know the stuff you have but i don't know that's why i've kind of kept a you know more of a small scale you know hobbyist breeder type thing rather than going professional or something whatever but yeah it's a trick yeah you know i mean it's all scales right as well like it's uh a lot of people in australia like the u.s you know, it blows me away when we sort of see the scale of stuff you guys have going over there because your small scale is like, and I'm not saying you particularly, but just generally. Sure.

U.S. small scale is like a commercial breeder in Australia. Yeah, yeah. That's true. It's just so different. But, yeah, we've got, what, 10 times the population, and so that makes a big difference if you have a limited pool of people who are interested in buying. And, you know, I think, you know, I think around the world, reptiles are rising in popularity as pets and more households are keeping reptiles, which is, which is exciting, you know, because I like, I don't know, you always hear reptile shows,

you know, oh, I'd love to keep a snake, but my mom or my dad won't let me and they're afraid of it. And so I think that's kind of diminishing a little, and now you hear more kids being able to get those pets and be able to keep them. So it's kind of cool. Well, as I say, I was very much like my, uh, my mom was very anti snakes, uh, like very, um, uh, she sort of had like regional upbringing like she's from the city but had lived regionally and stuff and you know that attitude in australia is very anti-snake you know like the classic she wasn't a strong any the only good snakes are dead snake which is a

pretty common expression here in australia i don't know if it is in the u.s but yeah yeah but she definitely was anti-snake and uh eventually after however many lizards she's like maybe and then i just bought the snake anyway yeah um it's a legless lizard actually yeah exactly like um and just after having this diamond python that you know once it got too big to hide um i sort of put it in like a centered part of the house um just walking past it every day, like totally sort of, I guess, broke down those barriers, you know, like seeing it's not a psychotic killing machine that's trying to kill you every three minutes. I think particularly with like all of the outreach stuff on social media and things

like that, like we have a lot of these really good snake ID groups where people, you know, from all these areas where they've got these terrible ideas about snakes, put up a photo and then, you know, like a ridiculously dedicated team of admins will actually ID, actually idea give them information walk them through like it's all leading to positive change across the board so that's cool um yeah it's nice to see that you know people like reptiles like us or more people yeah uh well that's yeah it's hopefully it keeps going up and we see more and more people getting into it and you know i think the attitudes of kind of that, uh, everybody needs to be a big time breeder changing a little bit as well. People realize, you know, I don't need to necessarily do this as my full-time job and maybe I keep it as a hobby. And we talked about that last week a bit, you know, like staying smaller

two weeks ago, whatever, when is what, but, uh, yeah. Uh, I don't know. I, I, I just, I, I enjoy, you know, breeding and seeing the babies hatch out and kind of the challenge of getting them going and stuff like that. So it keeps, keeps life interesting when you're working with reptiles, but I've also got my room so I can keep everything if nobody's buying or if I'm a lazy advertiser, which I most certainly am. So, yeah. Oh, I feel you there. Yeah. I literally go through runs where I'm like, okay, time to sit down one evening and put up all the things I just haven't been bothered to put up.

And then when you put up 20 ads, you get 200 responses, you know, and then you're like, yeah, which one is which? Yeah, exactly. Have I sold that one? I don't know. Where am I? Exactly. Have I sold that one? I don't know. Where am I? It's like, oh, how much is the – or do you still have the dragon for sale? It's like, which dragon?

There's eight ads up. And I feel like the multitude of questions are other things that come with just one ad. Ads like multiple layers underneath just one person inquiring about one ad and then you get 200. So you really have like 700 different things you have to do off of 200 people. Yeah. Maybe that's why I don't post many ads, but sorry guys. Yeah. We're kind of in the breeding stage right now.'s uh winter here so it's you know nice and cold outside we've been getting a lot of snow lately so that's been have you been skiing oh yeah i went up boarding last night it was it was beautiful like just

floating across that powder you know it's a great great feeling but um so i saw a pair of pygmy pythons locked up a couple of days ago. So that was encouraging. I missed on those last year. And so we'll see how they go this year. But I've got a couple of females paired up. So we'll see how. You had two clutches the year prior though, right? Yeah.

Or at least a clutch not last year but the year before and then the year before that as well that's right yeah when we moved into you've been pretty yeah the new the new house was really good for for that first year but then second year i don't know if i i probably left them too warm during the breeding season and so they just didn't get that cooling or stimulation or whatever so i changed things up a little and it looks like it's doing something. Maybe all the storms too, you know, storms rolling through promoting that breeding activity, but saw a few, you know, Stimpsons and, and Western stems, Eastern stems, you know,

locked up. So yeah, things are moving in the right direction. The blackhead female looks like she's gravid. I think she's ovulating. We got eggs on the way. So hopefully I can do better with them this year. I've been chatting with a few Australian friends trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong and how to improve my success rate there. So hopefully we can get more blackheads hatched out. Do you feel like you've made some gains as far as what to do different? I think so. i think one of the big things was putting the male in earlier where she's ovulating so early in the in the season you just had your you just

had your timing off yeah yeah i think that was a big part of it to get you know good viable strong eggs and then the other part's just working out my incubation you know mechanism that's that's a challenge i mean i don't know maybe australians don't seem to have a problem with that i don't know if there's some inbreeding depression going on but yeah it's we have a hard time hatching them i can't remember it's blackheads i know one of the might be blackheads or worms i'm not so full credit i have only ever bred snakes once and i've bred brown tree snakes it's anything i've read or ever invested interest in to try and breed snake wise lizards as usual but um but uh yeah with the aspergillus i'm pretty sure a lot

of people do like dryer incubation i always remember that being something that people talk about here all the time and yet yeah um and like that being a big trick is like you know if you do it too wet they just don't go where they get moldy. Well, there are some people I remember, I barely remember someone not even putting any water in, like maybe a splash of water or something once and having five legs, um,

whether that's a, you know, end of one, right? Like maybe they just have like, you can actually could survive anything, you know, you can,

they still hatch out. Um, but, uh, yeah, no, they seem like that. – you definitely hear people have, I would say, issues, but certainly from what I've seen, blackheads are more tricky when he is still – once people get the eggs,

they seem like they go okay, but, yeah. Okay. Well, yeah, that's one of the big changes I'm making is, you know, drier incubation and less ventilation, things like that. But then, of course, later'm making is, you know, drier incubation and, um, less, less ventilation, things like that. But then of course, later in incubation, you know, making sure the humidity isn't too like airing them out every day and things like that towards the end. So see if that works, but yeah. Well, good luck, dude. Thanks. Yeah. Fingers crossed. She looks like she's going to dump a bunch of eggs or,

um, I mean, she looks full. I haven't really, she looks pretty good. Yeah. I did a chat with, uh, one of the, uh, herpetology professors up on campus. She, uh, Susanna friend, she's really doing some cool research on, you know, Island, uh, iguanas, some of the, um, like the, Oh, Caribbean Island iguanas. So some cool stuff there and but she's i i went and chatted with her in her office about uh um ultrasound equipment and trying to figure out maybe i could you know pick something up but she's like oh yeah come bring a snake in you can use our stuff anytime you want and all that kind of stuff so So see if, see how easy it is. See how, you know, cause I don't know, it's one, you know, one more thing to add and where we're, you know,

we're all busy and got other stuff and you know, am I really going to use it if I bought an ultrasound? So it's, it's probably good to do a test drive, see, see if I can do that. But I think I just, I like the idea of scientifically just kind of tracking things and, you know, kind of having an understanding of what's going on. Your brain can't resist that. Yeah, exactly. But then again, I have a lot of ideas and, you know, some not much follow through. You know, it's like I'm here to enjoy these things. I don't want to be tracking all this data.

But then at the same time, I'm like, I want to collect the data so i can make graphs and charts i don't know so it's kind of a two-way thing i guess nothing wrong with a little spitballing there you go but it would be it'd be fun first-hand data for the complete aspidarties yeah right there you go right that might be uh forthcoming we'll see it's a business expense yeah exactly there you go all right that might be uh forthcoming we'll see it's a business expense yeah exactly there you go yeah well and yeah that's that's obviously like you know the the idea is uh not having to pay taxes on the money i'm making from the reptile so buying uh stuff through the business or going over to australia that's how i like to spend that business money so research purposes exactly you gotta you gotta you know see him in the wild to be an expert or whatever so

yep but cool so you're in uh sydney right sydney area or uh yes yeah yeah so i um yeah at the moment i'm actually down in our nation's capital can Canberra. Oh, cool. But generally, I am in Sydney. Yeah, gotcha. That's a cool spot. You know, I've done a little bit. I spent some time up with Peter Birch in Arimba and stuff. On the central coast. Yeah, yeah.

It's a cool, like, Sydney's good, especially herping. Well, it depends. When you've grown up here and seen a lot of stuff you kind of get tired of it but sydney's great in the sense that like once you get across the hawksbury river which is the sort of big river north of sydney which is where peter is on the rimbar you start to get all these northern not northern but like the sort of mid-north coast species start to creep in so you see angle heads and you get a bunch of different like um alapid species usually sort of start picking up there so you get like um on theheads and you get a bunch of different like a lapid species usually sort of start picking up there.

So you get like on the central coast, you get rough scale snakes, you get Stevens banded snakes, all these really cool sort of a lapids. While in Sydney, you get, you know, things like the broadhead, which is a Sydney endemic. Like it's just a nice sort of little melting pot of a lot of cool herbs. Not to say that other regions aren't, but like there's certainly worse places to be. Yeah, that's for sure. I guess anywhere in Australia seems pretty nice right now, especially. I wouldn't mind getting over there soon. But we've got a trip planned for June to go look for green trees.

Oh, beauty, yeah. I guess that's an okay time to go up there and check them out before you know, but before it gets too dry and not, but it's not too wet to get up there. So you don't want to get stuck there in the wet. Yeah. I mean, supposedly like I haven't done like Cape York, but you hear people trying to rush out before the rains come. Cause they want to get stuck up there. So yeah. I went 2010 was the last time I've been up there. So good, you know, 13 years ago. So I'm excited to get back up there. And I was very happy to hear that a lot of the road is sealed now rather than dirt roads. I'm excited about that because that's a rough drive from Cairns up north. So that should be fun yeah cool well you get to revisit areas and uh see where they finally resealed roads i've done um for work i've been out to western new south wales a couple of times and

progressively one of the big roads out there has become more and more sealed that's like thank god yeah yep i i was uh fascinated by the half sealed roads where you're like driving along and all of a sudden it goes yeah it's like on off yeah or it goes down to one lane and you're driving this one lane and all of a sudden the car's coming towards you and you're like wait what do we do you know what's the protocol here i i didn't i don't know about these roads and then i see the car go kind of one wheel off the sealed part and so i go one wheel off and we pass each other and then i see a truck coming so i go one wheel off and we pass each other and then i see a truck coming so i go one wheel off and he's not doing one wheel off i'm like oh yeah you just plow through like

you get out of the way if it's a truck exactly yeah you you get out of the way so yeah i bet they don't even slow down huh yeah right yeah and and you know being used to driving on the right side of the road not the correct side necessarily but the the right side yeah and then having to switch over to left especially if it's a dirt road you know i yeah so is is is when it goes you know paved or sealed unsealed like is it sketchy like you're driving at speed and then all of a sudden you're like oh my gosh it's dirt yeah oh yeah i mean it can it can be a little yeah pretty pretty dangerous if you're not paying attention i could definitely see if you you know yeah had different moist soils or something like that where you're like yeah i almost got caught in a river uh doing one of the crossings uh up towards

like it goes like right through a river yeah yeah so you're driving on a dirt road and then all of a sudden dirt road's going through a riverbed and and and i you know i haven't done a lot of riverbed crossings in a vehicle and so i'm i'm starting in like i got three guys screaming different things at me speed up slow down no go this way i'm like oh crap so i start getting bogged down a little and i barely made it you know get across and i'm like okay i'm done i'm out somebody else drives yeah so yeah turn it over to alan rapashi he's a driver oh yeah he's a driver a thing where we were herping in um like northwestern new south wales but that exact sort of thing where it was like this road looks good and there'd been a lot of rain in the area so we turned down this road and it had kind of just turned to slush.

Like, it looked fine, but the road just, like, no traction, and the car was... Like, as soon as your tires got into it, you're done. Yeah, and it was kind of like, as soon as there was some traction, it was, and we're going to do a U-turn now, and then we're going to go all the way back. It's like, everyone, just be quiet. We're going to get there, but be quiet. Yeah, quiet everyone yeah we were out in the middle of western australia just like on this dirt road um where were we going we were going from like newman over to um some mining town with a strange

name but anyway we it's it's dirt road and all of a sudden we come to this place and it's just water mud you know across the the whole road and uh i was like and we were in like this hippie van you know no no great four-wheel drive or anything so all of a sudden we see this mining truck coming the other way so we're like oh good you know we can kind of cross and if we get stuck there's somebody here to help us because we hadn't seen anybody else on this road. And so we start to get going and they just plow through, like just whip past us. No, don't even wave, you know, just gone. And we're like, oh, I guess we're not going to have help if we get stuck. So and we we kind of went around, went around, went through the mud and it was OK. We made it through. But I was like, oh, crap.

Now we're going to get stuck, you know, beyond that was a clear message right yeah yeah i got it on your own got some fun yeah car stories out in the middle out in the middle of the outback which are yeah so i was just gonna say i do feel like you know uh us americans westerners are very spoiled because you know i guess there are parts of the united states where it's pretty isolated if your car breaks down but i mean literally like in australia i feel like you have to be able to solve your own fucking problems in the middle of fucking nowhere so like preparedness and being able to do things is important. Do you know what I mean? So that's not my, that's not my wheelhouse.

I don't know much about self rescue. Yeah, exactly. Get out the YouTube and look up how to do something. But yeah, that's about it. Yeah. Oh,

I, I'm, I'm anxious to get back over there. I love your country. It's good stuff. It's a good spot. Hey, I mean, it's's a good spot, hey? I mean, it's one of those things, right, a lot of Australians,

and I think actually a lot of people don't take it for granted, but really like, and I know I guess it's probably more of a herpetoculture rather than herping and herpetophore in general, but we have some pretty damn amazing stuff here. I'm a big deserts person. I absolutely love the deserts and just the diversity of things we have in our deserts are amazing and you know just the diversity landscapes we have right like we've got we've got alpine regions like where i am at the

moment sort of the start of our alpine regional alpine region people listen can't see my air quotations but like you know yeah it's not like overseas, but then we've got, you know, these wonderful deserts, the tropics, tropical rainforests, tropical savannahs, subtropical rainforests. You have all these different amazing species that fill all these different nations. So, yeah, we've got some cool stuff here. Yeah, I'd say heaven on earth is in the Pilbara. That's my favorite spot. Karajini, oh, man. That was a little surprising to hear.

