Reptile Fight Club - Reptile Fight Club debates Maternal vs Artificial Incubation

Episode Date: April 1, 2022

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

Welcome to the edition of Reptile Fight Club. We are joining you again. Welcome to Thunderdome. Well, my name is Justin Julander. I am the owner and proprietor of Australian Addiction Reptiles. And with me is my co-host, Chuck Poland. And I'm a schlub. We're all schlubs, man. Well, but we're schlubbable, so it's nice. That's good. That's good. Yeah. How's it going? Good. Good, man. Long time,

no see. Excellent. Yeah. Yeah. How are things? Things good? Good. Good. Yep. Yep. Staying busy. Yeah. Wonderful. Wonderful. All right. Well, what's anything new going on? No, no. When people are listening to this, we're going to be out herping the deserts of California. That's true. That's true. I cannot wait to get back into the desert to herp. When will now be then? Now. Wait, then.

Just now. Now, now? I love that sequence. That's one of the funniest. It's the greatest. What is this? This is now. All right.

Yeah, I'm itching to her. I don't know. I've been looking at people's pictures on Instagram or Flickr or whatever from Australia. Oh, man. I need to get back to Australia. It's killing me. Yeah. Well, you're not even going to do it this year.

I know. I know. I'm ditching out on the guys. You got to reel that back in, buddy. You got some time before you're going to get back there. This is true. You're going to have to settle for the West. Yeah, yeah. That's okay.

The West is good. No, the West is very good. You're going to do a nice trip down to Mexico, so that'll be fun. That's true, too. Some snorkeling with sea lions that'll be cool and some herping unbeknownst to your yeah your co-traveler hey i'm always in herp mode you know i know that well i know that they're gonna get in there gotta get in the incidental herping yeah yeah yeah for sure yeah we did find a midget faded rattlesnake on one of the canyons that I did with my buddy in Southern Utah.

That was pretty cool. Southeastern Utah. That is pretty cool. Yeah, it was a nice one too. Really nice pink color. Did you take pictures or anything? Oh, yeah, yeah. I posted on my website, I think.

Did you? Okay. Yeah, that's a while back. That's a few years back. That was the same canyon I got stuck in with my daughters overnight. Ah, yes. I remember this story. Yeah, that was an entertaining one. Spontaneous adventure, I believe is the correct word.

For sure. Misadventure implies a mistake on your part. Yeah. You could have attributed it to me it's all planned surprises yeah they're all planned there you go but i mean it worked out all right we all survived and everybody was kind of none the worse for the wear we did find a hatchling banded uh gecko see yeah uh utah banded i think it was a utah banded gecko i mean it was in utah but it was i would not have expected one to be there it was kind of a surprise like and and it was funny because we'd found a i found a little canyon tree frog and i'm showing the kids hey

check this out or something and they're like oh he's tiny i'm like not really and then i realized there was a banded gecko hanging out on the same rock as the tree frog. So that was kind of cool. I'm sure they were both as surprised to see you as you were to see that. And I had no battery power left on my phone. So I have no pictures. I kind of feel bad about that. But that was a pretty cool little lizard.

Yeah. So, you know, the misadventures can sometimes be rewarding in that way but did you die i did not die nobody died yeah i don't think my oldest daughter's ever gonna go out on a camping trip with me a backpack really yeah i kind of burned that bridge a little bit maybe she'll forget about all the pain and misery she had. She was like my rock. She was the strength of the trip. She took care of the younger siblings while I went out and tried to get back to the car. But you use the, use the collective power of the family to reel her back in.

There you go. Yeah. Well, any, uh, hear any good podcasts lately? Any good information out there? I have not listened to a single podcast because I have been too stupid busy. Oh, that's lame. It's lame. It's lame. It's lame sauce. Like, like as, as lame as it gets. So tell me about it. I'm yeah. I started to swim. I don't like treading water. There you go. I started listening to the Raleigh Pythons radio podcast, their most recent one. I guess they had a bunch of delays. I was like, man, I'm not seeing much new stuff coming from Eric and Owen lately.

But I guess they had a few setbacks and so they weren't able to record, uh, last couple of weeks. So, um, it was nice to, to see one of their episodes and they were, they did a book club and they talked about the secret, uh, secret social lives of reptiles, that book by, uh, Sean duty duty. Sorry. That was, that was terrible. Uh, Vladimir Donets and Gordon Berghardt. So it's a cool book. I, I started reading it, haven't made it too far in, but yeah, some fun stuff and Gordon Burghardt. So it's a cool book. I, I started reading it, haven't made it too far in, but yeah, some fun stuff in that book for sure. So Eric and Owen talk about all the cool things that they enjoyed from the book. So kind of a cool idea, you know, book club. I think, um, I know I've heard, uh, the guys on the, the Herbiculture Network do some, some of those kind of things.

Yeah. Book, book club type things. Book report. It's a book report. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Book report. I think they were, at least they mentioned, Eric and Owen mentioned they were delayed because, you know, it took a while to read the book and they kept, they thought they'd get it done sooner or something.

So, yeah, but it was an enjoyable one. I really enjoyed listening to their take on the book and thinking about social lives. Reptiles is, is a cool, cool topic for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, there's a, there's a lot of cool things in the reptile world for sure. Um, I, I got a, a couple new books recently one is the the monitor lizard book um by baron einmuller uh he's kind of the european king of monitor

lizards he's kept and bred a lot of things some of the you know world's first breedings it seems have come from him yeah yeah yeah i know there was a period of time where uh the europeans were pretty much the only ones doing good with monitors like right like i mean yeah i'm sure that's french came along yeah i'm sure that's not probably the case but maybe maybe a little bit you know oh that was a fun time though that whole monitor resurgence back in the you know early 2000s yeah yeah in the late 90s early 2000s and pretty cool now there's there it's kind of we kind of take it for granted how you know for sure can be done yeah um not that i've had that much success i i really enjoy monitors but they're a lot of work for sure a lot to keep those guys happy enough to to breed and to breed you

know repeatedly so hats off you gotta be a busy work a busy food monkey yeah yeah yeah speaking of food monkeys man that mike sure does a good job with his monitors yeah there's there's a few species i want to keep before i die so yeah i might have to wait till I'm retired or more time on my hands before I can keep some of them or have more room, I guess, to, to do them justice. But yeah, there's a few more on my list. I need to tick off before I die and enjoy. So yeah, it's tough. It's tough to do it in the back 40 in Utah though. So yeah, that's true. Yeah. Not, not a lot of outdoor well i mean during the summer i can keep them outside but it's still pretty cold yeah it's you gotta still need that yeah yeah

yeah yeah well and there's probably some monitors that would do okay and i i know like i know i was talking to burt langworth and and he was saying, oh yeah, if you could get some, you know, Veranus griseus, the desert monitors, he's like, they come from an area that's very similar to Utah. You know, maybe not so much snow, but it gets very cold and harsh deserts and things. So that might be, he was recommending that for keeping outdoors. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of cool. Well,

yeah, maybe someday, I don't know. Griseus are not readily available. I saw there, there was a few in the country for a while there, but they, I think they got either confiscated or just kind of faded away, but yeah,

it's unfortunate. There's some cool, cool monitors out there. I'm, I need to go find more in, in Australia. There's still some, some ones I need to take off the list,

but like as far as seeing them in the wild, but yeah. You always mention, man. I know. I see it. There's too many cool species. Yeah.

