Reptile Fight Club - Reptile Fight Club debates Pathogen Testing with Dr. Travis Wyman

Episode Date: December 26, 2021

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Welcome to thetile Fight Club. Justin Jeter. As always, the Mr. Master Chuck Poland. Say hi to the people, Chuck. Hi, people. Is that what we did last time? That's exactly what we did last time. I know, I'm sorry. We're getting into a group here.

Papa needs a new bag. You always have the farewell statements, I, farewell statements, I suppose, but well, you gotta work on your, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you caught me off guard. You just, you, you know, you, you, you ran, you ran with it and I was still walking and here we are. Gotcha. All right. Well, any, anything to report? Things going well? Yeah, things are good. Things are good. Nothing, nothing major to report. I'm here.

We've been recording, recording a lot lately, so we've kind of been, you know, and today's a good day to not BS. Cause we've got a nice guest on today. So you don't want to leave him waiting anyway. So today we are going to fight with Dr. Travis Wyman. So we're really excited. We're going to be talking about viral pathogens, which is near and dear to my heart. So you all should see the smile on Justin's face. It's huge.

Assuming I win the coin toss. I mean, I'm not going to get ahead of myself. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know in good conscience that I could take this pleasure from you. Okay. But I might, I might, I might. Yeah. All right. Well, without further ado, uh, welcome to the show, Travis. Thanks for being here. Gentlemen. Thank you for having me. Yeah, thanks for coming on. Yeah, well, why don't you tell us a little about yourself, where you fit into herpetoculture and your profession and all that good stuff. So I am a doctorate in microbiology and molecular genomics.

I work mostly in forensic type capacity. And where I fit in the hobby, I'm just kind of all over the place. I drop into the ball groups. I drop into the weird colubrid groups. I drop into the Morelia groups, strange little boads and things. I'm kind of known as being a bit of a, I don't want to say an expert per se, but I'm, I'm a go-to for a lot of people because I can take those scientific concepts and stuff and bring them down to more of a, a layman or a human level. Awesome. Yeah. That's the way to do it. I think at least that's

the, that's the approach I like to take as well. So, uh, kindred spirits here. Yes. Um, cool. So do you, do you keep any, are you keeping any animals or? Yeah, I have, um, kind of a diverse collection. 70 ish, I think. Okay. Yeah. Can't count. Counting is about maybe half of them are ball pythons that's just kind of something i do for myself mostly because you get to play with the genetics and that's you know genetics is near and dear to my heart that's you know where the majority of my education and mind is and it allows me to bring my work home with me without actually bringing my work home with me um yeah and you know the paint jobbing is fun but i do most of the paint jobbing for myself just working for things that i know i'm gonna like and whatever surplus type of stuff i have is generally what i'm selling off i'm not looking to make you know make a name for myself

or make a business for myself out of it um I also have then the other half of the collection, which is a bunch of assorted things. So I've got 1.2 Bruttles, 1.1 Calabar Boas, 1.1 Ranfiofis Oxyrhynchus Beak Snakes, a 1.0 Restostrata speak snake i have i've lost count of the kukri snakes i think i've got i think i ended up keeping 3.3 so i've got 2.2 breeders from the clutch that I produced. 1.4 rubber boas.

Oh, cool. Yeah. Those are local species for me. Yeah. Yeah. I've got some hognose. Actually, those are more my kids, but I've got those. I've got some alterna.

I have a morning gecko. Just one. Yeah. Is that another scientific interest thing? Yeah, because one can turn. Is it a parthogenic? Yeah, it's the parthenogenic one. I actually, I got a small colony of them because I had, so I, obviously I like little weird species and I picked up some wild caught species out of Africa and they're they're not rodent feeders by nature.

So they would not take anything for me. And so I picked up some morning geckos and. Unfortunately, as often happens when you're trying to establish wild caught populations, They don't always make it, but I ended up with still having one morning gecko left over from the little colony that I had started to try and feed them with. And so it's now living all by itself in a giant 24, 24, 30 page and loving life. Cause it's, I feel like that's called the reverse Chuck.

Like as far as like coin toss lock, you know what I mean? You're, you're set to be a feeder and you make it, you make it, uh, as a resident living in a mansion. And it's great. That's kind of the jackpot, which is often called the reverse Chuck around here. That's amazing. Um, my kids also got some crusties and she has a tan and bar scrub. Oh, wow. Cool. So you said your kids?

Yeah, I've got two kids, one 18 and one 7. Okay. And they're into the reptiles to some extent at least? Yeah. Eldest, she's more into them. She's the one with the hog nose, the Cresties, and the tannin bar um youngest more likes to just be kind of involved every now and then really loves to show them off to her friends yeah yeah um but as all good you know reptile parents have done she knows she doesn't get to go into the snake room unless daddy's there. So she's not just going in and breaking in and bringing snakes out to friends. Yeah. I learned that lesson. It's always,

come show everybody the snakes. And it's like, no, they may not want to see the snakes because not everybody thinks you're as cool as you. Yeah. I learned the lesson early on to not let the kids, well, he, my son was in there with me and he was a toddler and I was busy, you know, doing stuff. And he was over there fiddling with the heater and he turned the heater up all the way. And I kind of smell the smell and went downstairs and like the herp room was like at a hundred degrees and half my collection was, you know, fried. And I'm like, Oh, awesome. This is wonderful.

You know, and I'm a poor grad student, you know, living in a rental with a bunch of snakes in the basement. So it was not a good thing. The, the Ackies were out basking. Like they were like, finally, somebody turns the heat up. This is perfect. I'm like, okay, you guys are enjoying this, but everybody else didn't so much. So yeah, that was a little rough learning curve to not let the kids unattended in the

reptile room, even if I'm in there. But yeah, and I've had a, I don't know. Yeah. My kids have all kind of been in and in and out of it throughout their lives. And right now my youngest is completely in, she's been very helpful cleaning skink cages and stuff. So it's a lot of fun when the kids get involved, but yeah. Cool. Well, sometimes fun when the kids get involved, but yeah. Cool. Well, sometimes fun when the kids get involved. Sometimes. Yeah. Well, since that incident, it's been all fun.

Well, I guess there was a bite once I was showing some people a ball python. It was this big past obvious female that was always pissed off. And I pull out the cage and I could see she was not happy to be being shown. So I was just leaving her in the cage holding the cage and you know the tub or whatever i had her in a rack system and and my daughter reached down to grab her and the thing was i'm like no she didn't ask she just went in for the grab i'm like okay well how did she how did she handle the bite it was it it was it was pretty like i think she was more embarrassed in front of people you you know, that she got bit.

So she didn't really, it wasn't too big of a trauma, but she was like, she went out and saw my wife. And I'm like, oh, great. Now mom knows, you know, I'm in trouble. My kids have never been good at keeping things for my wife. Keeping mom out of the loop. Exactly. We ran out of gas once and my son's like, I said, don't tell your mom because she was always, you're going to run out of gas. And then first thing we get in the door, mom, we ran out of gas.

Thanks, buddy. Thanks for outing me. I know how much to trust you. when I was living in Atlanta, we had a, just a mutt carpet and she opened the drawer and she was probably about three and she just opened the drawer and reached in to grab her and popped her on the hand. And she was fine. Like she didn't even cry. She just kind of looked at her hand and they closed the drawer. Like, okay, fine. You know? And I was like, Oh, you're fine. And she's like, yeah, no. And she's like yeah no she's like yeah a little blood and so we washed her hands and then when her mother woke up it was snake bit me and she was all proud of it yeah yeah i bet your wife was as enthused right she didn't think it was as cool

yeah nice so uh where did you get your uh phd i got PhD at Emory. Emory. Okay. That's a good place. We work with some folks from Emory. They're a bright group there. So I imagine good things come out of Emory. Nice. Well, cool deal. Are you ready to get into this? Ready to get into this. Throw down. All right. Well, we got to get the ugliness aside of flipping the coin to see who gets to debate you. So I'll let Chuck call it in the air here. All right. Tails. It is heads. Ah, see? I gave that to you, bro. I gave that to you.