Going over and seeing some of these things and then finding out that my good friends in Australia haven't seen those or haven't been to that spot. And you're like, what? You live here. Just fly over to Western Australia. Just go do it. Go see it. I think that's here too. I'll do it one day. I can do it one day. Yeah. I can do it one day. You just never do. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think, you know, Chuck and I and some of our friends have been getting into more regional herping here with COVID and shutting everything down. It's like maybe we should check out the stuff in our own backyard.

You know, I haven't seen all these species that are a state away. And here I am trying to fly to Australia to tick off all their species that are a state away and here i am trying to fly to australia to tick off all their you know species and so yeah it's been a lot of fun getting out into arizona or california and seeing there's nothing wrong with that either yeah yeah it's true it's true yeah walk into bubblegum okay folks like yeah exactly so yeah i i guess the the answer is get out and hurt regardless of where you are, where you're going. Just get out and see nature and see the things you're keeping in boxes. And, you know, so you don't think everything comes from a deli cup or something.

Yeah, I mean, it's really like changing. Right. Like I know everyone talks about it, but like when you actually and I mean, so when started, my herp sort of path was very much like I got into keeping. I just had the – I saw, like, a TV show or something where they talked about, like, reptiles as pets. And then also the other thing we can have here are a few native mice species in my state. So, like, state by state, as I'm sure everyone's probably aware, like, Australia's regulations vary considerably from all manner of different

paths, but in my state, at least New South Wales, you can only keep two native mice species. And so I was interested in getting these mice and a lizard, but I ended up going to like a sort of backyard pet shop thing and getting both of them and sort of diving off the deep end from there. But I went probably like four years of keeping before i even like actually cared about seeing anything in the wild and then you know i started slowly seeing things and um that was when i sort of like really got into my phd and was looking for one species in

particular um and then from there um i got into a bunch of different work and things like that and started seeing all these different species and seeing things i'd kept and you know things that i would was considering keeping and it just changes your whole perspective like how you set them up what actually interests you like after seeing certain species in the wild um i said wow these are like a you know different from person to person right but like there are certain things that i would never have considered being good captives that i'm like wow i'd love to actually keep this one day yeah and then you know there are certain dream species here that people keep that i personally have kept and think of the most miserable species i've kept yeah you know like it's kind of like you know you only know

until you've kept it but um yeah i think seeing a lot of the stuff in the wild um really changes your perspective on what you want to keep and everything like that. And I know people go on about it, but I know it's a really good motivation for people to go out and see it and actually evaluate. Do I want to keep this? How do I want to keep this, et cetera, et cetera. Great ones, Luke from the Aussie Herb Podcast, like his perspective changed entirely when he found the wild gillons. And you talk about everyone that was on that herb trip and when they sort of talk about like where the gillans was in the tree how big the tree was you know all the dimensions how hot the tree was on the inside

versus the outside like all these different aspects it's kind of like you know re uh rejude the passion for the species but be you know gave you a lot of thoughts about how he should be keeping it you know and i think that's probably the next stage of her keeping, right? Like it's not just buying a new species to feel that I want something new in my life. It's changing around a tank or doing something to make it more fun. You know what I mean? Like we're changing out tact, I think collectively as a community. Yeah. It's encouraging to see that too, that movement towards, you know,

bigger caging more. I mean, you're, you're a great example. if you're hatching out things in the environment, you know, in the enclosure. That's a good sign of a well-set-up environment. And, you know, that's what we should be shooting for and striving for is something that tricks them into thinking they're in a suitable environment to lay their eggs and have them hatch and things like that. So that's encouraging and i mean in also i guess you rarely see that with academics where they you know they study the animals and also are good keepers i i was surprised you know reading rick shine's book and seeing that he just didn't succeed much with keeping stuff in in enclosures and things so that was uh that was kind of funny to see, but yeah. I, um, so my current job is actually at a Rick's old institution.

So I'm currently at the university he was based at. Um, but, um, and I work in another research group there, but, um, it's kind of cool. You've got like, uh, when Rick finished up there, he moved a lot of his stuff out. There's a lot of his legacy stuff that's still around. So like a lot of the, they've got, we've got like old racking units that we use to maintain like babies of the lizards we work on. But a lot of them have like the, we have like ID cards and ethics cards and things like that from like,

you know, if you've got an animal in there, you need to identify and all that sort of stuff. But they're from a lot of Rick's old projects with like students. And there's like his old snake room where he used to keep all the snakes that he worked on um you know it's just cool seeing all these things where you're like wow this is the foundational stuff of a lot of things we read right yeah yeah as far as uh academics go man i don't know that anybody can touch his track record and publication record. I mean, the guy is prolific and just did a lot of great things. And I love reading his.

A machine. Yeah. Right. So I guess that would kind of bring us in. Let's have you introduce, you know, yourself and where you fit into herped culture and kind of. Yes. Sorry. I realize we've changed it.

No, no. It's great. It's been a great discussion. Yeah. Horrible tangenta and chatter. It's been a great discussion. A horrible tangenta and chatter. That's what we like here. You're a high place. Good company.

So yeah, I started keeping it, I think, 2014, somewhere around there. And so my main interest was primarily lizards. And that was when I sort of had a lot more time lived at home had more disposable income etc etc um and so i fell into i guess what i would call the trap a lot of people do where you rapidly balloon and buy everything you want um and you find a cage for it and yeah my perspectives changed a lot like i still sort of use basically a very similar space but i have a lot less animals and a lot bigger cages, and I feel a lot happier about it. So, yeah, but I've kept more species than I really want to admit,

at least Australian species. And, yeah, so part of the reason as well I thought I'd recommend the topic that we're going to chat about was that I actually worked in a pet shop throughout my PhD, or prior to and throughout my PhD. Wow. So I worked there for about five years. Yeah. So I kind of saw a lot of,

and I think this is something that the reptile community don't fully appreciate is the really clear distinction between, or distinctions. It's almost like these boxes right you've got your commercial at least in the us we have them to a degree but not the same but like your commercial industrial massive breeder yeah um you've got your hobbyist which is probably where i'd peg yourself say justin like in that hobbyist thing where you're small batch breeding yeah you've got your passion projects but there are things that are probably like viable financially and blah,

blah, blah. But your focus is like your passion money is good on the side, but it's not like an industrial breeder where it's like an operation where, you know, everything needs to be a machine because you've got 10,000 snakes. But then the final box that we usually totally neglect as a community is the pet keeper, you know, and this is, you know, little Johnny who's going to get his first bearded dragon his first um i guess our equivalent of your corn snake would be a children's python or anteresia so that's like a common starter snake species for most people yeah um or morelia um but you know they're going to get their first python they don't care about

all of the crap they don't care that it's a hit they don't care any all of the crap. They don't care that it's a hit. They don't care any of that sort of stuff. If it's a pretty-looking marble, they're like, that snake's pretty. If it's a pretty-looking T-positive, that snake's pretty. If it's an ugly-ass-looking spotted python that's brown and doesn't do anything and bites a lot, they don't want it. It's all about that individual animal that's going to be their pet that they're going to watch for the next 20 years, you know, like, and so I think it's something that a lot of people kind of neglect is that

whole different perspective. And, you know, like for us as a keeper, you know, I don't know what the prices are in the U S but like people who want to do everything on a budget could set up a full snake, like raising enclosure, like 20 bucks sort of thing, you know, like 30 bucks, you know, if you're really cutting every corner, buying your heat metal he caught from like a dodgy importer um all that sort of stuff but like you know it's a whole different market where these people will invest a small fortune into raising this animal so they'll buy a very fancy setup to go off the ball and they're ready to like fully commit to this and so it's sort of like experiencing that firsthand throughout, you know, this five-year period where I worked at the shop,

it just made me realize that like when the community, the herd community go on about like, oh, this is how this should be, or this is a great pet for people or blah, blah, blah. And also seeing how irresponsible some people that come in to get pets are. It just makes you realize that like, i think people need to be better especially like large-scale breeders who probably breed stuff and ultimately sell the pet shops and that certainly happens here in australia and i know it definitely happens in the us you've got like a number of uh what's my wording here correctly uh not necessarily mills but like

yeah yeah large-scale breeding operations let's go with that um where people are just totally disconnected from the animal like the end product you know where the animal goes um and so yeah it just got me out to a list of perspective about like the pet industry and uh what it means for our community because it is a lifeblood right like if a herb keeper wants something it's not going happen. Like the pet industry doesn't care what hobbyists want. Yeah. If a pet keeper wants it, say for instance, red bulbs which have been thoroughly debunked now for several years for their

use, but you know, they're commercially viable. So they keep manufacturing the living hell out of them. So it's one of those things where they are the impetus behind a lot of innovation in our community. Yeah. At least product wise, market driving, all this sort of stuff. And us, the 20% at the top that love all these animals and are keeping all the freaky stuff, don't give them the credit they're due. Or criticize them where it's required, which is kind of where the point of today's discussion comes in.

There you go so so real quick just um i you know so as far as like um you know here uh a lot of our our pet shops i would say you know people like justin and maybe myself who are like more small batch breeders we do have quite a bit of, of, uh, you know, move through into those pet shops. A lot of what I see comes from guys who get stuff, breed stuff and then sell it back to the pet shops, uh, just to kind of like, as a simple way to move animals. Is that, is that kind of the same or is it more of a, how does, how does it kind of work in where you're at?

Again, it really differs, um, due to the States. So, uh, how does, how does it kind of work in where you're at? Again, it really differs, um, due to the States. So, uh, not only do we have different, um, legislation for what can be kept,

how it needs to be kept record keeping, et cetera, or I shouldn't say legislation, uh, regulation, um, between the different States. Um,

we also have like varying degrees of, uh, what pet shops can do and so for instance or if they can operate so for instance tasmania you can't commercially like there's no commercial operation of live animal or live reptile sales down there their system is actually literally like you apply for a permit to go catch it from the bush and you can keep six of every species on that list if you want to keep snakes because those snakes they have down there are venomous, you've got to do some extra loopholes. While, for instance, say South Australia is probably the loosest one.

So South Australia has basically got like a prescriptive list, or they've got an exempt list, so things that don't require a license. They've got a basic list of things that are considered easy to keep, high numbers, not threatened in the wild. So you just pay your 50 bucks and you go get your license from the regulator and you can keep those species. They can all be sold in pet shops that have a basic approval. And then they have what's called the specialist list,

and that includes every species you can get legally. So that specialist list, you know, if I, um, I'm trying to think of something obscure, but like a white-lipped Python. So we do have white-lipped Pythons in Australia, um, or in for captive trade. Um, you know, if I've got a white-lipped Python, that's not on any of those predefined lists. So I would apply to the, um, regulator and say, hello, this is my white-lipped Python. This is its legal source.

Could I please buy this snake? They give you your little permit. You go sweet and you go buy it. But the thing with that is, is that their pet shops operate in a similar scheme. So they can all sell, I think, exempt as long as they've got a pet shop license. Then they've got this basic list of, you know, or this exempt list

they can sell in the basic list with, like, bearded dragons, enteresia, morelia, blah, blah, blah. And then they can apply for the specialist, which means that they can, as long as they're approved as a pet shop with this specialist permit, they can sell anything. And so I don't mean this in a bad way. It's just a comment on it. But we did have a pet shop doing an essay that was selling a Perenti.

So, like, you know, you can rock out. And obviously I hope they would have exercised care in who they sold it to. But it to but you know like you can rock up to a pet shop and buy a guarantee again because that regulation they are on the you know you need a specialist permit to buy them but yeah um well here in new south wales we're only allowed not even 15 species in pet shops but 15 taxa so there's pretty strong rules about um they've actually cracked or not cracked down but like for instance um carpet pythons uh when they brought the pet shop legislation in they had huge fears that um diamond pythons were just going to be wild caught from the bush relentlessly and laundered into pet shops so they refused to license pet shops to sell diamond pythons so

new south wales pet shops can sell imbricata so southwest carpets which are almost non-existent on the non-existent on the east coast yeah so we can't sell diamonds which are one of the most common ones here so um it just comes down to sort of the i wouldn't say the whims of regulators but just and the problem is is the turnover time these things you know yeah these reviews and these things take decades to get going. And usually it's only a minute change. So, yeah, it really varies from rule to rule. But with all of that said, coming back to your question, Chuck, because I know it's a tangent, but I wanted to give the sort of –

No, no, you – that's exactly – you just answered exactly what I was really driving at is how does it kind of work for you guys? And so it varies quite a lot in the sense that in the, um, say my state, usually there is a few bigger breeders that will supply pet shops, you know, or even small batch breeders that will supply pet shops, but that's because they can build a really good relationship because they can only sell anteresia. So you know, you find people that can breed anteresia in the numbers you want in good quality, good health, disease-free, et cetera, et cetera. And so you work with these people to, you know, get these animals in,

arrangement, these people connected, blah, blah, blah. Same with bearded dragons, all that sort of stuff, like the typical geckos. You know, they usually work on a small batch scheme. Now, in the other states being South Australia and Queensland, and I don't know too much about NT's pet shop sector nor WA's, they do have a larger list of species that can be sold in their pet shops and sort of more into the hobbyist territory rather than the pet keeper territory. And with that, I think there's less connection to the end user. You know, they know the people they're buying off and they bet them and obviously make sure they're not going to get themselves in trouble from, you know, buying something illegal or buying something unwell.

But because of the diversity of species they can buy, there's a lot more just buying anything from whoever's got whatever available. And that's just an observation of mine. Like, you know, oh, there's five stores monitors available. I'll buy all five of them for my pet shop and then we'll be selling stores monitors next week. Oh, there's, you know, 30 Oedura Marmorata available. Let's sell Oedura Marmorata this week.

