Reptile Fight Club - Reptile Fight Club does yet another Clip Show!

Episode Date: May 6, 2022

In this episode, Justin and Chuck have put off fighting for the week and go over some of the best clips of RFC.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. Justin Juliener, with me is Chuck Poland. What is up? Nothing, did you see Mike Tyson beat that dude's ass on an airplane? I saw that That dude had it coming He was messing with him, right? What are you thinking?

Even dumb drunk me would not fucking fuck with Mike Tyson I know Like even as an old man he could still just and you know he didn't hit him as hard as he could like i mean he was he was punching on him but dude i watched his like when he was training to fight uh who did he fight just recently it was like an exhibition thing for charity or something but uh yeah anyway was it roy jones jr yeah yeah but like man he was bro he was serious yeah yeah that guy's on another level man yeah he's a monster like if you've ever like if you've ever

listened to like him talk about like his life and and stuff like that like he he he has a he has a switch that like you know when he when he loses his like he goes you know he's not all like when he flips out he's not all there yeah yeah scary dude this is the guy who beat his girlfriend and stuff you know he's not gonna think twice about beating some loud mouth behind yeah oh yeah yeah but the guy's probably thinking oh i can sue him now but i don't think he's worth what he used to be no i don't i i know i think he's i think he is he back yeah he has uh he has like a cannabis ranch where he does like a whole, I mean, I think it's, yeah, it's a multimillion dollar operation, I think. But, yeah, I think, I think Mike's doing okay.

Mike, Mike's doing all right. just think i think it's really interesting like like like like uh well i i saw that they basically like when it came when the police came to take statements all of a sudden the the guy who was bugging him you know didn't want to give a statement and didn't want to like you know what i mean yeah well i mean it's that too and it's like are you really going to be the guy that presses charges on mike tyson after you know after you uh you basically bothered him to the point where he beat you up on an airplane yeah he can't wake the bear and and then cry about yeah he mauls you exactly exactly yeah yeah so i'm pulling a Dr. Evil today. Now, you know. He's nuts.

But he'll just come and sit on my lap in here. It's kind of nice. That's crazy. He usually does not like to sit still very long. So I read, I was reading an article about a loosely correlated. So men who had cats as boys suffer psychosis at a greater rate in adulthood than, but they said it was the, it was inconsistent. Yeah, it's inconsistent. The data was kind of inconsistent a little bit. But in men who had cats as boys, when they grow up, they have a higher propensity for psychosis, which is, yeah. I heard it was like risky behaviors. Like there was a parasite that cats carry.

I can't remember the name and then the the mice get it and the mice will like go towards the cat you know and that was what that was what they that was what they also said was uh it was hot it was it was more correlated to cats that were outdoor uh cat like hunt cats that would hunt yeah all our cats are indoors there but they're yeah they're they're pretty funny this ramsey's a good cat yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna ditch him out of the room because he wants to explore and probably he'll start peeing on stuff or something he thinks he's a dog more than a cat but one second Yeah. So cats who needs them. Waste of fur.

If you ask me that, that, uh, our, our hairless cat is, he's really fun. He's a cool cat, but those are probably the only cats I can dig on there.

But that's only because they think they're dogs. Yeah. Maybe so. I don't know. I mean, he's pretty cat, but like he't know i mean he's pretty cat but like he he's he's all cat but but yeah he has some dog tendencies but it's kind of funny he'll wake me up every morning he'll yeah he'll come up and like go up the side of the bed and just

kind of tap my face slap you in the face get up and wine time to feed me you know typical cat get your ass out of bed jolinder let's go's go. So now he's going to sit and whine, want to come back in, but hopefully he'll lose interest quickly. All right. Well, he just got back from a dance recital. I did. I did. I did wonderfully. You should have seen me in my tutu and everything. You are pretty graceful. So I'm spry oh yeah right no actually yeah my daughter is in uh ballet she's in junior company so she uh she's been so junior company does performances and they do them around so like we we went to knott's berry farms and she performed and she did a halftime at an SDSU basketball game. And, um, this one was at a, uh, a high school, really nice auditorium. Um, so she, she, she has a couple of dances.

She has a solo and a couple of dances. So, uh, family went to watch her perform. So she's actually, she's very, very good dancer very good dancer um very very proud father so yeah yeah it's nice fun to watch your kids uh you know excel and do yeah i i feel like such an asshole though because i like watch the other kids dance and i'm like ah my daughter yeah like that one's kind of good i don't know if i like her but i think sophie is still better than her you know that's awesome i know you're a competitive dude so you get what i'm saying you get me i'm not competitive what your ass you were talking about me i just yeah no yeah i i have a pretty big competitive streak i try not to be no too jerky about it but yeah no you're not you're not you're just like yeah you're you're pretty cool about it and you

just have to get your one like haha you lose in there and you're done right i just let my action speak you know they'll speak for me I don't need to say anything. When I work out, I'm swimming and if somebody next to me is going fast, I try to keep up with them and pass them. Drown them.

Push their head under. Undo their lane chain and throw it into their way. They get all tangled up. So you can pass them up. Yeah. Well, all right. I've been working on some tanks, putting in some fake rock and stuff. I'm trying to make them nice looking for my skinks.

Frank the tank. Yeah, gurney is oh nice nice yep so i was working on well yeah i mean i mean you're they're like yeah they they live together yeah yeah i mean that the depressor may be a little young the the it looks like the yeah the hosmeri are older the um strialata look like they might be going soon one of the one of the ones that looks female is much bigger than the others and she's out basking a lot more than she ever has so i'm hoping she's cooking some babies in there looks like a couple of my blue tongues are also grab or gravid you're gonna have some babies soon too so one looks huge i'm like oh man and then i i'm like i was so worried i wasn't gonna get inlands again i paired like three of the females and and they look they all look gravid like i'm gonna have three clutches of inlands or something,

but I don't know. We'll see. You never count your eggs till they hit the ground. That's true. And even then you got to hatch them out. If you end up with a gaggle of inlands, I might talk to you about it. Yeah.

You can keep those outside. That would be awesome. Yeah, I know. I know. That's what I've been like. Fill the cage next to the coastals build a cage no no no no no yeah you know so like yeah and like i paired up a black-eyed children's male with a black-eyed children's female so this will be the first time i nice black-eyed black-eyed and and the male was

tiny so i thought ah it's not gonna happen well she looks gravid. And then I've got too many things that look gravid. Does black-eyed to black-eyed make other wonky stuff? I don't know. I've never done it. I'm assuming it's just a recessive trait. So they'll all be black-eyed. But I don't know. Who knows what else is going on there?

Because I don't know if this is much of a secret project. But I bred a black-ed Stimson's Python. That's really dark. Like he started going darker and darker. What's anyway. So I bred him back. I bred him to one of the female Stimson's and then held back two of the females from him and then bred him back to them. And last year, one of the females laid and I got two out of five that had like a

pied tail so some pied tailed skimpsons i remember they were kind of patternless with a little white spot yeah so i i repeated those pairings and i one of the clutches crashed and i just got good eggs from that female they look good anyway we'll see if they hatch out. So we'll see what happens with that. And neither of the females have black eyes like the, the male, the black male has black eyes versus the yellow eyes that you usually see or orangey yellow eyes with the Stimson. So yeah, we'll see. What, what happens, but it's kind of fun, kind of interesting, you know, see what we get. Cool.

One of the, one of the pie tails I hatched out is doing really well. The other one's kind of struggling. It's, it's kind of a runty one and I keep trying to feed it up and I think I keep trying to give it too big a food items too soon. And so it'll kill them and then not eat them. Yeah. So I'm like, gosh, I gotta just give it smaller pinkies and get it growing. Okay. But not, not really thriving like the other one is. We'll see what happens. Just one of those morphs, one of those messed up. I was just going to say, sometimes you got to limp those morphs along. Right?

Yeah. I mean, it's nothing too crazy, but it's kind of something interesting, I guess. Hey, so I have a pair of children's pythons from you. And, you know, the female, she looks really reduced pattern. And, like, the male looks is really reduced. They're both, like like almost patternless. Yeah. Is that pretty common?