Well, you know. No, that's what happened. Okay. Okay. You knew it was going to be heads, but you called tails. I appreciate that, man. I appreciate it. All right. Well, I will, I will take the, the, the fight. Okay. Well, unless you really want. No, you should. Okay. Nobody wants to hear me debate Travis.

Nobody wants to hear that. No. All right. Well, I will do this and then I'll let Travis call it to see which side we get. So go ahead and call it. Heads. Heads. It is heads. So you have the reverse check here. So as I hear it's called. Well done, sir. Well done. All right. Well, what side would you like to take? Okay. I guess I need to introduce the topic. We're going to talk about testing for pathogens in collections.

Is it something we should all be doing or is it something that maybe it's not the best idea or worth it to get tested? So that's the kind of sides we're going to take. So I'll let you pick which side you want. I'll take the pro side. Okay. to get tested. So that's the kind of sides we're going to take. So I'll let you pick which side you want. I'll take the pro side. Okay. To get tested. That makes sense. Somebody that's involved with forensic virology,

that's a good approach to take. I mean, it's also a side that you could take as well, but you're the virologist. I got to try and get some advantage here. I'm sure that you can come up with equally as many reasons not to bother well and vice versa i mean that's the the idea right we we have we can both talk on either side and this is a good good topic to discuss and kind of work out some of the some of the um i guess nitty-gritty or yeah some of the issues and i'm excited all right right. You just keep us from going at each other's throat. Yeah.

You keep us. That's what I'm saying. Pretty easy job for me today, guys. If tempers flare. Yeah. You guys seem pretty. We're pretty high. A couple of educated gentlemen having a heady discussion.

So I think the kind of the dynamics and some of the the social the social kind of norm around this topic is going to be really interesting to flush out. So, oh, yeah, there's yeah, there's pretty high, high tempers on on either side. Absolutely. Sometimes, you know, and especially with the latest. I this this was kind of prompted by Travis was on THP the other night talking about, uh, you know, this kind of thing. And, uh, I, I was supposed to be on there with them and, and, uh, I had the COVID so I had to, and I was coughing quite a bit, so I had to bail out there, but, um, it was a really great discussion. If you haven't listened to that show, go, go check it out. But so hopefully this is kind of a continuation on or kind of a little bit of a different take on, on the whole issue. And we're, we're going to maybe focus around Serpenti viruses just because that's maybe what I have a better interest in, but we could probably talk about other things as well. It's, it's the big focus right now. And it also seems to be the big uh the big boogum

right now as it were yeah and and are there are i mean i guess i'm not aware of are there many can you get a test for uh like ibd or something other there are tests for um reptorina virus and you know paramyxovirus uh crypto obviously sunshine is there some i know that's not really an issue here i think there is a test for sunshine yeah it's not so much of an issue here although you know that could just be dumb luck that you know the the mystic german portal hasn't brought it over here yet yeah that's true so it might be something to that people need to keep an eye out for um obviously it's it's a very nasty pathogen in australia yeah and i don't know about adeno and rio viruses i don't know if we have really good at least not test at home type tests

like you can get for nIDO or crypto or something. Okay. Well, we'll, we'll, I mean, it can, we can broaden out, but I guess maybe just for ease of discussion, we kind of maybe focus it on Serpentovirus or, you know, snake NIDO viruses. I, I say plural NIDO viruses cause there are quite a few different kinds. And then, so you won the coin toss. Do you want to lead us out and, or do you want me to start us out? Um, I'll go ahead and let you start us out. All right. The deferring. So, so just for, for clarity's sake, I didn't get

to listen to that podcast. So it were a lot of these viruses kind of discussed and flushed out in that podcast. Like if somebody were to go listen to that, these viruses kind of discussed and flushed out in that podcast? Like if somebody were to go listen to that, would they kind of understand a little bit better of like some of the viruses you guys are talking about? Or do we need to lay some of that work? Probably help. So the majority of the discussion that we had was on both crypto and Serpento. So Cryptosporidium, if you're not familiar with it, is a protist infection. Tends to be most prevalent and most detrimental to colubrids. And the Serpentoviruses are most commonly seen and tend to hit hardest in the pythons um although like there's a turtle night of virus

that's very closely related that you know it was discovered because of a massive massive wild turtle die off was that just in the murray murray river turtles or were there other turtles um i i know that a couple of other captive turtles have been found to be carrying some you know some type of related virus but it's one of those you know is it because somebody had it in their snakes and it's something that is able to jump across but not really do anything or is it a completely different virus um you know there's also a similar one in shingle backs yeah yeah they had they had a big die off too and there's also, uh, a similar one in shinglebacks. Yeah. Yeah. They had a, they had a big die off too. And that's another one that was a wild, uh, outbreak, I guess,

if you want to call it or, uh, yeah. Um, and we, we touched lightly on the others. Uh, you know, the reptorina virus is what causes IBD and boas. Um, We didn't go really deep in that, mostly because none of us were really BOA keepers, so we don't have a ton to go on. We try to speak from, on that show, we try to speak from our areas of, I don't want to say authority, but more familiarity. Paramyxovirus is another one. We just touched on it lightly. Uh, it's another very common one that kind of gets ignored, I think mostly because everybody freaks out over the other ones, just kind of forgets that it's there. And then adenovirus and reoviruses are things that have been seen, but are a little bit less common. So, um, so I guess if, if I'm going to lead us out, um, you know, I, I would

kind of start with the idea that these viruses come from nature, you know, as evidenced by the Murray river turtle outbreak and the shingleback outbreak and the die offs in the wild of these animals. And, and that, you know, they, they aren't just popping up because they're brought into captivity. Now, um, there definitely can be some mixing and matching where you'd have, uh, serpentoviruses that infect animals that would not typically be infected, maybe by that subtype of serpentoviruses, because when we were talking about these viruses, there's a lot of different kinds of serpentoviruses. And some are more distantly related to others. And, you know, so they don't all fit in a nice little package, I guess I'd say.

So they can have some diversity among the different serpentoviruses. And so we still are kind of somewhat in the early stages of learning about these. And as we all know, I mean, there's so much money that's put into some of the serpentoviruses because of a generous donation from keepers at one of the carpet fests. And so we've actually got those results and I have my results ready. We need to publish those. I guess I need to talk to Steven and get going with that. But, um, so we, we did look at a few antivirals that might treat, uh, Serpentoviruses and found some hits. So that's, you know, something encouraging and some, hopefully good use of the money. And maybe that leads to something down the road, but, um, so as they come from the wild, you know, there's no real way to maybe eradicate them or keep them completely out of a collection, right? And I would suggest that maybe most, if not all larger collections have some sort of Serpentovirus or another in the collection. Now you can test and get different results. But the presence of a serpentovirus doesn't necessarily cause or pose a need for panic, right? So I've heard a lot of people that would test and get

their results and say, oh, the snake has a serpentovirus, I'm going to euthanize it and euthanize a large part of their collection. And I think that's completely, you know, unnecessary. So I think a lot of times testing might lead us down a path that shouldn't be gone down. Right. And I think that was a good part of the discussion on THP was that, you know, the, there, there shouldn't be a panic just because you have them because some may cause disease, others may not. Some may be benign. Some may just persist in an animal and not cause any issues. So there needs to be not just the presence of the virus to cause that panic button. So I'd start out with that as my leading topic. All right. And I can concede to some level there, like, you know,