Yeah. Those in your pants, this podcast brought to you by virgin airlines. Go to Australia. Yeah. That'd be nice. Nice to get over there again yeah sooner than later that's what you need is a virgin airline sponsorship is that even do they even go free round trip miles to australia i'm thinking quonsis i should have said not quonsis is quantus airlines that's the austral airline. I don't know what I'm talking about. Isn't that owned by an Australian guy? Uh, Virgin is, well, uh, Richard Branson. Is he an Australian?

I thought he was an Aussie. I don't know if, if not, I apologize to, I don't know if Australia would, would claim him. I don't know. You might have to, it might be a hard sell. I don't know. Oh, there was a there was a good get together of some of my aussie buddies over and over at deb and uh wayne's place uh uh peter and joanne birch were there and troy kulegowski and looks like they were having a lot of fun i missed out yeah did they rub it in made me made me miss it. Ah, they were nice. They, they were, uh, nice about it, but yeah, that, that was, that was tough to,

I need to get over there and hang out with those guys again. They're such good people. Yeah. Good folks. Miss my Aussie buddies. Yeah. All right. Well, what are we going to fight about today? Eggs. Eggs. All right. Do you like them hard-boiled or over-easy or scrambled? I like them poached.

Ooh. I can't get on board with that. You're going to have to fight me on that one. I poach my eggs right from my females. I'm a poacher. We had a very nice discussion topic brought up and suggested to us by Lucas. And I don't even know if I want to try your last name. I'll probably butcher it. But Indiger? Sorry, man.

Indiger? Indiger? Indiger. He is indivisible. All right. All right. A little math humor there. Ah!

You missed Pi Day, though. Pi Day was a couple days ago. You can't bring up old stuff. Well, thank you, Lucas, for suggesting this topic. We're going to talk about maternal versus artificial incubation. I'm itching to fight about this one. Yeah. I haven't pretty strongly.

Oh God. Really? Do you? Yeah. Well, hopefully I get my, my topic. Well,

we'll see. I'll be pissed. So, okay, here we go. You ready for the coin test? I'm going to flip, I'm going to flip it like,

just like old times. Let's see if your plan works. You're full of, you're full of hurry, dude. Hey, just because I win one, I mean, come on. You won the odd one last year. Just because I win one doesn't mean that I'll flip it funny. All right, flip it. Let me see.

Here you go. All right, that's heads. It is. You got it. That's because you didn't do your normal flip. You did your extra. You're like timing it in the air i i watched you flip it you got me all messed up i don't know dude i don't know what it's messed up

i got you all figured out you yeah you must be you must be you got you messed up listen yeah i take notes when i lose because i don't like i'm just i'm just saying i'm impressed like you know you switched it up you didn't call tails and you won it. That's impressive. Way to go, man. You can beat me. You can beat me. And I'll leave with my tail between my legs.

But I'm coming back. I'm coming back. Yeah. You're a fighter, man. You're a fighter. Okay. Well, you won. So what side of the argument do you wish to defend?

Artificial or maternal incubation i will defend artificial incubation artificial is the best huh well i don't know if it's the best but that's what i'm defending i will gladly go with maternal incubation yeah i think i even i even think i served you up the side you wanted yeah might might have served it up to you sunny side up let's see how it goes you can see a big smile on my face i do see a big smile on your face all right well let's get to it here okay well since i won you can start hey i'll start i'll start don't you start i Hey, I'll start. I'll start. Don't you start with me. I will start. I will start with you on this one for sure. Okay. Maternal incubation is far superior to artificial incubation.

I mean, these animals, and I guess we got to clarify, we're talking about pythons, right? Because you don't get a lot of maternal incubation with many other species. There are some females that maybe stick with the eggs, but pythons have evolved and adapted to wrap their bodies around the eggs and keep them at a certain temperature and moisture even. Sometimes they'll even shiver their muscles to generate heat to increase the temperature of the clutch. You know, 15, what is it? 15, 15 million, 50 million. I don't know. Some, some odd million years can't be wrong. Um, they're there, they've evolved to do this and they've, uh, they do a very good job of it. So, you know, why, why mess with nature, go with what, uh, they've evolved to do. And, and, why, why mess with nature? Go with what they've evolved to do.

And, and now obviously that takes some support on the keeper end. You've got to make sure that your, your cages are set up properly and that they can get the temperatures they need to be able to maternally incubate their clutch. But I think there's a lot of benefits to maternal incubation. I will start out with that little tidbit. Wow. Over to you. Wow. Thank you. So what you're saying is that it's not just all on the female

when you're incubating these eggs, on her incubating these eggs. Don't you put words in my mouth. Don't you put. You have to do your part, right? You have to set it up correctly. So if you don't set it up correctly, it definitely, you know, so the females having to select potentially a subpar place to lay those eggs, she doesn't really have a choice.

So she'll make the best, worst decision she can. Um, and you have to make sure that, that you're supporting that female. And if you don't, obviously things can go awry. And I mean, heck, as, as you've even said in the not so distant past, you know, you, you, you've had some, some bum luck with some females that just didn't do very well with maternal incubation. They're just, they're bad moms. They're bad moms. Just call them bad moms. You know what I mean? Don't do well with the eggs. The eggs don't fare well. And the clutches end up kind of being train wrecks. So maybe that's a case where, you know, if you were to collect those eggs and you were to put them in an optimum, you know, environment that potentially, you know, you you were to collect those eggs and you were to put them in an optimum, you know, environment, um, that, that, that potentially, you know, you wouldn't,

you wouldn't have the die off or, or some of the issues that you have. I mean, maybe, maybe you would, maybe you wouldn't, but you know, you're definitely potentially leveraging a better, better outcome by, uh, collecting those eggs. Um, certainly I, know, certainly, I think there's, there's definitely a case where artificial incubation is, is, is definitely the way to go. I mean, I've, I've done, I've done, I've never actually maternally incubated a clutch, which, you know, it is both okay with me. And, you know, sadly, sadly, you know, just pitiful. Oh, you're missing out. You gotta, you gotta let it go with your, your outdoor. Well, you would think with my, you gotta try it out.

