Reptile Fight Club - Reptile Fight Club fights with Phillip Lietz about cohabitation

Episode Date: January 21, 2022

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

Thank you. All right, welcome to another episode of Reptile Fight Club. As always, it's myself, Justin Jeweletter, and my co-host, Jack Holman. Oh, yeah! That was a good one. I had to get you to watch it. It was a good one, yeah. I thought it was like the Kool-Aid man. Well, I could be the Kool-Aid man. Let me go get my red outfit, and get my red outfit and i'll i'll

be over justin i'll just bust through your wall yeah we need some sound effects like so like right before you say that we'll have yeah i'm with that dude totally there totally there cool yeah i was a kool-aid man generation so yeah all right well they're missing tonight we've got a great guest uh philip is it lights or leets leets leets i yeah i thought that sounded german you know what the yeah it is yeah i before the e say the e sound so yeah you got it on that yeah you got it just been confident about it yeah man it's a tricky one people uh we you know back in the era of telemarketers calling your house. Yeah. We used to get every imaginable pronunciation of my last name.

It was remarkable the kinds of crap people would come up with. You can always tell if it's a friend, if they know how to say your name. Yeah. Cool. Well, yeah. Thanks for being here here we're excited to have you on the show so i'm psyched to do it i really like the show it's fun oh thanks thanks thank you we enjoy doing it yeah i've really i've legitimately learned uh quite a bit just

from your guys's shows i mean just just points of view i had not considered or maybe um different guests that you've had on i was like oh, oh, I never heard of that guy. Let me go see what they're up to. It's awesome. I really like it a lot. Cool. Awesome. Thank you.

I guess that's the hope is that people like you get some information out of it. Super good to hear, and we're glad you're on. Yeah. Same for me, though. I get stuff out of all our conversations and see different points of view. And that's the whole point of this, because because you may not consider everything you know both sides and you never do no yeah and i mean we're just scratching the surface of course so yeah this is a yeah and uh phil you phil or philip what do you prefer oh yeah phil phil philip whatever's

easy for you it's all good phil is great yeah so phil phil gave us some really good uh ideas for for topics so we're like hey come on let's and he was all for it so yeah yeah you're a fighter right you get into like fighting life yeah fighting light yeah so it's um i'm a brazilian jiu-jitsu instructor and okay and and competitor um never never got in the cage with anybody nothing quite like that even though even though that kind of training is kind of peppered into your jiu-jitsu training to editor. Never, never got in a cage with anybody, nothing quite like that. Even though, even though that kind of training is kind of peppered into your jujitsu training to a certain degree. I've never, yeah, that's not,

I want to protect my computer, you know? Yeah. Yeah. The longevity jujitsu. Yeah, that's right. Exactly. Yes. That's cool. And you've been doing a lot of cool artwork with that too, right? The, yeah, That's cool. I'm with that. You've been doing a lot of cool artwork with that too, right? Yeah. That's cool. So are you an artist or are you just?

Yeah, I was trained as an illustrator. That was what I went to college for. And I spent some time living over in Berlin in Germany. Oh, really? Me too. Oh, no kidding, right? When? When were you in Berlin? I was in 95 in Germany. Uh, me too. Oh, no kidding. Right. When, when were you in Berlin? I was in 95 to 96, 95, 96 around there. Yeah. Okay. I was, I was about 20 years late. Yeah. I was from

about 2000 end of, or beginning of 2011 to the middle of 2012 or so I was, I was in Berlin and I was working at a studio where we did like concept art for games and film and stuff like that. And, and then when I came back from there, the jujitsu artwork stuff kind of picked up and I was doing that, but man, I've been doing reptiles for, I mean, just like you guys have, you know, forever, right. You just find out, you find dinosaurs when you're a kid and then you find real dinosaurs well cooler than dinosaurs you know yeah that's cool yeah last week uh it hasn't hasn't been out yet but we had adeline oh that's okay no one on the floor well not really i mean yeah we had adeline robinson Robinson on and talk about her art.

So that was sweet. That's awesome. You can totally spoil episodes that haven't happened yet. This is kind of the cool part of it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, they, yeah, it was good. If you're listening to this, that's what I'm saying. There you go. But you know, it hasn't happened now. Now. Right. Yeah. But when will then be now?

Exactly. Oh man. When is is now isn't that there's a podcast i listen to uh a couple comedians it's pretty funny pen pals and they oh nice when is now or whatever who knows when when you're going to be listening to this it could be you know 10 years in the future right when is now right yeah that's cool but yeah both chuck and i are dabbling art as well and oh nice really start yeah he went to school for it as well so yeah no kid where'd you go uh so i was uh in the art program at ball state university uh in muncie indiana yeah i i did i did i did like sculpture in high school. I had an art teacher who I just I didn't really do art seriously before that. And he was really cool. He kind of put me on some projects and and had me working in stone and doing plaster and stuff like that.

And he encouraged me to enter into an art, a statewide art contest called the Prelude Awards. And so I I run one runner up in that uh and that's that's out of the entire state of indiana so i that was when i was kind of like oh wow so like i can i can do this you know but no no real formal training i went and went to ball state and as as i told adeline i i just had such a good time that i partied my butt right out of there and uh yeah yeah so wasn't wasn't quite ready to be serious so I I came back to the came back to Indiana did some did some work you know did some jobs and just decided like I I got to get out of here I got to do something so I joined the joined the Navy and and um you know that's been that that was a great experience. But that was kind of really where I stopped doing art kind of seriously.

So, you know, still still very interested in it, still, you know, love, love art and have such an appreciation for it. But man, now I'm into reptiles and I like, you know, I like shooting and, and, and, uh, things like that. So, you know, my, my eclectic, uh, uh, taste take me all different directions, but apparently not back to art. So, um, you know, sometimes, sometimes the path to art can be, uh, a winding path. Yeah, for sure. For sure. For sure. So now I just try to do pretty, pretty reptiles. That's my, that's my living. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, for sure. That's my main contribution.

Do you do art as, as like for, for money or? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It was, it was something I was, yeah. Do you do art for money? Do you exchange art for money? Only for free no yeah no uh um yeah it's a it's like a side hustle um it it has been at periods of time in my life it's been the primary thing yeah um but uh the last like five uh five six years or so it's just been all reptiles um with a handful of odd jobs sprinkled in there here and there um and even, and even though I've been, you know, I've been doing artwork the whole time and, and, um, occasionally some reptile artwork too, but it, uh, it never,

as of yet, it hasn't added up to like sufficient to cover everything, you know? Um, and eventually if I could get it to do that, it'd be great, but I prefer to spend most of my time with the reptiles. So that's, um, I it's fine if, if I have to just, if I bummer, if I just have to keep playing with lizards for the rest of my life, I guess I'll just keep doing that. Right. Yeah. That's how I feel too. Yeah.

Well, so where do you fit into herped culture? Like what kind of stuff do you work with? Yeah. Tell us what you do. Sure. kind of stuff do you work with yeah tell us what you do sure so um the my primary focus is uromastics um and those are i just i've been working with those for well breeding them this will be my 10th year okay uh breeding them but that i've been working keeping i've been keeping them since i was like 17 years old just at various times um but never took euros specifically super

seriously until about 10 years ago or so um and uh well i guess it would have been a little because i got babies before you know 10 years ago was when i bred them for the first time right but then you know i think yeah i got you yeah and and then uh i have a handful of other projects as well like i i also breed um xenogama taylori oh cool, um, I love those weird little things. Yeah. The weird tails. Yeah.