there's not necessarily a need to panic, but I don't think the panic response alone negates the need to be testing for things. Um, you know, I think the tests are necessary and important as they would be for any type of pet you keep. You know, if your snake is sick, you should get it tested the same way if your dog is sick. You know, you get it checked out. Your cat is sick. You get it checked out. Your horse is sick. You get it checked out. You don't just sit there and let the animal continue to be sick. Um, you know, doing that and ignoring what is wrong with your animal and whether or not it's something that is going to spread to the rest of your animals can actually make the situation worse. Um, you know, and that in and of itself could be part of the reason that we have seen a

lot of this panic because early on when people didn't know what they were dealing with, you would, you know. They just pretended like there wasn't anything there. Well, or they didn't act. The hobby has this really bad tendency of, you know, we all understand that there aren't a lot of reptile specialist vets. So collectively, we've kind of all decided that we know more about medicine for our snakes. Sadly, the medicine that most people have is, well, my snake was wheezing and kind of snotty. So I just turned up the heat and that solves everything because everybody knows that turning up the heat is the solution to everything possible and so you do that with your sick snake

but now your sick snake has got something really nasty and it spreads to the rest of your collection whereas if you had tested that snake early on found out what was wrong with it then you could have isolated the animal and the rest of your collection would have been fine and maybe you would have lost this one snake or maybe you would have found out what it was that it had you know obviously we don't know of any treatments for these now although hopefully justin's work will give us a boost in some regard that way but if you had tested and isolated that animal from the beginning, rather than just going with the default, you know, I'm not going to take it to a vet. I know more. I'm just going to bump up the temperature and solve my problem. So the aversion to testing,

because we don't know enough, isn't exactly the best way to take it. You know, we may not know everything there is to know about them, but testing to make sure that you know what you're dealing with and then appropriate actions to take with that one animal is extremely important. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I, I agree with that. And then, you know, I want to make sure that everybody knows that I'm not opposed to testing. And I think it's, you know, definitely knowing what's, what's going on in your collection is very helpful. This is the point of the reptile fight club. We have to pick sides because we can't just be the reptile, you know, kumbaya club. Exactly. Although it does become that sometimes, but I will say, um, so, you know, we can, we can test and get results. Um, but a lot of times that might be misleading. Like I said before, you know, you could have a NIDO positive test or a serpentovirus positive test.

I'll use those interchangeably, I guess, because, you know, most people know it as NIDO virus, but they've kind of changed the name to serpentoviruses. So a little bit of confusion there, but you could get a positive serpentovirus test, but it may not be the thing that's causing the disease. And that's always been a struggle for me, you know, when I've gotten things tested and it comes back and they say, oh virus tests at the time so it could have easily have been some serpentovirus or another before you know the testing was possible sorry for the for the not so fast for the slow guy in the back uh so you're saying you're saying that that you can have a serpentovirus but you can have something completely unrelated to that that's manifesting some type like your outward signs of disease, like the Serpentovirus is not the cause for disease? Is that what you're saying? Yeah. And I think Stephen kind of illustrated that on the THP discussion where he did a test and found that there was a Serpentovirus, but it was a strain that's not typically known for

disease. And he did some more deep sequencing and found another viral etiology present that was more likely to be the cause of disease. But then, you know, the test just came up as serpentovirus. So without that further deep sequencing, he wouldn't have known what the true pathogen potentially causing the disease was. And I don't know that he knows exactly what was causing the disease. So, yeah, you know, but the idea that we, you know, you're trying to kind of peel that onion back a little bit. And the first thing you find is like, Oh, there's disease. That's not necessarily, if you were to continue to peel the onion back, maybe you find something else that, that could be potentially at the heart of what, what's causing, uh, outward signs of disease. And I guess, so if you do get a, you know, identify something,

especially if it's a virus, well then what, you know, I, it's a long way off from the treatment. My results, you know, they're very preliminary and just in cell culture, you know, using, uh, Steven's great, uh, cell culture model of, of serpentovirus infection. And, but so, you know, there's a little ways to go. And, and if we, you know, if we had a, had something to treat these with, that might be a good first option. Like, oh, your serpentovirus test came we don't know if treating it will eradicate, you know, get rid of the virus completely or if it will just knock it down and kind of put it into, you know, if they can go dormant or if they can hide out from the immune system or hide out from antiviral treatment regimen. We, you know, these are all questions that not saying it's, you know, hopeless right now, but you know, there's, there's not much you can do if it's a virus infection other than isolate the animal or, or euthanize the animal, you know, move it to somewhere else, uh, alter your keeping regimen. And in, in, you know, my opinion, if you get a snake that's sick and you say, oh, this, this seems like it, it's probably some kind of viral infection. I'm just going to isolate and treat it as if it was and, you know, make the decision based on the disease rather than, you know,

the test result. You know, I think you're going to have the same outcome to some extent. You may not know exactly what's causing the disease, but I would contend that you might not know what's exactly causing the disease, even if you get a positive test result. So maybe another reason, you know, that, that testing is all that it's cracked up to be necessarily. Yeah, you, okay. Fair, but you're still essentially using the testing to inform your decision there. So yeah, you could test and come back, have it be negative for the virus that you tested for, the viruses that you tested for. And so that then leads you with a, well, what do I do? You know, well, then the next step next step is well if you've eliminated viruses

test for bacteria because you know if it's something bacterial there are treatments for the bacteria yeah um so again just ignoring the idea of well but the test could give me the wrong answer still doesn't solve the problem that you know yeah it could give you the wrong answer still doesn't solve the problem that, you know, yeah, it could give you the wrong answer. It could give you the right answer. You're still using the test to inform your decision as to how you treat that animal. Now, yeah, I guess you could just do away with all testing of everything and isolate your animal. But as I mentioned earlier, the hobby doesn't tend to do that. You know, they, they get a sick snake and their solution is just I'll bump up the temperature. They still leave the animal in their own, you know, the same drawer in the same rack with all the other animals that they enforce good core quarantine procedures through. They almost certainly don't have both a dedicated quarantine room and a dedicated sick animal room along with their main collection room.

So if you can inform your decision as to how you're going to be moving forward with this animal, you know, you tested, it comes back viral negative. Then, you know, okay, I don't have a virus, but maybe it's, you know, what else could it be? Could it be bacterial? Could it be protist? Could it be fungus? You know, you test for those other things, then you find out, okay, well, it's bacterial, I need to give it antibiotics. Then you can give it the treatment, a bacterial infection, while not absolutely non-contagious, may be less contagious. So it might be okay to keep it in its tub in with your main collection. It may not be. It may be something that you want to get out because it's just going to be able to spread as nastily along

the way. But you still need that testing in some form or other to inform your decision as to how you're going to treat your animal. Yeah. And I think too, you know, people, uh, keeping any, any animal, you know, if you, if you do have a sick snake, um, if you don't have an extra facility or somewhere to put it, you know, when it's sick, you definitely need to adopt some sort of, um, protocol to avoid contaminating other snakes. And this should just be, you know, something that every keeper does. If you have a sick snake, you isolate it. If you can't isolate it physically, then you need to isolate it through how you work with your animals. That should always be the last animal you mess with, or it should be worked with on a different day from the other animals. You don't open its cage. You don't hold the animal. You don't try to feed it something. And then if it doesn't eat, you give it to something else. You know, that's, it's always

the last step in your routine and you change your clothes or, you know, you know, gloves or whatever, you know, between that animal and anything else. Uh, and so, you know, we, we do similar things in the lab where you have, you know, protective, uh, clothing and equipment and stuff that you, you know, try to re reduce the, uh, transmission from one, one thing to another. So these, uh, kind of practices should be with any keeper, you know? So if you do identify a sick snake, even if you're, if you don't know exactly what's causing it or the test results are inconclusive, you should be working with that animal last and not, you know, trying to spread things. And,

you know, the biggest cause of spread of a disease is probably us and the fomites, you know, of our hands. And even if you're wearing gloves, youomites, you know, of our hands. And even if you're wearing gloves, you can transmit, you know, disease from one animal to another. So just wearing gloves or, you know, sanitizing your gloves once in a while is not necessarily a foolproof plan to prevent disease spread. Sorry, Chuck, you wanted to ask? Yeah, no, I just was wondering, I mean, I've never really seen, you know, like we talk about how it should be standard practice to implement some type of, you know, a viral or, you know, biosecurity. Thank you. Wow.