You'd think with my Zen, with my Zen mentality about things that I would be much more of a maternal incubator, but there is an inner control freak, I guess. I don't know. Yeah. You gotta, you gotta let that control go. It's, it's a beautiful thing, man, to see those babies emerging from their mother's coils. It's, it's pretty sweet. And just to, I don't know. I, and you know, like I said, they, they, they know what they're doing to some extent, you know, you do have some females that may, you know, and, you know, talking about maybe Aspidites, they're, they're not necessarily, um, I think there, there's a possibility that they're in the environment where they're living in burrow systems of other animals, where they're,

they have a humid environment that probably stays warm. They're semi-tropical, at least the blackheads are. And so, you know, they, they probably can just leave their eggs in a, in a burrow and they'll probably hatch out fine. There was a study by, uh, Shine's group that showed that water pythons actually a lot of times will leave their eggs in a burrow and, uh, because the temperatures are right. And, you know, they, they fared okay. So I guess, you know, they're not maternally incubating, but they're naturally incubating, I guess, in, in, in a burrow. So I don't know what you'd classify that as because nobody's taking them and putting them in a controlled environment. So, and, and also, I mean, their nature doesn't necessarily always support maternal incubation either. And there are failures

in nature too. So, you know, you got to expect a miss here and there. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't have a, an incubator at the ready in case things go wrong. You know, there's no, no reason just to let all the eggs die because the female decides not to wrap around them. Now, another interesting thing is the female usually knows which eggs are good and which eggs are worth, you know, wrapping around. And so, for example, this Woma female that laid for me, she had an egg excluded out of her coils and she actually wrapped the eggs really nicely. It was a lot of people commented on that, like, wow, you got a female woma to wrap her eggs. Usually they just kind of lay them and drape around them loosely or, or just leave them in the cage. So, you know, thing you've got to know your species, you got to know the, the animals that you're working with and kind of know, um, their natural history. And that will definitely help, uh, you have better success in, in maternal incubation attempts.

But, you know, there, there have been some reports as well on females that are, you know, incubating their eggs in nature. So this was an older publication. I believe Shine was one of the authors on this one too. It was back in 1985. And they just reported like some findings of maternally incubating females in the field. And a couple of them had abandoned their nests because the, the weather conditions were not great. You know, it started raining a lot and they were in a place where it was just not conducive to stay with those eggs. And they ended up abandoning him. And I think in

some instances, the eggs were collected and artificially incubated and they got a couple to hatch out but win for me no no no i mean it was a win for nobody that that was a train wreck you know well it was a win for whoever made it out of the egg that's true that's true so yeah i guess uh as a backup you know your side might have a have some validity as a backup i mean well you know i well i i don't i don't necessarily, have some validity as a backup. I mean, well, you know, I, well, I, I don't, I don't necessarily, I mean, it could be a backup if you want to take the more risky way of, of, of doing things. I just think that, you know, the stability that you look, no, no, no doubt that artificial incubation is cooler. Like it's definitely like more of artificial is cooler or maternal is cooler

sorry it's definitely cooler win for me but but always with the butts chuck yeah well that's that's that's because you like butts and you cannot lie that's because your argument is, but, um, no, look, I just think that if, you know, if you can create an environment that is optimum conditions and put those eggs into that, you're leveraging your best outcomes. Uh, you're, you're, you're creating an environment that is hard to do in, in somewhere dynamic, like a cage where you can hold a steady environment that if you do it right and you're good at setting up your, your incubation chamber and your thermostat and your, and your, um, and your incubator, thank you, Jesus. Uh, then, you know, it can, it, it, it, it's an optimum, it's an optimum condition for doing those eggs. Now,

does that mean every egg makes it or, or, or conditions can't become suboptimal? They can, but if you set it up right and you pay attention to it, they stay optimum. And so I think, you know, you know, sure you can do artificial incubation as a backup when mom fails and things start to go south and you rely on old faithful or you have the option to just go old faithful right from the jump and you'll get probably as good or better of an outcome. So for me, I just think that artificial wins the day. Is it as cool or flashy? It's kind of like the you know, the YouTube or the Instagram of today, you know? Oh, did you maternally incubate that? Yeah. Okay. Well, Mr. Optimal, yeah. I mean, what if you have Owen brain and you forget to

turn on your incubator? What then? Is that optimal? No. Is there a cure for old brain now? What if your thermostat fritzes out and you cook all your clutches in the incubator? You're out the whole season. That's not optimal. There's a lot of things that can go wrong in the incubator. You might bump it and you know, eggs roll or you, you drop a drop, a container full eggs and they roll across the floor and get all scrambled up. And, and, uh, you know, there's a lot of things that can go wrong with artificial incubation as well. Um, I don't know, like there's, there's definitely some downsides to artificial incubation.

Well, if you suck like if you're just like oh the trail rolling across the floor i mean that's kind of all right accidents happen man i get that i get that you're you know you you want to throw in there that that your thermostat doesn't breaks and goes wide open and cooks everything. Yeah, that's possible, but it's not likely it's not, it does. Well, and it depends on the type of equipment you're using. I mean, if you're using, um, you know, I mean, obviously anything electrical can break, like anything mechanical can break. I mean, that's always, that's always an option, you know, um, you know, two months of no sun and, and cold temperatures is an option in nature too you know two months of no sun and and cold temperatures is an option in

nature too so there's no guarantee in life about anything but you know with a with a quality incubator uh and and a good thermostat you can be relatively assured with a proper setup and and a little bit of attention to detail that you can be pulling, you know, good, good, safe incubation. No, no fail. Yeah. I, you know, I think that might be true for some species. And I mean, let's, let's talk precision, right? I mean, you've got a female that kind of can sense when the temperature's right or when it's not so right. And so they can loosen or tighten their coils. They can, you know, they've, they've been known to, um, increase the, the humidity by, you know, urinating if they need to, to, to kind of increase the, the moisture

levels of the clutch. There's all sorts of things that the female can do. And she senses a lot better than we can. I mean, if we open the incubator and the eggs are sinking in too early, you're like, Oh crap, what do I, you know, I'm going to add more water. And then that has the revert and then they swell up and then they go bad because you're fiddling around with them and can't figure out which, which to, what to do with them. Female is going to know a lot better than a keeper. If things start to kind of go downhill. And also, I mean, I've, I've the, of the few, uh, maternally incubated clutches I've done, like the eggs don't look great, but they hatch and the babies that come out, they seem more robust. They seem, you know, a little more feisty or, or full of life. They usually absorb all their yolk, things like that. So, um, there are things that you can get as a, as an added

benefit when you do a maternal incubation, right? What you got? I cannot, I cannot, I cannot believe you just used that. You can't believe it? Well, believe it, buddy. That just happened. Okay, sorry. I'll stop yelling. It's all right. What you got?