You know, like it just really comes down to what's available, them getting it in, throwing a markup on it, selling the equipment, making their profit margin, rather than having an ongoing professional relationship. Though some of them do, and I know certain pet shops in those states that do have ongoing relationships with people that breed strange and like not strange but you know more hobbyist species rather than true what is your typical pet species so and and what one last question that those specialty permits that allow people to sell you know kind

of pretty much the the the uncommon or anything hard to get, uh, for, for a pet shops, uh, very scrutinized or, uh, so all of the pet shops have, uh, in all the States from what I understand. And again, I'm most familiar with New South Wales and I know a bit about the other ones. Um, there is scrutiny. So, and it depends where you draw the line at what is good scrutiny, but like the New South Wales, they have to sit a test. So the pet shops applying have to get, do a test that sort of says, you know, we know the fundamentals and supposedly it really is just the raw fundamentals of like, you know, reptiles need heat, uh, you know, give them water. What are the rules? And we've got like, um, uh, a code of practice,

which I don't know if you guys really have them in the U S I assume so, but like basically it's a code of practice for how a pet shop needs to operate, and if you breach that code of practice, I should say with respect to reptiles, so this is the regulator, the environmental regulator with this code of practice, but minimum cage size for display, minimum housing requirements, minimum record-keeping requirements, blah, blah, blah. If you breach these, you can be fined. And then the pet shops here, again in New South Wales, get audited a lot more frequently.

So they actually have auditors that go through and make sure that everything's, you know, in a good standing animal welfare-wise. You know, they check the record books to make sure that the record keeping's all on point, all that sort of stuff. So I wouldn't say it's hard to get them at least here. I think there is definitely a bit of a step up and it's not something you can just get a whim and you can't just start up a reptile pet shop with no consideration here and that license fee i've heard is like killer the commercial license

fee is killer in new south wales but um there are checks and balances but you know i think a bad operator could still sneak through ultimately for the other states, I think you have to do a similar sort of thing where you've got to convince the regulator that you are competent in being able to sell. And so, for instance, like in the example I gave with the Perentis, I know having spoken to the people at that shop that they've got a permit that says open varinid. So as long as they've legally acquired any varinid,

they can legally sell it to someone with an appropriate license to own that varinid. That covers a lot of ground too with all the – That is a lot of ground. Yeah, all the varinids. Although I think most Australians would come here and look at our pet trade and be like, Yankee, Cowboys, aye, aye, aye, crikey, whatever, because it's pretty uh i mean it is chalk and cheese between our two right yeah like just before the show started like we've got a couple of big things and for instance probably our most sketchy snakes are probably for size wise is probably scrubbies and we're pretty well internally regulated as a community you know like there's the idea that you

know gets a scrubby somehow and you're like this is a terrible decision you know like how did you get here blah blah blah but most people that breed like scrub pythons are pretty on top of who they sell them to you know yeah and they don't breed prolifically like they have large clutches but like yeah it's a really well internally managed species for us well other things like lace monitors here aren't nearly as white you know to be totally frank i'd be happy if most of the lace monitors here were legally exported to the us because they're probably going to get better homes than 90 of the mouth breathers that get them here you know like there are just some absolute idiots that buy them and like we always joke about it with like the large and medium monitors because it gets to two years old and

it's that size where it's like oh i can't keep it in a four-foot tank anymore and suddenly all of these monitors all at the same time like you know back to back go up for sale yeah because all these people just realize they need like an avery or something big yeah um so and you know the u.s is just like it did my head in that you guys sell iguanas in pet shops like green iguanas yeah i feel the same way yeah i think i think you're giving us too much credit sending uh lace monitors here because yeah we do the same thing with yeah green iguanas with yeah all these different species so and we can we can get into that a bit more with the with the fight but i i have a couple additional questions for you you know i'm interested in you you know, have you completed your PhD?

Are you working on that now? Yes. Yeah, okay. You're done there. So I got – oh, jeez, what's the term? I'm having a blank. Like it was approved just over 12 months ago. Okay, okay.

Cool. Nice. Congratulations. And then what was your research topic? So I worked on sort of how evolution and plasticity shape, like the thermal physiology of a common lizard species here. So basically I looked at a whole heap of different, or I did a bunch of experiments and field studies looking at how the physiology

of this species, um, was shaped by different evolutionary and like sort of experienced life factors. So, um, I looked at a lot of climate stuff. Yeah. Um,

I did, um, I actually, so one of them, like one of my projects, which is interviewing, uh, I know you've spoken about it,

um, previously just about journals and impact factors and things like that. But for the general field, I've got one that's in, well, I've got the review back and I need to do a lot of work, but it's in a pretty high impact journal for our field. So that was a project that was partially inspired by keeping reptiles at home and seeing things.

So there's a case to be made there about the benefit of, you know, having pet reptiles and being able to see something. I wonder if I tested this experimentally, what actually means yeah that's very cool that's that's exciting to hear too that you can you know translate that uh keeping experience into a project that's really really uh cool what what species was it that you were looking at yeah so the it's called the jackie dragon oh yeah yeah and popularist muricatus. Yeah. Very common. Yeah. Um, sort of gray again. Well,

no, you get some colorful ones. Actually there's red, red colored ones and greeny ones. Yeah. Uh, you know, it's not like a fluorescent bearded dragon,

but you know, they're, they're attractive in their own right. That's very cool. Um, but yeah, so I worked on those guys and then my current job, I'm working on,

um, the evolution of by the parody. Okay. So like live birth in reptiles. And so we're using – Australia's got several. Pardon me. Sorry, just one second. Sorry for those who didn't say.

I just needed to cough. I'm working on the evolution of viviparity. So we've got several species here that have what's called bimodal reproduction. So some individuals in the same species from certain populations display egg laying, and then same species, different populations display live birth. And so of those, I think we've got three here, three reported. Two are well-known, and I'm working on the more too well-known ones. But we actually know that they've also got an intermediate stage as well so it's kind of like a uh or it's it's viewed as a transitional step between um oviparity so

egg laying and viviparity so the embryos uh still eggs they're laid as an egg but they're a lot further along in development so like instead of seeing for those that have seen you know a reptile leg you see that sort of red ring on the egg um Instead of seeing that, you see a developed embryo. Like there's a little eye that's already formed and there's a little baby skink in there already. That's similar to, I think Dale DiNardo did a lot of studies with children's pythons and saw that they were laid at like stage 12 or whatever stage it is, you know. And you could see the little embryo with the stage it is, you know, and they, and you could see the little embryo with the eyes and stuff, you know, it's like, I didn't realize, you know, I always thought,

oh, when an egg's laid, it's, it's got, you know, the full development to do, but a lot of the development has already occurred once it's laid. And then there was a recent study, I think, was it a turtle or, and they, they, they could either, they could hold onto their eggs depending on the environment they were in. So if, if the conditions were they could either they could hold on to their eggs depending on the environment they were in so if if the conditions were too hot they could hold on to them for longer and then lay them just before hatching or or lay them you know quite a bit bit sooner than that so yeah very very exciting and interesting there's a lot of crazy mechanisms that reptiles have with respect to like timing nest parturition or like you know parturition and nest site selection and things like that like you know in a variable world which

is the reality of what we live in like things aren't consistent um well you know they can be consistent but they're not necessarily always consistent you want to have a good toolkit that allows you to have your best chances that you know your offspring succeeding and so they've evolved all these wonderful mechanisms i guess yeah yeah they do well so yeah very cool that's an exciting exciting area of research so they look forward to seeing some of your papers and stuff yeah i have to look you up on pubman i've got a huge backlog that i need to actually get out the door which i know a lot of people in academia have but yeah that's stage, you really need them out the door. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, right. Me, I'm resting on my laurels from this point. I had a colleague ask me that. Phoning it in at this point. I recently got promoted to professor a year or two ago, and one of my colleagues was like, oh, so now you can just rest on your laurels right i'm like yeah if only that were the case i'm not tenure track so i can't

rest on anything you know i gotta gotta get the funding so but yeah we're i mean when we have these huge outbreaks of viral disease that's you know that's all we need for me to get funded so i was gonna say that's uh working to you for sure. Yeah. We're the only, I don't think few, few people that get excited about an outbreak, not because, you know, people are dying, you know, don't, don't get me wrong there, but just because it's, you know, people have an interest in, in funding antiviral research. So yeah. Anyway, I think with anthropogenic climate change and tropical disease, you will be doing fine. I think it's job security

for sure but yeah it's unfortunate to see for sure then again you know they're going to close down the government because the debt ceiling's been reached so we won't get any funding or some goofy thing like whatever do us in whatever we've been through these things i guess well i i think this this is a record for our longest introduction. And so, yeah, congratulations. Yeah, no, this is great. Yeah, it's been very useful and informative stuff. So, yeah. So let's get on with the fight. be able to keep or to sell these large species or species of, you know, that require more than

the average pet keeper can provide, you know, kind of. And I think, you know, your background in working in a reptile shop or a pet store is a really good background for this topic. So thanks for suggesting it and thanks for coming on. This is what we like. This is super interesting because, you know, our two kind of hobbies, you know, Australia and us, their pet shops don't operate the same way. So there's some little different incentives, little different mechanisms. But still, I think the fundamental question still holds pretty true. So it's, yeah, but still, I think the fundamental question still holds pretty true. So it's, uh, um, yeah, very interesting. I'm glad we got to spend some time unpacking how that worked a little bit up front.

So I think that, that helps. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. All right. On. Well, Mr. Chuck, why don't you call the flip to see who gets tails tails?

It's tails, man. You're on a roll. Yeah. What do you, what do you want? I'm'm i'm happy to fight this okay sounds good yeah i'll uh take the moderator role and keep you guys you know keep your cool and all right let's uh all right mitchell you want to call the the next one for what taught what side of the topic you get. Heads. Tails. Sorry, man. That's all right.

So, Chuck, what side would you like? And do you want to go first? Which is a redundant question. Boy, I think I will take the pet shops being able to sell whatever species they want that that's a that so the pro that they should be able to the pro yeah that they should have the autonomy to sell whatever uh they they want very american view of things you know we do whatever that would be fitting yes yes all right my problem get out of here you mangy kid yeah Yeah. I mean, I guess just kind of thinking about that, like if there was a parenti for sale in a pet store here, I would very much want them to be able to sell those. That's like my dream species. But yeah, of course, I probably wouldn't be able to do them justice. Not many can. I'll figure it out. I'll kick one of my kids out and use the room.

That's the american way right there i don't know this is an opportunity i can't yeah all right so anyway uh well let's uh chuck did you want to go first or do you want to let mitchell go um you want to go first yeah i'm happy either way yeah okay works for you. Go for it. I have a tradition of always letting the other person go first if I can. So I will carry on. Let them hang themselves with their own rope. I don't think there will be any hanging. Let's have Dr. Hodgson start.

Yeah, exactly. I was just going to offer a quick joke on your uh comment about the parenti and the picture by the way justin um i don't know if many of the people listening or yourself are familiar but there's a journal like a um interest journal called bwac which is like a monitor specific and it's yeah public access i've published in it yeah oh really oh cool yeah i had an observation of some uh ackeys breeding in the wild in in the alice springs uh reptile or no alice springs desert park where you know and they were wild living on the grounds of the of the place but they were yeah copulating and i heard some noise

and so i you know just recorded information and published it there so yeah that's cool um i was just gonna say there was a um article a few years ago now about monitors in the pet trade but one of the things they highlighted was an advert for uh parentis in a pet shop in japan yeah and anyway said highlighting got onto the radar of various people that are like a parenti in a pet shop in japan and it didn't end well for the pet shop who got looked into because of their Perenti. So if you saw a Perenti in a pet shop in the U.S., I probably wouldn't buy it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Not for the reason of tearing through a Perenti and having a go at it,

just because you're probably going to get a knock on the door. I would buy it in cash, and I would give a fake name, and I would kiss a fake name and I would diss a fucking deer. Yeah, so I guess the big motivation for this and for the discussion and what I want us to bring forward is that even a well-meaning, so any animal that a pet shop should sell, they should sell realistically with the attitude. And I think it has changed in years gone by, but originally I think pet shops were all about flogging the animal

and not caring about it after it's gone out the door, really. changed in years gone by but originally i think pet shops were all about flogging the animal and not caring about it after it's gone out the door really like you know there is certainly ones and this is we're talking about painting with a blanket brush right so i'm happy to accept there's nuance i think people should realize there's nuance here there are people with different degrees but broadly speaking you get your sale out the door you've sold the animal you've sold the equipment you probably give some follow-up advice if the person comes back in but you're not actively invested in where that animal's gone yeah so much and with something that's small robust easy to manage um say again small pythons small colubrids whatever that's easy to do because you can sell everything in one sale and be

guaranteed that that that animal's going to a good home and everything's good as a pet shop if you've got a baby and particularly i think you've got like asian water monitors are a big one over there like with all the mutations and stuff um i mean burmese and retics like it's mind-blowing that they retailed in the volume they are to me like something that big that's and i know it's sort of entered the discourse across herpetoculture in both the UK and the US now. But they've been marketed for years as like, you know, the perfect snake for someone getting into it. You know, this is – you want a big snake, blah, blah, blah. And they're just not appropriate.

There's no way you can ensure that that's being kept correctly, that you're doing things right, the public risk aspect. And I think broadly with all this as well, and this is a point I'll get into a bit later, is the public perception and what that means for keeping overall. But so I guess the key point I'm trying to get at here is that there's no way you can accurately guarantee if you're selling these things in volume, as babies, in a starter setup, whether they be berms, retics,

lace monitors, again, because that's probably a common one here, the medium-sized monitors. We have Asian water monitors. You sell it as a baby and it goes into, say, a three- or four-foot enclosure to start off with. Within two months, sorry, probably not two months, probably within 12 months, you know, it definitely needs to be in a four-foot. Within 18 months, two years, you know, four-foot, six-foot. And then realistically something months two years you know four foot six foot and then realistically

something way bigger you know like and you know how long is a piece of string but you can give these things massive enclosures and they'll use all the space um i mean for the case of retics you know look at tom crutchfield he's got a massive aviary for him and you know he's got photos of it zipping around everywhere um so i just think there's a near impossible burden to accurately and like correctly make sure that they're going to a home and you can vet them and you can do everything like that but it becomes near impossible to actually make sure that people are going to take those steps and then on top of that the commercial availability of enclosures for them that are actually adequate is pretty low like you know i don't know about the u.s but like

no um we've had massive issues or i don't know about the us but like no um we've had massive issues or i shouldn't say massive issues here but as the perspectives have changed and the pet shops have led the push we've actually seen a change in like the minimum enclosures that commercial manufacturers will make so we used to not have six like our standard pet shop turtles get like massive you know we don't have small turtles yeah that you can buy in pet shops We have small species, but they're not, like, around or being able to be sold and then, you know, not cheap. But, like, our Murray Rivers, which are our common pet shop turtle, get massive. And for ages, people were housing them in tiny tanks and they were all, yeah,

they get monstrous and they're in these small tanks. The red-eared sliders. It was only after it. Yeah, exactly. And after the push from pet shops which were the ones that led the charge here they were able to upgrade the minimum enclosure size but that's because there was a good connection between the people that did it but ultimately you know if you sell someone a baby turtle and it's you know that big they have 50 cent piece

australian 50 cent piece i don't i don't know u.s currency size but you can't guarantee that when they get it home and it gets to that size, that they're actually going to give it an adequate enclosure. And so it's just one of those things. I think there's a lot of shortfalls in the chain of being able to, for things that get super large or, again, pose a public health risk. You know, like large baronets get out or large constrictors, A, you've got a welfare issue for that snake or that monitor because someone's going to see it, freak out, and probably kill it. Or call, you know, I guess animal control is the U.S. equivalent,

but like call some sort of animal handler to come remove the animal. Yeah. Or, you know, you can be guaranteed that it's going to just have an inadequate life because you can't make sure that something that needs it, you know, I don't know, again, your size, meter by five meter avery isn't going to get that as an adult yeah so yeah that's that's kind of the crux of my point okay all right chuck you want to respond um yeah so what before you say that i just wanted to throw in this anecdote i was my wife was looking at or something, and she saw one of her friends had an Asian water monitor trapped in their window well here in northern Utah. And he was saying he was going to kill it or something.