They do these weird little, they're like those phrenosoma, phrenocephalus where they, they actually can wriggle, wriggle the end of their tail. Really? Yeah. And do a little pushups. It's super weird. That's cool. Yeah.

It looks like it just like a sharp spine or something coming out the back, but it's flexible. Yeah. That's cool. it's very odd. And then some of those, I have chuckwallas. I have, well, I've worked with a ton of different things, but the primary stuff is going to be the euros, the xenogama. I have some nephrosamiae as well. And then I have a couple, species of the cuban giant anoles which are really cool uh i've only had them for maybe coming up on a year and a half two years

but like you want to talk about a reptile that you when i was younger i wrote them off as you know i feel bad about admitting it now but i you, you know, when I was young and dumb, I was kind of wrote off the Cuban anoles, like whatever. It's just these mean green lizards that, you know, come into the reptile shop where I used to work at all the time. But, um, I totally have come around due to guys like Ron St. Pierre breeding those, all those different varieties. Yeah. And, um, and when I got some, just because I was copying because i was copying i was like that seems cool i want to do it i got a few and i was like wow these are so fun so um yeah but but the euros specifically i think are what anyone if they do if they have heard of me it's for your master

yeah how do the anoles fit in with your kind of more deserty lizard type? They don't. No, I have to – I keep a few of the babies here at my home just because it's easier. The adults, I keep them – there's like a space in the small room of my shop. My shop is divided into two rooms, and the small room is like for babies and some of the Xenogama. So the temperature is already just a little cooler, um, compared to the big room with all the adult euros. And then, um, and so what I do is I just kind of keep the anoles and like a corner and then in the bathroom and then I keep a fan on them. And then I have, I have their cages kind of covered with plastic to keep humidity in and stuff like that. So it's, it's a, it's a real nightmare, but you know,

you got to do what you got to do to get to work with the animals you want to, you know? There's so many cool species out there. It's hard sometimes. Yeah. You're like, well, maybe I'll stick in my wheelhouse, but sometimes you get outside of there. That's kind of the cool part is, you know, when you're able to just kind of bridge, bridge gaps of, of care that, that don't always make total sense in, in the environment that you have, if you can do that and do it fairly well, like that's a, you know, that's kind of a fun chat. That's a fun challenge, I think.

Yeah, no, you're, you're totally right, man. I mean, you know, most of the time the anoles were kind of a nice practice for me because, um, just so much of my experience with herps has been with desert stuff, you know, it's just been, that's what I ended up being drawn to the most. And, um, when I go field herping, I most often go to the desert and I'm looking for, you know, yeah, exactly. Baking in the sun, try and try not to die of dehydration, uh, just to see some lizards. But, um, you know, the, having to incorporate an animal that needs lower temperatures and high humidity, um, is a nice fun challenge to tackle because most of the time I'm going the other way. Like for example, one of the reasons I got the nephrosamia is because um other than their strip you've i put a uv strip on them but other than their uv

i don't have to do anything temperature what you're right i don't have to add any heat or anything because they just go up and down with the natural temperatures of the of the room because ambient daytime temperature is like 88 degrees in the shop and that they're they're pretty solid you know they don't want to get a whole lot hotter than that as i know you you keep them right justin yeah yeah yeah yeah so they're my favorite gecko species they're so cool they they're little martian goblins oh yeah yeah i love them yeah cool but they normally stuff fits in some stuff can fit in streamline like that but then um it's it's been a fun

challenge with the anoles and a handful of other things to try to go the totally opposite direction now i just realized i need two different facilities is what i need at the end of the day that's the trick is getting although you know i really enjoyed uh ron saint pierre talking about the the humidity the dew point and all that talk about the moisture, especially with desert reptiles because you backpack or camp out in the desert and it's hot during the day, but then the night it can get pretty cold. Then you wake up and there's a lot of moisture on the tent or on your sleeping bag if you're out under the stars, that kind of thing. Yeah. No, you're right.

I've been playing with that a little bit, maybe maybe spraying them at night or something going yeah me too yeah it was really cool cool it's interesting yeah we do yeah we do it is interesting a lot of the adaptations i mean plant wise animal wise how they're they're really adapted to catch that that do that you know as it condensates in the morning because that's that's it you know and it's, but it's fairly, you know, it's there fairly regularly for them. So, um, yeah, I always find that kind of stuff. So interesting. Yeah. And the, and the desert too, is such a, especially in terms of plant life is such a wild place. Cause you can go out and I don't know any other place that changes so dramatically from dead dry to full of life. And you see, especially if you frequent some of the same places, you'll see whole plants that you're like, wait a minute.

I looked at this plant because I thought it was weird looking five years ago. And it hasn't changed for five years. And then one, out of of nowhere it's just this massive thing with all these tendrils and i mean i don't know that much about plants the ones you see in the background are my fiance's not mine but like but you know what i mean you see those plants that just pop out out of nowhere in the desert and you just yeah holy smokes where did this thing come from we were central australia in 2010 2010 and it was the wettest year on record for that area. And, you know, Alice area and like the botanists were going crazy because there were all these plants coming out that they'd never seen, you know, that were like, and they just come out because they had enough moisture to finally make an appearance.

And I mean, there were like flocks of budgies, you know, flying around and the locals like, we've never seen that before. Like we get to see waterfalls coming off of Ayers Rock, Uluru, you know, it was pretty sweet. That's great. I love the desert. I could, yeah. I spend a lot of time out there. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't been to that desert yet, but once, one, one, one day, man. Oh, I highly recommend it.

Yeah, once you get over there, it's hard not to keep going back. Yeah. If COVID wasn't an issue, I'd be probably over there last month or something. Yeah, I was going to say. Yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah, I just told my wife my 50th birthday party is going to be spent in Australia. So she was on board. Nice.

Hopefully we don't have COVID by then. It's another four years, I guess, but yeah. Right. A little ways away. Nice. All right. Well, so we're going to talk about cohabitation. This was your suggestion, Phil. So it's a really cool one. and i think there's you know you know we maybe have misconceptions or or the ideas about cohabitation so i think this will be a good a good fight topic so yeah um we'll go ahead and uh flip a coin to see who gets to debate you first off so cool let chuck uh call the losing i mean call the toss what you got oh did you already flip it i flipped it's waiting

i'll say heads but that was a sorry excuse for a coin toss you got it it's heads man you're on a roll that's two in a row what's going on here the new year i guess 2022 is your year man i had 2021 all the mice the more you tighten grip, the more coin tosses slip through your fingers, Justin. Yeah, it's true. Oh, man. Yeah. All right. I don't know.

What are you feeling? I could let you debate this one. I think I'm happy to take. I like this topic a lot. It's a good topic. I could debate this topic, too, but I'm going to let you do it. I'll let you do it. Okay. Yeah, that's fair enough. I'll let you do it.

Okay. Yeah, that's fair enough. Phil, are you all right with that? Oh, yeah. I'm ready. I came prepared to duke it out with either of you, so yeah. Okay, cool. You could probably take both of us. Yeah, I was going to say. All right. So Chuck is a great moderator, so he'll kind of keep us in line, I guess, right? Nice.