I mean, that's children's by tons. Yeah. Okay. Some of the lines, like I know I got, I got some from Ryan or I got a female from Ryan young that was really heavily patterned and they maintain a more heavy pattern into adulthood. But the ones that I got from the barkers they kind of fade

quite a bit and so they're almost patternless when they're adults yeah okay so there's there is a line of patternless children's in australia i don't know if we have them here or you know because it's really hard to tell because people call them patternless but they just fade they're they're just faded yeah yeah yeah and and it's funny because that female has always been like, I mean, she has a bit of a pattern to her, but she's pretty patternless. And the male, he definitely has a pattern. But I was like, you know, the other day, I'm like,

man, I'm having a hard time telling these apart because they're both really patternless right now. So I don't know if that's a hormonal thing or, I mean don't think so i think yeah they just kind of fade out and so i i bred um that female pattern you know highly patterned animal i also bred uh some of the black eyes and i got some really cool patterned animals and they maintain a fairly good pattern and like they change colors a bit so like at night the children's pythons like their pattern will stick out a little more and they'll get really light and cool looking they i don't know i always kind of referred to those as ghost

ghosty children's but it's not like it's a simple mutation or something it's just you want to be careful using words i know right yeah you can see it was really hard because you know somebody like cues you yeah exactly you're like oh i gotta market these and yeah something cool but then the other side is like it's just a normal children's and like the ones that i got from the barkers the babies are nice and pink like really reddish colored when they're babies and and like somebody hatched them out and they had, well, they got a one for me. And then they had an adult that was from somewhere else. I'm not sure where they got it. And then half the babies were pink and half the ones were darker. And

they're like, Oh, I got a new morph. You know, they're all light colored. And I'm like, no, that's just what nice ones look like. That just what they what they do so i don't know i you know it i guess it is what it is but i nice try satan nice try so i'm so i'm waiting i did get a a bum clutch from uh stimson's python she laid she's one of my nicer stims that got i i've got some really nice babies from her over the last few years and i i held back like almost all of her clutch like two seasons ago and they were really nice i had one that was kind of aberrantly patterned it's really fine patterning it looks really cool so um i kept probably i think 2.3 from that clutch and then what what do you think why why

bum clutch just bad year yeah i mean she was kind of acting gravid but she was not really big so i just knew they were and she laid a bunch of slugs so i don't know what happened with her why you know why they she failed this year but um she's she's bred the last two years so probably she's probably just needs a break yeah so and then um a couple pygmies are gonna lay here soon a couple inlands will lay i just got eggs from that jungle and and the the black eyed line Stimpsons. And then, so I probably ought to call it something else. I guess pied tail would work

or patternless tail or something. We'll see what these next couple of clutches because both the females are gravid from the black Stimpsons male. He just keeps getting darker. You know, he's not like totally black but he's really dark um so yeah kind of a fun thing it was uh david hastens i sold some stimpsons to david hastens and then he he's like yeah this one keeps getting darker and it's got white eye black

and white eyes and i'm like oh that's interesting and like, yeah, I don't think I want to work with him anymore. Do you want him back? And so I bought the mail back. Yeah. Cool. Okay. And, you know, it proved out to be something weird. Something's going on there because the two that have the pie tails also have black eyes. So something's going on. But I don't want to call them black-eyed Stimpsons because we've got the black-eyed children.

And we'll see what happens when we black eyed a black eye but you could call them Hastings never mind yeah so that's my week I suppose it was a good week didn't you have NIH talks

yeah I think we talked a little bit about that on the last one, but yeah, the last podcast. Well, I don't, I think you had to get ready to do them. I don't know. Or did we, did we, I think it was just after I'd given them, cause we, I gave talks that day. I had three, three, like 20, 25 minute talks. I basically spoke for an hour, you know, on and off. I had two that were in a row and then one that was separated by a couple other talks. So it was a, you know, it was an hour plus of speaking

to the NIH and other researchers that are part of the contract group. So yeah, long day. And then today, yeah, we're recording Friday night. So another, yeah, kind of end to a long week. But today was nice. We had an employee appreciation lunch for our group, for our antiviral group at work. And we have a lot of people that work for us. And we had pizza in the library. Ah, there you go. But yeah, everybody was introducing themselves.

I'm like, I don't know a lot of these people. So it's good to see everybody in one room. Does that mean you just stay in your office? Yeah, unfortunately. Are you the get out of my lab guy? No, no. I like to look for reasons to get in the lab and interact. No, but I mean other people.

You're like, get out of my lab. Well, if they're not supposed to be there, then yeah. I suppose that's true. You can't be in those labs if you're not supposed to be. But yeah, I'm in my office behind the keyboard way too much. I like to look for excuses to get out in the lab and do something, you know, hands on, but what do you do? All right. Well, we've got another clip show for you.

Everybody loves a clip show, right? I don't know if they do. I still, I need to find that clip from simpsons but yeah um so we're gonna go through the the third 10 episodes and kind of this is our third yeah clip show three what's the we got it like clip show two is electric boogaloo. What's show three. I don't know. Can't think of a good one. It's too late, I guess. Yep. Good times. Well, that's let's, let's start them out here. So the first, and we had a lot of great guests in this, in the, you know, the, the 21 to 30, um, episodes.

So first one started out with a bang. It was, uh, Keith, uh, McPeak. What a legend, man. That guy's awesome. I sure, I sure like Keith. Dud muffin. Yeah. And I've had the pleasure of doing a couple of herp trips with him and kind of chatting with him, picking his brain. He's,

he's been doing this a long time and he's been very successful. Like he's, he's kind of maybe flown under the radar a bit. It hasn't been held like somebody like the Barkers, but, and he is just as accomplished as he's doing. He's doing it as good as some. Yeah. I mean, I mean, I pretty sure he's going to. God damn, I'm going to knock on wood. Don't say it.

He's going to have some special eggs this year. Everything's moving in the right direction. It looks awesome. I'm so excited for him. I think he's got a lot of people rooting for him. Oh, 100%. If anybody deserves it. Of all the fuck-assery that comes out of those snakes,

to have Keith do that, please, yes. You know what I mean? And that was the topic of the conversation. We were talking about breeding projects and long-term success and things like that. He was talking about if he, you know, breeding projects and long-term success and things like that. Like he was talking about, you know, if he's successful with Bolins, he wants to put them in the right hands to continue the project, not to make a bunch of money, you know, like he, he wants to do it the right way. So what, I mean, that's just cool. That's, that's really admirable. And, and I'm sure he'll follow through with it because he's, you know, that's,

that's his, his mental, you know, his mentality over the project is like, he's not in it to make, make a buck. He's in it to make sure that people can work with Bolins long into the future. So good on you, Keith. And, and I, you know, it was, it was fun. It was really fun because we recorded it live so it was right on the uh right at the first of the herp trip down in arizona last year so yeah and that's that was that was some good that was a good trip and some fun times there so yeah it was fun to kick it off and chat with him and and get distracted by all the cool birds that

were flying overhead and is is keith a big bird or two is there was that yeah he likes birds he's been sending me some like uh some tiktoks of birds like doing different things that he just sent a liar i'm gonna call you to the bird nerds yeah he sent me a i don't know if you've heard of the liar bird in australia They're like a mimic. So they can do like all these different calls. I mean, it was mimicking a camera shutter and like a truck and stuff like that. It's pretty cool. That's pretty cool.