And she said, no, wait, my husband will come get it. So we went out there, and it was still there, and I was able to rescue it. And I kept it for a week or two until I found it a suitable place to live. And so it's send it down to Joey Muggleston, but yeah, it was a kind of an interesting thing where you don't expect to hear a water monitor on the loose, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, again, I don't know how, um, I'm going to argue that pet shops should be able to sell anything, but I don't know how popular what I'm going to say ends up being in the eyes of most Americans. You know, I think any pet shop should be able to do what the law allows them to do, right? And in the U.S., there is no regular or very few regulatory, you know, checks on pet shops, you know, outside of the moral argument and their responsibility to find good homes for these pets are just following the law.

And as we kind of discussed in Australia, you know, the law is very, very widely. But but at least you kind of have some, you know, some checks to that. And, and, you know, you cited the example of the Perenti that got sold and Hey, that, that, uh, you know, that pet shop legally obtained the permit to allow to sell any type of Veranid and they got their hands on a legally obtained Perenti and they sold it. Now, whether or not that is, um, you know, the best idea or who they sold it to, we don't know. Maybe that it, maybe that parenti is living its best captive life. And, and, and, you know, not to say that. And, and, and, and I think as reptile keepers, we can look at a large berm or a large, or even a baby berm or a baby retic and

say, oh, yep, we know what the complications and difficulties the average person would have down the road with that animal. And I think the question becomes, so if what we're going to say is that pet shops should either be able to sell these things or they shouldn't, then what we're really talking about is should we be able to keep certain animals period point blank or not? Because. And this is just the U S so, um, you know, nothing stops me from getting a retake or a berm, even if a pet shop can't sell it and I can breed those things and I can sell them. So even if a pet shop can't, the bus doesn't stop, it doesn't even slow down. Right. And so to me, it's kind of like, all right, what we're talking about is a, is the perception of a cheap, simple avenue to unload potentially dangerous

animals. Right. That's really what we're kind of where we're, where maybe the unknowing kid or a parent, you know, allows an animal that's grossly inappropriate to go to their son or daughter. Right. And I agree that that that that can happen. But I think, you know, or I would at least like to think that. And, you know, I have a local pet shop around me. They're very big. They have tons of stores. And, and the, the, the, the employees that I know there tend to be fairly thoughtful. Are they going to, are they going to not sell an animal that somebody is, you know, fully committed that they want to buy that? No, they're not. But are they going to try to educate that person and say like, Hey, you know, I get it.

This, this reticulated Python looks really cool. I just want you to understand this is what's what the reality is going to be. And I do think that we are at a point in, in herpetoculture and, and, uh, where there at least an, uh, a greater effort is being made to, um, try to, because we've ended up, especially in the U S in a legislative lead driven, you know, dicey situation where we cannot afford to be reckless like we were in the past now again this starts to drive towards the legislative part of this right where australia has done a lot of legislation around can't keep this you got to do this here's and and we haven't done that right and so I guess my whole thing kind of

comes down to what, you know, either we just keep doing this business as usual. And, you know, I would say, relatively speaking, the issues that we have come from people who are reckless with venomous animals. You know, I don't, you don't see a lot of large constrictors having public incidents where somebody gets hurt or killed. What you see is animals that get released or, you know, things that, you know, the Burmese pythons in the Everglades, all of those things are bad, but not all of those things are solely on people who bought their animal at a pet shop, couldn't keep it, and then threw it in the Everglades. Like, I don't, you know, it's much more complicated than that. And the Everglades problem is not just large snakes. So I think it's easy to

look at the problems and say, ah, if we just controlled pet shops, especially in the US, if we just control pet shops, we'd be in a better place. No, we wouldn't. We'd be in the same place. Right. And I don't even think in Australia,ia under a very regulated system you can totally stop if you have an all veranted permit and you can legally obtain a parenti you can sell it right nobody broke any law nobody did anything but but you still did something that's um you know by by most keeper standards is like whoa you sold a Perenti to just an average person like that's crazy. You know, still still kind of a whoa moment. So it's so to me, it kind of goes to either we say this animal is too dangerous to sell and nobody can have it or and then it, and then it becomes a total black market thing.

And that doesn't go away either. Right. So it's kind of like, I, you know, I hate to make it an all or nothing thing. And if I, you know, if I wasn't so American, like I could, you know, I can't resist making it all or nothing. Right. Um, it's, it's our way. Uh, but I, I think, I think that's kind of been, that's overarching is that it really comes into a situation where and I'm not saying you do nothing. I'm not saying that. But what I'm saying is either you let this kind of stuff be sold out of pet shops or nobody has it, nobody keeps it. So I'll turn over. I, you know, one, one aspect of that, I think you mentioned is, you know, the, the responsible pet shop, uh, employees or whatever that are educating the public or, or, or withholding, you know, animals or, or trying to talk them out of purchases they don't think are going to be a good fit, you know? So I think, uh,

you know, I'd like to hear your, your, uh, ideas on that in regards to, you know, what, what, how the employees kind of fit into this and if, if they can make a difference or, or if the, you know, pet store goal, of course, to make money overarches that. So I, um, I totally agree. And again, this whole conversation is like blanket brushes, right? Like we're removing nuance and I don't't i genuinely don't know the inner workings of us pet stores so i've never been there i don't know how they work i've been to like plenty of australian ones yeah um both in my state and others i i'm sorry i will say there there is there has been kind of a shift at least you know i've i see i try to go into every pet store that i can you know to just

because you know just to check out their collections and stuff and you know most of the time it's like okay it's kind of the same old stuff but like um you you really and you know it's illegal now to import uh reticulated pythons so you don't see reticulated pythons in stores and you typically don't see burmese and and a lot of times you're not seeing the green iguanas and stuff. But at least generally that has declined a bit. So that's my observation, and that may not match other people's observations. There's probably still shops that do that. There's a bunch of retakes at my local pet shop right now.

Oh, but captive bred, not the imports is what I'm saying i guess yeah no not yet yeah yeah they're still they're still being sold but not imported in big numbers kept in a cage like 50 and you know in a big tank or something and you pick out the one you like so or same that's two judas priests right now so anyway that's kind of maybe a background a little bit of pet stores that there are some changes and you know same thing with like red-eared sliders i mean generally the only red-eared sliders you see for sale are ones that somebody gave to the pet shop because they didn't want them anymore and then they're just trying to rehome them for the you know so i don't know things things are improving a little bit compared to you know the the wild west days of the you know 80s or 90s or whatever but um so so some improvements are occurring but that's

mainly i would say legislation so sorry that's no no no totally as i said it comes into a point i'll probably get into after i answer your question but very much the sort of supply demand and how regulation fits into like the supply demand model of certain spaces which is kind of like some thoughts i've had on that big stuff in particular and something i'll talk that parenti, because I don't want to do that shop a disservice because I do like them. It's just the outrageous point of a parenti in a pet shop, you know? Yeah. But with the staff, I absolutely agree with you.

And so I think they're like gatekeepers almost. And I mean that in a positive way, not in like a, you know, how people like to talk about the venomous community sort of way. You know, it's one of those things where like they are the front line and it comes down to their competency. And so I wonder, and again, I don't know the U.S., and I've seen it here in different ways, but there's different qualities of the people at a pet shop.

And I would quite happily say that a pet shop and i would quite happily say that the pet shop i was at had a really really high standard um i i genuinely think that they they actively and this is how i got the job they looked for people that were interested in reptiles first and then they taught them how to be uh i guess a salesperson a like customer service they taught you the skills you know If you had that coming in, that was great. But their key point was making sure that you were a competent, educated sort of reptile person. There are a lot of people there that are doing various tertiary qualifications.

So like one of the blokes that I worked with for a number of years and he's still there is just finishing up his vet degree to become an exotic vet. You know, another bloke, like most people finishing up his vet degree to become an exotic vet. You know, like most people have done undergraduate degrees or are doing undergraduate degrees in like life or environmental sciences or biology or things like that. Like they had a really high standard for the quality of people there. And obviously, like, you know, most people get those degrees, they move on to new jobs, but they like to find the best of the best.

Now, I've been to other pet shops in other states where I've spoken to the people, and it's just a mom-and-pop business, and that's fine. I have no judgment there. But that pet shop in particular is also selling a mangrove monitor. Now, I don't know if you guys have experience with mangrove monitors, but what's your podcast like for you guys? Tired on swearing? Oh, no.

Swear away, man. I'm a foul mouse are they are shit pets like everyone i know with the mangrove monitor it whips it carries on it hates you it is not something that should be sold in a pet shop if you want to be the sort of person that wants a pet mangrove and loves it to pieces and treats it well and appreciates how lovely it is. They're stunning monitors, but they're shit pets. And so there's no reason that that should be in a pet shop. And I know you guys have – we don't obviously have wild take. Well, we do have wild take, legal wild take, but it's very controlled and very regulated.

But we don't have the same thing where, you know, there's shipments of baby mangroves bred on farms in, you know, Southeast Asia or eggs that are dug up or whatever and shipped to the U.S. and just retailed out the wazoo. We don't have that. And so we don't have the same high supply of these species that really aren't good pet species. And ultimately when the supply gets too high,

that's where they start going to pet shops. I'll get to that in a sec. But the problem is, is that, yeah, you've got this quality issue with the staff behind it. Like this mangrove monitor is not a beginner species. It was in a special off-interstate, and the staff really weren't what I would call reptile competent. You know, like I'd say they're fine.

Like, you know, put a heat light on it, give it some water, feed it some crickets, it'll be fine. But, like, you know, with something like a mangrove, you're going to be prepping people for the fact that it's going to be a whippy, angry animal. You'll be prepping people for the fact that it's going to be, you know, angry animal. You'll be prepping people for the fact that it's going to be, you know, three foot long, that it needs an aquarium to swim in, that it's arboreal, so it needs climbing perches, you know,

all these things that for the good welfare of that species. And ultimately this is another point I'll come back to is that when you get these people that buy these species that they shouldn't, whether it be through pet shops or black market or whatever, and they get done for having stuff in shit conditions. It looks bad for everyone, you know? And this is an example of that Florida thing that's been doing the rounds. Those guys have now, I think, sunk the Florida hobby.

You know, those guys that got caught on camera or whatever saying we're going to release. I mean, it's been twisted, but I assume it's been twisted. But like the article I wrote basically implied that they openly admitted on camera or and recording just saying they were going to release venomous snakes to get them established so that they could go collect them and resell you know like that's the logic right yeah yeah but and i'm sure that's not the exact i hope that's not the exact case but like that's the attitude and you know this reflects on everyone certainly everyone in florida which is already going through legislative nightmare are wanting to release invasive venomous snakes to you know make profit.

And so these guys that get done with mangrove monitors in crap conditions, suddenly everyone's a welfare criminal, and that's a big issue we have here. So just for some additional context about why I'm sort of interested in this and why I got involved, during my PhD I actually got involved with our New South Wales legislative review of all the licensing so i went to the stakeholder meetings and you know actively contributed and put forth submissions for species to be moved around and things like that um and you know where things should be added whatever and to be honest i got pretty burnt out because it's one of those things where you do a whole heap of work and then the legislators are like, we won't do anything. The regulators.

So it's going through review again now for anyone listening in New South Wales, but I'm sure as hell not involved in it because I can't be bothered to do it again. But it opened my eyes up because historically here, our big issue was environmental. So they had concerns with the legal world taking large numbers they had huge concerns with um people releasing species that shouldn't be released you know like oh my well not so much but it was around now the conversation has shifted because ultimately a lot of our the the regulatory hyperbole around impacts environmental impacts is you know for most things overstated.

There are certain things unequivocally we shouldn't be stuffing with. But for most things, you know, I think there's a lot of hyperbole, and it's just so that we can have a strong regulatory agenda, personally, personal opinion. But the conversation has now moved on to welfare of those animals, and that is the next scape of herb keeping is animal welfare. You know, all the anti sort of groups are suddenly publishing, like they're publishing in scientific journals,

albeit not good scientific journals, but peer-reviewed scientific journals nevertheless, research sort of condemning various aspects of animal use trade, whether it be skin trade, whether it be pet trade, whatever. So they're publishing all this work, which is giving them kudos when they write reports to government saying, oh, well, this scientific paper by blah, blah, blah, blah,

found that 25,000 ball pythons died in whatever. This is, again, an exaggeration, but making a point. But the conversation is now changing to welfare, and that was exactly what we saw here was the welfare of those individual animals. And beyond that, even here, we had the regulators publish their own journal article in some small like domestic journals looking at pet trade native pet trade aspects so they published on like the number of um released pets that have been found and there was a really uncomfortable correlation here with when pet shops and um started up so when they were legalized um

and when we had our carpet python boom and there was a massive influx of carpet pythons being found out in the wild like non-native carpets you know and you could argue various aspects of that yeah yeah exactly so like mutation like we had um when jags first became available here it was like a breeding frenzy everyone was just masscing Jags to cash in. Yeah. And suddenly you've got all these Jags that have Nuro. You've got all these Jags that are kind of average. You know how like you get the good ones, the bad ones?

All the bad ones got dumped. Or not dumped, but like flogged onto whoever would ever buy them. And so we had this massive oversupply. We tried to warn you guys. We tried to warn you guys. We tried to tell you. I think it's classic 2020 hindsight, right? Thankfully, the Jags are no longer around here. Like, really, in the volume they once were.