All right. So we'll let Phil call the flip here for the show side. I'm going with heads, just like Chuck. You didn't have the Chuck luck today. That's the way it is. Anytime you bring money in there. Yeah. Maybe I'll go pro on this one.

Pro cohabitation yeah um of course there's you know obviously lots of different uh pros and cons to it so this should be a fun one and i'm sure we won't cover it all but yeah yeah so yeah anybody's out there listening thinking of things we missed go ahead and hit us up we'll have somebody else on to talk about as well um what who's leading us out? We didn't cover that. I'll defer. You can go ahead, Phil, and lead us out.

So, Phil, you're going to start. Oh, man. Yeah. Yeah, let's do it. So I guess I'll start by saying that I have a little list of stuff. A man who comes prepared. Because I came ready. Yeah, I like that.

That's good. That's good. I normally find myself on the on your end of this argument so I'm I'm excited this is a nice mental exercise for me to have to yeah to be to fight against what I do at my own place um yeah so uh I think I think I'm gonna start with this and come at it from a um purely a like an energy perspective, which is that when you house things solo, you are increasing the amount of money you have to spend on energy bills every

month. That to me is like, you know, if I had to say, cause that's again, cause I keep everything solo at my place. And so it's a huge cost to have to add cage after cage, after cage, after cage and light after light after light. And, you know, um, I had to move, you know, a couple of years ago, I had to move from, um, one home or I had to move my, all my reptiles into a shop. And. You know, if I had half the number of cages, I might have saved myself some, some back pain from all the heavy lifting and move, because of course, Euromastics, it's all stones and logs and gravel and heavy, heavy, heavy stuff.

And so just the number of animals, or I mean, excuse me, when you're, when you're housing things alone, the number of stuff and, and, and, and material and material costs stacks up way, way, way more than if you're housing things, um, communally, uh, in most cases. So I'd say that's like the first thing anyway, that jumps to my mind is that, yeah, especially, yeah, yeah. I gotcha. Um, I think, think you know as far as uh um if you're gonna cohab stuff so now i i'm going the the cons of of cohabbing and you're going pro no no you're going pro i'm going pro okay yeah so that sounds like a point for me right so if you if you house things together um you would have less uh caging well he's saying yeah but he's

saying that he saves money no i think he's saying he saves money because well he spends money but if if he were to uh cohab stuff he would be saving money he's he's but he's he's kind of the example of your argument so he's using the counter, the example of the counter. It is kind of confusing, but I knew exactly what the fuck he was saying. Yeah. I was like, are you making points for me or? No. Don't concede, man. Okay. No, sorry about that. I didn't know. No, I try to steal points wherever I can. Yes, he does. But I guess, you know, with cohabitation too, you do require larger caging, right? And more space because you do need to give the animals the chance to get out of the way and things.

But I think, you know, as far as, well, I don't know that it may save much because you've got to have multiple basking sites perhaps too so they don't fight over where they can warm themselves up. So I guess I'm kind of making points for you here too, but the, the, uh, I think the, the, uh, the, I, I think my, my main thing, especially with when you're co-having the same species is that, uh, they will really cue into each other's reproductive cycles. So a lot of times you won't even see them breed because they know when it's going to be productive and when it's time to breed. Whereas if you keep them singly and you introduce them, they're right at it and it may or may not be productive. The female may or may not be receptive and things like that.

So if you're cohabiting them, you kind of skip that, you know, uh, what's this, this is a female. I haven't seen a female in six months. I'm going to grab her and, you know, go to town or whatever. And, and it may not be, be good. So you're wasting the male's energy and you're also, you know, having the female get harassed when she's not ready to reproduce. And you know, some reptiles, that's not a big deal. Like the chameleons will show their disapproval and you can tell pretty quick if they, you know, turn black or whatever, you'd be like, okay, I'm going to pull, pull the male. But some, you know, you don't really, you can't tell if they're receptive or not, you know? Yeah. You, you, you could definitely, I could see a way that you, you could, you could invert that too, um, about the breeding and timing because I actually happen to agree with you on that point, which with my Euromastics anyway, they're housed solo all the time.

And I think the fact that the only time the cages with heating pads in the burrow. And his animals are housed together all year round unless he has to separate them and his he has the opposite thing playing into his favor which is that his animals never miss a mating opportunity so really you know yeah so like housing them separately you could in theory you know because it happens all the time right we all have at least those of us like you guys who keep several of one species, sometimes they're off, right? They're not on the exact same cycle all the time and they're not on the, on the, on the same like seasonal schedule.

And as much as keeping stuff together can throw that off too, because, you know, maybe disparities in nutrient availability and stuff like that can mess with what seasonally is happening. The same thing could be said of, of not having them in the paired up and in the same cage together, like ready to go when the time comes, you know? Um, and then kind of just growing a little bit onto that argument would be, um, you know, we talk about breeding and there's all this, there's a lot of nuances and subtlety to breeding behavior, depending on what species of herb we're talking about. Right. And, um, I think

it's arguable that it's, you might see a little bit more variety of, um, just general reptilian behavior when you have two animals housed together all the time, because, you know, maybe if you're only doing solo introductions for breeding that are brief, you might just get that small slice of behavior layer. Whereas if you were observing animals in the wild or in a communal setting where they're otherwise hanging out together outside of breeding, there might be all kinds of other interesting displays and behaviors and interactions that you might miss because they're not around one another all the time. I think that's an excellent point.

And I just, I mean, in my keeping, you know, and cohabiting, I think the amount of data that you can get by observing two animals cohabitating together is much greater than if you're just doing separate, you know, separate keeping and introductions. And I think you get to see that around the site, you know, around the year. So you get it in almost, you know, more of a complete cycle versus, you know, only a slice of the pie kind of. Yeah. If I could kind of dice that up into a, a mental pie chart there.

Yeah, sure. And I'm, you know, I think that goes kind of back to that adage of, you know, it depends on the species too, because if you have tortoises, sometimes they'll just drive a female to death, you know, they'll try to mater every chance they get now if you have you know 10 females in there with him you know he he may spread that out he may hump himself from females yeah oh yeah you know he might get tired and stop for a while but this is like energizer bunnies and then i've i've heard this um i i heard someone else talking

about this i don't remember exactly where, but other people who were talking about when you keep a group of reptiles together, let's say it's a single male with multiple females, again, depending on species. The guys talk a lot about the males having a favorite female, right? And so that you might, there's, there's situations where, you know, maybe the male does his job with three out of four of the females, but the fourth female either has a low fertility rate or none. And she just wasn't out at the same time when he was, or maybe she was getting picked on by one of the other females. I was just going to say too, because you mentioned tortoises, and euros are just like tortoises in that regard. They will, the males will just hound the females. And at least at my place with the way I have them set up, they just beat the snot out of each other. And, and so I choose to intentionally keep them apart. Now there are a handful of rare exceptions

to the constantly apart thing, which is, um, individuals who are especially cryptic or shy. So, um, Euromastix yemenensis, uh, most of the adults that I have, except for a few are wild caught. And, um, also with my Xenogama taylori, they're very flighty. Just, I mean, you know, you get a handful that are super chill and whatever, and the captive bred or something different, but the ones that are wild are so skittish and so flighty. Um, I can't imagine how you'd get them to breed if you didn't house them together for extended periods of time, if not all year round. And, um, also my Xenogama are the example of they, they have an inverted cycle. So for some reason, they're all breeding right now in the winter time in December and January, but, um, every um everything else normally breeds in the spring

right but for some reason they just were on an inverted schedule and had i been keeping them solo like i do with a lot of the euros i just just would have gotten a bunch of dud eggs yeah yeah and that's i think um you know keeping you know with multiple males you know some species need multiple males to to get the job done i think a lot of the scrub pyth, you know, some species need multiple males to get the job done. I think a lot of the scrub pythons, you know, I always had the misconception that scrub males would just absolutely kill each other. But then Chuck's got, you know, 2.1. Yeah, I don't know who's putting that out there in the world. Thanks a lot.