So, yeah, but I, I think, you know, I really admire that attitude of like, we've got to, we got to be in this for the animals, not just for, you know, for the money. And, you know, we've talked about that quite a bit and yeah, you can, you can make a living doing reptiles and you can make a comfortable living in some, in some circumstances, but it definitely takes a lot of work and it takes a lot of dedication and, and you got to put in the time and most people don't come out of the gate running, you know, they're not professional breeders right off the bat. Most people have a day job for a decade or more until they kind of get a collection and a reputation and things like that. So to, uh,

take that, that high end, extremely expensive project, and then just say hey i'm gonna make sure this gets into good hands you know i'm sure i i hope he'll sell an animal or two you know to to try to kind of um be able to to not that he'll need it but to to pay for you know i wouldn't even be mad and i know he's i know he said i know he said that he he he, you know, he'll put those and, and that was kind of part of the discussion was, and I, I, I think my, you know, the me burking all my Tracy was kind of in that discussion and, and, uh, and, and, you know, his, his thoughts were more moving those out to people, which, you know, man, what, you know, what a guy, it definitely got me like, man,

am I, you know, am I, am I making the right call with what I'm doing or, and I, you know, I, I hope he holds on to a few of them, you know, some back because, you know, that's, you're going to have the best success with animals that are born on your, you know, in your facility, on your property, in your hometown, you know, whatever. So, you know, that, that would definitely go towards extending that project and, you know, put some animals in the hands of capable people who, who already work with Bolin. So they can have that, you know, increase of increased chance of working with a captive bred and born animal in the United States, but they're not going to do any better than where, where they're produced. increased chance of working with a captive bred and born animal in the united states but they're not going to do any better than where where they're produced in my opinion like that's

in a lot of cases that's kind of how it works out and you know i the way i see it is it whoever whoever they go to i mean that that person should be like, all right, what do I need to do? And, and, and, and, you know, they should go somewhere where the conditions are as close to as possible as what Keith's doing, you know, like that, you know, it's, it's one of those things where it's, to me, it's that important that, um, you know, that, that if, if they go somewhere that the, that the care, the exact care follows, you know? Yeah. And frankly, I mean, I, I think, especially with, with Bolins where there are a few people that have a decent, like, uh, Ari showed out, uh, his collection of Bolini on one of their videos showing off Reptolandia down in Texas.

And he's got a pretty sweet setup and he's got quite a few Bolani. So, you know, he, you know, he could probably house them really well. And I'm sure they're going to have a sweet setup in Reptolandia, like seeing what they've got planned for the Bolani exhibit. That's going to be something that I'm going to definitely want to go visit and see that. Cause it looks incredible. I mean, oh my goodness, very incredible. So, you know, hopefully, uh, some of the animals make their way down there. You know, he, he'd be one of those capable people that could do well with those. And, but you know, I, I, I really hope I like the Chuck Poland method of, you know, I, I, I really hope I, I like the Chuck Poland method of, you know,

burking everything and holding onto it and making sure that the project is going to be viable. Now, you know, on the other hand, if something were to happen or, you know, then all your eggs are kind of in one basket. Yeah. And I, I mean, Keith's point was, yeah, Keith's point was well taken and, you know, I just, you know, God, if I had a fire or something horrible happened, like that'd be it, you know, I'd, I would not be the same man anymore.

There's gotta be a balance, I think, between the two, you know, I don't think you should necessarily farm them all out, but you shouldn't necessarily hold on to all of them for, for, you know, in perpetuity, but yeah, you know, until you figure it out or, and you know, you're working on getting a group working group put together and stuff, but yeah. Yeah. What a great episode and what a great guy. I just really admire Keith and all his, all he's doing. And his wife's really cool too. Teresa is really a great guy. I just really admire Keith and all he's doing. And his wife's really cool too. Teresa is really a great person as well. So I had the pleasure of meeting her. They came,

she came with Keith to Utah. So just a wonderful woman. So yeah, really, really great time with those guys. Yeah. Well, anything else you want to say on that one? I know you probably have a lot of, a lot of insight into that and I, you know, you've, you've said, kind of said your piece, but anything else to add? No, I mean, I, you know, I just, I really wish that guy luck. I, I, I'm pulling for him in a big way. So, you know. And I sure hope he gets that success. Listen, there's just, there's there, man, I don't want to say this cause it sounds bad, but there's, there, there are some really, really great people, uh, in the reptile community and they're not always, uh, fair or, you know, fair and wide. Some of them are few and far between.

And, and Keith's definitely one of those few and far between amazing guys that, you know fair and wide some of them are few and far between and and keith's definitely one of those few and far between amazing guys that definitely you know yeah i i just i i want to see the best for those people because they they dang dang deserve it they make the community better they make us all better you know for sure yeah i i echo that completely. All right. Our, our next episode was on marketing with Summer Grace Mitchell and she was on the ball. She, she, she was, she knocked it out of the park and made us, you know, just, I did, I, I fought with her, didn't I? Yes. Thankfully I did not because yes, I, I mean, I, I, you know, I mean, that's her job and obviously she's, I, I, you know, I mean, that's her job and obviously

she's a professional marketer. Uh, and you know, you can see she, you know, she, Justin Kabuka does an amazing job and she makes him look amazing with her marketing. So, you know, that, that's a good, good team. Top to bottom. They are, you know, they are the, they are probably the model for, um, you know, uh, a high end, um, breeding, you know, morph, uh, morph driven kind of, uh, reptile business. Um, and he's kind of set, you know, he, he, he and his team have kind of set, set up that, uh, you know, that vision and that, uh, complete package kind of idea. Oh, absolutely.

And they go the extra mile and do a lot of extra things that, you know, most, most people don't do. And, you know, that's, that's really cool. That's, uh, I, I learned, you know, some things from that and, you know, I, I, I'm a terrible marketer and I'm a terrible salesman and all those kind of things. So I just hope that people appreciate the snakes as much as I do and want to work with the snakes, you know. Well, and I mean, I think, yeah, maybe you'll agree with me here, but I feel like I am a much better breeder than I am a marketer. And I, I try to pair snakes that make good babies and I try to let the snakes sell themselves, which, you know I guess maybe works in, in one vein,

but you know, clearly, you know, from that, from that fight, uh, we saw what that next level or that, uh, third gear, fourth gear, fifth, sixth gear looked like, uh, to our first or second gear. Um, so yeah, it was, uh, it was definitely impressive. And yeah i definitely i definitely walked away being like wow i i i suck so well that's you know that's a that's a good good person to work for i think just oh yeah is kind of one of the exemplary you know people out there doing it the right way and so yeah what you know what a, what a great team and good lesson on, um, some of the useful things that can be done with marketing, you know, and you know, like, like I think she brought up that point of, if you have good animals and you're

striving to breed good animals, that's marketing, you know, you're showing, showing off amazing animals. Like that's going to be some of the best marketing you can maybe do is just show off good, healthy, strong, you know, well-feeding animals. Well, and I, you know, I guess I never really like, you know, I think about positive image representation of the reptile community, but I don't really think of it through marketing, which, you know, when she kind of pointed that out, I was, I was kind of like, yeah, why, why don't I think about it like that? Like, I mean, you know, PR firms are marketing, right? Like, you know, so like, why, why wouldn't, why wouldn't we take ourselves much more seriously with marketing and, and, and, and, and do that to the nines as they would say. And, you know, I mean, I, I, to their credit, like, I mean, it, you can kind of see like why, you know, it's definitely paid them dividends and why it would behoo of somebody to take marketing

very seriously if they wanted to positively represent not only themselves, but the reptile community. Yeah. And, and that was a big part of that conversation that was very kind of eyeopening for me that just kind of hit me by surprise. Like we need good rep, representatives to, to make this whole thing last, you know, you don't want to just have the dirt bags with the gross animals that are, you know, hawking, uh, half dead reptiles at a show. And, you know, I mean, we, uh, unfortunately we suffer from, you know, not all of our attention being good attention. And, and so, you know, it's, it's, it's kind of a fine line anyway. And yeah, sure.

We want to push ourselves over on the good side rather than the bad. So they can see, yeah, there's professional businessmen in this, in business women in this industry and that, you know, we deserve respect and, and that kind of thing. So. Yep. Cool stuff. Cool stuff. That was a great episode though. It was a great episode. Yeah.

And then we talked about natural versus artificial diets and kind of some of the pros and cons of, you know, trying to mimic what an animal would eat in the wild and, and what they, what we have available in captivity. And I'm still kind of on the fence on that. Like, I don't know which way I lean more because, you know, I like the idea of, of getting a naturalistic diet, but at the same time, I, I kind of come back to like energy in energy out, you know, I don't know, like, you know, we used maybe hog noses and showed kind

of through domestication. They, they prefer rodents, you know, coming out of the egg, they're looking for a rodent rather than a toad, but you know, are they missing something by not eating toads and do, can we feed them toads? I mean, maybe the best approximation we'd have would be like frog legs or, or those reptile links or whatever that are made of frog or something like that. That's about as close as we could get. But are they missing something by not eating toads? And I mean, toads are kind of hard to come by these days, you know, with the chytrid fungus and some of the other issues that they've faced.