You're speechless. No, I'm not. I am a little speechless because you're – what is that? What is that? Doesn't equal causation. What is that a core correlation doesn't equal causation. So, you know, here's a scientist telling me all these like, Oh, I seen this and this and this, and that's the way it is. No, that's, that's there. There was a published study that, yeah, it's been studied.

So, so across how, you how yeah how big was the study that was pretty big it was on uh ball pythons in oh my god maternally versus artificially incubated like they do on the farms so it's pretty interesting all right fair fair but you know i think again uh you know they saw an increase in feistiness like zest like right now with you yeah exactly increasing your feistiness larger larger and more robust hatchlings now there were problems with the study so i will admit oh whoa what really no wait a minute what you're pushing you're pushing bad study on me not necessarily bad study there at least at least you're being on at least you're being honest and saying that maybe there was some yeah um but you know there that's that's a potential outcome of of maternal versus uh

at least from the data we have there's a a potential benefit. So can we agree that in our modern day of technological age that we have instruments for measure that if you spend enough money, you can get a high degree of accuracy and precision? Can we agree? Yeah, I think so. of accuracy and precision. Can we agree? Okay. So you can do, you can through, you know, the, through technology, you can have these sensory data, just like the mother can, by not possessing those skills, if you have the right technology at play. And the point being is as long as you set it up correctly

and you use your knowledge and your best understanding of science and using the best technology, you can leverage as good, if not better outcomes, lacking the external sensory inputs that that female might have. Can we agree about that? I mean, it's possible. I don't think you can get the precision that a female can provide because you don't know what's going on inside that egg like she does. I mean, the estimators haven't evolved over the last

several million years is it is it are are are you saying that that female knows exactly what's going on in that egg or or or do you just say she's reacting to external stimulus and i think there's a little bit of both so and so and so hold on hold on a minute okay so so in in a lot of these maternal incubation studies these females take these eggs way up to like 90 something degrees and they'll incubate them at that period for a while and then they're back down and they're they're up now is that because she's so precise in in the way that she's incubating and she knows exactly how high she can take them up or how long or maybe she she she lacks a level of precision and and is doing that as a safe parameter that that she knows she operate in. Maybe she doesn't need to, maybe it's not as important to, or she's not able to control the exact temperature of that egg.

So she expends her resource to take it all the way up because she gets the sensory input that things are too cold. So she warms them up with her body. She takes them up very high and the egg can tolerate them and that's fine. That's fine. But does that necessarily mean she knows better than what you can do optimally in an incubator? I mean, that's, that's a good question. I don't know if that's known. I would, I would think that the female would probably have a better sense of things than we could, despite all our technology. And I mean, you need to watch more Simpsons episodes, because if you saw what happened at Itchy and Scratchy Land when, you know, they relied on technology and the robots just about killed everybody. I mean, that's some serious business there. You know, you don't want a giant metal rat chasing you. Anyway, I think, you know, that what I was going to say before Dave Barker, they had National Geographic out filming some't know if it's National Geographic Wild, but it was back. It was a while back, but it's pretty, pretty cool looking at back when the barkers bred a lot of different species. Anyway, they had a children's python that was laying eggs when the film crew was there.

And so they set up their cameras and filmed this female laying her eggs and settling the clutch. And she went to an egg in the clutch and she was kind of nosing it and tongue flicking and stuff like that. And then she like used her head and neck and just kind of flipped it out of the clutch. And, and, and Dave grabbed, I think he said he took the egg and put it back in her clutch and he just thought, what'd she do that for? And so she, the female like kind of started wrapping around and then she started nosing the eggs again. And then she picked that same egg and, and grabbed it with her neck and flipped it out of the clutch again.

And it was, you know, he was just like, holy cow. I haven't, I've never witnessed this behavior. That's really cool. And that egg was infertile and it didn't go on to hatch or anything. So she knew it was a bad egg and flipped it out of the clutch. Now that footage exists with National Geographic and Dave asked them because they didn't put it in the program. And so Dave asked about it and they said, yeah, it's a million dollars to buy that, uh, or something, you know, some outrageous amount to buy that footage. It was, but it was kind of, kind of interesting to think about, you know, the females kind of know, you know, what,

what eggs are worth incubating, which, what kind of temperatures they can withstand. Now, uh, you know, we did, we put in these little temperature probes with some anteresia when we were writing the children's python book. So let me ask you this. Let me finish real quick. Hold on. Have you ever seen snakes incubate bat eggs? I don't know. I mean, not a slug, and it may be may be keeper error that the result, I have an example of that

too. But so anyway, the, we put in the temperature probe in with the clutch, right? So as the female was laying, I saw she was laying. So I got this little temperature sensor probe that records the temperature data. So I put it in the middle of the clutch. She laid a couple more eggs, wrapped it all around. So the thing was embedded in the middle of the clutch. And then, you know, after the eggs hatched, I could go in and dig it out of the egg shells that were remaining. And that was a successful clutch. All the babies hatched. They all did great. They were very robust and happy upon hatching. And the, I got the um, I, I got the data and I imported, I'm like, holy cow, like they got up into the nineties, you know, in some, sometimes, and, you know,

there was a, there was a natural cycle of temperatures, which you'd expect in, in nature as well. Like you don't just have a constant temperature unless you're somewhere close to the equator or something like that. So, um, and these, this was going up and down and getting pretty high. Now, if you set your incubator at 90, you know, you're going to cook those eggs pretty good, but apparently they can handle 90 for certain amount of time. And the female probably can adjust that a little bit if she needs to loosen her coils or whatever, let more airflow in or something. But I don't think there's any objective evidence that that putting an egg into thermopause because it goes down into the low into the low end and then goes way up into the high end is any better than running a a an