So, you know, having that, some of the misconceptions about the, and I think, you know, monitors to a great extent were kind of, kind of fell under that where everybody assumed they were, um, a antisocial, you know, loaners that maybe met up once every year to, to mate or whatever, but you know, they're found that if you keep, you know, keep them together from an early age, they kind of recognize each other, you know, and are familiarized with each other so they can be cohabitated together. Whereas if you raise them singly and then put them together, they might kill each other, you know, because they don't recognize each other. And, you know, there's a lot of things that go into that scent cues and, you know, marking and each, you know, they might have their territory. And so that's where it gets a little complex because we're trying to do this in a box, you know, and sometimes the box is a little small. And so,

you know, if you, I think another cool example of that is the, the, is it the side blotch lizards? They have, you know, three different colors and they have like, you know, one's like the, the lover, not the one's the fighter, one's the lover and one's the sneaky, something like that, you know, where they all have different roles. Right. And so if you had just one male in, he might be the bully and you need to have, you know, a lot of females. So he wouldn't just beat up on one or something. But if you just had a pair, you know, you could, it might negatively impact the female or, or you might have greater success with a colony where you have several different males and a lot of different, and you know, kind of with a colony where you have several different males and a lot of different and you know kind of have a but you need a lot of space for that you know

yeah are you saying that side blotch lizards need orgies is that like not necessarily they're just like different mating strategies so like a male that's like strategy okay yeah that's a better male that's uh tough you Okay. Yeah. That's a better male. That's tough. You know, he's, he has to defend his females or his, you know, and so he's,

he's wasting a lot of energy trying to fight the other males. Whereas the other male may not be tough, but he's sneaky. So he'll kind of sneak in there and, you know, and, and then others are kind of maybe more monogamous. So they just have one female or something like the favorite female kind of

idea. But, and it's like, it's, it's's there's somebody for everybody's strategy exactly i gotcha in side blotched it's denoted by color right so like yeah the like the red ones are the bullies and the blue ones are the like more monogamous ones and the green ones are the ones that like sneak in when one male's distracted and go mate with a female when he's not looking at bail, you know, but they do this, but they develop these colors based up because of the, the, the, you know, so like if I was the bully, I would color up red because that's bright. It's intimidating.

It's that's the question. Or, or is that, or, you know, which came first, the color or the behavior? I don't know. What's going on? That's a good question. I don't know if they've worked that out or if it's always like a set in stone rule or what. But yeah, they showed that the color kind of gave their personality to some sense. I want to know now. I want to know now. It could be environmental.

Maybe the behavior they exhibit influences what color they become. I don't know. Right, right, right. maybe the the behavior they exhibit influences what color they become i don't know right right right yeah and i'd be i would be curious to know if they change ever you know because like maybe you mentioned the environment justin and i wonder if like you know maybe in certain environmental circumstances they might drive more males to be more um defensive of females or might drive more males to be more sneaky and snipe females when they're when the other males not looking at man there's so much richness yeah yeah yeah and lizard divert

or lizard behavior is pretty complex too like oh yeah we always think of reptiles as simplistic but they have a pretty diverse uh you know array of of behavior that's really fascinating i got that what's that book? The Secret Lives of Reptiles. Secret Social Lives. Yeah. Yeah. So I need to read that. That would have been a good one to read for this topic.

I know. There's probably a lot of stuff in there, but yeah. We'll have to revisit it someday after we read the book. Yeah. For sure. I want the book report. Yeah, exactly. I think another really good aspect of, of communal keeping is sometimes when you can do a different species in the same exhibit. Oh yeah. I think one of my favorite zoo exhibits was at the Western Australia,

Perth museum or Perth zoo, where they this uh they're in their reptile room they've got this giant like open air um like glass-sided uh lizard enclosure and they have frilled dragons bearded dragons shingleback skinks western blue tongues like gidgees like all these different species of reptile in there and and like they'll you know put a put a plate of veggies or something in the middle and all the skinks come running you know they'll they'll throw some bugs in there and the frilled lizard will jump down and grab one and go back up its log and stuff um but of course you know i'm sure there can uh can be some negative aspects to that but i just think it's cool to you know it's it's a very large enclosure but that's kind of like a dream for

me someday to just have a room i can go in and sit down and see a bunch of different species interacting like you would potentially in nature you know i sure i was telling chuck on a previous episode and maybe this is a repeat but when i was in uh singapore i went to the singapore zoo and i asked somebody if there were any like wild monitors on the, on the site. And they told me, you know, go down this area. So I went down, I found a couple of spitting cobras that were hanging out under a rock. And then I saw this water monitor. And so I went and was trying to take pictures of it and it starts climbing up a tree. It was a smaller one and it scared a Draco, the flying lizard to another tree. And then it was interacting with a flying lizard above it.

You know, like this is my tree. Get out of here. This, you know, behavior. And then, you know, so it was just like paradise. It was really a cool place. And you got to see all these different reptiles interacting or having behaviors or whatever. It was really cool. That is so awesome, man.

I used to keep, I used to do breed a lot of collared lizards and, um, like, like four or five, uh, maybe six different species, quite a few. I was really, I still love them, honestly. If there weren't, if there weren't laws in Colorado that prevent me from keeping them, I would keep all of them all day, all day, every day. But I used to put the, uh, crotophitis vestigium, the, the Baja collared lizards that I had. Um, I would rotate females in with the males cause I didn't like to keep my collared lizards together either. I would keep females together, but never keep them with males. And, um, when I had an extra female who maybe didn't have a good place to go, I would always put them in with my

chuck Wallace because the big, you know, the, the adult chucks, they would bask, you know, the chucks would be here and the collared lizard would be basking right here. And you're like, I don't want that. Maybe I need more basking areas, but, but either way, um, they got along. All right. They did. And the, um, usually the ones that were housed with the chuck wallows were the ones that most often ate greens oddly enough, um, because collared lizards are supposed to occasionally eat greens and flowers, but you know, it's kind of hard to get them to do that. And I wonder if it's almost like a, like a, if it's like a motion thing where they see the Chuck's eating the greens and then that, you know, the collared lizard would come over and eat the greens. That's like, I think it was

moving or Chuck invites you over for dinner. Yeah, exactly. Or, or if it's like a, like a, like a, like a microbiome kind of thing like like they need the bacteria in the gut to like crave a you know greens in the first place and i mean i that's a little far-fetched in my mind but you know i don't know like yeah the the micro or the gut microbiome is a complex thing there's a lot of different things well and if there's if there's something that actually cues them to start and kind of creates that, that, that gut flora that, that kind of, you know, gets it, gets it going. Like I, that, that's a good point. That makes great sense to me. That's a, that's a, that's a really good point. And actually, um, just somehow, I don't know why