I know growing up, there were toads everywhere around my house. As far as the eye could see. No, I mean, yeah, you'd go out at night and see five or six toads just hopping around your house. As far as the eye can see. No, I mean, yeah, you'd go out at night and see five or six toads just hopping around your yard. And then like sometime in the, you know, when was that? Like late nineties, mid to late nineties, they started declining. And, and then, then you very rarely see toads out where I grew up. And so it's kind of a sad thing. And they are kind of those environmental canaries.

And when the coal mine's getting poisoned, those are the first things to disappear. So I get really excited every time I see a toad when I go visit my parents now. But it used to be very commonplace. So, you know, can we, could we even have a mechanism to feed toads, you know, unless somebody is breeding a mess of toads, that would be really difficult to, to feed. Hog nose is a naturalistic diet. So does, does that mean we don't keep them or, you know, it's, it's hard to say. And, you know, thinking like, um, I know what the venom extraction places, they have coral snakes and coral snakes are mainly snake eaters. And so they're difficult to feed in captivity and they will mix up like a, uh, uh, formulated diet kind of thing based on like, food or, you know, and that mixed with other

vitamins and nutrients and other stuff. And so they'll just assist feed, they'll just tube feed these coral snakes to keep them robust, healthy, alive, so they can milk them for their venom. So, you know, it's purpose driven. I, you know, I don't know how great that is or if it, you know, results in runny stools or whatever, but, um, so, I mean, is that acceptable? You know, would it be better to, to try to get them on rodents like we did with the hog noses or, or should we feed them other things like birds that more approximate a reptile you know it's tricky tricky yeah i i think that's a tough that's a that's a tough thing i mean you know i i and i guess like it's kind of a what you what you should do versus what you must do kind of an argument too. I mean, I, I think, you know, you, you, you,

you should try to feed something that's natural diet, but must you? No. I mean, I think at some level you're, you're a hundred percent right that it's energy in energy out, but it may just be that the, um, whatever you're trying to feed doesn't recognize that food item as, you know, a valid prey source and it doesn't want to eat it. And, you know, you end up going through all this extra trouble, which could create other issues, you know, stress, whatever, you know, all those things that could potentially happen when you're trying to force an animal to do something that's not natural for it. Obviously, there's some things that are specialists like a phrynosoma, you know, the horned lizards that are ant specialists. And some are more ant specialized than others, like the short horned horned lizards that live around here they they have a more diverse diet of beetles and

i saw a cool i saw a cool video of of some horned lizards sitting around like a it was like a trough thing that had a hole in like a pole that stuck up out of it and the ants would come up and they just sit there like licking off that that was so yeah that's what it made me think of that no that yeah those are some of the um that's another species that's more uh that will take a lot of different prey items other than ants or the mexican giant horn lizards the asio phrynosoma asio or and and they're you know the largest species as well they're pretty cool and they're you know more commonly bred than probably any other species, but I do think they need, you know, at least some part of their diet needs to be ants

and who knows, maybe it's other factors that we're not hitting in their captive care, but, um, but you know, you can order ants, you can get ants. And I kept, uh, kept a group of mountain short horned lizards, Phrynosoma hernandezi, happy and healthy as far as I could tell until I messed up brumation. And, you know, we won't talk about that. But up to that point, I was feeling pretty successful with those. But, yeah, so, you know, know of course you need to be careful i i sent off some of the babies to a friend and and he had collected some ants and the ants had had had poison and so that ended up resulting in yep that's not good the poor outcome but so we you know um it's sometimes hard to find those diets but it was kind of nice cause there was a commercial source of harvester ants that I could order for certain, you know, 20 bucks

for a cup of ants and they would last, you know, probably the better part of a month. And you could just put them in the fridge and slow them down, keep them kind of in a torpor and then they would last quite a while. So, you know, say that that word again which one torpor yeah in a slow slow you know cool state they're in the fridge so they're slowed down and they're not you know burning themselves out and needing to eat food and all that kind of stuff they just kind of almost like a hibernation or yeah tor Torpor? Torpor. All right. That's a new word for me.

There we go. All right. So, you know, there, there are some avenues to get those naturalistic prey potentially, you know, but again, I go back to that snakes of the world book by Jay and. Well, it's just, yeah, I mean, you kind of have to figure that, you know, reptiles are, you know, everywhere and they all fill different kind of niche nippers. And so they're all going to have different prey sources. And, you know, and so you're going to, you know,

you're going to run into, and like, as O'Shea poignantly makes a point that poignantly makes a point that's horrible you know you're some of this stuff is just impractical to keep because of it because of what it eats it's because of its diet and and um you know but maybe to your point does it matter you know i mean i think maybe at some level it does but well and they do have that predisposition to eat certain things and so it's kind of sometimes difficult to overcome that if you can find a very young animal or something you might be able to overcome that the other thing is like there are a lot of really cool snakes that can be, you know, switched over to maybe more available prey, like the shovel nose snakes, you know, why aren't, why is nobody breeding those in numbers or, you know,

I don't know. They're cool as hell too. They're way cool. I mean, yeah, there's challenges, but I, I'm hoping to maybe do that someday, you know, but they're, they're really cool snakes and insectivorous. So there's, there's quite a few of those little insectivorous snakes that would be really interesting to try, but yeah, lots of things to think about when you're thinking about natural prey and, and switching over to artificial diets or lab bred. Non-natural.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're not finding an albino mice out in the wild very often. That's for sure. All right. Well, then we had a really fun debate with Scott Iper, our Australian buddy. Oh, Scotty. On the carpet python taxonomy. Yeah, you guys. Guys. on the carpet python taxonomy yeah you guys uh guys that was a fun debate that was good that was good yeah it's good yeah that uh trigger like

from he shall not be named and yeah i think well i you you stirred the you stirred the aussie hornet nest yeah that's well and i think you know the new book Hornet nest. Yeah, that's well. And I think, you know, the new book is going to do a little of that. So sure. Sure. That Scott, Scott blue line soon, but you know, yeah. Yeah. So I could not go without putting his two cents in there. It was good. Yeah. And I, I just listened to, uh, uh, the podcast. Um, yeah. My, my brain is not functioning well tonight, but the, um, herpetological highlights, um, those guys are, they do a great job on their podcast, but they were talking about the new, um, Antaresia paper and the naming of the new

spotted Python in New Guinea and, and the ones up in you know up in the northern cape and stuff and i mean you mean the one that's shite i mean it's it's it's really hard to swallow and and you know they kind of fully endorsed it and i'm like oh come on guys at least have some you know uh on on the other side of it you know just because it's published doesn't mean it's great and and they did mention like they the the article starts out citing a 10 meter long snake and it's like there's no 10 meter long. I mean, that's, that's a, that's a bit of length there to be off, you know,, that article is just full of full of holes. But, you know, they're using a bit of an outdated species concept. So I I don't agree with it. I will use Stimsoni.

And, you know, and some of the things that I brought up with the carpet python taxonomy, you know, I know it can go either way and you know i'm okay if they're all if they're all kind of genetically close enough or they don't hit the cutoff but what that cutoff is who knows you know it's just some arbitrary magical number i mean i think and i you know again thinking back you know the the areas where you guys wrestled were were you know were not uh were not area they they were they were areas of debate and and and and minor distinction not of of gross you know cavernous divide uh you know i mean clearly they're you know these things are you know not the same thing uh that that's shown pretty clearly they're not and there is now you know where those divisions happen how far they've diverged

you know how the radiation has affected them you know what were the factors of radiation like you know all of that is is i mean that's a tough that's tough to talk radiation? Like, you know, all of that is, is, I mean, that's a tough, that's tough to talk about because it's, you know, you're, we're, we're a snapshot in time on a scale. Yeah. So, you know, and we're naming them for today, you know, like naming them for today. And so that's, that's difficult because you've got to take into account potentially millions of years of evolution.