Missing that word. You know, to implement some type of biosecurity. But I've never really seen like, I mean, you know, I know Justin's and we've talked about this. So I know some very basic biosecurity measures that even somebody who doesn't have dedicated rooms and a lot of space can take to at least have some form of reasonable biosecurity. Have, is there, is there, is there a published, you know, have we published something like that? Is there, you know, is there, uh, you know, places people can go if they're like, well, I, I, I want to do that, but I don't know how to, I'm not really slick on what I need to do or what I shouldn't do. Absolutely. You know, have you, have you guys

ever seen any, anything like that around? I can't think of anything within the hobby that's like legitimately published out. Just, you know, word of mouth conversations and stuff through groups and obviously on social media. But social media is horrible for historic retention. Yeah. You know, but things like, you know, Justin's right. You know, don't use the same tools with sick animals. Um, but, you know, I would add in, you know, washer tools. I know way too many people who will take, you know, their 12 inch forceps and they've got, you know, one pair and they just feed all the

rats, you know, and if you've got a sick snake and you decide to feed it on a different day, you still use that one pair of 12 inch forceps to feed the six snake. And then it just goes right back on the rack. You know, if you're done feeding your animals, wash your forceps, you know, gloves are good, but gloves can also give people a sense of false security. They're like, I've got to put gloves on so I can handle my snakes. And they go through their entire room with one pair of gloves. Well, you might as well have just gone through your entire room without the gloves,

because it's no different than if you just went through with your hands. So you need to change your gloves or, you know, wipe them down with, you know, a Clorox wipe or something in between animals. Don't put your animals in the same one tub. You know, if you're opening a drawer, take the animal out, put it in a tub, clean the drawer out, put it back in the drawer, open the drawer, pull the animal out, put it in the same tub, you know, have different tubs or wipe the tub down in between. You know, it's, it's kind of common sense things, but at the same time, the reptile

hobby does things in its own way. So they, they don't always make the same common sense. What? Justin alluded to how, you know, like in our industry, we have things, you know, there are protocols for how to work with viruses and bacteria in labs. And depending on the nature of the lab, you know, we have different biosecurity levels as we call them, you know, like at a school or, you know, in Justin's lab, they might have, you know, basically BSL-1 or BSL-2, which is you can work on it on an open bench, either, you know, with just your street clothes and a pair of gloves. Or you might need to put on a lab coat and, you know, booty covers, depending on the room, you know, but as you bump up to scare your organisms, you know,

you've got to work with it inside of a biosafety containment hood. And, you know, with gloves, wearing scrubs and a lab coat and an air purifying mask, or, you know, all the way up to, you know, if anybody watched the, uh, the hot zone show on national geographic, you know, you've got that full on bubble suit that you have to wear because you're working with something that's just so dangerous that if you get it, you're basically going to die because there's no treatment. So isolate yourself completely. And, you know, it's a little bit ridiculous to expect us as pet owners to do that with all of our pets, but that's not just the way we, I mean, we don't do that with our dogs and our cats either, but you know, if your dog has a really gnarly infection, you might try and confine it to a different room from the rest of your dogs

so that you're not spreading it around the same way you should kind of try and, you know, segregate your steak. You're not going to give your dog that's sick. You're not going to use the same feed bowl to feed all of your dogs. You're not going to use the same water bowl. So yeah. Yeah. And I think just that understanding that, that we can be the ones to move around pathogens from cage to cage.

That's, you know, a good step, you know, the good first step to understand you are the, you're the, you're the vector. You're the vector if you're, you're exposing animals that are uninfected to materials from animals that are infected. And, you know, viruses are shed and, and, you know, that's the virus's main objective, I guess, is to make more of itself. And that's done intracellularly. So that's done within the host. And then the viruses are released and they have to make their way from one host to another. And sometimes that's through vectors like mosquitoes. Sometimes that's through coughing, like, you know, with COVID, you know, it's a respiratory illness. And so people are coughing that stuff up and, or you're breathing it in or, or just exhaling, you know, it can be, um, just in normal breathing. But, um, so for, for, I believe for serpentoviruses, they're not like, uh, an airborne type, like it's not, you know, in the room and, and going from cage to cage through the air as easily, you know, possibly, but not, not likely that way. Mostly it's through, uh, contact, physical contact. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's the assumption. Yes. You know, again, as you noted, there's not a lot

of money that goes into the study of these things. we base it more on uh you know extrapolation but yeah it's it's most likely through you know fomites you know the the contact you know your animal is drooling your animals while they cough you know a snake doesn't cough the same way a human coughs so even though they cough, they're not spreading it everywhere, you know, but you know, they, their cough still probably expunges some of the virus, but it's, it's more likely still staying within their more immediate surrounding. It's, you know, it's contact between, um, you know, it's also potentially fecal oral route. You know, if you get a, you know, sufficiently contaminated feces and you know, when you're wiping up again, if you've got it

on your gloves and you miss that, you've got snake crap on your glove and then you pick up your next snake. Now you may be transferring it over to that snake. Yeah. Yeah. So a fomite is just something that the virus can hit your ride on. You know, it could be tongs, it could be your hands, it could be, you know, a food object, anything that, you know, is potentially exposed to the virus can transmit that virus. So that's what we're talking about when we say fomite. Sounds like some weird, you know. It's a fun word. It is. Or parasite or something. Yeah, fomite.

Fomite, you know, it's got the word mite in it. So we're all like. Yeah, exactly. Another thing to throw reptile people way off track of it, you know. Yeah, but just a vector for transmission. And I'd also talk about in um, inactivation. So viruses are pretty wimpy outside of the house. Most, at least, um, Serpento viruses, they're enveloped. So they're easy to kill using household, um, cleaners, cleaners, like disinfectants,

ethanol, or, you know, rubbing alcohol or bleach, you know, it kills easily, but with a Cervento virus infection, you often think gasoline, you don't use gasoline on your reptiles. Yes. Don't listen to Chuck. Um, but, uh, you know, so they're easy to inactivate outside of the body. Um, so, but I'd also, I, I, I think there needs to be a discussion on, um, bio layers, um, biofilms. So when your virus, when your snake is, you know, infected with the Serpento virus, um, a lot of times there's a lot of mucus involved, they're expelling mucus and, and, you know, you'll see stuff in your cages or something. Um, now that, that adds a protective layer to the virus. So they're less

easy to, you know, to, to disinfect it, you know, with a peripheral just wipe down of the cage, you need to get in there and, and physically, you know, scrub or remove that biofilm because that's kind of protecting the virus potentially. So like the virus is like encapsulated in that in that mucus and yeah and it gives it a well and that's what mucus does right it protects our cells or it protects them but also kind of uh walls off or or kind of you know it's our body's attempt to get rid of pathogens or viruses or whatever so it's you know we that's why we're spitting out mucus or expelling mucus trying to get rid of that junk from our body, something foreign from our bodies. So it's in a little package.