this triggered this in my mind, but, um, argument for communal housing because it's something I've been thinking about a lot lately because I'm normally a staunch advocate of solo housing, given specific contexts. And, okay, so there's a whole separate discussion to be had, and I swear I'm going to bring this back, so forgive me if it gets a little twisted. Roll on, man. Roll on. We all know that there's a big discussion to be had around genetic diversity and inbreeding depression and all these things within captive reptiles, right? Um, normally I've thought about solo housing in the past as a way of controlling a little bit what, you know, because if you keep animals solo, you don't get any unwanted mating, right? So it's, you only get mating with the animal that you want them to mate with for the most part, unless there's some parthenogenic stuff going on and, um, what have you. But, um, and I have said a lot lately, um um with other friends and other herpers uh that we are

as as the as the kind of the guiding force behind a captive group of lizards we are an imperfect selector so you know we people like to talk about stuff oh that was the runt of the litter and that's the pick of the clutch and it's like like, well, that's really arbitrary. And we don't really know what to look for because we're not nature, right? When you house stuff communally, not just pairs, but in larger groups, you're going to get a lot more randomness and a lot more just kind of chaotic mating, which might be beneficial long-term. So stuff like, you know, for stuff like Egernia, which, um, you know, I've read a handful of the random field studies on Egernia and they talk about how closely related some of

them are to like the, they're really tight family groups. Yeah. Family groups. Right. And so, um, that probably lends itself well to captivity where you're going to have relatively low genetic diversity anyway. But when you have stuff like um that lives more dispersed and only encounters each other at certain times of year it might be really beneficial to have a group of random animals all thrown together let it all play out and kind of not know exactly who's the father of that clutch and like which you know what i'm saying it might be kind of beneficial long term i mean it's totally hypothetical but well i mean it would maybe model nature better if you're you know letting them select who

who breeds and they they're the judge of who's the strongest or most dominant or who yeah you know there's the best looking to them you know that kind of thing right one of the things that made me think of that recently was I was listening to a podcast that was talking about axolotls and they were saying how the, the main, whatever organization that controls the bulk of captive axolotl production, um, they randomize their holdback process. Right. So instead of like, Oh, that one's, I like that one. I'm going to keep that one. It's more of like a, they put all the, you know, 10,000 axolotls that they breed any given year into one big tub, mix it all up and then take a net out and scoop out whatever random smattering of axolotl you get. And, and I think that was a way for them to address. I mean, I, if I say anymore, I'd be putting words in their mouth and i don't want to do that but i think i think you guys know what i'm what i'm where i'm getting at with that yeah you know yeah we we definitely don't do much randomization in our selection

and maybe i think that that would be a benefit of having a large you know enclosure and letting them select and and having multiple sites where they can escape, you know, so the, if the male's chasing another male, he can get away without getting damaged too much, but. Right. Yeah. Right. Cause that's definitely, uh, you know, the, the downside of that is you, you can have issues like that. You know, you might have a frilled lizard that grabs a skink and bites off a leg or something, you know, those kinds of things could happen with that. So you need to be careful of that. But, um, I, I, I like, uh, I like the idea of, of trying to replicate nature, but it gets tricky, you know, when you have a finite space, I think that's where like outdoor pits come in into play. And, um, another cool example of that is the Tucson, uh, desert park or that place is awesome awesome and they have a lot of yeah the

desert museum they have a lot of outdoor pits and um we've recently visited bob ashley's place out in uh new mexico and he's got a bunch of outdoor pits and has like gila monsters and you know different lizards and stuff and in some of the different pits. And, um, so you're able to go out and kind of see them in, in, in their natural habitat. And I mean, he'll have like roadrunners get in and grab some lizards and, you know, eat them and stuff take off. So it's, you know, that's how nature is. So, you know, they, I, I, I do think that you, you do, you'll run the risk of having your reptiles behave very differently when keeping them outside. I know I was talking to Frank Reedys and he said that when he would, uh, keep like Ackie's outdoors, they would just go nuts because everything's a predator. They're

always looking at the skies. You'd never see them out. They'd always be undercover. You know, they're a lot more shy than they would be in, you know, in a controlled environment in a cage or something. So yeah, it's, it it's a, it's a different, completely different behavior than you might see in a smaller enclosure. And when you throw it, factor in the sun, I mean, reptiles are definitely, especially for heliothermic reptiles that need the sun and, and are diurnal, you're going to see completely different behaviors. And so like Chuck was saying, you know, that was, that'd be really, you might see completely different things than you might otherwise see. Yeah. And you mentioned having other, you know, like a frilled dragon in a

communal setup somewhere, maybe taking a bite of an arm of some other lizard in the cage too, right? That actually happened to me last year with one of my xenogama. I had a little female in with a male. It was just meant to be a breeding introduction. And with those, I've been housing them in little groups or pairs. And I went to clean the cage one day and I lifted up one of the hides and the females, her whole arm was just mutilated by the male. And yeah, exactly. And she ended up losing it. It, it, you know, pinched and just fell off, um, you know, cause it was, it was pretty messed up, you know, so I put a little ointment on it and you could tell it was just going to fall off anyway.

So I was like, all right, let, just let this happen. And, and that's another thing that I'm actually arguing your point of it now, which is that you run the risk of an injury. And, and that's another thing that I'm actually arguing your point of it now, which is that you run the risk of an injury. And when, you know, when you house things solo, you have almost 0% unless they injure themselves, which is less likely, but, um, but yeah, no, no, I, it just reminded me. But, but, but I mean, in theory, like if you're introducing the, that same thing could happen on introduction, right? Like, you know, I mean, it is a is I'll put two males in the same cage with plexiglass in between them and just let them do get out and, and kind of fight and do their thing and, you know, get them fired up. And then you put a female in there or something like that. Um, and it's, it's, it's pretty fun, but, um, I have to admit there are definitely

a lot of times when I wish I housed stuff together, um, whether it be for the space or whether it be for seeing more stuff or not missing opportunity. And I also think communal housing is probably a little less time consuming. You probably have fewer cages to address at any given point in time. So you have fewer chores to do. Whereas when you have stuff like mine, you got literally hundreds of cages that you have to go through and, you know, scoop out and clean. And like the, the, the general maintenance technically doubles, um, at least almost doubles. Yeah. I mean, I, I do keep, uh, keep a lot of my pythons together and, and trying to feed,

you know, when there's two snakes in one cage trying to feed them is it's very difficult you got to really you know have a have a good system down i i've got a some cool cages that have like a subterranean hide and they're fitted with like a pipe so i can screw on like a pipe uh you know lid on there to keep them you know keep one down below and one up above and so you can feed them a lot easier that way so you kind of have to innovate a on there to keep them, you know, keep one down below and one up above. And so you can feed them a lot easier that way. So you kind of have to innovate a little bit to keep them separated. And if you have, you know, truly a very large, like walk-in size enclosure with multiple animals, usually they're not, I guess some species might hang out next to each other, but sometimes they'll kind of pick their spots. Yeah. But you know what I've had, I've had a male,

I've had my diamond pythons, I've had the male just kind of drop its food and then go over and then try and take the female's food. And they just end up fighting each other. And it's like, oh, come on. And, you know, it's like you'll get away with it once. You'll feed them together. And you're like, ah, this is perfect. It's great. And there's nothing but then you know it's just like when you have those like when you get when you get a two good size scrubs

fighting each other because you were cohabiting them and you're trying to peel them off each other that's when you're like oh yeah there's just rules there's just rules to this cohab stuff and feeding separately is one of them but i would i have found that they usually work it out. Like I've never had – I guess I've had one death that I would attribute to feeding response gone bad. And unfortunately, it was a pair that I imported from Europe. And then the guy wasn't successful the following year, so I wasn't able to get a replacement male. So I've got a lone female from this locality that doesn't have a male to pair up with her. And I agree. I mean, most of mine sort out.