incubation uh it you know in the middle of of, you know, but you don't know that. Well, you don't know that either. Well, yeah. So how are you claiming that one's better than the other? I'm just, I'm just saying you, you, you, you, you started this out saying that maternal incubation is far superior and you're using these, you know, these analogies of the female understanding and being able to, you know, work within this, you know, range. And I just, I don't think there's any objective evidence other than some studies that have had some problems that maternal incubation is better. Show me a study without problems, but, you know, from the data that they gathered, it show you can design the best experiment in the world things still go wrong right but that doesn't mean you throw everything out that you've discovered from that study anyway their data

did show that maternal incubation had a benefit right that it was it was better than than their artificial incubation technique well what than their artificial incubation technique well what was their artificial incubation technique um they put the eggs in a warm stable environment with uh high humidity and just like you would in an incubator except it wasn't an incubator so what they didn't use like it was in a hole in the ground yeah so so there you go so so but that's what they do you know over in the in a lot of those farms they just uh incubate that way i get that but but now you're i mean so it's successful enough you know well it's not an apt comparison though because we're talking about an incubator that's ideal conditions

not a hole in the ground, which is subject to it. So, so what you're saying is ideal. I'm not sure what you're basing ideal on. So, okay. So one, you have a female who can moderate temperature and humidity. And then the other, you have a hole where those eggs are just subject to whatever the

environmental conditions are going on right there. Right. Well, they're pretty stable because they're underground. Okay. So, but. Thermal stable. eggs are just subject to whatever the environmental conditions are going on right there right well they're pretty stable because they're underground okay so but you know thermal stable but okay but it's still subject to the environment right whereas the incubator is only subject to the condition the inputs that are put into there right okay so who's defining ideal though that's what i want to know like is it ideal to have a set stable temperature is it ideal to have a fluctuation well i think you could ask and uh you know i think you could ask a snake which it which it likes more whether it likes large fluctuations in temperatures or whether it likes to have a fairly steady like do okay do you think that snakes have a preferred body temperature

sure okay you have a preferred body temperature right it differs for different jobs right like but why preferred body temperature is probably higher for a female that has eggs that she's about to lay um because she needs to keep those eggs warm enough that they, you know, move in the right direction. But, you know, she might get above that a little bit and that's okay. And they have a little bit of plasticity and some, you know, handling of varied conditions built in, right? So that's what I'm saying. What's optimal? How do you define optimal?

Well, 87.8 or is it 89 or is it 86? What's up? Listen, I can't tell you because I'm not, I'm not a Python, but we can both sit here and agree that there are optimal temperatures that, that, that they do certain required functions at, right? Sure. That, that, that they need potentially. Yeah. Okay. But whether that's optimal or whether that's just, you know, what, what's necessary, I don't know. It's hard to say it's optimal. If it was optimal. Well, I just don't understand why having an increase. So the question becomes, is artificial incubation at the wrong temperature better than maternal incubation at a varied temperature? So how do you know what you're basically saying is?

And what I was saying was that at an artificial incubation with the correct setup, I'm not saying that what I do is the correct setup. I'm just saying if you knew what that was, having that stability over the long course of the incubation of those eggs is an optimal. I'm not saying I know what that is. And I'm not saying I set it up that way. But if you could figure out what that is, if you knew what that was, would that not be better than the, would that female, if you could set her up in an optimal environment and she had to do less work, i.e. she could get off her eggs sooner. She could eat sooner. She could not

have to worry about the eggs. Would that not be of a better benefit to her? So artificially incubating those eggs in an artificial environment that is quote optimum, whatever that is, does that not free the female up to eat more? Does it not free her up to go about her life sure sure i mean yeah you could definitely do that i i don't know that that's any any more of a benefit for for her why wouldn't it be a benefit for her well i mean that's what they're designed to do well i get that but if she's lost body condition, if she's lost, you know, you know, proteins, minerals, all those things that go into shelling and producing eggs. Why would she not want to bring those things back? You know, if she's in a weakened state because of it, what like what what is the benefit for her to remain on those eggs longer. I mean, other than, other than to bring her clutch to, to, to hatching. Sure. I mean, theoretically, sure. Yeah, that's great. But we don't,

we don't know all those optimal set points like she does. Right. So it's, it's very difficult to say, Hey, if we do it optimally, then yeah, that, that might work great for her but i'm saying maybe we don't know what's optimal and it's better off for the eggs to be but by a lot of female but by the data that you talked about she she seems to go way up and way down and she doesn't hold them at an optimal temperature she doesn't hold that's uh that's the environment that she was in right and what do they do in nature? Does the sun not set? Does it not get a little chillier at night, especially for some of these more,

but is that harder? Diamond Python. But is that harder on her? Because she's having, she's, she's having to expend energy after she's laid a clutch of eggs. Is it harder for, for snakes to have to,

to roommate, you know, do they have to, to, to hibernate? Is that harder on them? Maybe, but why do they do that? There's a trade off. Why do they do that? Why do they burn? It's just because the way they've evolved, right? Their environment, they're dealing with

the environment, but every animal will exist in its lowest energy state that it has to. Right. And so if that animal has to exist at a higher energy state in order to get her eggs along she will do that but there is a there is a cost to her to do that yeah yeah and that's why wild females don't reproduce every every year and i guess i'm saying you know is that optimal to reproduce every year is that what what you're saying? They should be able to gain body mass back faster so they can reproduce again sooner? I guess part of what I'm saying is like, what if these females had optimal conditions like in an incubator, right? And they didn't have to necessarily worry about incubating their eggs for environmental differences that may be occurring. They didn't have to be that buffer, right? That that may be occurring. They didn't

have to be that buffer, right? That's what they are. They're a buffer to the environment, right? Sure. So if they didn't have to do that, they could go about their putting on their, their, you know, eating, getting, getting their body condition back. So maybe they do produce that following year, but I mentioned that that's what some, you water pythons do so it does occur in nature they'll leave their eggs in a thermal stable environment that has and i would i would i would gather to say that uh you know burrowing species that can put their clutches down in in the ground where it's fairly thermally stable and fairly humidity constant probably are aren't as good at wrapping their eggs because they're used to being able to have to leave them and they can go on to do other

things and and them being able to come off of those eggs and do other things as an advent you know is advantageous to them right so well to them but not necessarily to the offspring like any goanna can climb down there find the eggs and gulp them down. There's no protection for those eggs. And that's one of the natural, you know, things that, that a female incubates her eggs for is to defend them. You know, even get some species like king cobras that will stay close to the nest and nest guard and build a nest for their, their offspring. And that's a new, and there's, that's a nuanced argument because it depends on the type of

species you're talking about. Well, it's a risk reward because it depends on the type of species you're talking about. Well, it's a risk-reward strategy, right? Yeah, some python moms are going to be going to food right along with their eggs. Well, and you can, you know, these pythons are probably able to defend. But no, I'm just saying like there are reasons why they're incubating their eggs. And so just because they can leave them in nature doesn't necessarily give that. Well, they're incubating them because they have to.