But that also can potentially protect the virus and give it maybe a little more duration outside of the body and on surfaces. Each virus varies in its ability to survive outside of the host. Um, you know, we know that you can pick up coronavirus from touching things, but it's very, it's, it's a lot less likely to get, you know, COVID through touching through surfaces versus through the aerosols. Yeah. But you know, COVID is definitely more of an aerosol transmission type virus versus, you know, the Serpentavirus being more contact, being more transmission type virus versus you know the serpentovirus being more contact being more contact because of you know so you but but like to your point travis like like you could have potentially have a serpentovirus that is is mildly aerosolized

and in like a snake like you said that doesn't necessarily cough the way a person would cough and if it if it's mildly transmitted through you know like aerosol droplets then it may not be it could still be uh airborne but just not an effective means of transmission so something to still worry about but maybe it's not the primary means that a serpentovirus might transmit itself. Right. Is that kind of what we're, we're saying? Yeah. I mean, my, you know, again, you know, when we think about how we keep snakes, you know, a snake coughing does not have the same force as, you know, a mammal coughing would. so it's not being forced out the same way um most of us you know it's your snake is enclosed in a box of some form or other whether that's a tub or a cage or a tank and the

basically the dead airspace in there does not have a lot of motion so it's not going to be carrying those respiratory droplets out. Then for that respiratory droplet to get out and then around into another cage, tub, tank, whatever, the transmission that way is very much reduced. The only time I would be a little bit more concerned about direct respiratory transmission would be like if you have a sick snake and you you know it's your female and you put a male in with her and now they're together in the same cage tub whatever but at that point you're also putting two sick snakes together with you know something where there's close contact they're all over each other. They're possibly biting each other, depending on the species that you're dealing with.

So the respiratory or the contact at that point is moot. The likelihood of transmission is high because you have two snakes together with each other. Certainly it conceptually easy to see happening. Well confined within, you know, the walls of a cage like you know so yeah and also you know the the idea the of of social distancing you know we're very well aware of that these days and and i think it applies to you know veterinary viruses in in your snakes if you're keeping them in different areas of the room if they have to be in the same room separate them by some physical distance you're gonna you know reduce the likelihood to some extent of that

occurring obviously obviously putting up signs just one more thing you can please social distance to your animals is not as effective as actually putting in a room yeah if you If you are the mandate, it's better. I got you. That's applicable for the Serpentavirus, but when you're dealing with other diseases, there are other ways of transmission. Crypto, one of the

main ways that crypto gets spread through the collections is, I mean, it's contact-based, but it's also forward flies. you get those little gnats and they'll spread it around to every cage in your collection that's interesting i didn't even think about it like yeah yeah you're right you have to think about other things if it's serpentivirus is fecal oral it's possible that if you have a really high density viral load in a sick snake species and the little fly gets in and then goes to the next tub and spreads it around in there. And if you're not, you know,

diligently cleaning your snakes or, you know, that fly lands on your snake's face and walks around and tracks microscopic snake crap and viral load onto your snake, you spread it that way. Um, you know, IBD is, is believed to at least be transmitted in large part by mites. So if you've got a mite infestation, you could be spreading something around. So it's not, it's not always about respiratory, you know, for Nido, that's a big consideration of if I can confine the respiratory aspect, the snake that's sick is probably not going to spread it to others. But it's not the only thing to consider when you're dealing with diseases as a whole.

Yeah. And I thought that was really interesting, that discussion on the Ford flies by Zach Lofman, Dr. Zach Lofman, where he said, you don't think about checking the elbow of your sink, you know, to reduce a pathogen outbreak, you know, because they could reproduce in the elbow of your, you know, your drain pipe and you wouldn't even think about that, you know. And so you could get rid of all of them, but they might come back. The elbow of my drain pipe! Shaking fist in there. Sorry. See, that goes why it's important to test because if you know what

you're dealing with, then you know if you have to pour bleach down all of your drains. There you go. See? Or should you be doing that anyway? Should that be part of your protocol? The other thing that you kind know, you kind of mentioned, you know, when you're putting snakes together for breeding season is stress and stress can cause these things, you know, outbreaks to, or a sick snake to manifest disease. You know, they may be carrying a pathogenic etiology, some kind of virus or bacteria. But once they get that stress, that's when the virus or the bacteria kind of has the chance to take over and cause real disease that we can observe.

And so that's another thing. You might test, but if you're testing at the wrong time, if you're testing an animal that's not manifesting disease, that could kind of misinform you. And I think maybe a lot of these people who are euthanizing animals based on a test maybe don't understand that. Like just because it has the pathogen doesn't necessarily mean it's diseased and doesn't necessarily mean that it's a risk to the rest of the collection. So testing an animal that's not displaying disease might be not so worthwhile. So that's kind of a, another, another point I'd make of, you know, why, you know, you have to test correctly. If you're not testing correctly, it might misinform you and cause you to do things

that probably are not necessary. And so just kind of for the lay person in the room. So are you saying, Justin, that potentially like maybe a test, like if an animal was positive for something, but not displaying enough viral load, could you potentially get a negative test? Or, you know, I mean, like different tests have different sensitivities, I would imagine, right? So you potentially, if you had an animal in good health, good fitness, but was still positive, you may not see that

until you see outward signs of disease. And then the test may pick up a viral load that's significant enough to give you a positive result. Yeah. Or as I mentioned, it might be a benign strain. Just because you have a nidovirus doesn't mean it's a disease causing nidovirus. I think that's the outstanding clarification. so i would like to kind of turn turn gears here if you guys don't mind and talk about the the what i consider the more interesting portion of this is the i mean the science is absolutely interesting but but it's the social aspect of how we deal with viruses and you know it the reason why people don't test in our

hobby the reasons because there's like there's there's the whole we can do this but but i think the elephant in the room is why we're not doing this because we certainly have capability to to test for some of these viruses uh as we've clearly talked about. Why are people so hesitant to want to test for a virus? If I'm a big breeder, why would I absolutely come jaybreaking into the room about, no, I'm not going to test for this. I, why should I have to test for this? Everything in my collection looks fine, acts fine. It's fine. Yeah. That's a, that's a tricky question, especially with the reptile hobby. Um, if you don't mind, I'll, I'll go, go first on this one, but the, uh, the, the idea that, um, where, where there's nothing you can really do except for euthanize an animal that, that sometimes,

and, and in a hobby where, or a industry or whatever you want to call it, where we often blackball people who, who come forward that, that report outbreaks or report, you know, cases of disease. Nobody seems to want to buy animals from that person anymore, which is completely off base because I would suggest everybody has some kind of issue or another that they're going to have to deal with if they keep any number of snakes for any amount of time. You're going to have mites at some point. You're going to have bacterial or viral infections at some point. And so, you know, ignoring that or something because you think, oh, I'm just going to be blackballed. That's that's a sad state that we are in right now. I don't know. I don't have a great answer for for how we get around that. What do you think, Travis? comes down to you know i would say there are three major reasons um one of them is yeah the the blackballing nature that just there's so much infighting in this hobby anyways that hey let's throw one more reason to fight um on top of it um and the others would just be aspects of money and time, you know, for a smaller breeder.