But you've got a supply issue. Yeah, here either. So, yeah, the issue is it's moved to this welfare discussion right and so we as a community need to whether it be private breeders or pet shops need to focus on at least ensuring this welfare and self-regulating because that's the thing right if we don't self-regulate yeah we're going to get over regulated and that's what happens yeah and you know when we show that we're actually playing by the rules and doing what we can and making sure things are right that's where we will have a bit more leeway with um regulators and like

the layperson because ultimately at the end of the day there's like 10 that are always going to be or 15 they're always going to be like no animal should ever be in captivity 15 of your diehard patriots that'll be like i should legally oh sorry i should be able to have whatever i want in whatever avery i want wherever i want it exactly um and then there's the 70 in the middle that will play by the rules if the rules are good and we'll go this is a pretty stinky rule you know like um i don't want to abide by that and that applies to anything right like that that sort of 50 50 sorry 15 15 70 is like a thing that traffic uses like a um animal what what are they, like a use organization. Like they monitor wildlife trade and stuff.

But that's one of their sort of like rough ratios where it's like you always have people play by the rules. You always have people break the rules. You need to regulate for that 70% that, you know, could go either way. If you try to regulate for the 15%, it's not going to do anything, right? Because they're always going to break the rules they don't give a crap well you know the 15 you don't need to meet their expectations because they'll always do what's right you know they've just got this psychological drive to do it um but that middle percent's where it's at yeah and so with i guess the the pet shop

sector and like controlling um they are where you know to be frank it seems like a bit in the u.s and even here to a degree as well depending what they can sell they become a bit of a dumping ground now people just get rid of stuff that they don't want that's not necessarily a bad thing um you know but it means that if that pet shop has um less than high standards they're going to then just move it on to whoever will buy it. And then we've got this welfare issue proliferating. And so this is kind of that point I was just wanting to make about supply and demand, right?

Burns, reed ticks, all of that have, I don't know what their clutch size is. I just see the Jay Brewer videos online. And I was like, how can you find a home for that many animals you know like two clutches of reach into it out through everything i breed yeah yeah that's that's been the issue is where where do and i think that was you know um i think that's probably the bigger the bigger unspoken thing is where do all these animals you don't hear about animals getting out and attacking people or you know things like why maybe that's because there's not that many of them that make it right like that's that's

probably the bigger um truth of it and that that that definitely touches into the animal welfare issue um yeah that's that's a that's an extremely difficult problem because all of the animals that have huge clutch sizes and could make you know an unscrupulous breeder a lot of money because you know you've got this huge you know you can sell them for less because there's so many of them and then that benefits the pet stores because they can buy them for less and sell them you know for a little bit more and make more money because they're moving you know units that's i guess the you, equating animals with money is kind of where we run into problems. And if we can get away from that and see animals as animals and having,

you know, worth and, you know, we treat them properly and give them the space they need, those kind of attitudes, I think we run into a lot less problems. We regulate ourselves better. And yeah, it's such a hard issue because a pet store wants to make money and stay in business. But I think you can do it the right way. Oh, absolutely. And I think there's,

again, talking about the rules, you'll have 15% of pet stores that always do the right thing. Like they'll do best by their animals. They'll have sort of degree in integrity and're going to have 15% that won't. You know, you always have 15 that are dealing, you know, whatever out the back. They'll buy a half-dead, you know, ball python and sell it to someone that has no idea how to assess the health of an animal.

Things like that. Like you're always going to have these bad ones. But we're talking, again, that 70% in the middle. They're the ones that we need to make sure are on our side following the rules and helping drive the conversation yeah i mean you know i i'm genuinely dumbfounded with like the us with these retakes and things like that part of the issue i think as well and i don't mean to tempt you into this conversation but like is the morph trade and you know that pyramid scheme and all that sort of stuff people i like i literally say to people when they buy animals

off me with the intention of wanting to breed it down the line you know you new keepers i go okay that's fine um depends on the species to be honest but like this species will have a clutch of x you know that's going to be a lot to raise and find good homes if you get eggs freeze two-thirds of them you know just kill those eggs off the bat like you know it's a humane way to euthanize them euthanize those eggs hatch the four three two whatever of those eggs get a feel for raising those and then go and if you want to upscale do it like that but the problem is is when there's mutations involved it's not as simple because you want to optimize your odds you want to get your fucking 13 gene ball python or 33 gene corn snake or

whatever yeah but you want to get that animal that's going to be your payday and so you breed everything you hatch everything um and then you go okay cool this one snake is the one i want the triple snow hetford candy floss whatever that i don't know you guys have some stupid names um but you've got that snake now and those other 10 snakes you don't really give a shit about so what do you do you sell them to a pet shop and then they sell them on and there's nothing wrong with on selling that stock to a pet shop as a pet i think that's great and i know um having spoken to people here people do do that with big projects here like stuff that's worth a lot of money they will sell possets to pet shops without saying it's a posset

for whatever just to distribute it to a good home um versus you know like every pyramid scheme breeder morph chaser you know buying a posset breeding 30 animals and realizing oh it's not pet it's just you know a wild type and suddenly we've got 30 extra of the species you know like there's there's big big moves to be made for how we deal particularly posthets i think should just be sold as wild type animals treated that way and respected that way so to have this proliferation of people trying to breed stuff and crack big for cheap you know because we've just got an oversupply of so many species. And in part, I think it's because of the mutation trade.

And with that oversupply, again, you see a lot of stuff go to pet shops, you know, nothing wrong with that again, as I said, but with that high volume of animals coming in, then you see people start to get things cheaper, as you said, Justin, and then flog them on to whoever will buy them, especially when you know you've got stuff coming in through the wings, you know? And that's the point I did want to make about that parenti.

The big difference we have here is, firstly, we do have that regulation, so they couldn't just sell it to anyone. They had to sell it to someone who's got a permit to own a parenti. Right, right, right, right, right. First thing there. But on top of that, parentis actually don't, like people don't breed them consistently. They don't breed large clutches of them.

You know, you're lucky to get, you know, they can have like nine or 10 eggs, I think, from memory. But generally speaking, people hatch between one and four. You know, that's usually the success rate is quite low. I think the best I've seen in recent years was Joe Ball get four. And then I know other people that have hatched one. There's probably like, you know, Peter Krause used to breed them out in his pits and stuff.

And, you know, he was like an old timer that didn't really use social media. So I never really saw, you know, the volume of stuff he was breeding. I know he bred a lot, but, you know, they're not bred, you know, probably all the parentage bred in Australia over the past five years would equate to one clutch of retics, you know? So it's one of those things where it's a large species isn't breeding in large volumes so it's still going to market people still scrupulous about who they sell it to etc etc versus the retics where it really is like an

oversupply issue yeah and you know and i imagine it wasn't to be said wasn't cheap either you know a parent is not an inexpensive animal you know i think it was like two and a half grand yeah it was the finance price was regulating it too no that's cheap which which which 2500 bucks here man that thing would be gone and it's like i mean you forget it multiply that by 10 you know that's yeah exactly yeah yeah so what's that for you guys like like $1,700 US? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you could triple or maybe quadruple that price. No, tenfold. Tenfold. Yeah.

I mean, yeah. Yeah, that's the trick, I guess. Because, yeah, like when you overproduce a sulcata tortoise, you know, they're a $50 animal or a $20 animal or something. And from the breeder perspective, they're just happy to move 100 animals at a time because they have 300 or 400 animals on hand or something. But it's actually a scale, right? Yeah. You wholesale that. It doesn't matter. You don't have to deal with every individual person.

You wholesale 50 cell carters to a pet shop. You've got your payday. And now you don't have to worry about it i mean i should say i'm like tortoises are so foreign to me because we don't have them no that's you know that's how it goes it's just like the salcata thing blows me away yeah like the fact you know the size of them the destruction capacity yeah it's like just get a you know red foot tortoise or something you know something tiny well not tiny you can get tiny turtles but like you want a pet get a medium so don't get a sulcata why are they the staple because they're easy to breed in large numbers and that's not

the right thing for it to be a staple you know yeah and they come i don't know i assume they probably still have wild like yeah wild caught animals or whatever brought in or they i don't have legislation around them but i'm sure there's and americans have no chill dude we have no chill like huge tortoise giant snake you know giant goanna like we don't we have no chill like we're there's no part of us it's like that's a bad idea you know what i mean like we're like let's try it maybe it's not a bad idea i mean how am i supposed to know how this is going to work out right like but i i did want to just go back and touch real quick on so you know i i get a lot of these um you know animal rights organizations and some of the push-pull forces

as far as like animal welfare uh becoming huge things with reptiles, which make no mistake. What I'm saying is that is a positive, you know, nothing but a positive thing when we address better animal welfare conditions for animals. I think that the U S needs to do, you know, I think the U S needs to say, Hey, every, everyone should be keeping to it at a minimum AZA type standards. And maybe the AZA could have some of their standards changed a little bit so that they make more sense. I'm just saying a uniform standard would be something much better, even if it's not exactly what we see right now.

You know, having a standard of care is not a bad thing. And unfortunately, you know, when we talk about animal welfare, you know, a lot of times it's arbitrary, it's capricious. And that's, that's kind of the big issue. And then, you know, if you want to talk about we don't even as so, so everything that I'm going to say here is all human centric problems. They're all problems that humans create and humans perpetuate. Right. And and we don't even treat each other well. We don't treat other humans of our, you know, of our of our like species correctly. That there is, you know, I would say, especially in the the u.s the value system of life is you know

is is on sketchy ground um and i'm only speaking for the u.s just because i'm i'm i'm here um and and then you carry that over into other animals dogs hoof stock i horses, you know, horses are extremely dangerous animals and, you know, they suffer from some of, and, and the, the, so the, the regulation around horses, probably not that, you know, okay. So, so you can own a horse and, and the amount of care and husbandry that you need to take care of that horse is huge but you see it all the time when economic conditions get bad horses get dumped or left or starved to death just like large retakes so it's so this idea that um the animal welfare issue is concentrated to reptile keepers is unfair. Doesn't make it invalid.

I'm just saying it's a little unfair. I feel like they use the low-hanging fruit of scary reptiles and how tattooed people and people who maybe are on the fringe of society oh look at these weirdos look at these malcontents not taking care of animals not you know and and to your point i have a pair of mangrove monitors and they are not uh uh they are not a pet-type monitor. You know, the requirements that they have, I've just accepted the fact that they're never going to, like, be social. They're not.

They're not. They hide all the time. You know, mine don't whip. I've maybe taken one kind of opportunity bite where they just, the male kind of had enough of me and kind of just turned over and was like, ah, but mine are pretty good other than that. But but for them to be sold to average people. Yeah, I agree with I do think that with the animal welfare issue, you know, there is an impetus for that against us feels a little shitty because, you know, they there's, you know, the trough is very deep and they're using us as the low hanging fruit. And then to talk environmentally, you know, if you kind of get into the environmental factors of animals being released and yeah i i think that's a consideration um certainly and you know you can look at the everglades you can look at um you know what's happened with large constrictors and and there's all kinds of stuff that's loose

there that is you know mammalian feral stuff that is way more out of control than fish. Yeah. A hundred percent. Like, like all kinds of stuff. How many primate species have been established there? Some have been eradicated. Crab eating macaques.

There was like a wild population of crab eating macaques down there. And that's not, that's not what's on the news. That's not what's thrown at, you know, the average person. They're like, what? There's giant constrictorsrictors well there's crocs there too i mean those are scary like oh but they belong there oh okay got it well let's look at the list of stuff that doesn't

belong there and see you know so i again and you know i guess I feel like the other issue with the environmental thing is, again, this is a human centric problem. We're the cause of all of this stuff. And so to so to have global trade and to have, you know, global transport, which moves feral stuff all, you know, all over the globe and then to be like ah it's you pet trade people that are ruining this for everybody is again targeting the low-hanging fruit um and and are we a contributing factor to the problem yes but in the grand scheme of things are we the problem i and and by us i mean the reptile community or reptile keepers um i you know i would argue that you know we contribute but you know we should not be the tip of the spear that gets knifed in the side i was gonna say just on that point like this is broadly one of my opinions about it i think there

is actually a lot that the reptile trade pet trade is guilty of and needs to either hold itself to account or be held to account for but i also think it is a bit of a whipping boy basically for other issues you know i mean i know you guys have alluded to that but there is it's an easy thing to throw under the bus and say but there are things that it's guilty of like the whole like i remember i went to an international conference and saw someone who worked on madagascan plowshares like the tortoises and the things that got done for that because of the pet trade like the the rampant illegal take when they're already low numbers in the wild breaking into a breeding facility and stealing them people unashamedly putting photos up of animals that had their shells like

intentionally defaced with id numbers yeah to detract from like unashamed like that is something that we as a hobby need to hold our head and shame about like that is yeah horrible you know we're talking a threatened species people just not caring and wanting to profit at the end of it and that's where we need to be clipped on the years now other stuff where it's safe in the wild or like you know ball pythons for example like i don't see a need to take them from the wild anymore but i don't think there's a huge from what i've seen and i could be wrong i'm happy to be wrong here but it seems that they seem to like our brown snakes right they proliferate proliferate really well in areas of human development so they're probably in unnaturally high numbers anyway you know like they just do well in these modified landscapes but that's just a point i think you know we're guilty of a lot of things

and we need to be held account for it but i also think we get slogged as a you know it's easy to paint that brush on everyone um on your point on horses i actually totally agree so i find horses incredibly scary the first time i rode a horse, I got kicked off one. And this is why I kind of empathize with people that like scared snakes, right? Like you have a bad experience. You don't like it. I'm not scared of horses, but I don't like them. I don't like being near them.

Like I think that you see the muscles on that animal, it'll kill you. Oh, yeah. I'd rather have a laugh than any day. Yeah. They can sew you up from a parenti, providing it doesn't get you in the wrong spot. But a horse will kick you the reptile where you know oh they'll they'll let the horse go out and destroy habitat for endangered frogs but you know we're not gonna we're not gonna go call those animals because they're cute and cuddly and people will be upset about that it's kind of crazy why i know the brumbish is a bit of a tangent but it's

amazing the the strength of opinions on that they should be here. And, I mean, we recently, like, past six months, had an issue where they did a cull. Like, they did a cull and, you know, they do their best to make sure that obviously any of the animals, the aerial shoot them, aren't visible to public because they don't want people seeing, you know, dead animals that they've shot. But someone literally just walked, you know, 300, 400 metres off a track and found a whole

herd that had been shot off the track and that blew up huge like there's no photos of all these horses that have been shot and suddenly the conversation just reignited with this like fervent like oh my god you know they shot and one of them was pregnant which isn't probably a good thing that they shot a minute but you know it just started this whole again it taps into that emotional element yeah nobody wants to see a dead horse you know but yeah and this is the same thing with like welfare with all these animals we're talking again you know we're a community we understand these things this is what we care about blah blah blah the lay person seeing it it's a perspective issue the lay person sees a half dead corn snake python, bearded dragon, whatever.