But that's what taxonomy does is it takes a today snapshot. And that's why taxonomy is not a static thing. And nobody says this is how it is. They say this is how it is right now. Well, but they are trying to base it off of the last several million years and predicting what's going to happen in the future and things like that. So I don't know. I've got some issues with taxonomy,

and I don't know if those will ever be resolved. I was reading an article about Orioles, the birds, right? I don't know if the issues of taxonomy will ever be resolved ever anywhere it's going to be very difficult to change that behemoth of a field but i was reading an article about uh orioles right and there's there's two species one that occurs the baltimore occurs baltimore oriole and the um either the what was it the Scots or or black-headed something like that anyway they they meet in the middle and hybridize in the plains you know and you can clearly identify for the most part a hybrid versus the two species does that

mean they're all one species that occur across the whole United States or do those phenotypic and genotypic differences or they do they warrant specific status you know right now they're classified I think in the past they were classified as one species and then you know just different variants of the same species and now they're classified as two separate species with a hybridization zone in the middle, similar to, you know, costals and diamonds. So, and to me that, that means, you know, the fact that they have a hybridization zone means absolutely nothing. And if you can still, you know, I guess it depends on the market and measure that you're using to,

to judge the two species. But as long as there is a difference, you know, that warrants different species, then that integrated zone hasn't caused, you know, a homo, a homo, a homo, a homo, a homogenization of the species, right? Like, so, you know, I mean, again, it's like, you know, just because something is happening doesn't necessarily mean, you know, you throw the baby out with the bath water. And, and, you know, I, I, I think that's one of those things where the, the coastal, you know, the McDowell-I-Spilota-Spilota argument, you know, happenscdowell i spalota spalota argument you know happens and and it's kind of like uh no i i still think they're very much two different things uh you know

i mean it's kind of not a shouldn't it shouldn't be an argument it really shouldn't be an argument in my mind and well and i mean again regardless of what science labels them as we we kind of know what what is distinct and what is unusual or different and to some extent you know as far as we can know and i think the more you look at photographs of wild specimens or you travel in australia yourself you can kind of see okay there is quite a bit of variability especially with carpet python that's one of the things that makes them cool but you can still see fairly solid divisions you know and it blurs when the line but i think that's the

same way when you're talking about you know uh when you're talking about chondropythons too, like, yes, there's some variation there and maybe you shouldn't be so hard and fast, but there are some very reliable visual cues to say, this is a Northern ranging animal. This is a Southern ranging animal. And same with Stimson's pythons. That's why I don't think they should go away. Exactly. And that's, and that's and that's what i mean is like like yes i get it and and you know sometimes when you can look at a genetic analysis and all there's very there's very little difference here but but but that wasn't the measure they were using when they classified the species yeah you know what i mean and so so do you just

now say like well because we have this newer technology, we throw everything, you know, it basically means that we should invalidate all of taxonomy until we can redo it at a genetic level, which is kind of, you know, you can't go back like that. You just, it doesn't. So, so you're left with the tool you know yeah and so you're left with an imperfect thing right yeah yeah and it's just kind of like you do the best you can you understand that it's never perfect and you just take the american who writes the book about your snakes and move on with your life well regardless a discussion with scott is fun. No, and Scott, he's a very knowledgeable fellow. He is a super knowledgeable guy. He's fun to talk to. And, you know, he's pretty reasonable about stuff. You know, I mean, he who shall not be named would not have been reasonable in that conversation. Right. So to be able to have

a reasonable and, you know, lively talk with, with Scott was, was, uh, was awesome. So we, we do love you, Scott. And then we, uh, had our, uh, scientific name discussion the week after that with, uh, and, and I don't think any Smitty tears were shed in that episode that was a lot of fun and no mountains were climbed no smitty he's a bright guy and he he has a very good grasp on a lot of different topics so it was fun to have him back on and chat with him a bit on that and you know i think it's an important issue to talk, you know, the, the, you got to learn the scientific names. I, here's a great example of yesterday. I was in the, the local pet shop and, and they had what they were calling mossy

tree frogs. And I'm like, that doesn't look like the mossy tree frog. I know, you know, like the, the, uh, really cool, you know, bumpy green things. And I'm trying, I'm trying to think of the scientific name and I can't think of it, but that's, you know, so I'm like, well, what's the scientific name of the one that you've got in the shop? Oh, I don't know. You know, so yeah, it was, it was kind of like, eh, you know, if you don't know, there's a lot of things that could be called

mossy tree frog or something but this i was thinking theloderma the you know the vietnamese mossy green frogs theloderma corticali or whatever but that are just really cool looking so these weren't weren't quite so striking a little different but i I don't know what they're, what they are. Cause I don't, you know, I wasn't given their scientific name and the people didn't know it. Yeah. I was going to say, it sounded like they weren't expecting anybody to come in and know what they were in either. So, yeah. And, and for the most part, people don't really care about science, but, but I mean, scientific names help you convey, you know, what you're talking about, because there's multiple common names for things.

And I think Schmitty did a good job about, you know, making that distinction and pointing out, you know, the importance of that. But, you know, within the bird world, common names work very well because there is a more set in stone common name for just about every species. So it's really hard to not know what you're talking about unless you say a gull or a duck. You've got to know at least the proper common name for it. But I think they do a really good job of having a defined set in stone common name. And I think there are some efforts in the reptile world to do that. And I frequently, especially when talking about Australian reptiles, refer to the AROD site. They do a good job of kind of having a set common name for all the reptiles.

I'm sure it gets difficult with the skinks and they probably bow out of not having a common name for a lot all the reptiles. Um, yeah, I'm sure it gets difficult with the skinks and they probably bow out of not having a common name for a lot of the skinks and then just use the scientific name, but you know, when all else fails using the scientific name will let you know specifically what there is. And for some things like he was talking about tarantulas and spiders, there, there is no common, they just go exclusively. And, and a lot of times we'll even shorten the scientific name as a little nickname, like Aki, you know, comes from Paranus, Akinthurus. And so we'll, we'll use that as kind of a, uh, uh, as the scientific name, but

in a nickname-y manner, you know, as a common name, but based off the scientific name. So I guess as long as the two people who are conversing know what the other one's talking about, then it's okay. You can use common or scientific names, but it's good to know the scientific names, learn them, study them, memorize them. My daughter, it was really cute. My third child. Mispronounced them.

That's what I do. That's always fun too. It's fun to hear what, you know, how other people pronounce them too. Cause yeah. And I read them and I think I'm pronouncing them. Oh no, Scott will come in and say, no, it's Brett Lee. And I'm like, I don't care. I'm going to say Brett a lot. But then you might sound like a redneck american yeah but anyway my my daughter uh made a bunch of flash cards with all the species that i keep in the reptile room and to learn their scientific name so i thought that was pretty fun she she printed out a picture and wrote the scientific name on the back and then tried to memorize them.

So that's pretty, pretty cute. That's pretty good, dude. What a good daughter. Yep. Then we had a great episode on husbandry practices with the Mr. Frank pain.

Yeah. What a cool guy. That was really great to have him on too. So Frank is, he's another one of those shining examples of how to do it right. Select some species that really some, you know, a lot of people don't really care about or know about and, and develop those and make them, you know, popular, popularize them,

make them more popular. Yeah. And I mean, I would say, I would say that he, uh, you know, he, he kind of won his argument because that's what he's done. You know what I mean? I, I, I certainly, you know, I think people need to start somewhere and I gave him the credit for, for, for, for that for sure as being a place to start from. But, you know, I think, you know, the, the pitfalls of, of, of the, the care sheet or, or having somebody tell you how it is, is, is you don't find out that that's actually what's worked best for them. And, you know, I had, I had, uh, I saw, I saw Frank say something about that. A 12, 12, 18 was too small for a pair of William Cy.

And that's, that's what I breed my William Cy in and mine do great in there. And I understand, I'm not saying Frank's wrong. I understand why he says that because it is kind of a small space for some very, very quick geckos. And you got to clean it a little more often. You know, there's definitely some nuance to it. But you can absolutely do it in a 12-12-18. So, you know, I guess my thing would be somebody would hear that and they would say, oh, no, you can't do that.