But for the most part, they – Who wants to risk the – Yeah, yeah. Do you want to risk your diamond python or something? It's just a good practice to say like, okay, I separate the feed when I cohab. Sure, sure. I read an interesting post by Keith McPeak. He was talking about when he has hatchlings,

he'll leave them together and he finds that when they, when they kind of feel each other crawling over each other, you know, after they hatch, they're less likely to be you know be worried about you know contact with other things so they're not so defensive or freaked out or and it also you know somehow they they kind of develop a little more strength so they're you know i guess i don't know if they have to fight for their space or whatever but and i and i'll i'll house my hatchlings together for you know a month or two maybe before they shed i mean if you wait too long they can start eating each other and i've have had cannibalism in hatchling and teresia python so

you want you know yeah and and it doesn't end well for either of them like the one that eats the other one usually dies because it's just such a large meal so it's yeah it's a bummer usually use lose two animals that way but um and i you know, I've learned, it hasn't happened that often, but it happened once or twice. And I'm just like, oh man, I need to separate these guys quicker. So, but, you know, I did find that when, you know, until their first shed, they're always together. They're in a ball, like just right on top of each other. Yep. And so, obviously they probably do that in nature too. Once they hatch, they hang out, you know, with the mom or together wherever they hatched. But I don't know. I mean, maybe that's just an artifact of, of captivity. Maybe, you know, hanging out together might have stronger scent. So a predator might find them and just go, Oh, here's a whole ball of pythons and eat them all, you know?

Good point. So maybe dispersal is a good idea, but, and you also see sometimes like. Electric do blue dig echoes. Yeah. That's like, you're a dead, you're, you're a dead mama jamma. If you're, if you're a baby still in the cage, the females will take them out. They're aggressive. They're aggressive. Yeah. There, there has been some reports of of of rattlesnakes you know guarding their offspring and and the babies hang out with the adults for a little longer you know then i think it definitely it definitely depends on the species i mean yeah yeah however well i mean even within the same uh genre so even with

euros you know um some animals like the uromastyxix ornata, I'm able to house them together. You know, because I do the same thing with new clutches. They all, they're housed together, right? It would be insane to try to house every baby euro alone. It would just be out of control. But with some of them, you actually have to. So like Euromastix flavifasciata, Maliensis, Nigra Ventris, Dispar Dispar. So that whole Dispar complex with the single exception of Euromastix J.R.I., they murder each other.

Really? Yes. Right from the get-go. They are aggressive. They're so grumpy. I mean even baby Euromastix Thomasi, I'll take whole clutches out. They all pop out of the eggs. I go to put them in their brooder tub.

And you'll see little babies doing push-ups at each other. Like, hey, I don't like this. Or get it back off, buddy. And it's such a strange thing that some of them hate it. And right away, they make it so clear. No, get out of my space right now. You know, whereas some of them don't, um, I I'm, I'm, I'm very lucky that I have a number of other friends who also keep euros and almost all of them, except for one or two, do it, do it the total opposite for me. They're doing it totally

differently. They house everything together, pairs, babies, et cetera. And they've one guy in particular, my friend, Nick Alexander, who, um, he's, he's hatched a handful of species and he's growing his crew and he's doing a killer job over there. He insists on, on co-having his animals because, well, I don't want to put words in his mouth, but I know one of the reasons is that he says that they're more friendly when they're communal because, you know, there's less of a big flight response when something shows up. He, he also keeps all his stuff in front opening enclosures and all of mine are top entry. So it's a little different, but, um, you know, uh, I have noticed that clutches of babies do tend to be more relaxed. There's so many of them. And as long as one of them, you know, as soon as they learn that, you know,

after it takes like four or five days, but once they learn that you're just bringing them food, that, that flight response disappears and then it'll reemerge when you split them up. And, and, and so that's been a, it's actually been kind of a downside because a lot of the people who buy my Euromx buy them as pets. And so they want it to be really friendly. And so it's hard because that transition is so stressful for the animal and so scary that they tend to revert back to being flighty. Whereas, granted, they would have to quarantine either way but if there was a situation where they were you know if we could find out what you need to really make them communal it might be more beneficial for taming because the other guys there's nick and then there's my friend camille hammers over in the netherlands hammerhead reptiles

he also keeps everything together but he has empty cages all year round that he's ready in case one's there's too much aggression he'll split you know which which i think is a nice middle ground i like the way he does things um and uh you know so that's that's just another consideration and i think you know the what how tame that animal is maybe doesn't matter unless you're really wanting a pet then it's like all right you know now it's a big important thing sure yeah yeah i. You mentioned the top opening versus front opening too, because like, you know, a predator of a Euro is going to come from the top. And so, you know, if they're, if they're maybe front opening, they're, they're less stressed

out or they, they don't think it's a predator coming in because they're, you know, head height or body height or whatever. So, um, that, you know, and I, this this this may be completely off the rails but you know maybe um communally housed animals there's some epigenetic changes that occur and that are passed on to the babies where they're like you know some social type sure uh epigenetic change might might be passed on it's it's you know possibility and if you if you're singly housing your adults and introducing them then they're maybe less social and so they pass that trait on to their It's, it's, you know, possibility. And if you, if you're singly housing your adults and introducing them, then there may be less social. And so they pass that trade onto their, not genetically,

but through their, you know, that, that behavior and the different DNA modifications. That's a great, that's a, that's also a really interesting point. You know I know a handful of guys who mostly in Europe, who breed Thomasi. And several of them, you've seen them put the babies, the whole clutch right back in with mom and dad. And it's like, in my mind, that's like the worst thing you could, oh my God, that's terrifying. You know, like I've, I've had male Thomasi kill adult females in like 20 minutes. Like it just, it was an accident. It was years and years and years ago. I put a female in with a male and, um, I went to, I was like, he was doing his pushups

and she was going to flip over. So I was like, all right, I'll leave him for a few minutes and see what happens. Went and did my little rounds of cleaning, came back and he had just, just killed her, man. Yeah. It was, it was just awful, you know? And,, and now I just never leave them. I just watch all. But but anyway, that it's an interesting consideration because they had, you know, great footage of just little baby coming out, sharing food with mom they can pick up from the scats you know that kind of thing getting that microflora from the adults and things that's that's that happens in the wild all the time yeah the babies will eat the scat of the adult yeah beneficial bacteria so yeah that's you know obviously these are you know we're kind of working into areas that nobody really knows the answer but you know it's fun to think about and it could be somebody's phd project or something down the road

but poop pirating yeah yeah well they have to do it i mean yeah the euro the euros and the chucks at least it's a well-defined everybody you know it's like and all the old care sheets they're like no you got to put poop of the adults in with the babies and they eat it. I mean, it's the first thing they look for. It's hilarious. You know, you should take these big pellets from the adults and you can either crumble them up or you put in the whole pellet and you put in this one long log and all of them just come snack on the turd. That's cool. Yeah.