It taps into that animal abuse. It's like, you know, RSPCA, which is our compliance thing, every ad has a dog that's half-dead because suddenly everyone's like, oh, my God, someone did that? Take my money. And I'm not saying I'm in support of RSPCA. I think that can be heavy-handed. But, like, they do amazing work for people that abuse animals, you know i think they can be heavy-handed but like they do amazing work for people that

abuse animals you know which is which is the opposite here with like the hsus you know they're they're heavy-handed but they're also using that money not to help animals but to rate you know to legislate against being able to keep animals so you think you're helping the cute little dog, but you're actually funding their plan to not allow anybody to have a dog. We're just kind of sad that we're in that state with things. And quite frankly, it goes into regulatory agencies like Fish and Wildlife. wildlife like when they when they have protected species that they're overseeing and they get something like a coyote or a pack of coyotes that move in they hire an outside contractor to hunt and shoot those coyotes dead so that they can protect a dying species which they don't advertise that to the public they don't talk about that but it's just a reality of of you know what you have to do to protect a a species so

you know there's all kinds of you know well we keep this quiet and we keep that quiet but you know it and so and i guess you know like look there's a lot of consideration and and i think things like that just kind of muddy the waters and it makes it easy for reptile people to be like, oh yeah, well, what about this? And what about that? And what about this? And I think some of it is used as a justification for them not to police their own house because, oh, well, nothing else is fair. So why should we have to act accordingly? Right. And that's the wrong approach to take yeah yeah that's bullshit yeah yeah but but at this but at the same time like that you know it is it is pretty difficult uh to stomach some of the hypocrisy when you feel

like it's it's coming at you more than things that probably cause greater problems than you do. Yeah, it's disproportionate. Yeah, it's a good way to say that. But we're talking again, like we are low-hanging fruit, like as you totally implied. The thing is that I would say there's genuinely a disadvantage that's been dealt, but as much as there is things that we brought on ourselves right as a community like we i think we've got a perspective issue not just from how we do things but just the fact that it's reptiles this guy has a thousand snakes in his basement you know blah blah blah blah blah like there's a perspective issue there that we're never going to get away from but i mean i don't know how this in the u.s but and i'm sorry this is tangiting more so into a welfare debate but i guess that's

the core of yeah it's like you know um but i wonder how it is with like say for instance dogs over there with the like the large-scale societies and like the organizations that are like the the peak bodies here our dog peak bodies are huge like we have they have huge say they're multi-million dollar organizations they're run by like the passionate dog breeders and stuff and obviously there's a lot more money in dogs than there is in reptiles but the professionalism as a at a level and they have just as much if not more regulatory hoops to jump through they handle and negotiate it really well and there's a standard

that we could look to these other organizations um i think where as a community we can bring it up right like because the thing is is like you can bitch and moan and carry on about um you know oh this is unfair or whatever but it doesn't change the fact that it's coming right like yeah this is the thing that's done my head in with the us right everyone's like it seems almost with um i've and please correct me if i'm wrong but everything i say about us arc which i view as your peak organization, is all reactive. Everything is reactive. It's like this legislation comes in.

We're going to fight it. Does USARC have a code of practice? Like why don't they just have a code of practice? They should be going, all right, all USARC members are expected to follow this code of practice for the keeping of ball pythons, the keeping of mangrove mongers keeping of whatever you know they get however i don't know what their income is i remember someone sent me a um the tax statement or whatever because it's on their website well they got a decent amount

of money but it seems like you know just put someone on for a couple days a week couple hours a week to write these codes of practice for the community consultation things like that and show that we're self-regulating and moving forwards because otherwise, you know, the world's catching up, you know. Gone are the days where, like here, for instance, you talk to all the old-timers, it was totally normal to go out and catch whatever you wanted. You found a whatever.

Like guys that used to work on gas pipelines used to just bag up every snake that fell into the pipeline and take it home as a pet or sell it to someone. That's 40 years ago 30 years ago whatever you can't do that now yeah yeah um you know 10 years ago you couldn't sell reptiles and pet shops now you can't and you sell us now you can't like the rules change and if you like bitch and bone and say the rules are changing and i don't like it doesn't matter the rules are changing like you gotta yeah the damage is done and they're moving on. Sorry, Lon.

Well, I do know that USARC's board is primarily comprised of business owners and people who are kind of within the reptile – have a commercial interest in the reptile community. And so I think some of that, you know, that may be why they tend to be more reactive is because they're, they're one, they're focused on, you know, how, how can this impact, you know, the, the commercialization of reptiles rather than, you know, looking at it from a, and that's not to say that they don't. And that, that, that's not, I, please don't misquote me here and string me up by my freaking toenails. But, um, you know, I think that's probably a lot of why that is the way it is. And I think there needs to be a shift. And I don't know if it needs to be a new agency

or USARC needs to make a pivot. But I agree with you is we need to start, you know, doing because because because being reactive is is is one piece of it. But once you show that you're proactive, then, you know, I feel like it changes the conversation in the room with people when they're like, well, you know, okay, yeah, there's this going on. What are you doing about it? Well, I'm glad you asked. Here's what we have proposed. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Where if you can't speak to that, if you can't speak to what you're doing to correct the problem then they're like yeah that's why we're correcting the problem right so yeah that's exactly it right like i

so the main reason i actually got involved with that review i mentioned earlier was i was part of people that were making or trying to push for a shift to have more mammals legalized in our state native mammals so things like sugar gliders you can own them in south australia victoria but here they're illegal and there's a really strong you won't be able to keep them sort of attitude like we have a policy on our regulators website that's like why you shouldn't keep native mammals and so when we made this push during this review we contacted a whole heap of experts literally someone from the the regulators, so our government welfare regulator. We spoke to him because he wrote the book on keeping those mammals

in captivity, like literally a tome, you know, massive thick book, how to keep every Australian native mammal in captivity. He's the head of what he was. He's in a different position now, but he was the head of, like, working out the welfare standards for them, all that sort of stuff. We spoke to interstate organizations, and we prepared this massive document that systematically attacked each of these bullshit points that was up on the website.

We also submitted a code of practice we wrote. So we took other states' legislation and said, this is an example code of practice for one of these species. Like we made every preemptive push we could to show that we're not here to fuck around. We're quite interested in doing this and we want to do this right. And where we ended up with that is that the regulator from the – sorry, the guy from the welfare regulator was on board with us.

He said, I would personally support a handful of species being added. We had one of the aunties. So our big thing here, and this is part of our issue with oversupply, the way our rules work is that if a non-native pet is found in an area, a wildlife rehabilitation organization are the only ones that can legally hold onto it. So what happens is if a snake catcher gets to a member of the public finds it, they have to call these wildlife rehabbers, they collect it. And then up until recently, as I understand it there's been huge issues with um parks and wildlife for us issuing authorities for them to move those

animals on and so it's led to all these massive carpet pythons bearded dragons whatever the hell's been found just sitting with these people that don't give a shit about captive reptiles they care about rehabbing wild stuff and so they're getting jaded they've always been anti-pet keeping but they're now even more strong about that and so it's getting jaded they've always been anti-pet keeping but they're now even more strong about that and so it's one of these things where i've got this massive build-up um uh shit where was i sorry i've just i've lost my point what was the thing just before i talked about the wise guys oh hello um but yeah so it's just about being oh the mammals yeah yeah but we have one of the more moderates of those guys in those wildlife rehab groups.

She was on our side. She was like, look, I think it's going to happen. I would like to see it done right. And that's all she said. She was like, I'll support you if you're going to do it right. We have minimum standards. We talk it through. So she was an auntie, and she was on our side because we were going to do it right.

And, you know, you're always going to have the Peter extremists. And, again, 15% will never going to have the Peter extremists. And, again, 15% will never be able to deal with. We've just got to manage them in their own way. But the more moderate people, you can win over. And so I think the – I don't know. I just think there's a whole more proactive discussion to be had here about – and this comes back to the supply issue, right? Like maybe retic shouldn't be – I don't know.

What's a wild-type retic worth over there? You you don't see them anymore so they'd probably be more worth than uh than uh yeah morphs morphs tend to be prevalent to what you see i see i've seen i've seen some stuff that's advertised as dwarf so i think there's still you know maybe a handful of people who who have some some wild type stuff that was brought in that they're still keeping. But most of everything is morphs. What's low end on that? $200, $300 sometimes depending upon – That's probably higher than I was expecting.

I was thinking like green iguanas were $20 or something. I remember seeing something like that. No, no, no, no. So I think the days of $50 retake and berms are gone. Um, I think it was, that was kind of my point of, you know, the, the, the amount of wildcats and just green iguanas, Burmese, all that kind of stuff in pet shops is kind of fading away. And, and we'd like to see that continue.

I think, and I think in our, our, our modern political climate around reptiles, I'm going to sell it. And I don't care. I'm just going to do it because other people are being responsible and they don't have it. So if somebody wants it, they can come get it for me. Right. Like, so in long term, I think that's a, that's a help, you know, to have the attitude of like, I'm in this for the long haul. I want to do it responsibly because if I do it the right way, then down the road, that will pay dividends. You know, I might lose a sale here or there now up front, but down the road, people are going to trust, okay, these guys know what they're talking about. They've been here,

they're clean, they're, you know, doing it the right way. So I'm going to trust them. And I've seen examples of that. Unfortunately, you do see the examples of people doing it the wrong way, who stay in business somehow, you know, like, how is this? How is this shop still in practice, you walk in, and it just smells like ammonia, you know, you can't even stay in the store for longer than five minutes. But I guess, you know, maybe it's just people not being educated. But I think with, you know, YouTube and all these influencers, hopefully the words getting out a little bit more that, hey, we need to keep these things the right way.

You know, say what you want about Brian Barczyk, but he's showing, you know, a giant reticulated python in a giant cage with a tree, you know, that kind of stuff where it's like, this is how they should be kept rather than, you know, like he used to in a rack system, you know, in his basement or whatever. That's fair. That's fair. I don't know. I'm hoping that's kind of the message that's getting out these days is keep them right.

One thing I think is really a surprisingly good tool, and I don't know how it applies in the other states, but it's certainly here, and I think it's something that changes the game entirely. One of the conditions of the pet shop license is mandatory lifetime rehoming so if you sell an animal the entire time you're in operation you are legally required to not be

in breach of your license and therefore have it cancelled i mean they probably wouldn't cancel it but you get fined yeah you are legally required to take back any animal you've sold if the person says i can't have it anymore so you know that's a nice rule yeah yeah it brings up the game on betting who you sell to and what you're selling because if you sell a re-tick to some mouth breathing moron oh sorry i just slapped my keyboard in um if you sell if you sell a re-tick to some idiot and in three years time he comes back with a you know massive snake because he's powerful ever living hell out of it and you're legally required to take it back you're

like what am i going to do with this retake yeah you know you can't dump it because then you know hey it's bad yeah you know you're gonna kill it like are you a pet shop that's gonna just sell it for profit and kill it like you're gonna have to rehome it so then you spend all this effort how do you house a retake because you're only used to housing baby retip you know like yeah i know i'm using the example of like mega snakes but it changes the game like even here so when they did the whole review again referencing this wonderful review with all these great ideas that never happened um pet shops were looking at getting everything they wanted yeah at this point they were going to expand everything because the pet shops are regulated here and they've shown themselves to be good game players and do everything right and it meant that a lot of stuff would get funneled into pet

shops that would then be um you know under tighter scrutiny so the regulator could spend more time watching pet shops making sure everything across the community is above board it all just worked out as a great idea but that was on the fact that pet shops and pet shops had shown themselves to be good yeah but there were certain lines in the sand that were discussed that some pet shops were totally against like olive pythons you know for that exact reason you sell an olive python that gets massive i shouldn't say that was all of them some definitely still did want to sell all the pythons yeah but you sell an olive and it's probably because of albinos being worth so much here right like an albino olive in the pet shop would probably retail at the moment for like

three to four grand australian if someone was actually going to buy it. But, um, you know, it's one of those things where they've shown themselves to be good. There was a framework in place that they had to play by. And so expanding it to other stuff, wasn't going to be as risky, you know, while it feels like in the U S you guys started with an open slather and it's slowly getting whittled away. Yeah. Yeah. There's a greater philosophical point to be, you know,

maybe we shouldn't keep everything or maybe we shouldn't have the availability. I'm not going to start that fight, but you know what I mean? There should be some responsibility and common sense. And yeah, if you're going to do it, you should have responsibility for that. I really like that aspect of that. I kind of question whether the American reptile hobby can work out any other way than the way it's working out now just because of how america is you know like i just like i i do see i do see things changing could it yes it could and it does but? What are the driving factors? It's mainly regulation or things like that.

And it's because people have been, you know, because we've gone through the aches and pains and like, you know, we, you know, we suffer from the ills and we ignore it and we allow it to continue. And we oh, you can't take away our rights and we can't. Well, and, you know, I think, listen, I get that everybody hates being told what to do. I don't like it either. But nobody wanted seatbelts when they first said you got to wear a seatbelt in your car. And look how many lives have been saved by wearing seatbelts. So not all regulation is bad regulation. Now, as we've talked about ad nauseum, you know, there is a lot of bad regulation out there. And, and, um, I think, but it's usually in response to bad practice. I mean, you know what I mean? Like, like it's, it's rare that they just gonna

blanket ban something because, you know, everything's hunky dory. It's usually because something happened. And, and I think that goes to why it's even more important for us to have our hands on the wheel when this stuff is going on because a lot of times a politician just says, well, we have to do something about this, and they're less concerned what the details look like. They leave that up to somebody else, and maybe some idiot, you know, doesn't know what he's talking about. And he's in charge of figuring that out. And he just does something capricious. And the and the politician can say, well, we solved that problem, didn't we? We put in legislation to fix this. And, you know, it's total garbage in the end. So, you know, but but but in the but but I do feel like, you know, we we should look at, you know, and hey, listen, you know, my side is that pet shops should be able to have and and sell what they want and and um you know i think even in australia they for you know at at some degree they can have and sell what they want as long as they're

they're following the regulations that and and have the proper permits and and that they're doing it right so it can be done in a successful model um And, you know, I think there's, you know, plenty of examples of Aussie keepers keeping stuff that we're kind of like, whoa, that's crazy. That's awesome. Right? Like, so they're still enjoying themselves. They're still so so, you know, I get it. Nobody likes change. Nobody likes to be told what to do but you know this this all kind of goes back and i think to the core of this is a welfare uh a regulatory you know acceptance of of what's coming to us as americans for sure um and and you know i i mean i think we can look at some australian laws and say those are stupid they don't make any sense um but we can look at some Australian laws and say those are stupid. They don't make any sense. But you can look at others and say, well, I see how they arrived at those things. I see how they got there.