So because Frank said they can't that you can't do that. You know what I mean? And and I think that's kind of, you know, it's not wrong. It's just not necessarily the complete. And, you know, me being the guy I am, I think stuff like people are always like, Oh, that's too small of an enclosure. Like, well, maybe the animals like it better. Cause they feel safer. Like I always go to that. Maybe that's total bunk. I don't, you know, like, but it has been successful for me. Now, can you keep animals in too small of an enclosure uh absolutely you can sure i'm not saying that's not a thing but i just i i definitely kind of feel like you know

they're they're you know the pitfalls of of just listening to you know i mean obviously frank's going to give you good advice because because you know there there's, there's not, not very many people who do it better than him. And so you're not really going to go wrong there, but you know, it, it, it may not work out that the Frank Payne way of doing it works for you and your situation. And if you're so rigid in the idea that you can't step out of the four walls of that box, then maybe you're missing an opportunity. And I think that really was my only point. Other than that, I would never argue against anything somebody like Frank Payne says. Yeah. Well, and we just had Philip Leitz on and he was talking about how, you know, he's seen people be successful when they follow kind of his recipe or his,

you know, care sheet, if you will. And so, you know, there, there are some species that respond very well to that and have a specific set of parameters that you need to hit on. And if you don't, and I don't think that, you know, I don't think that't well and i don't think that you know i i don't think that's wrong at all i think yeah you know when you have a phil leitz or a frank pain who's gone in and been highly successful with a species they're articulate guys they're smart guys they know what the fuck they're talking about you know they've obviously had success. So, yeah, why wouldn't you listen to those guys as a starting point? And, you know, even even Phil was saying that, you know, he's had situations where he's upon the species, you may not have the same success as you did with another species that's closely related or should be kept under the same kind of regime. So, you know, use guys like that as a solid base, but always understand that you gotta be the student of the serpent. You gotta, you know, continue to, yeah.

I mean, be, be articulate in, in the observations that you make and the, and the decisions and, and always keep in mind, you know, like you know, that foundation, but sometimes you mind, you know, like, you know, that foundation. But sometimes you got to, you know, sometimes straying away from that is a basis for success in something else. You can learn things by, yeah, going away from the plan. Yeah. But also you can just as easily or more easily fail by, you know, going a different direction. So, you know, it's, it's hard to say, and, you know, I, there's more than one way to skin a cat, you know, there's

more than one way to do things. And so we, uh, yeah, your hairless cat is proof of that. Exactly. We need to make sure that we're not, uh know over emphasizing like sticking to the plan even when you know it's clearly failing yeah and i think like the maybe the chondro world went through a bit of that you know having to have females be over a thousand grams before they even attempted breeding that's a monster you know yeah but nobody knew on life support by spraying them you know all the time but but nobody knew and you know what i mean like that nobody strayed from the plan you know what i mean well that's yeah that's fair said oh this worked for him so i'm gonna do it well because that's you know somebody had had limped animals but they did right people did

but they limped these animals along and they got them to breed and oh by the way you know they were missing them all the time and that they were huge and so that you know incorrectly made the observation oh this is how they read yeah i mean it's just like yeah and and you know it there yeah sometimes that leads to a false sense of, okay, we've, we've cracked the code, you know? And so people stop asking questions. And I think it's, it's very healthy to have that intellectually curious mind, you know, never stop asking questions. And I, I do, I do have to say, though, you know, having had a number of green tree pythons in my collection over the years,

I'm really surprised it didn't occur to any of these pioneers that they just are like hang out, do nothing pythons that may not necessarily need to eat all the time you know what i mean like yeah like like they're pretty easy you can ignore them and they do fantastic it's like i don't you know i don't know i mean but then again i wasn't there in the early days i don't know how these snakes were coming in from importers. Oh, yeah. Totally different game. Yeah.

I can't believe they didn't see it now, but I wasn't there back then. So I'm not talking smack. Oh, yeah. We're not trying to pass judgment. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah. Well, and that leads us to the next thing.

Breeding is a benchmark. Just because your your animals breed does that mean you're succeeding or you know that's uh you took the yes on you i did that was a tricky one to i mean i i i don't think that you can say that you know uh that breeding is not a benchmark for success it definitely is i don't know if it's yeah i don't know if it's the benchmark and do we even have the tools to measure the benchmark i mean it would probably be very expensive to look at blood chemistry for your you know for your animals yeah and i mean I think longevity is probably the benchmark but but again you can put something on ice and keep it alive for you know decades and decades they prove that with the monitor lizards you know like that's some of those some of those longevity records are just because they

were kept you know very low I I once I visited like a a distant relative like a great aunt twice removed or something you know something like that where it was like my dad's cousin's mom or something uh anyway it was it or dad's cousin's cousin's you know something i'm just gonna roll with it keep going anyway yeah so um i they they found out that i was interested in reptiles like oh we have a turtle downstairs and i'm like oh we're at oh down in the basement like go down it's like oh my goodness it's like you know a typical cold cement floor basement and there's this box turtle down there the it's it's nails were like probably six inches long you know it couldn't even hardly walk on its feet because of long nails and you know just obviously neglected and but they're

like yeah we've had it for like 20 years i mean it was it had been around for a long time and the poor thing was getting along and living but was it thriving was it happy yeah you know was doing the things that should and maybe it was maybe it was just fine maybe it just had a little bit of long toenails but i you know i didn't interact with it that much but i'm like oh man you probably want to help that thing out well if we you know if we if we go if we go back to your derpy jag argument, then it should be fine, right? It should be fine. It just falls off a perch every once in a while. It should be fine.

I mean, it lived a long time. Yeah. So I would think breeding is probably more of a benchmark than longevity because with reptiles, if you just keep them cold, they- But at the same time i mean couldn't you overbreed i mean couldn't you overbreed a reptile the end of death sure oh yeah yeah so i mean you know if you don't support reproduction you can sure but but i think a lot of like some species are designed to do that chameleons i mean chameleons pump out

hundreds of eggs over a couple year period and then they die you know i don't know that saying oh i have a 10 year old chameleon is that how they i mean is that is that their their wild behavior as well yeah they have fairly like the insects of the of the reptile world and they don't live more than a couple of, and there's a lot of, a lot of the, you know, smaller, uh, dragon lizards, agamids in Australia, you know, the tympano cryptus, uh, um, couple of those species, like they, they only live a couple of years, you know, and they just crank out the offspring. And so if you have a project like that, you just say, okay, well, you know, I'm going to, and, and, and a lot of times those chameleon females, if they're not bred when they're young, like six, seven months old, they die. They go egg bound.

So you want to give them the opportunity to breed. You want them to fulfill their nature, their call of the wild. So definitely the details matter. I mean, you have to take into account the reproductive strategy of the animal you're talking about. And, you know, and as long as, you know, you're talking apples and I, but I also think longevity can be a benchmark for success. But, but that has to be coupled with proper care. Right. I mean, you know, I, I think, you know. If you can get away with both, that's great.

I mean, if you can. Yeah. I mean. You can breed a female for five years and she's still going strong, you know, more power to you. That's impressive. But I wouldn't say that if you bred your female and she bred and produced hundreds of eggs and then she died two years, I don't think you would consider that a failure necessarily. You know what I mean? Like, you know, I could be talking out my butt.