It might make sense to test your whole collection because, you know, testing 5, 10, 20, 30 snakes isn't going to take you that long. And depending on, you know, yeah, everybody has their own specific financial situation, but that's not a lot of money. If you are somebody like, you know, Justin Kobylka or the guys at Nerd or, you know, Barcheck, that's, you know, when you're dealing with hundreds upon hundreds of animals, the time debt involved in testing every one of those animals is massive. And the financial debt that you would incur there is not insignificant as well. So, you know, yeah, in some respects, it makes sense that they don't do it because, you know, if you've got 500 snakes, you know, that's an entire year worth of time to test all of them, basically. And the cost to that is going to be a huge part of your bottom line. So you don't test and then you don't want to talk about the fact that you don't test because when people are like, well, you know, Kobilka is this leading name, so he should be testing everything. It's a really bad way to think about it. And I'm just grabbing

names out of the air. I'm not slamming anybody or saying anybody actually has this. I want that absolutely clear. You know, Kobil this. I want that absolutely clear. You know, Kobilka is a name that everybody knows, so I grab him. You know, it's not unreasonable for Justin to say, like, there's no way I can run my facility properly and test every single one of my animals. And it's not a realistic expectation that we should expect him to do that. Um, but it should also not be unrealistic for, you know, if just, if you buy a snake from Justin for you to test that snake, if it comes back positive, you know, if the snake is not physically outwardly sick when it gets to you, or, you know, as you mentioned with, you know, if the snake is not physically outwardly sick when it gets to you,

or, you know, as you mentioned with, you know, breeding season causing stress and stress can sometimes manifest or allow the virus to pop up or any disease to pop up because when you're stressed, your immune system goes down, you know, so you test your animal. If it hits positive, you know, you should still be quarantining that animal regardless, because it's a brand new animal to your collection, you know, put it in quarantine, but tell the person you bought from, you know, I bought your animal. I, you know, obviously I just bought this animal. I tested it. It tested positive. It's in quarantine. Let's see how it does. You know, if it starts drooling and slobbering and hacking and rolls, then you had something nasty. But if if it does not manifest any disease, if it stays fine and healthy through, you know, 30, 60, 90 days, however long you quarantine, then it could very well be, like you said, just another one of these,

you know, kind of prevalent but benign strains. And he shouldn't be put on blast for that because, like you noted, we could all, anybody who has a sizeable collection probably has something floating around in it. And, you know, that's just the nature of how we are. You know, we hear about how all reptiles have salmonella. You don't hear everybody freaking out whenever, you know, everybody in the hobby freaking out of, you know, well, somebody got salmonella. Well, you know, yeah, the public freaks out about it because the public thinks it's a big deal. But quite frankly, more people get salmonella from Boston market probably than they get from their reptiles in a year. Yeah. Oh yeah. So it's- Disclaimer, we don't suppose that Boston market has salmonella.

No, again, just grabbing a restaurant name out of the ether. There, you know, it's, there's, there's so much stigma around it because of the unknown factor that, you know, on one side, I think, you know, the people who are against testing, they're worried about the blacklisting and, you know, depending on their size, the, the time and money debt that's occurred to them. But then on the other side, the people who are for testing are completely ignoring the fact that, you know, you're dealing with collection sizes and types and behaviors that are so unlike your own that you,

you can't expect everybody to adhere to your own behavior. You know, I don't think it's unreasonable for everybody buying a new animal to get a test for it because it's a new animal that you're bringing into your collection. But you should be doing that anytime you buy a pet. You know, you buy a new puppy. It's the first thing you do. You take it to the vet for a wellness visit. You know, the dog may test positive for something.

You know, one thing that's very common with most puppies is, you know, roundworm. It's just common. It happens if your dog, you know, if you take your puppy in and it tests positive for roundworm, if you've got other dogs, you keep the puppy away from the other dogs, you treat it. Once it doesn't test positive for roundworm anymore, you can interact it with your dogs. You know, if your snake tests positive for something and you quarantine it and then you test later and it's not testing positive, then there's no reason to panic. If it never had any symptomology, if it didn't roll over and die, I don't think you need to freak out and panic. Yeah. And all collections probably have their own, you know, blend of pathogens. And it collections probably have their own blend of pathogens. And it definitely applies to wild populations too.

The pathogens don't necessarily want to wipe out their hosts. They don't want to kill off the population. And so most viral diseases have a very low mortality rate. They might make you sick, but then you spread the disease and you get over the disease and then somebody else has to deal with it and you go on your merry way. You know, like, um, something like these, these, uh, diseases that maybe have a very high mortality rate, they're probably not human pathogens in the first place. They're probably incidental pathogens that spilled over into the human population. And they're probably completely asymptomatic in their primary host. Yeah,

generally speaking. Exactly. And so it's, yeah, it's the spillover effect. And I think you probably see the same thing with, you know, like serpentiviruses. You know, I think that, you know, like you mentioned, Steve, how he's found, you know, this one that doesn't seem to do anything. He said that he saw like 60 or 80 different isolates of this same subfamily of them, we'll call it. If you look at it on a taxonomic level, it's a branch on a phylogenetic tree. This whole group of them, he's seen them, but he's never seen them cause disease. But then there's a whole other group of these serpentiviruses that cause disease.

And maybe what that is, is those disease causing serpentiviruses spilled over from a different species. And in that other species, they're basically benign, but now they've gotten into something where they just burn up like wildfire. And this would be to your case, Travis, about why you would want to test in a collection, because potentially, depending upon the diversity of your collection, you could start to see some of that potential spillover from a virus that's asymptomatic, non-disease causing, that gets into something, you know, asymptomatic, non-disease causing that gets into some, something else you have and maybe starts causing disease or, or runs through it like wildfire.

Correct. Is that. I would say potentially, but we don't have that knowledge. So you're, you're, you're just making calls in the dark and that's, that's just potentially as dangerous as, you know, as, as the opposite. But I think that's one thing. It could be as bad as not testing. Sometimes, sometimes knowledge, you know, where, where you don't understand it is, is not necessarily knowledge. And it's just having a fact and then trying to run with that and making calls that are beyond what, what our understanding is at this point it could be as potentially

damaging to your collection as as not doing anything you know so yeah is it's you know knowledge is good but sometimes too little knowledge is just as bad as no knowledge at all yeah um and you know but at the same time you know if even if you're just testing, if, if the hobby as a whole tested more and we got a better feel for just the baseline kind of, of really how prevalent these things are, it, it might actually sort of in a contrary manner, give a little bit of a, a security and understanding of, you know, like if everybody tested and we found out that 70% of animals test positive at some point, asymptomatically and never, ever go on, you know, if I've got a 23 year old animal and I've tested it and it's, it's got a viral load, but it's never shown disease in the entire time that I've had it.

And I test babies that I've grown up, you know, and they've never tested positive. Then that shows that in and of itself shows that we shows, okay, this is a potential problem strain. So I know that I'm not going to has something to be a little bit more aware of so that if he sees any of his animals that start coughing, snotting, mucousing, he's going to want to isolate them immediately as well. So if we all started testing a little bit more, it would help us get more of this information and inform us better. But, you know, the knee jerk that we have where people on both sides are screaming at each other, I think that helps keep the, the testing level down so much that, you know, we have a handful of people who test the ever loving hell out of things, but we have a greater majority of the hobby that's not testing because of these, you know, this blackballing and everything

that happens. Yeah. Yeah. I've heard that from, from bigger breeders that are like, you know, it costs me hundreds of thousands of dollars to get everything tested. And then what do I do? Then everybody's like, Oh, he's got an idol virus. I'm not buying anything from that guy, that kind of thing. Um, I would also want to maybe hit on the, uh, you know, false positive, false negative. Um, I, I had a, a PhD student a PhD student that was also a veterinarian. He

was doing his residency in veterinary pathology. And I was talking to him about, he was kind of teaching me about these different tests. You know, I was asking about the Nidovirus tests and, you know, some places were cheaper than others to get your samples tested and things. And I was trying to figure out, you know, which one would be a better source to use. And he said, it depends on how well they validated their assay and the controls that they use. Cause he says a lot of these kind of fly by night, um, testing labs will offer tests for things, but they don't control it properly.