I was going to say, like, on that, I think a good example of Australia, like, just on how the rules ended up the way they were and how being reactive is a bad way. This is more broadly about just our licensing in general, but Queensland recently, the past couple of years, went through a license change. So I would be quite happy in saying publicly that Queensland was probably often regarded as the Germany of Australia with everything magically appearing in Queensland with legal paperwork and all that wonderful white-lipped pythons and emerald tree monitors and... Green tree pythons.

...that's appeared in Queensland. So it's all magically appeared up there. And Queensland got condemned, basically, by a lot of the regulatory organizations because they've allowed this absolute travel i shouldn't say travesty but like you know it was the the squeaky wheel that had let everything fall apart yeah you know all this stuff had made its way into other states and the other states were pissy about it and um in the end they went through a rehaul and you know you could tell

from the the process i remember i was speaking to one of the people at the the queensland review like one of the the her representatives and they sent me a document and it didn't matter like you could argue that the person had no idea what they were arguing the in this document like from the regulator but one of the arguments that just did my head in which was clear because i just didn't want to allow the point which was taking animals off licensing um they argued that a children's python was harder to keep than a bearded dragon and less maintenance and higher responsibility. And it was just like, you know, you could argue it was ignorance, but it almost came across to me, in my opinion,

as more of a they just didn't want to allow it to happen. What ended up happening is that Queensland got, we had positive lists. Queensland ended up getting a positive list and the positive list was basically just ripped off New South Wales. So our positive list down here with things that they knew were in large numbers in Queensland. Yeah. Now our positive list is a shit show.

It has not been updated properly. It's been ad hoc added to change, subtracted whatever the species over the past 20 years, and it's never actually had a full review in recent times. And so there's stuff on the basic license that's just not legally around anymore, you know. Some of the things that are on our open, like, beginner license, the only reason that they were common back in the day is because they're all

getting ripped out of the bush, you know. People don't actually breed them in captivity really in good numbers. There are people that breed some of these species, really they're not they're not suited to captivity yeah and so they're really not around and that's again this is pre-licensing early licensing when there was that sort of changeover period that it should certainly change now um but it was just like yum yum yum yum yum and they just don't breed they're not easy to keep etc etc the stuff on our advance list that had only just legally come in at the time that it was added onto our advance list, and they're prolific breeders.

You know, two seasons and you've sunk the market. Like Varanus kingorum, for example, they are without question, in my opinion, I've kept too many monitor species to admit, but Varanus kingorum are one of the best pet monitors that we have in Australia. They're super outgoing. They're super small. They're suited to we have in Australia. They're super outgoing. They're super small. They're suited to small enclosures. They're really good.

When they first came into New South Wales and were licensed and all of that, they were five grand a pair. And they're on our advance list. They're a lot of money. There was definitely silly business that went on, like with people, you know, laundering them in. That's pretty well acknowledged that that did happen, particularly because none of the animals in captivity now

which are all many generations captive bred look anything like the locality they were collected from yeah funny funny how that is like legally collected from when they were i should say but you know like they they'd be like however many generations down the line now um but it's one of those things where there there's no demand outside of like no legal, illegal take, like nothing like that going on. Um, but they're still on our advanced list because they haven't been moved down and they are well suited, like really well suited to being something that people keep as a first time pet

say compared to an Aki because you know, you get good Aki's that handle well, you get Aki's that are pretty like sort of run out, look you zip away like all that king oram's half the size half the response half the sizing responsibility yeah um and just as active and engaging and you know handles probably just as well so you know and less food like there's so much of a better case for them to be a good pet species but with our slow reactive framework yeah they're never going to be there at least in our state in the coming future and it's such a sad thing to see yeah you know because they really are well suited to being and this is probably an argument against too much regulation in the pet trade right like it would be better if they were more around and if they become they breed like

rats like literally they just shit eggs out you know when you treat them right. So there's a really good case for why something should be facilitated to becoming a more common pet species rather than say Tristis. Baroness Tristis is a really commonly maintained species here. They're big. They hide a lot. They hide more than you think. They really hide. They suck.

You know, like, but people just love them because they're common they breed a lot um you know but they're not a great pet you know like in my opinion yeah you know you get odd individuals but they're just sookie little animals so anyway i just think there's like a structural change but the problem is again everyone's got vested interests yeah yeah yeah it's a well and i think that's where you get at least the public you know the average keeper or whatever they're that's where you get at least the public, you know, the average keeper or whatever. That's where they'll push back as they say, well, once once we accept some kind of legislation and it never changes, it doesn't make sense. And they don't they don't have their hand on the wheel. And it's like, you know, it doesn't.

I really think, you know, it's it's one of those things where it takes the village to get down the road you know and and i think i think legislators and and regulators have to continue to do their part they just can't put something in place and then walk away from it um because what you're regulating is a dynamic system uh it both on the human side and on the on on and on the nature side of things. So, you know, it's not a set it and forget it. Not in your reptile room, not in regulation, not in life. And just because you come against a brick wall at a certain point, you know, if you want to change the regulations or whatever, that, you know, politicians turn over. So down the road, you might have somebody that would listen to your cause. And, you know, yeah, like you said, it can be like banging your head against a wall and it's not, you know, a fun job.

And so maybe you do take a break and then try again later or, you know, find somebody with a sympathetic ear or whatnot. It's timing, right? So exactly the point you make about politicians changing over in that review i was involved with we had two different governments although it was the same government got re-elected but they changed over the minister who oversaw the environmental portfolio and so we went through all these meetings chatting to the chief of staff of one minister yeah and then as it got close to election the minister was like we're not going to do

anything right because it's better to do nothing near an election than do something that gets to someone else. So it just went all quiet and nothing happened. And then they turfed that minister out because there was a lot of allegations of them being useless, which, you know, I never met with him, but I met with the chief of staff and he was fine. And then we met with the next minister's chief of staff. And so I had a chat with them and they were really receptive to the idea and they were really supportive and they

thought it was all good and all that sort of stuff and we had to re-establish the same ground and have the conversation and go again yeah and the problem is though and this is i think a big issue that comes back to all these points across the whole thing is perspective and that minister was pretty up front or that minister's chief of staff is pretty up front and saying it's a perspective issue you know we they'd rather not as you guys have said in heaps of the podcast say it's better to do nothing than do something that'll piss someone off and turn voters against you and so it's a perspective thing right like if they do this change and they do it wrong it's going to get them kicked out and they lose their job

and like anyone who's going to lose their job whether it be a mom and dad pet store or a politician they're going to fight to make sure and they lose their job. And like anyone who's going to lose their job, whether it be a mom and dad pet store or a politician, they're going to fight to make sure that they keep their job because they need to feed their family and live their lifestyle. And it's an easy argument for them. Well, I'd like to help you, but if I'm not even in office because I do this, how can I help you? Huh? You know? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so it's, you know, and they're smart. Like, you know, there's some dumb ones there.

We all acknowledge that there's some smart guys in politics you know and all hate comes from the fact that they know how to play the game yeah you know like it is you know it's as much political as it is uh moral leading the charge etc there's horse trading you know all manner of stuff in politics but it's as much a game as anything else. Yeah. And I know that from friends that work as public servants in ministerial offices or have worked as contractors. You know what I mean? Like it's one of those things where you'd be surprised about how much public perspective plays into politics. And that's what's happening with reptiles, right?

Like we need to regulate our image and pet shops are a key font we need to do that through because they are the front line. Most people, and I mean, I don't know for the us but particularly here in australia most lay people that aren't part of the hobby the community etc their first first port of call is a pet shop you can walk into a pet shop you can have a look at the animals you can have a chat to someone in person it's the power of a brick and mortar store you know you actually feel like you're becoming more educated and getting comfortable you can handle an animal you can do all that and you can argue a good breeder does that too and this isn't a breed diverse pet store debate but this is just talking again that's 70 percent yeah everything is about that 70 percent

yeah same thing with the regulation there are still people today that refuse to wear seatbelts or bicycle helmets like we have legislation here to wear bike helmets and i saw a dude that got fined for it the other day he's like i shouldn't have to wear one he's literally screaming out of the car you know like there are going to be those guys and it doesn't matter like cut them leave them forget them we need to be focusing on this entry point and managing the perspectives of these people because without that perspective change and same thing with racking right like we've gone from the era of brian bargek's videos having fucking water monitors in iraq yeah like and he didn't think there was anything wrong with that and i acknowledge he's totally changed his perspective and i think too many people have treated him like shit for

too long he's making changes and that's respectful especially with the volume of animals he has you know and like heaps of people here got into the same situation where they got sold an idea of having 10,000 racks of 10,000 things in whatever size and they needed to change it, you know, but it takes time. Yeah. But we need to work on making sure these pet shops, which inform lay people who are ultimately the people that will drive politicians perspectives are getting sold the right idea.

And that comes through making sure that pet shops have, you know, the right species in there, the right attitudes. And, you know, we're talking about large, dangerous stuff. There's probably a big case to be made for, like, random, finicky, you know, species that, you know, only eat strange stuff. We had a really good example here recently in Australia. We have a handful of colubrid species and very few are represented in captivity. So two species, three species is probably like a handful of individuals.

One species, which is the brown tree snake, there's plenty of individuals. And then the other species, the common tree snake, there's a reasonable amount, but they don't breed consistently. Usually someone comes in, does really good with them, breeds a lot of them, releases them, and then over the next five years, everyone else bumbles trying to breed them. But they're a finicky species until they get established. And so we had a pet shop recently.

And because they're pretty, they come in all manner of colors. They're gold, they're green, they're blue, they're black, and they're like pristine examples of each, like, you know, bright gold, dark black black hot yellow bumblebee whatever the fuck you can name it whatever but they just got this wonderful natural color palette they're really highly desirable but they're frog eaters in the wild primarily they do take to rodents but they crash fairly hard as well in captivity if not treated well not meant to and a pet shop recently put some up fresh out of the egg. The photo was someone holding an egg with the babies coming out of the egg,

going fresh, common tree snakes available, unfeeding, 2.2 thousand. And they got destroyed. The whole community turned against them and said, this is irresponsible. This is tragic. What are you doing? And so the snakes, their retail price for really high-quality hatchling for the blue, which is probably the most expensive one,

are about $1,500, $1,500. Adults, you probably could get two grand for, but we're talking unfeeding neonates straight out of the egg for sale in a pet shop for two and like 2.2 thousand. And, you know, it was just such an egregious thing that the whole community and like, you know,

a lay person won't know what that is, but just the fact that that attitude was tried to pull off, you know, we need to try and stamp that sort of thing out now because, you know, when it does make its way to a lay person that goes, well, now it's pretty slack trying to sell something that's going to basically die, you know, like you sell it to, they said, Oh no, no,

we'll exercise caution who we sell it to. But can you really like something like that? You'd want a high price, really competent might do that. The price would factor in, but then you do get people that come in, like having worked in the pet shop there are people that have come in that will easily drop five grand in the sale for snakes and tanks you know yeah and you know they're certainly not common but they're not yeah i'd say they're probably uncommon to rare like they they happen like there are people i remember one guy came in and bought an adult albino darwin and a three thousand dollar setup you know like an albino darwin was worth over a thousand bucks it would have been you know

five grand all up easily and you know it's like for the pet shop but they you know spent fucking two and a half three hours with this guy walking through everything yeah because he was about to spend five grand buying a snack yeah yep and that's a huge if he doesn't know that's a huge, if he doesn't know, that's a huge curve to try to talk somebody through. Yeah. You know. So it's just, yeah, I think pet shops, I think they're a wonderful thing. And, you know, when they're done right, it's just making sure that not only the pet shop at its front, but the support behind it being the breeders and people supplying it are done right, you know.

I remember I was a huge boy for the reptile hobby when um i want to say was it reptiles by mac one of the big u.s supplies of petco pet smart whatever had that peter team getting behind them and like record all the facilities where they were breeding their bearded dragons and stuff you know everything was abysmal you know they had glue traps down to catch escapees. Like, you know, it was proper criminal. Like, well, like in Australia, you'd probably get jail time for that. You know? Yeah. Like, I don't know what happened with them.

And I apologize. I should say, I don't know. I can give you a guess. Probably nothing. Yeah, exactly. It would have been like, I know the U.S. is a lot more lenient, but this is probably part of it. Like, it comes back to my point, right? You need to self-regulate or you're going to get screwed and florida is seeing

that florida has been playing around for ages and started with tiger king and the big cat bands coming in over there and it's going to start proliferating into reptiles you know and you know there's people here i don't know what it's like in the u.s but there are people here that said we'll give them the low-hanging fruit from us canned venomous, you know, and that just pisses people off. Right. Like, you know, and you suddenly isolate that community and there's an argument to be said, black market venomous and blah, blah, blah. But like, you know, I don't know. I just, I think the whole discussion is be proactive, not reactive. Yeah.

And that's, I mean, that's everything from supply to distribution. Yeah. And that's, that's hard because you know, there's limited funds to fight the fight. And usually you have enough stuff that you have to react to that you don't have a lot left over to be proactive. And so I think it, it, it boils down to the keeper, you know, your, your money is what's funding these things. If there's a pet store you walk into and it's garbage, walk out, don't spend any money with them. Even if you're desperate to get crickets or, you know, whatever,

like, you know, your, your money talks and that's, what's going to keep, keep this thing going or, or potentially shut it down. So if you're supporting,

um, unscrupulous people now we're, we're probably preaching to the choir because anybody listening to this probably keeps and understands these things. That's what I was going through my head right now. It's like the people who are going in there are not willfully ignorant. They just

don't know. Normal ignorant. And it's the local pet show. Normal ignorant. They're not going to drive you. That's really true. The person I got my first lizards off, you know googled where do i buy lizards where i live and that was the person that came up as the first here yeah um yeah and i bought them off them and thought i was doing everything right and you know went back the next week and bought more lizards because that's what they said was totally fine and good to do and

set up shoot our setups for all of them and then had some die. And, you know, that was the idea I was sold. I was sold the dream of, oh yeah, it's easy to have as many lizards as I have. So come back next week with your next paycheck and buy another lizard. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And I think that's been a part of the hobby too is this, it's fine to have 10,000 snakes, you know,

and that's a different discussion as well. But I, and I guess, well, no people probably know who i'm implying in australia because it's pretty obvious who this person is but you know they're pretty their operation is somewhat condemned you know some people love them some people hate them but they skirt the line between a pet shop and a private breeder and they've certainly been in all manner of debates and debacles between that but in skirting that line they've been able to avoid the legislation that restricts pet shops here because they're just a private breeder,

but they operate in the same fashion that a pet shop would. And so they've been able to sort of cheat the system in many ways, whether you, again, love them or hate them. I'm not passing judgment on this particular person per se. But it just shows, like, you know, they retail a hell of a lot more animals than other places. Like, they just flog them out the door to whoever will pay, you know? And I don't think anyone could argue otherwise.