Maybe chameleons live five years and maybe we should say 10 years or something, you know, that kind of thing. But, you know, the nuances are there. But I think if you can say, okay, I produced 300 offspring from this female and she lived for three years, that's pretty successful. She passed on her genes. She did her genetically programmed, you know know thing and got her genes out there and you know i always kind of wonder like like so so you you think about like and i i like plants in this where you where you see plants that um that plants either tend to put their energy one way or another whether it's defensive you know alleliopathy where plants produce secondary metabolites, which actually resist bugs or,

uh, you know, or, you know, uh, oils, which give you rashes or blisters or things like that, or, or they, um, or they re you know, they flower and reproduce very quickly. Right. But they don't tend to do both. They put their egg in one basket or the other. And, and, and, you know, those ways are genetic, you know, like biologically costly, maybe. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You can't do both. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And, and, and, you know, I think, you know, if you, and it's probably hard to do, but you know, if you, if there was a way to kind of take an average of what, you know, a snake or a lizard or a chameleon or whatever would, would a lay respectively in, in the life of that animal. And you could take a, a mean of, of how many eggs it laid in its life. And whether

they lived a long time and spread that out over a long period or lived a short time and had a lot of eggs in that period because you know the golden spoon you know talk about shine in the golden spoon uh theory um or the the golden spoon hypothesis you know that that's kind of what that's talking about and so you know both both of those water pythons would be considered successful if, you know, it lived a long time and had lots guess, you know, to the point it's both benchmarks, you know, reading being a benchmark for success, but you know, how do you, how do you parse that out? Yeah. Well, I guess that's kind of the summary, right. Is that it's not the only benchmark, but it is a reasonable benchmark in a lot of cases. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And I mean, one of the strongest drives that animals have

is to pass their genes on you know and to find a mate you know that's what gets male reptiles out on the move in you know the spring or whatever so they're all like matthew mcconaughey all right all right all right i don't know all right well you, if you breed a lot of stuff, sometimes that leads to our next topic in breeding. Um, we've got a sweet flow through here. So in breeding, is it a problem? And yeah, that was a, it was another tricky one. What are the, what are the indications of inbreeding and when do you say oh we've inbred it too much and stop and you know i think a lot of uh consequences of morphs if you want to call it that uh are are could be could mask as inbreeding i feel like we just argued this and you said there

are no consequences of morphs no i said there were some but were they enough to call the animals no they're not all right well let's go i guess that's back to the topic i was just i was speaking more recently you're just poking the bear yes yes yes the claws don't i know calm down mike tyson Mike Tyson. So, you know, obviously there have been cases of inbreeding and inbreeding can inbreeding depression and can have some effects. And, and, and we see this, I, so there was an, an example of, um, a few of us had been breeding Cape York spotted pythons and we bred a bunch and I produced a bunch of them one year. And so I'm like, you know, I've got too many. I'm going to send, so Nick arranged to send some over to Paul in Europe. And so, and so after that year of producing all those,

all of a sudden my Cape York stopped producing and I couldn't get him to lay good eggs after that point. And so I'm like, oh, come on. And, you know, it might've been a change of focus and maybe I wasn't feeding them up enough and maybe I wasn't paying enough attention or something, but, or I had them in the wrong setup or they were too hot or something. Anyway, they, they didn't breed. And so I, and so we were kind of talking, Nick and I were kind of talking about that and we were speculating, oh, maybe it's some inbreeding depression. They're just not thriving because they're, they've been in, you know, inbred for a few generations or whatever. Well, the offspring that got sent over to Europe did fantastic and bred like wildfire, you know, and they produced a bunch of them over there.

And so now it seems like they have more over there than we do over here. So, you know, the offspring of the ones that we thought maybe were, had inbreeding depression did not really show that. So, you know, there's other factors. And I mean, I think we touched on this, but I mean, don't animals that suffer from inbreeding depression pretty much take care of themselves in the long run? Right. I mean, you know, you know, you can get some maybe more common mutations or, you know, or they just failure to thrive and that kind of

weeds them out anyway. So, yeah. And, and I mean, there's lots of examples of, of higher order animals, if you want to call them that mammals that, I mean, laboratory mice are highly inbred over, over many, many generations. That's why they're there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that, that concentrates their genes and kind of makes them more homogenous. Homogenous. Yeah. That's good. Both. I think both are correct. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. You say tomato, but so we, we, we, we can use that as a tool.

And that's why we inbreed rodents is to use that as a tool to study different aspects of their genetic inbredness or, you know, I think, I mean, on inbreeding, probably, probably, probably worse than we should. Uh, I think, I think a lot of this stuff, you know, I think a lot of stuff is inbred and we just do it all the time. We don't even realize we're doing it. Um, you know, you can look at stuff that we bring in, you know, I mean, one could probably argue that jungles us jungles are heavily, heavily, heavily inbred, but nobody will bat an eye at that because we called them, you know, oh, this is a Larry black line and this is a LASIK line. And this is a w which all came from the same fucking place.

You know what I mean? So yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, exactly. Exactly. Well, I'm sure there, there've been others that have kind of made sure, sure, sure. Kind of an influx, but yeah, for the most part, they're, they're fairly highly inbred. And I mean, unless there's a negative, but I think, but okay.

Genetic combination that results in a negative outcome. If that's not present, then you can inbreed all you want. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Inbreeding is bad when you have something deleterious going on, then you're perpetuating a deleterious gene. And because you're not outcrossing it and you don't have anything else to do, all of a sudden it's in everything, which you could see moving forward, you know, especially because you're, but by not by, by inbreeding, you're magnifying, uh, you're magnifying traits. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It weeds itself out. It will definitely weed itself out. So I, you know,

like, you know, I, I, but, but at the same time, like one of the things I really like about integrates is that hybrid vigor that we talk about is they do seem to do great. And yes, taxonomically, they may be a little, you know, not fun, not comfortable to talk about. We can't, you know't they don't pass the mutton test but but they can look very cool and if you can get over the fact that they're a carpet python and and and you know look look past subspecies um you know nothing wrong with it yeah and i think you know island populations are a good example of of you know species nothing wrong with it. Yeah. And I think, you know, island populations are a good example of, of, you know, species that do just, just fine with, you know, inbreeding to some,

some level of inbreeding, because some of those places had to have had fairly small founder stock, you know? I mean, I think the Burmese pythons in the Everglades are a great example of that. They did a study on those and found them to be fairly closely related genetically that they all originated from the same mother or something, you know, like a guy in the seventies released a female that was gravid and she had eggs and some of those perpetuate, you know, kept, kept on keeping on. And now we have a fairly substantial problem down there but

you know yeah yeah well and you know made a tv show about that i was looking on on hulu or or some one of those uh streaming series and they had a it had a guy who plays daryl on the office that's uh craig somebody and yeah anyway he's it's like he's hunting burmese pythons in the in i don't even know if it was florida somewhere but he like the the preview has him stapling a snake to his hand with like a nail gun or something i just nailed a snake to my hand like how do you think i'm doing i'm like pass, yeah, I was going to say, you don't want to make slaughter. You don't want to spend your time on that quality programming. Yeah. I mean, it looked, it looked like it could have had some potential to be funny, but yeah.

And you know, I mean, I, I'm just a, I'm just a fucking Yahoo Yank that doesn't know, uh, his genetics, but maybe we do an episode and bring ben ben morel on and and let a real expert talk about genetics yeah we definitely i've i've invited him he he's actually agreed to come on he just was busy right now and he didn't wait a few weeks until finals were over and things like that right he's coming on we just need to get a topic worthy of him you know coming on so yeah let's talk yeah i feel like yeah i don't even know if that's even worthwhile worthwhile topic for somebody like ben no it'll be fun yeah he'll he'll he'll do good we should debate i i love the the debate that he um brought to my attention of of once you bring a snake out of the wild, it ceases to

belong to that evolutionary trajectory. So technically it's not a member of the species you removed it from in the wild. There's something, something kind of academic like that, you know, kind of fun to think about, but you know hard to accept in practice i guess yeah well i mean and and oh yeah people love their names yeah there's no i mean you can't you can't do that to people they gotta hear him do that like like the fact that you would have to like like that a lineage chart would really mean nothing well i guess it wouldn't mean nothing i guess it would mean everything yeah it would just be yes the line you have is yeah yeah it's the new because you're you're selecting their mates and

it would mean everything and it would mean nothing at the same time nothing oh my god that just blew my mind what the heck all right we got more yep two more pathogen testing travis we did not we did not transition to travis very well there the doctor travis oh yeah what the hell yeah uh that guy he's he's the real deal man for sure he definitely deserved that phd and yes just like yeah and so uh nobody tears our buddy down like that and And, you know, it was kind of that, uh, that fun little debate of whether or not you should test your animals for pathogens. And, you know, I was kind of on the negative side of the, you know, the don't test side of that argument. And, and to some extent, you know, I kind of stand by that a little bit, but I think

it helps to know what's going on in your colony. You can assume it's one thing or another. And that's the problem with pathogens is they, a lot of them share the same symptoms, symptomology. And so diagnosing something based on what symptoms they have is really difficult to do. You know, I don't know anybody who can necessarily tell a, you know, a certain virus from another virus or even like a bacterial respiratory infection from a viral respiratory infection. You know, that's very difficult. It's difficult in people. Oh, yeah.