And so, you know, the, the results are almost meaningless. And another factor in this is that we are trusting the keeper to collect the sample rather than a competent vet or somebody that, you know, collects it in the proper manner. So you need to weigh that in a little bit too. You need to learn how to collect a sample properly, not contaminate, like, you know, if you're handling different animals that you think are sick andate. Like, you know, if you're handling different animals that you think are sick and you're using, you know, your unwashed hands between each animal, you could be spreading disease or you could be getting false positives by contaminating the new

swab with your hands versus, you know, it's not coming from the animal, it's coming from your hand. So there's different factors that could play into a test result that could be misleading or could, you know, lead you down the wrong path where you might think an animal's infected when it's in fact not, or maybe you introduce the infection because you're collecting improperly or, you know, you're spreading the disease by trying to figure out if you have the disease, um, that could be a potential, uh, downside of, of, you know, trying to test your animals. Yes. And, you know, not just, you know, like looking at stringencies and things, but there's also the nature of the type of test. So, you know, these are all PCR based tests, but some of them are as,

we're going to get scientific jargon here. I'll, I'll fall back and explain it in a moment. So there are what they call degenerate tests and then the quantitative tests. And most typically, the quantitative tests are extremely, extremely sensitive, but they're also extremely, extremely specific. So if you have a strain that's even marginally different, the quantitative test can miss it because of that sensitivity level. So if we're dealing with, you know, a super problematic strain, and that's all we care about, then that test may be really good for telling you whether or not it's

there. But if that's the only one that I've been using to test my collection, and I know that, you know, this quantitative test works for the problem strains, and my collection is free of problem strains, and I sell you an animal, and you you test it and you sent it to someplace else that uses the degenerate test, those degenerate tests are, they tend to be more broadly, you know, applicable. They pick up things that not just that one, but a whole group of them. So it's kind of like, you know know a quantitative test is this test only looks for orange tabby cats whereas a degenerate test is this test looks for cats so if i know that i don't have an orange tabby cat in my collection i'm not worried about it because it's the orange

tabby cats that are the problem but if you send it to a company and their test is saying we test for cats, well, now you test positive, but I've tested negative and you're yelling at me that I sent you a diseased animal. Well, no, I sent you an animal that has cat, but I know it's not a problem cat. So we're all good. And I think that's a huge part of this. You know, people say that false positives are really common with these tests. I don't think that's the case. I think we're looking at different tests from different companies are picking up different strains at different sensitivities. Yeah, there's there's more conserved areas of viruses, like as far as their genetic information there.

There's areas where they're more conserved. And so you'd expect to see a hit between more, you know, a variety of animals, and then there's a variety of viruses. And then there's some areas of the virus that are very unique to that virus. And so if you're targeting or amplifying that region of the viral genome, then you're going to be more specific in your test, like Travis was saying. So, you know, we need to know the test we're getting. And that's, I mean, that's the trick too, because a lot of these labs might just say,

hey, we need a Nidovirus test. That's hot. Everybody wants a Nidovirus test and they just pull something out of their butt and it may not be the best test. And that's something that Dr. Justin Marchegiani not if it comes from your butt. Dr. Tim Jackson No, that's not good. Dr. Tim Jackson Well, the test should be actually done with

the coanal swab. So not your butt the other end. Anyway, yeah, that was a term that I got to learn. I didn't know the term coanal. Dr. Justin Marchegiani Coanal? Is that-anal is that like is that like that sounds like it it like because it's like co-anal it they're actually including the person who asked to swab your butt right is that is that that's the sorry we're sorry we are we are sliding into inappropriate uh it's fine okay but um well not but but you know, the, the, uh, that there could be labs out there that don't have the best test, but they also have the cheapest prices. So somebody going, Hey, I need to test 50 animals. I'm going to go with the cheapest price may not be getting the best

test, you know? And so they may get a bunch of nonsense information, false negatives, false positives, whatever you want to say, but it could not be, um, what, you know, useful information. So Justin was talking to me about, um, morph market just kind of instituted or is going to institute, um, a policy around testing um right justin is that yeah or they were talking about doing trying to yeah yeah yeah so i'll um and i'm gonna put a small caveat here so i i do forgive me if this was already discussed no no this is fine i mean you discussed it in the snakes and stogies but it doesn't hurt to discuss it again here because different audiences and different people. So, small caveat here. I do work with John at Morph Market some. He considers me part of his staff.

That said, I am not part of the policymaking staff. I help him around the forums. Um, you know, I help him a little bit with like, you know, if somebody throws up a complaint saying a morph is incorrectly labeled, you know, I'm one of the people who, you know, there's a handful of us, they'll pass it to us. We'll look it over and see, you know, yes, that morph is, you know, that's the type of, you know, staff that I am for morph market. So I don't set the policies. Um, so don't say that what I'm saying here is gospel. Now I have talked with John some about this. So what I'm saying is I do believe right, but John absolutely has the right to override anything that I say. His policy was basically saying, and he tried, he, he had launched this and then it hit the social media and went on fire. And so they walked it back.

But what the policy basically said was, you know, almost everybody has terms and services. And in that terms and services, it says, you know, we guarantee our animal is healthy. If it comes to you sick,

you have, you know, two hours, four hours, 12 hours to tell us this and we'll make it right. And John recognized that, you know, with some of these viruses and things, people are getting tests. You can't get those test results back in two hours or four hours. So the morph market policy was basically saying, unless your own terms and services is written that says

we will not accept a viral test after, you know, it's done. If somebody gets tested, the animal comes back positive and they want to, you know, resolve this with the buyer or the seller by sending it back because they don't want this diseased animal that Morph Market would side with the buyer. So, you know, that was what the policy was. But like I said, once it hit social media and because of all the bad information and misinformation out there, so many people were like, Morph Market is mandating testing by breeders. and that's absolutely not what happened but it's the buyer so hard and so fast and so many people were screaming and yelling that john went okay this did not come out the way we wanted it to come out and there is so much pushback so he

walked back on it and i understand why he did it i don't fault him for doing it because like you know just what i saw publicly i mean quite frankly i'm ashamed of some of the things that i saw some people say because it just it was wrong and obnoxious and horrible um on a personal level i don't think what John did was inappropriate or even crossing any boundaries really. Um, you know, frankly, I think it was very much in line with legitimizing the hobby more, which is something that I have seen, you know, just the way John has moved morph market forward. It's been something that I have seen him do. You know, he's, he's making reptile keeping more legitimate. And so, you know, that, that same thing I said about, you know, when you buy a puppy, you take it to the vet to get it

checked out. You know, I see that as a legitimate form of wellness care that we see in other forms of the, or in other sides of the pet industry that we don't see here. And so by John saying, you know, if somebody decides to test their animal, if they take photographic or video proof that they do it right after the animal was purchased and received and they send it out and they come back and get a positive test, they should have a recourse and we will side with them unless it's already written into the terms and service of the seller that the buyer should have written or read that they won't do that. You know,

if you go buy a dog from somebody and you sign paperwork that says, once you walk out of here with the dog, I don't care what's wrong with it. I'm never taking it back. You know, that's, you know, that's on you as the buyer, if you didn't read that terms and services, but if it's not written in there and you bring the puppy back because it's got something that, you know, is terrible and horrible, that seller should be like, you're right. You know, I didn't realize the dog was sick. I'll take the dog back. Here's your money back. You know, it, it was a legitimization thing that I saw. And so I'm, like I said, on a personal level,