Like it's pretty well known what they do and that they're happy to sell anything as long as you meet the requirements, I'll sell you anything, you know, anything I've got that is. So, and you know, you take a tank and a setup and you come back the next week cause your lizard died and they tell you, Oh, it's cause you didn't do this and you buy another lizard. And that's the money making operation. Um, so yeah,

just a, as an example of like what happens when you can skirt around the regulation here, you know, while the other pet shops are again, tightly regulated and there's a lot more control over what they do and how they distribute it. So yeah. Sorry. the solutions are, you know, mixed and difficult to achieve. But I think, you know, as long as we're thinking is, you know, collectively and trying to educate others at, you know, reptile shows or through social media or whatever, as long as we're doing our part, you know, I think we can

feel good about our efforts and, you know, like being proactive and trying to give people the resources they need to succeed. And I mean, I think, like you said, you know, we've all been there, that first reptile and, you know, a lot of times it doesn't end well, but, you know, we've grown and we've learned from that. And unfortunately, you know, that's one thing that bothers me a lot is, you know, the animals that I'm putting out there, you know, how many of those are being used to learn. But at the same time, you know, that's kind of a valuable thing. I guess they may be a snack for a hawk in the wild. You know, it's kind of, I don't know, you know, it's valuable.

I'm as introspective as you, right? Yeah. Like, I think, and you can only, like, and I shouldn't say I'm expecting the world of everyone, even with pet shops, right? You can only do so much due diligence. Yeah. But the standard of due diligence, I think, varies considerably in what people view as good.

You know, like in Australia, some people view the fact you have a license as your due diligence. Some people won't. They'll just sell you fucking anything. Like, you know? Yeah. Like, and then there's other people like myself where I genuinely go, show us a photo of your setup.

I'll have a phone call with them now because generally speaking, if they're happy to be on the phone, you know, it's not just some idiot that's called like sending a message being like, how much is it? You know, like you do digital events, you have a conversation, you ask them about like for a lot of the lizards I like sell or have sold. I'm like, what sort of UV do you have? Like what's the brand, all that sort of stuff.

Like, cause still we have people here buying cheap, unbranded crap that just dies after a week. And I'm like, Oh no, go for this, for this, or this type of UV, you should be fine with, you know, like there's different degrees. And when you start investing more per individual, that's more time and less profit for you. And that's where I think a lot of people that have, and again, pet shops, it doesn't matter. It's their day job, right? They rock up in the morning and they can invest that time into that person. Well, for everyone else, as you sort of said before, unless you're a professional breeder, if you're doing it on the side,

that's time out of your downtime, you know, you work your nine to five and then you spend time trying to convince someone to buy your stuff or you take a break and work, you know, or whatever. Like it eats into other things and other time points. And so when you're breathing that volume and trying to flog it off and not investing as much time you just go bam bam bam bam bam but you need to increase your due diligence i guess is what i'm getting at yeah yeah well i think i think we've broken a record with this one we've we've passed the two hour

mark which is you know it's been uh i told you i chat that's hey you gave us fair warning and but it's been all good. So, you know, I can't complain about that at all. So thank you for your insights. New ground, but fertile ground nonetheless. All right. Well, you know, that's been a good fight. Hopefully you guys learned some stuff and can take some things into consideration and maybe change a perspective here or there. But I don't know, any new things you've discovered in the reptile world or exciting things?

In the U.S. today is National Rattlesnake Day, so happy Rattlesnake Day, everybody. And go out and, I don't think you can go out and see a rattlesnake in too many places in the U.S. right now, but they're probably down for the winter. Hopefully you're buzzing and muzzing nonetheless. Buzz and muzz away. Travis Wyman sent me a link to a show. It's called the Anthropocene Podcast, and they were talking about Diet Dr. Pepper,

so I learned a little bit about my favorite drink. What the heck? And the pepper is not for the flavor. It's for pep. So there you go. There's my herping fuel is uh so you knew all this very intuitively exactly exactly so all right well done doctor well done and then i i got a couple new books so i'm kind of excited about i just broke into one

of them uh hunters in the trees the natural history of arboreal snakes there was a bunch of like cheap books on amazon so so I'm like, oh. Can you move it over so I can see the cover here? Yeah. Oh, nice. Who's the author? It's Richard A. Sajdak. I'm not sure how to pronounce that.

Sajdak? Sajdak. Sajdak? Something like that. Sajdak. And then I just got a. That sounds like me pronouncing Latin names right there. Just a guidebook to the amphibians and reptiles of Madagascar.

I don't know. Nice. I saw old Dave Kaufman went over there, so I'm excited to see some of his videos. I like his videos. I think he does a good job, and especially where he's traveling throughout the world showing us them in their natural habitat. Really cool stuff. And some of the things he was

doing regarding like here's their temperatures and here's you know what kind of soil they're on and things like that i think that's very helpful so i applaud his his efforts you know i know some people have maybe a different attitude about him but i i think he's doing a good job educating people and showing us the cool wildlife out there so i don't know that's i was gonna say i really like dave's stuff too but i wouldn't say it's a criticism it's just yeah the one thing i would say about particularly the temperatures and those they're all snapshots and people need to understand they're snapshots right like yeah you can't say well i've seen people and this isn't what he's done. This isn't about his videos.

It's how people have interpreted it. They go, this is exactly how it always is now. You know, it's like this is just a single example of one or two species. You know, we talk about in science, you know, N of one, right? Like you can't say anything on an N of one. But if you have a good sample size and you see consistent patterns, you can say about this population of X or this, you know, this whole species because we've looked across the whole range of X or whatever. Anyway, sorry, I don't mean to tangent, but I just –

No, no. I know. That's good. That's a good – You can't be adamant about it. Yeah, no, I appreciate that because I – you're right. It is a snapshot. And I guess – and herping kind of clears things up a little bit too because I always thought, you know, rainforest.

You go into a rainforest, it's hot, it's muggy, it's, you know, 90, 100 degrees with 100% humidity. I went up into Iron Range in the rainforest and walk around and it's like 70. And then I get looking on, you know, on the different apps and looking at temperatures, you know, averages, minimums, maximums, and like pretty much it's always, you know, 70 degrees or always 70 to 80 degrees, you know, and that's pretty much the way they live. And then I look at their keeping and they're keeping them at 90 degrees and feeding them rats. And I'm like, this is an arboreal python. Like, why are you feeding it large, you know, and the recommendations to have them over a thousand grams to breed and stuff i'm like this is a lot of misinformation you know let's change that so kind of the impetus for writing that green tree python book but you know just you're right don't take a a snapshot in time as what they do all the time you know because that varies what

they eat you know how much heat they're taking in or or avoiding you know that can all vary depending on the time of year exactly it's like you know it's building a case i guess for certain arguments and there's some you know it's a pity for some of these natural history papers particularly i think australian species that are behind like the scientific pay wall because they really are such informative things for people that want to keep them, you know, like there's papers on the ecology and, you know, micro habitat use. Like Daniel Latouche, for instance, has done a heap on all the tropical pythons, like radio tracking them and all that beyond just green trees.

Yeah. He's done like Somalia. Yeah, exactly. You know, so there's a huge case to be made about the benefit of people seeing that and understanding, you know, how it can inform their keeping. Um, but that's cause he's got, you know, X sample size. He's looked at a whole heap of individuals and he can compare patterns versus just one animal. I was thinking about that the other day, because a lot of people go and do,

uh, field work when they don't have classes, you know? And so a lot of times that, that coincides with the summer from like June to August. And, and a lot of, a lot of reptiles, especially in the deserts of the Southwest where I live are, are the reptiles are not very active, you know, except maybe nocturnally. So if you looked at that snapshot, you'd think, oh, everything's nocturnal. And, you know, they love this high heat and all that kind of stuff where they're doing everything they can to avoid that high heat or that kind of thing. So just when these studies are done is important too. And I really liked that aspect of Shine's book where he talked about going into the museums and having this huge amount of animals that have been collected over time and

and could look at you know trends and you know what they were doing or what they were eating at certain times of the year and i thought that was pretty good i mean like those like rick's lapid papers the museum papers are like foundational to so much of what like that's where he really built his his like stronghold on australian lapids at the time right because we knew nothing yeah we knew absolutely nothing and to build or to to make hypotheses you have to know something you have to have a base layer you know to build on that and so he did a great job of putting in that base layer yeah that foundation yeah like i've got a paper we're finishing up at

the moment looking at um how a lapid responded to the bushfires like the um you know the massive bushfires we had here yeah and literally there's only two papers on that a lapid there's one by rick and a natural history note from someone who caught one and got babies out of it you know this is again you know 20 years ago when you could do that yeah um and they're like oh the mother was this long the neonates were this long you know things like that yeah but you know there's so many things we don't have this knowledge on but the fact that rick had this broad ecology paper allowed us to say a lot more things in this paper because we go oh well you know they eat this and you know maybe there was more of the species of skink that we're all –

we observe more of the species of skink in that area, this, that. You know what I mean? You can actually make these better calls, and that's about building on this knowledge base. It's the whole point of science, right? On the shoulders of giants, right? Exactly. So you need fundamental knowledge to be able to generate hypothesis and build understanding. Yeah, that's awesome.

So I neglected to ask you but i wanted to i had it in my head but i just never got around to it but what what speed what group of lizards do you enjoy the most or what kind of are you known for keeping uh so i guess historically my main one was a gametes so i kept a lot of the australian gametes so primarily the tenophorous genus which is our sort of yeah most one of our most diverse along with thy peripheral yeah um so i used to keep yeah too many of them too many tenophorous species you know i'll be quite honest in saying i got into like the collector mindset where it's like another one in the in the house yeah um and there's certainly certain species that i really do want again uh and i, a different discussion for another point is about the,

I very much got into the mindset and I've reflected on it a lot, but where the species might go extinct in captivity. And so I needed to keep it and breed it and perpetuate it. And everyone that I know that's ever done that with uncommon species has always had like very bad experiences because the reason it's uncommon is because no one wants it yeah and so you put your heart and soul into breeding and proliferating it yeah and then you struggle and you're sitting yeah and so it's just it's it's one of those things that maybe there are certain things that you shouldn't and this is again that

philosophical question right like if you're constantly fighting to keep it in captivity anyway um but that's what i used to keep a lot of and i still have like quite a few species and i'm quite passionate about them what's one of what's one of your favorites or one of the most i guess that's so of the agamids yeah my favorites probably the central netted yeah which is the most common one they are so which i found out uh in the u.s now yeah so they're a friend of here um over there like the ones i saw that someone sent me a link to it on the importers website but there was 1700 us i think or something yeah yeah well here they're like a hundred dollars yeah exactly but like uh so new carlos is definitely one of my favorites i also really like pictus tenofris pictus they're really wonderful lizards

okay um but at the moment probably my favorite lizard is the western blue tongue so i've got a few western i love them they're so cool yeah so um they're like my little passion project and then with snakes brown tree snakes like my other big passion yeah passion project and so you know i went through a downsize just with work life and um, yeah, mainly work. Like trying to make, you know, I was in the very unhealthy state of getting home and spending hours, you know, getting home in the afternoon and spending four hours every night cleaning, feed, oh no, feed in the morning, like get up early, feed everything, get home in the

evening, change waters, all that sort of stuff. And, you know, I barely had a life and all the money. So the smart reduction move and yeah, but I still love all the species I kept. And, you know, there's so many wonderful things you can do and enjoy, but you can't have them all. And that's something everyone needs to understand. Yeah, for sure. Well, cool.

Anything else? I think this has been a really great show. And thanks again for coming on. And we'll have to have you back again. So any other ideas sure our way so yeah thank you for having me and make sure for the next show to plan out at least three out now yeah there you go where can people find you what's your uh you know i mean i do i do have facebook but um i probably like i'm i'll be honest i've i really don't reply to people i you know for ages i i

get burnt out dealing with slack uh slack buyers when i try to sell stuff yeah um so you know i'm very much in the the herp herp scenes where i just talk to my like reptile keeping friends my herping friends and like you know extended networks and stuff so feel free to extend the line and i'll try to reply to you but i'll be honest that I just, I'm pretty shocking. So, but yeah, Mitchell, Mitchell Hudson. All right. Well, we'll follow you on, you know, from afar, I guess. Yeah. All right. Well, don't call me. I'll call you. Yeah. I know that's the most asshole thing to say.

No, no, no, no, no. Cause I just have so many people that message me and I just, I, no, no. I'm honest about it on my part because I just have so many people that message me, and I'm running around like a headless chicken at work. So on top of my private animals, I've got a lot of animals at work, which I won't say the number, but a lot there that I'm dealing with. So I have a lot to balance. Understood, understood. You do not have to explain this to either of us.

Yep. All right. All right. And, B, you can check me out at australianaddiction.com i don't update it as much as i'd like and or as i should but uh yeah you can see stuff i work with there at least and and on the social media is uh jg julander on instagram and then justin julander uh, on Facebook. So Chuck, you. Yeah. Um, you can find me on Instagram at Chuck Norris wins. Um, it's a bit of a hodgepodge of my life and my reptiles. So don't be shocked when it's not just, uh, just pictures of snakes and stuff, but, uh, yeah, I'm on Facebook, Chuck Poland, but it's really kind of my personal

account. Like, you know, I don't, I don't even post on Facebook that much anymore. So yeah, I'm pretty lame. So I guess we got a group of lame guys here today. The lames. Well, hopefully you enjoyed listening to this cause that's all you're getting from us. That's right. All right. Well, shout out to NPR Network and check out Morelli Python's radio on all their social media and websites and all that good stuff. And thanks again to them for hosting us. And we'll catch you again next week for another edition of Reptile Fight Club. I don't want to have to smack your bum. Join us next week edition of Reptile Fight Club. I don't want to have to smack your bum.

Join us next week for more Reptile Fight Club fun. Thank you. Outro Music Bye.