Well, no, because some of the water pythons will incubate their eggs, even though they don't have to. It's a kind of a risk reward type thing. So you have some that maybe are more risky, leave their eggs, but then they can go eat and reproduce again sooner. And so maybe there is a calculus to that sure sure and and i mean it it must have some advantage or or none of them would

do it right so right but but the fact that some remain with their eggs says okay maybe there's also a benefit to sticking with your eggs defending them from predators and and you know regulating temperatures or or moving your clutch if it's a bad spot or whatever. And certainly, like I said, you know, artificial incubation, i.e. intervening with what we understand to be optimal conditions seems to leverage good outcomes in the same way that a female maternally incubating rather than just being like fuck it and leaving

and chalking it up to nature is a better is a better um you know uh control than than just nothing than just chance right so well again i don't know what we're assuming there like what optimal or what better is you know it may be, but I don't know that it's necessarily better. And if there are indeed advantages, you know, given to the offspring by the female sticking with the eggs, which I would argue that there's a very good chance of that again, you know, maybe you do have the benefit of having your female reproduce again, but if they have better, stronger hatchlings when they maternally incubate, is that not something to consider as well?

I mean, I think it's something to consider, but why, again, I would question why they got the data that artificially incubated or in this case, hands-off incubated, not necessarily artificially incubated because it's a stable environment. I mean, it's not your refrigerator or whatever, you know, it's not like that precise. It's not insulated. It's not as controlled. I mean, you're in equatorial Africa where it's pretty consistent during, you know during certain times of the year, especially when the eggs are being incubated and things.

So it's not that crazy. And they did pack them in boxes and stuff like that. And I get that, but there's no human checking on it to say like, oh, this is too moist. But they're not there to – I mean, this is their livelihood. They're at a farm so i mean and and they these are successful methods they've used for you know decades i don't know so so you're saying that that they were not leaving these eggs in the ground and that they

were going in and they were checking on them and that they were making changes based on what they saw or what? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think they were taking the eggs from the females as well and weighing the clutches and stuff like recording data throughout the study. So they were trying to maintain an optimal or what, or a good environment for the eggs to hatch. Like they wanted the eggs to hatch, but they were comparing their artificial incubation techniques in, in boxes, in a hole in the ground versus the females incubating their eggs in, you know, in a,

in a natural, in a natural setting or whatever. So that was kind of the comparison. I don't know. I mean, read the study. It's very interesting. I didn't send you the paper,

but, um, you know, they did show a benefit of, of maternal incubation. And, you know, I guess I, I keep going back to that know, she needs it to be very humid in there. So I moistened the substrate quite a bit and the eggs on the bottom got, got too wet and they ended up dying, but the eggs on the top were fine and hatched out, you know, so it was kind of a, a lesson to learn. So, you know, make sure that you're, you're setting them up properly with a, um, and, and, uh, the next attempt I did was with a jungle carp. And I basically had like this, um, uh, kind of ghetto cage that I made. It had, it was like two rubber maids attached to each other. One was opaque and the other one was clear

and the clear one had like a basking light. And then there was a hole down to the one below and in the, in like the nest box part of the cage, I had some green moss and I had just a big bowl of water in there so she could drink, but then she, you know, later eggs wrapped them and, and maternally incubated them in that, uh, set up and, you know, she hatched them out and it's pretty cool. Um, that was my second go around with maternal incubation, but, and, and, you know, those eggs were fine. They, they hatched them out and it's pretty cool. Um, that was my second go around with maternal incubation, but, and, and, you know, those eggs were fine. They, they hatched out pretty well. They looked pretty terrible when they did hatch. I was worried that they were not good, but, um, they, they would, it worked out pretty good. So, you know, there is some element of, of setting things up properly to,

to allow that. Now, a lot of times, like we think we know what the female needs. And I know that I've heard people talk about this, where the female will lay her eggs, you know, outside of the nest box in an area where they didn't think it was the best temperature or whatever, but she knows, you know, and she's going to put it where she thinks it has the best chance of success because that's what they've evolved to do. Right. And I think sometimes they've even moved the female with her eggs to somewhere else and then she moves them back to

where she had them. And so it's like, okay, I get it. You want them here. So I'll let you do what you need to do. And of course there are some females that don't do a good job and the eggs can crash, you know, while they're incubating them so you know there's definitely um not every female is that bright or that well and i so so i'm going to yield a one to you uh for you here's a here's a gimme you can all right take it for free you know we talked about stress and reptiles and i think you know going up really high in temperature and then going low and down in temperature, we don't understand how that external environmental stress, you know, what's going on with that that external stress is actually a positive thing. And, you know, that perhaps, and maybe that's a mechanism why people seem to think that maternal incubation and that up and down and or that, you know, natural and humidity, um, are, are, you know, produces better eggs. Maybe there's a secondary environmental, you know, benefit to it that we just don't understand. Um, you know, and, and, and maybe that that's true, but I, you know, I don't

think that what we see is something that is vastly different between maternal and artificial. I mean, I think if you had, you know, if you could see a marketed difference in mortality and vitality in between the two methods, then maybe I would say, OK, yeah, I definitely hear you that, you know, maybe one is better than the other. But I think, you know, sure, the jury's still out, right? Yeah, the jury's definitely still out, right. So, you know, I don't think I don't think it's wrong either way. And I think, you know, the mom probably can get a suboptimal condition through better than we can because she knows, you know, she has those sensory inputs to understand what's optimal because, you know, she's she's the python and we're the human, you know, we're the food monkey. So, you know, you know, in the same way that nobody can tell, you know, nobody can tell you what's better for you than you, right? Like that, that kind of thing. But at the same time, like, they also can't, they also don't have the ability to create the most stable environment, we can do that. So if we