Whatever. That was COVID. That was COVID. You go to the doctor and say, what do I have? And they give you antibiotics and say, get out of here. They don't know. Yeah. They very, very rarely. And mean, unless you get a doctor, they to test to see, uh, if they're given the right kind of drugs, uh, to treat it. But yeah, I totally agree that when I was a kid, man, they just threw antibiotics at you and kicked you out the door.

They'll do that in some instances, but, and you know, a lot of times if you have a viral infection, you'll get a secondary bacterial infection. So maybe it's not the worst thing. And there, there are, there aren't many antivirals approved. And that's my struggle is like, I identify some really good ones in, in, uh, cell culture or in animal models and show that they work really well but no company's gonna take them to market because it's just for a tropical disease that occurs in south and america and africa or something and doesn't impact the u.s very much and there's which is which is stupid which is stupid because if you have a global society yeah it no matter how much the nationalists want to say America first,

and we're the only ones that matter. No travel. Yeah. Well, and I mean, right now we've got, uh, birds flying through North America that have avian influenza. Right. And you know, there's a risk of that establishing itself in the U S and having some avian influenza pandemic, how fun would that be? You know?

So yeah, we're not ready for that. Nope. We need to work together, but you know, testing your reptiles for pathogens, I think gives you at least the peace of mind to kind of have an answer. If you can, if you can identify it, you know, if the vet can identify it or, or the testing service can figure out what you've got, but, um, what to do after you identify it, you know, for a lot new options for, you know, some of the newer class of antibiotics are coming out or, or better versions of previous classes. So, you know, work with your vet, take care of the sick animals as best you can.

Yeah. Sometimes that's easier said than done because there's not a good vet close by. And, but there's a lot of vets that would do kind of a tele uh session you know over zoom over zoom or whatever and and kind of look at the animal over zoom to some extent but yeah yeah i mean i think it's tough um you know there's certainly some challenges around testing uh there's certainly benefits around it and i think you know the nice thing is we actually have some diagnostic tests that that are out there that we can call upon and and and they're available to people so you know no matter whether you feel like, uh, everyone should

test or nobody should test or whatever the, the, the point is there is the capability to test if you feel like you need to. So, you know, no matter what side you're on, it doesn't prevent anybody from testing. Uh, and, and, um, certainly if you were worried about it you have something that you could keep your collection if nothing else you know keep you informed um about a potential concern uh that you had coming you know going on in your collection yeah all right well let's finish this Yeah. Obviously, it's kind of a little obnoxious when people take anthropomorphism to the level of, you know, my beardy loves me or my leopard gecko loves it when I scratch his belly, look at him, turn over and close his eyes or something. That can be a little hard to take sometimes. But I mean, I guess as long as you're caring for him. Mack and Wookiee,

Mac and Wookiee boops, the snoot dude, get over it. Oh girl. That gets me. I love that term. You did a good job there, Chuck. Mac and Wookiee. I was trying to remember it the other day. I'm like, what was that? He said, you know, like, wait, Owen foot. No, Matt. No, it's, it's Mac and Wookiee. trying to remember the other day i'm like what was that he said you know like wait oh oh one foot no matt no it's it's mac and wookiee mac and wookiee owen owensis owensis yeah something like that is it mac and wookiee owensis yeah yeah the scientific name of the mac and wookiee

uh yeah we gotta we gotta do some shirts or something oh dude the Mackinwookie. Oh yeah. We gotta, we gotta do some shirts or something. Oh dude. The Mackinwookie believes in you. All right. Yeah. I mean, I don't know what else I have to say about anthropomorphism. I,

I get a little impatient or frustrated with that. It's kind of, kind of simple. I mean, I'll just, I'll just wrap anthropomorphism up for you here. Do it. We're humans.

We're going to anthropomorphize shit. That's what we do because we're humans. Like, so, you know, being like, of course, you're going to look at something from a human-centric point of view because you're a human, and that's the only point of view you have, right? You can, you can try to put yourself in another animal's, you know, shoes. You can guess what's going on with them. You can take cues and make your best determinations about things. But, but really you're always, you know, you're always going to do your best to figure out what that animal is doing from your point of view.

So, you know, are there potential pitfalls of anthropomorphizing things? Sure, I guess so. But there's also, you know, the idea that life is built upon the same building blocks. And it's an unbroken chain of evolution. So maybe some forms of anthropomorphism have some validity to them. Oh, by the way, if you're just, you know, you're just not hearing that, you know, then do your best to think like your snake and move on with your life. Yeah, I think the damaging aspect of anthropomorphism is when you are saying your snake doesn't like that. If you don't keep your snake in a 40 foot by 20 foot enclosure, you know, your corn snake, you're, he's, he's unhappy. He's miserable. And you are torturing that poor thing. You know,

like when you're, when you're trying to use an anthropomorphism and try to pass it off as a, as what the snake is thinking, you know, I think you can get into trouble that way. So you need to be careful to interpret how our animals are, are, are thinking, you know, because who knows if they even are thinking, you know, it's really hard to, to, to con you know, to make, make an argument against or for consciousness of, you know, it's really hard to make an argument against or for consciousness of animals and that kind of thing. But, you know, there's some evidences for and against it. But, you know, I think try your best, like you said, to give your animal meet its needs, you know, give it food, warmth, you know, whatever.

I mean, and I mean, I just I mean, obviously, obviously. you know give it food warmth you know whatever i mean and they're active too there's nothing wrong with that i just i mean obviously obviously i i when i say that you know you're a human so you're going to come from it from a human point of view i don't mean i don't mean so literally what you would think is what the animal would do you absolutely have to be able to think what is best for this reptile uh knowing that you're a human to my estimation yeah so i mean you know obviously you can take anthropomorphism, as Justin just said, to the point of like, yes, absolutely, you're being a fucking idiot right now. learn about what has been scientifically observed to be, um, you know, the way your,

uh, the natural history of your reptile, um, uh, works. Yeah, for sure. So that's it.

Um, that does it. We are done with clipip Show number three, the return of the Clip Show. Oh, the second return of the Clip Show. I still didn't come up with a good one for that one. Yeah. It's really hard to beat Electric Boogaloo.

Yeah, that was so good. Yeah, I don't know. That one stuck with me from the eighties. So that clip show three, the revenge of the clip show gleaming, the clip show, you know, you mean the clip show? Remember that? Remember that? That was cool, dude. If you were into skateboarding back then, that was like, go Christian Slater. Yeah, man.

But we hopefully, you know, you got something out of this. It's fun to, you know, re recount some of the discussions or some of the new things that have kind of dawned on us since we had those. And obviously there's opportunity for other aspects of any of the topics that we've already covered to delve into deeper or to go off on a tangent. So if anything strikes you when you're listening to this, let us know. We can have you on and debate it with you or you can just tell us, hey, talk about this

and we'll give our best to, uh, you know, fight that topic. Well, so, um, we do appreciate the, the input and hopefully we can get some more fun guests on and we'll get new, new ones as well as some old ones that have been on. It's fun to have them revisit and get back on. So, um, thanks to everybody who has come on the show. I mean, this, these last, uh, the ones that we talked about today, um, you know, more than half of those had guests. So that was a lot of fun and we want to keep that going. So if you got any ideas, let us know, we'll get you on and have a, have a good, uh, good fight. So we have fun with our guests. That's for sure. I could say I've, I've thoroughly enjoyed every guest that we've had on. We always have a good time. So yeah. Yeah. It's been a lot

of fun. So anyway, thanks for listening. Check out Morelia pythons, radio.com and, uh, the pod father will grant you seven wishes. So, uh, I, I guess i can't speak for the podfather but yeah you really threw some shit on his back right there well you know him he'll he'll grant wishes he's a good dude he's a good dude yeah yeah all right folks our uh we we appreciate our listener and we hope to catch you next week for another episode of Reptile Fight Club. His name was Robert Paulson. Thank you. Bye.