I'm disappointed that everybody, and again, this is both sides because it, it turned into that, you know, if you don't test all of your animals, then you're a terrible, horrible person and you should go to hell and you shouldn't be selling snakes. And the other people who are like, it's not reasonable for John to say that all of us have to test all of our snakes all of the time. You know, both sides went to the extreme and nobody came into the center and said, hey, you know, maybe this testing thing isn't terrible. It's not something I thought of. Maybe I need to rewrite my terms and services a little bit differently so that it says,

you know, if the animal is outwardly sick within four hours, I need to know if you test the animal, it comes back positive. We need to have a longer conversation. You know, I don't think that's a terrible thing to have written into your terms of service. And that's what John was driving at. But I think everybody kind of missed it because of there's so much heat around this topic. Yeah. I would say on the other side of the coin, using that analogy, you know, we know a lot more about dogs and dog pathogens and, you know, other mammalian pathogens than we do about snake pathogens. So again, just because you get a positive test doesn't mean you have a sick animal, right? So I could see, you know, on, on the other side that, yeah, that's, that's a legitimate

concern that just because somebody gets a positive test doesn't mean that's a sick animal. Now, I often use the analogy of mouse colonies, you know, in this discussion, because a lot of times we have snake colonies that have just gotten used to the pathogens in our room and they're not outwardly sick. The pathogens are under control within the animals as long as the animals are happy you know they're the the pathogens kind of maintain their normal little uh balance or whatever you want to call it it's like if you have a mouse colony

if you bring in a group of mice to introduce to your mouse colony and you just throw them in your colony all your mice are gonna die usually crash because the colonies usually have pathogens that the other colony may not have been exposed to or used to and so you're going to have sick animals and i would and i would say anybody who's bred mice and done that has probably experienced yeah yeah i mean that's like i yeah i a hundred. And so I think a breeder can be legitimately like I, I sold an animal and, you know, and it went to another and it was very healthy when it was here. I had no problems with it, but then it gets, undergoes that stress, gets exposed to potentially pathogens from a new colony if they don't, you know, quarantine it well enough or, and

that's a, that's a tricky thing to try to introduce animals that may not be used to the, the balance of the room or whatever. And so that's, you know, that's something to consider as well, that that could be going on with our reptile colonies, just like it is with a mouse colony, that they have their own pathogens that could be problematic in, um, animals that are not used to those pathogens, just like a different Serpentovirus, you know, that, that doesn't occur necessarily in carpet pythons, but it does occur in green trees and it transmits from a green tree to a carpet. It could maybe have severe consequences that way. And, you know, there's just, we just don't have the understanding

to know what's going to happen when we mix and match and move things around. So, and I, and I think overall, like for myself, it's, it's made me very conscious of what I'm bringing into my collection. And I'll generally only want to start with very young animals because they're usually going to have a lot less issues. They're going to have a lot less exposure to pathogens. If you can get animals that are fairly young, you're probably going to avoid a lot of issues. But if you're getting a colony of animals, of adult breeder animals, man, that's a dangerous move. And you probably want to have those in a separate facility if you can separate a collection room. So just, just another something to think about.

Yeah. And, and I don't disagree, you know, I'm not, I, I don't think it should immediately go to if I, if my animal tests positive or if the animal gets sick, then that automatically paints, you know, the other breeder in a bad light. It just, I think if the animal gets sick, then that automatically paints, you know, the other breeder in a bad light. It just, I think if the animal tests positive after you receive it, you, there needs to be a more open avenue of discussion. It shouldn't just be the finger pointing thing. Yeah.

Yeah. I should feel free to get my animals tested without having to seek permission from the seller. Yeah. But the seller should also feel comfortable knowing that people may test animals when they get them. And whatever the answers are, or it's not even a matter of whatever, because if the answer is back, then there should be a, a civilized and adult conversation between the buyer and the seller. And that I think is extremely important. And, you know, again,

as we all know, this, this hobby has a tendency to rip itself apart from the inside in a lot of different ways. And I think this, I think the blow up that we saw when John pushed that policy out was just another symptom of that. I know that in his heart, John was going for a very positive thing. And I think the hobby just ripped itself apart.

And you know, I mean, something that this discussion has clearly laid bare for me is that both sides have some sort of responsibility towards understanding, you know, a way forward, uh, that, that makes sense. If, if, if, you know, there's, if you, somebody comes back with a positive test, doesn't that person who potentially sold that animal have the right to be like, all right, what test did you get? What, you know, where did you get this done? What is this? What, you know, what, what is the, uh, the method and manner this test

was done because that potentially matters. And at the same time, like, you know, it's, it, there's a, there's, there's push pull forces there. Uh, and I think finding a way to get both sides, you know, you can't just let the, the, well, we should, I mean, we all agree, maybe we're better off testing, right? But you can't just let that side that says, we should test everything, no matter what, all the time, all day long, you know, rule the conversation because you miss a huge slice of the nuanced argument when you, when you just go one direction or the other, which is so interesting because we are so polar opposite when we have these kinds of discussions, especially in the reptile community. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's how any, I mean,

I think the testing and the reptile hobby should follow the testing, you know, for basically any other medical type testing that you would think of. If it's for your dog, you know, for basically any other medical type testing that you would think of. If it's for your dog, you know, you take your dog when it's sick or right when you buy a brand new dog, because that's what you do. You don't take your dog. Well, you do take your dog when it's not sick because there are other laws that say you have to take your dog every year to make sure that it's rabies vaccine is up to date, you know, but by the same token, you also have a wellness visit as a human every year, you're supposed to go and see a doctor. Now, some people don't go and see doctors, except and unless they are sick, you know, but

so if that's how you do it with your snakes, then how are you being any different than you would anywhere across the board? But, you know, and that's part of, again, a bigger thing because, you know, yeah, there aren't as many reptile vets out there. So it's like, well, of course we don't take our snakes for wellness visits. There are vets that do wellness visits, but if your snake is sick, you should be finding a vet. And throughout the hobby, there's a lot of at-home medicine that is executed that, you know, on the one hand, you know, yeah, we all feel that it's fine. You know, I'm sure that there are plenty of people out there who treat their new snakes with fipronil. You know, it used to

be all the rage for people to just give their snakes bataitrel. You know, snake's got a respiratory infection. Just give it Baitrel, give it Baitrel, give it Baitrel. You know, there's a reason Baitrel doesn't work anymore because everybody was doing that. Exactly. You know, so it's not unreasonable to say that we should be treating our snakes the same way we would be treating any of our other pets. Yeah. Test when necessary. But all the time is not what's necessary. It's when you get it, when it's sick. Yeah. And I w I would definitely agree with

that. I think, uh, you know, hopefully this, this, uh, has this discussion has passed on some information that's helpful to, to understand, you know, when it's important to test and what the results might mean or what they might not mean and, uh, move forward, you know, when it's important to test and what the results might mean or what they might not mean and, uh, move forward, you know, in a thoughtful manner, uh, you know, hopefully people are listening and saying, I need a better, uh, biocontainment program, or I need to think about that for my own collection and how I'm going to deal with, with, uh, uh, outbreak or, or some sort of pathogen or some sick snake, you know, we need, you need a plan and you need to prepare for these things. And, and part of that plan would, would, uh, include testing and, and helping you, uh, better inform

your decisions and how you work with the animals and what you might do to, to help those animals. So, um, I know I just, uh, kind of sided with you there at the end, but you know, I think testing in the right, uh, in the right place in the right time is, is definitely very important. Um, but we also need to understand the other side. And, and I think everybody just needs to find that balance. We get so polarized with everything we think about these days, you know, y'all, if you haven't picked a side and defend that side to the death and not allow any other, you know, input to come in from the other side, you're, you're in the wrong. You know, if you're, if you're making those decisions, you know, in an echo chamber, that's probably a dangerous place to be, you know, like get,

get the other side, get the other information, get be, you know, like get, get the other side, get the other information, get both, you know, weigh both options, think about both things and see what's going to be best for, for your animals. Cause that's what, you know, what's important. Yes. All right. Well, we definitely appreciate your time, Travis, and your, and your insight and your, uh, helpful, uh, information here. This has been a really productive and good discussion and we really appreciate you having me on, gentlemen. The invitation was nice to have. Yeah, we'll have to

have you back for another scientific discussion. This is really great. And we're thankful for everybody that's listening. I wish you happy holidays and we will catch you later for another edition of Reptile Fight Club. Doctor. Doctor.

And we're out! Thank you. Bye.