I'd seen that with tortoises, but I didn't know that euros did that. That's cool. I'll send you a video. I have, I have every year I take a video of it. Cause it's like, this is just the weirdest, weirdest behavior, you know? And it's interesting too, that it would stick through in captivity, you know, just cause we don't have necessarily the same micro flora that they might experience in the wild, maybe from an import, but like from captive bred over generations.

Yeah. Yeah. It's going to change how that changes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the other one too is, oh, wait a minute. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So even though this is also kind of arguing your point, which is, and I thought of it because of the poo, communication of diseases. diseases i mean i would imagine this would be your because you're a virologist aren't you yeah yeah yeah that's that's amazing man yeah so um when you solo house you're probably less likely to see transmission of stuff right but at the same time um there are times when i wonder if keeping solo isn't kind of detrimental for gut flora in some some regard because like i would imagine that if because the common conjecture is that uromastyx are the kind of north african and middle eastern chuckwalla uh ecologically speaking right yeah and when i go

out here and i find chucks they're never alone because it's chucks all over one big rock pile and i we stick together yeah right so i always see chuck with his family that's that's correct yes that's right yeah and he and he kind of got a wonder because if when i've had animals that are you know maybe they come down with a parasite overload or something and um it because of gets out of hand, and it's time to medicate, which is very rare, but it does happen. And at one point, I remember just kind of getting a weird thought in my head, and I took – there was an animal, an ornate Euro that I just medicated for worms. And after its second dose of Panacur, I actually gave – I put in a pellet or two from other healthy euros back in with that animal and she ate it. She went right after their poo and ate it. And so in my mind at the time I was thinking, okay, maybe she just kind of knows that there's

something in there beneficial for her. But then I was like, no, it's probably more likely that in the wild, they probably do it from time to time for various reasons. I mean, there's, there's who knows why, right. But there could conceivably be like totally unknown reasons why euros might perform. There's a name for it. It's like, like a phagy of, you know, something, something phagy that refers to like, yeah, that's right. Yeah. Damn. That's awesome. Yeah. I wish I could yeah that's right yeah damn that's awesome yeah i wish i could remember that but yeah and i think yeah so it was just a just a fun experiment i was trying to mess around with totally unscientific of course but um it's one of those things that i wonder about

and i wonder you know like maybe animals that are housed together instead of thinking it is like a disease vulnerability uh frame of mind maybe frame of mind, maybe it's super beneficial. Maybe it's just like they get less sick less often because there's enough others pro-social behaviors going on that reduce stress or whatever. I mean, obviously I'm thinking specifically with uromastyx, but there's so many other reptiles to, that do it totally differently. Right. So, yeah, I mean, you definitely have reptiles that do it totally differently, right? Yeah. I mean, you definitely have to do it right. You know, you have to kind of try to match what they're going to have in the wild.

So that becomes very difficult sometimes, especially in a limited, you know, space setting or something. But I remember seeing a presentation about bull and I, and it was showing these wild bullens on a, on basically a hill of, of crap, you know, shed gold, shed skins, feces and stuff. And that's where they would hang out. That was their living quarters, right? They grow down in that stuff. And, and, uh, you know, And then, and then you'd see like this keeper was keeping them pristine like it's like anytime they poop i just clean it up immediately and you're like they're trying to

mark their territory or have their i mean i don't see the you know the disconnect between like what they're doing and what they're doing in the wild you know and it's like sure why aren't we having success with these things maybe you're missing you know that kind of aspect but um you know what's the balance you know how how much you know feces and shed skin do a lot of you accumulate and how big of a space is there is is there ammonia in the you know in the cage because you don't have enough airflow or room in there but i i did hear there was somebody keeping white-lipped pythons or some species like that and and they basically would just add new bedding on and they wouldn't clean out the old bedding

they just add like on top of it and they were like you know bugs and like uh i don't know what kind of isopods or whatever they had in there but they had bugs to kind of chew it up a little bit but but they just kept adding and the pythons would actually have these little burrow systems inside of this stuff. And he was very successful, like bred them and they were very successful and did well for him because they probably were living a natural life, you know, like more so than a lot of other keepers. They're keeping them on paper or something, you know, and cleaning them out every week or something. So I do think there are some, you know, potential benefits, but, but finding that balance is, is, can be really difficult, you know, and you might mess your animals up more than,

than, you know, if you, if you do it incorrectly. So yeah, that's the risk. I mean, there's so many, that's a really interesting, interesting point. And when you were talking about the, the Bolins out in the wild and them have it being living in a big pile of crap and shed it's like not just what kind of bacteria buildup is happening there but also like maybe there's some other critter that takes advantage of that resource whose gut flora is also beneficial to the bolins, you know, or like, it's really, really helpful or who the heck knows. There's so many crazy fun things. Could be a lot of things that could happen there. Yeah. And, and, and, uh, with my, with my uromastyx anyway,

when I have housed them together, um, speaking of feces anyway, um, when they're solo, they have a very specific crap area where they they're like this is where i go to the bathroom just about every day and sometimes i can kind of migrate through the cage depending on the length of time we're talking about but when when they're housed in a group like if i have a couple of pairs where they they need to be housed together um and they i need to leave them together for a few weeks at a time in order to ensure that mating happens, that throws that whole thing, the potty area, out of whack. And all of a sudden they crap all over the cage. And then the male, I'm sure you guys have seen it, they spin and mark just like a lot of lizards do.

And they leave. It's crazy because there's like an actual substance that's excreted onto the stone that's really really difficult to to wash off the stone or or the log or whatever it may be and the only way it comes off of the females is when they shed you know so it's like yeah it's definitely for a purpose you know they're there they need to be able to mark their territory yeah right yeah yeah that's interesting and i you, you wonder how that would play out if it's, you know, if you're introducing different males, if, you know, if that would help them or hinder them, you know, again, it's the complexity of it is really difficult to predict how that might help. And, and like you said, you know, there's, there's probably more, more than one way to do this and have success. And, and, you know, your way is obviously working and, and Philip or Hammer's way is also working, you know, even though you're doing it kind of opposite in some,

in some ways. But, you know, figuring that out sometimes can be a little tricky. And I think that goes to the point of, you know, you never know until you try it. And sometimes, you know, figuring that out sometimes can be a little tricky. And I think that goes to the point of, you know, you never know until you try it. And sometimes, you know, even negative results or good results, they might not be the best for that individual animal. But like, you know, you're going to learn something and hopefully not make that mistake again or teach others that, hey, I tried this in this situation. This is what happened, you know? And, and I think a lot of times reptile keepers are afraid to share their failures because then that, that, you know, that's kind of gives them a negative, uh, aspect or view of, from other keepers or people looking to buy their animal. Yeah, exactly. And that's tricky because, you know, if you're doing it as your livelihood, you don't want to like do that and put it out there and everybody goes oh he sucks you know i'm not gonna buy it yeah exactly