do understand what, what works pretty well, and I think, you you know you get plenty of keepers who are really good at incubating eggs and they get they get they they understand that what they're you know what they're hatching what they like where what does well for them especially when they've had repeated success and you see these people knocking out artificial incubations with 100% hatch rates, great looking, you know, robust animals. So I mean, you know, it's, I don't think there's one one better than the other. And I think, you know, if you're not really great at artificial incubation, then mom can kind of limp you along, right? Or do it maybe better than you can. But if you're really, really good at artificial incubation, maybe you can set this up better than she can. And maybe you get some

benefit by getting her, you know, so she's not worrying about those eggs. She can move on. She can eat some more, do her and do, you know, go about her life, uh, rather than tying up her, her resource time, uh, on those eggs. Yeah. I mean, obviously if you're farming, you know, reptiles and you need the females to produce optimally and produce more clutches, then yeah, it makes a lot of sense to take them away and to artificially incubate them. Um, but I, you know, I think you're missing out. I think, you know, it's more rewarding for the keeper to, to see those babies emerge from the mother's coils and to, to have that experience, to see how it's, you know, evolved to, to be done. It's kind of a cool

thing. So, you know, it's hard to, hard to argue against that. I think. Felt pretty good hatching out Tracy a two years in a row. Artificially. Sure. I'm not saying it's not that way, but, um, you know, seeing them, seeing them come out of the mother's coils is something else. And I think it's, I don't disagree with that. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I, I think it would be really, uh, a cool thing to have, you know, I, I'm really excited for, uh, Ari Flagle's, uh, reptile park out in Texas with those giant enclosures. And I'm hoping that, you know, he'll allow those animals to maybe incubate their eggs on exhibit or things like that. You know, that'd be pretty cool to see them kind of in a more naturalistic setup to see kind of what they do and maybe learn more about the maternal incubation process as it may occur in the wild. I know that in that Secret Social Lives of Reptiles where they talk about that being

one of the social aspects of reptiles is that maternal or parental care, right? And if the female's allowed to do that, and we don't know a lot about it, how it occurs in nature. They mentioned that a lot of nests of reptiles haven't been found. You know, we talk about green tree pythons and nobody's found a female incubating eggs or very, maybe, maybe one or two have been found, you know, it's very, um, rare occurrence to be able to find a female on eggs. Now with, uh, some of the more, um, you know, some of the pythons that can do better in human disturbed areas like a coastal carpet python or um you'll you'll see them more often in maybe people's uh compost bins things like that where you know they they're they're hanging out in there and and there was actually we're including a picture in the book but there were there's a picture of

two females incubating their eggs in somebody's compost bin so which is interesting because compost bins if they're active can get quite hot oh sure yeah so i you know i'm not sure all the specifics on the bin but you know it's pretty interesting that two females picked that spot well i'm sure i'm sure i'm sure they you know i'm sure the females checked it out and said oh man this is the right temperature. And as long as you're not turning that compost bin, it's not going to heat up anymore. You know? So, so I think as far as like aesthetics or connecting with nature, um, you know, having that opportunity to, to maternally incubate is really cool. Obviously there, there's some risks, especially in a captive environment where, you know,

you may not understand what the female needs. And so you try your best to provide it, but you might mess things up and, you know, you may not understand what the female needs. And so you try your best to provide it, but you might mess things up and, you know, it may, may be a little bit of a learning process, but, uh, definitely rewarding and, and worth the efforts. Sure. Well, and, and, you know, conversely, you, you may want to just try and let her incubate them and she may mess those things up. And there's always old faithful that back there in your incubator, you can put those eggs in and, and, uh, get it done yourself. Yeah, that's true. That's a good point. And it doesn't hurt to have an incubator waiting. Cause yeah, you do have some females that don't really know what they're doing or don't see. I mean,

on the other side of every maternal incubation is a keeper. Who's got an incubator ready to go. Sure. Yeah. And I think it was, it wasn't an Eric that was going to just incubate everything maternally. And then one of the females didn't wrap her eggs. Right. And he was scrambling to see if Owen could put them in his incubator or something, something like that. Yeah. I mean, it definitely makes sense to have, have an incubator at the ready. And I, you know, I've had females where they like, there's a big pile of eggs right here and they're wrapped all distorted around two eggs. You know, they've got two little beehives around one around each egg. And it's like, what are you doing? You know, it's so bizarre. And, and I think,

you know, maybe they're, who knows with domestication, maybe as we breed them more and more generations in captivity, if they kind of lose some of that sense of how to do it right. Or I don't know. That'd be an interesting study too, to see if, you know, several generation captive bred animals are able to maternally incubate as well as, you know, wild caught females or something like that. But yeah, obviously there's, there's, uh, downsides to, to either, uh, either or, and I, you know, I'm, I've been doing this for a while and I don't have artificial incubation, uh, you know, perfect yet. And I still lose eggs. Like I was saying, the Woma eggs, I've got most of the clutch crashed already. So yeah. I was just going to say, what, What percentage of artificial versus maternal do you do? Yeah. Most of them. I just want to get, I just want to gut check your,

I just want to check here. Yeah. And, and a lot of I've, I've maternally incubated pygmy pythons, jungle carpets, children's, Centralian carpets I did. Uh, and then they all had pretty good results. Um, sometimes, you know, it's better than others, but I wouldn't say that all my cages are the best setup for maternal. And that's one of the big reasons I usually take the, the eggs for artificial. Cause I don't trust my setup all the way, but if I could, you know, if I had unlimited space and unlimited resources,

I could make some pretty sweet cages that I would definitely maternally incubate every time, you know. So you're right. Yeah. Most of my stuff's artificial incubation. And I've got a nice big incubator right behind me here sitting there at temperature. So, yeah, good times. But anyway, I still think there's, you know, it's really a cool experience to do maternal incubation, even if you can't do it with,

with every clutch. Sure. Well, I think, I think, you know, just being a more well-rounded, uh, keeper who understands, you know, natural history and how, how, how it's done, uh, you know, in the wild can help you give you insight and make you a better, uh, breeder and, and keeper of, of, you know, whatever it is that you're keeping. So I, you know, all, all, all things are good. Uh, just everything has its place, I think, you know, and you're going to maternally incubate those Tracy eggs this year. No, that's not what's going to happen.

Chuck. I did learn nothing. You've learned nothing. materially incubate those tracy eggs this year no that's not what's going on chuck i did you've learned nothing you've learned nothing i i have done way too good knock on wood with the past two clutches to to materially incubate them see and oh you knocked on the door now Ruby and Chewy agree with me. They're like, hell no, we're not doing it. We're not doing it. I get it. I get it. You know, those are pretty precious clutches. So, yeah.

Well, I think hopefully you guys got something out of this fight. And consider maybe the other side that you haven't considered or haven't tried, maybe give it a try. Maybe don't start out with Tracy, a clutch, but, you know, I, I started out with children's pythons kind of as an intro and, you know, start out with something you might be able to lose and not, not lose your shirt or something you know don't don't risk it on a bolens python clutch or something but you know there's uh there's definitely something good and i don't know maybe if you've got if you've got a pair of bolens pythons to get eggs you're a big roller anyway you can that's true you can roll the dice you're high you're high you're at the

high stakes table in vegas yeah there was a of like, there was a lot of discussion with the green tree keeper group, right. On, on incubation and whether or not they were, and there were people that had different regimens of, you know, you got to increase it here and decrease the temperature there and you know, all the, all these different crazy regimens. And I think some, some of the keepers didn't really buy into that and just, you know, maintain them at a stable temperature, but some kind of swore that they needed that fluctuation in temperature. But, I mean, green trees come from such a stable environment as it is.

Like, there's not a lot of fluctuation, even day to night there or season to season. It's pretty much a stable 75, 78 degrees all year round. I mean, I would almost wonder how, you know, whether they're on the eggs all the time. Yeah. Like it's so it's stable. They, they probably could come off the eggs and take an opportunistic meal and then go back onto them if they wanted to. So it would be interesting to see more, more, uh, you know, more female, more females with eggs, uh, you know, see, see what they're doing in the wild but um i've done that a few times where i've offered meals to females that are artificially or maternally incubating

and sometimes they'll take a take a meal while they're on the eggs you know not always but especially towards the latter end you know and and so maybe you can do have kind of the best of both worlds where and this you know i this is another kind of theory with, uh, Antaresia that the, well, they did a study with crocodiles and I, I tried to track this down and I actually found the original quote for this, but they had painted crocodile eggs with like a strawberry flavor. And then when the babies, like they, they painted some eggs with strawberry and they painted others with just nothing, you know, no flavor or whatever. And then when the eggs hatch, they offered the baby strawberries and the ones that they'd painted the eggs with strawberry flavor, ate the strawberries. Whereas the other ones didn't not, you know, not a hundred percent, but they would take, they would recognize strawberries as food, um, because their eggs were painted with that scent.

And it was a difference between the two. Now, I kind of thought maybe that would apply to anteresia. And if the female's eating a mouse while she's incubating the clutch, maybe that smell would get on the eggs and they would be more apt to take rodent prey. Now, I think Nick did a few experiments where he took like a piece of pantyhose and put a bunch of like rodent bedding in the sections of pantyhose and put that in and incubated the eggs with that thing. I think he said it just turned into a nasty mess. So he wasn't sure how, how that benefited, you know, or had any benefit, but, um, you know, interesting to think about and, uh, potentially you could have some kind of,

um, external clues in the eggs that the female can communicate, you know, to the eggs that could actually provide a benefit down the road as well. So I don't know, interesting things to consider, but definitely studies need to be done to look into this. And if you're listening, Dr. Loafman, you can put a student on that. And I think, uh, I feel like in every episode now it's like, all right, Dr. Loafman, another one for you. He's going to be the busiest guy in herpetoculture. Well, you know, that's, that's where, that's where those kind of things come from, right? And Lucas is looking at that as part of his studies, his maternal versus artificial incubation.

So it'll be interesting to see what his results will be. He was having a hard time with it, was it? Well, I mean. He's had some challenges around it. Oh, sure, sure. That's the way research goes. It's hard to predict which ones are going to lay for sure. You know, that kind of thing, if they're going to have good eggs or not, you know, so, you know, you, you assign a female to a group and then all of a sudden she's got a slug clutch and you're like, uh, and I think, um, you know, more, more scientific way to do that would be to take half the clutch and let the female maternally incubate half the clutch and artificially incubate the other half of the clutch.

So you're comparing apples to apples because, you know, there's factors, um, with the, the females as well. You know, if you have a larger female, maybe she has, you know, or if the eggs are smaller in a clutch versus larger eggs. And you see that occasionally, like more smaller eggs versus less larger eggs. That's a reproductive strategy of different females. So, and that can be within the same species. And so, you know, what if you have one of your experimental animals have a clutch of larger eggs and oh, they, they had larger babies. Well, duh, they were larger eggs, you know? So if you can split the clutches up, then that helps to

compare apples to apples to some extent, because you can say if they're artificially incubated in these circumstances and this, you know, same clutches maternally incubated in these circumstances, but then you gotta, do you gotta fill the void volume where the rest circumstances and the same clutch is maternally incubated in these circumstances. But then you got to, do you got to fill the void volume where the rest of the eggs would be in the clutch or, you know, there's all sorts of other questions you can ask, but all right. Well, good discussion, man. Well, it's a good one. Yeah.

Yeah. Good topic. Thanks, Lucas. Yeah. I'm sorry, butchered your name, but you gave us a great topic. So hopefully you'll forgive us that we got your topic on air. All right. Well, I guess that does it for another episode of Reptile Fight Club. We'll acknowledge our parent company. This episode was brought to you by Moralee Python's Radio Network. Thanks to the podfather and all his efforts to get these wonderful podcasts out there. Support them. Listen to them.

Be a Patreon. Whatever it takes. Keep this stuff going. Hopefully Eric doesn't wear himself out with all the podcasts he's putting out. Cause he's got a lot. Yeah. Check out their new one.

The get Koda radio. Good coat. Good Koda radio. Is that what it's called? I should have looked that up anyway. Good Koda. It's cool. Talking about geckos.

Who doesn't like geckos? Check it out. You can be better at it than Justin. Okay. All right. ah sorry still feisty well you know you gotta you haven't calmed down yet when you when you wind me up let me go there we go you don't you get what you get and this is a little later episode. So we're a little testy and cranky and tired and during daily savings. But yeah, did we, we didn't look into that. We should have looked up daylight savings. Why, why we have daylight savings. I'm sure everybody's at the edge of their seat or yelling at their,

their podcast. Probably the only people. You idiots. Yeah. I still think it's farming. Tell Heather she's wrong. I try to tell my wife she's wrong, but she ain't hearing that shit. That doesn't go over well? No. Come on.

No. She's always right. Just like me. Yeah. All right, buddy. Another good fight. you hopefully you guys will check us out next week for another episode of reptile fight club hopefully we get a report on the trip i'm excited to to herp with you man should be fun so check us out next week we'll check you later

justin says let go my ego. I say no. so Thank you. Bye.