even though that's probably the way we need to be is you know share our failures so other people don't repeat them but what's it to to that point that's um actually camille and i talk about that all the time that's something that we try to do we try our best to do you know like if something goes wrong we share it you know like it's okay. It's not. And that's, that's, it's funny because it's not just reptiles. That's like everywhere, right? People need to be much, much more okay with admitting their mistakes. And, and all of us as a, as a population, whether it's reptiles or any other topic need to be way better about forgiving people for their mistakes and being like, it's reptiles or any other topic need to be way better about forgiving people for their mistakes and being like it's fine it's just like it happens we're all dumb we're all people it's

not a big deal and you know with the um uh actually i just i just lost it i had something else there well i think i think you know in regards to you know bouncing things off of other people who are doing the same thing or working with the same group of species that's probably more productive anyway than just bouncing it off joe schmoe oh yeah cyber world you know so like i think that's probably a reasonable thing to do is just keep it for your close friends that are doing the same thing you're doing so you know it's more they can give you feedback or give you ideas of why that might have happened or how to sure and then that helps you and them. And yeah. Right. Oh. And I, so I actually just, I just remembered it, but, um, the other thing was, I was going to say was that, um, every year, even though solo housing is like my

MO with the Euromastics at this point, um, every year I try it a little differently. Every single year I'll be like, okay, this pair, when I put them together to mate, it wasn't crazy. The male didn't try to kill her. She didn't try to kill him. Okay. So let me just experiment with, after they lay their eggs, I'm just going to leave them together, you know, and just see, just see what happens. And inevitably, like every year so far, something happens. And I, and I think it, it, it's got to do with setup and housing um because at least i've tried it so many different ways and so many different times yet everybody else manages to keep all their stuff together to a certain extent and so i'm always like kind of doubting myself

and i'm like maybe if i change this one little thing or if i you know i'll give them seven trillion hides and things like this and 20 basking zones, maybe they'll be okay. But so far with the Euros, anyway, every single year, at some point, somebody stops eating, somebody gets a bite mark, somebody gets, you know, you can hear it from halfway across the shop. You know, like that panic run. Getting stressed out, yeah. You know the shop. That panic run. Getting stressed out, yeah. You know the one I'm talking about. So at least for those anyway. But that's why it's so nice to change it up with some of these other species sometimes, right?

And have stuff that doesn't behave that same way. Because I can't think of something off the top of my head specifically. But working with those anoles that I was mentioning earlier has taught me stuff that I've then applied to the Uromastyx. And, you know, maybe, you know, you listening to you guys talk about it has inspired me to like, maybe I'll get some pythons here someday and try to try my hand at some serpents, you know, because I've never bred a snake to this day. So it'd be I'd love to try try it out yeah well chuck knows i've been drooling over uromastyx and i was like at the show i just kept looking at him thinking maybe i should try and i'm like well nobody nobody nobody can see this but when you know when phil started talking about uromastyx justin just like lit up like he's about 12 years old they're such cool animals

they're amazing yeah they're really cool they're they're i i mean there's a reason i i stuck with them you know and they uh yeah those things the every single year i you know you think you're gonna get tired of it or get used to it but every year when those things hatch you're just like oh man you know like that yeah it you're always shocked you're just like, Oh man, you know, like you're always shocked. You're just like, I gotta, I gotta compare my notes from last year because there's, these are totally different. These are way crazier.

And then you compare your notes and they're exactly the same. Yeah. Well, you know, maybe if you, if you ever want some, we can swap, I'll get some Antaresia from you. There you go. I'll send you some Euros. Yeah. That'd be fun. Someday i'll work with them that's yeah um i one other uh i guess the other i i was

thinking about um something else ron saint pierre said where he was talking about his caging and he had like um a bunch of different levels or know, he had like a false floor basically where they could go under it and, and different sized animals could get into different areas. And so they couldn't be chased by a larger animal, you know, having things like that, because it really can be, you know, dangerous, like you said, with some animals just might not be that social or might get some wild hair, you know, I'm just going to kill this thing. It's getting in my face. I don't want it in, you know, in my area. So, or, or to have visual barriers, you know, so they can't see each other all the time, you know, things like that. It's, you know, there's things, things you can do, but it does get a little complex and it does require some attention.

You know, like you said, you don't want to just throw them in there and leave them. You want to keep an eye on them and things, but yeah, you want to be around them. Yeah. But I, you know, I wonder where you, where you keep a, you know, a lot of the same species, maybe keep some solo and try some others as groups or, you know, try to mix it up a little and, you know, try something new and, you know, see how it goes. I mean, I'm going to have to, at some point I'm going to have to try other things. And what you mentioned about like an outdoor pit or a big outdoor pen, or, or even just a large, a large enough pen indoors. Um,

that's something I really do want to play around with one day, because at least with, you know, I can, I can speak as just uromastics in general. That's my, obviously it's the main thing. That's the thing I'm going to be working on for forever. but it's i also kind of am open about the possibility that you know right now i have a dozen different species and i've i've managed to get all the ones that are available in the united states but it also could be that in 10 years maybe i only have two kinds you know because it just you know um it's very possible that i'm underestimating the amount of dedication a single species may need to be established in herpetoculture you know or something like that and when i think i think about that all the time when i look at the ornata you know

because the ornata are just generally they're the most popular they're probably the most colorful and most interesting the most diverse and things like that. And so I think a lot about what, what kind of changes am I going to need to make in the next 10 years to make sure that this is a ongoing living thing. And it, I mean, it may be communal housing at some point. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, I guess that's the beauty when you're producing a lot, you can, you know, try different things and, you know, I've done that's, I guess that's the beauty when you're producing a lot, you can, you know, try different things. And, you know, I've done that myself, you know, trying to try different enclosure types or different aspects of caging that might benefit the animals. And yeah, it's fun to, I think that's one of the benefits of breeding things is you

can try those new things. But then again, if you've got something that's working sometimes, you know, changing things too much is like, all of a sudden you're not producing them you're like wait a second what happened one thing at a time right exactly can't do the whole can't do the blanket changes yeah yeah man there's there's so many cool uh cool aspects to this topic that we could probably have a three or four more shows but oh yeah oh yeah yeah yeah that's great stuff is fun. I mean, even just in this conversation, you gave, you guys both mentioned things I hadn't thought about. Yeah. I love it. So much fun. Yeah. I mean, if I didn't learn stuff on this, I don't think I'd do this podcast

because that's one of the benefits of this is thinking about things you hadn't thought about before. Totally. Yeah. And you know, things just kind of pop into your head too. Like I hadn't thought about before totally yeah and you know things just kind of pop into your head too like i hadn't thought about the possibility of epigenetic changes based on sociality you know that's something interesting that's definitely a phd project yeah for sure yeah cool well you got any kind of final thoughts or any any uh throw out there? Nah, nothing specific. Just probably like, it depends. Yeah. It depends. Yeah.

And I, I, I don't know that I, I mean, we kind of talked around it a little bit, but learning the natural history, observing like, you know, how you said you go out and watch Chuck Wallace in the wild. I'm sure someday you're going to be out watching if you haven't already watched your mastics in the wild. And there's some cool YouTube. I know Dave Kaufman did a couple videos on some wild. It kind of blew my mind a little bit. I always thought they were all just desert, flat sand dune type animals.

But seeing them up on the rocks, it's like, oh, yeah, of course, there's going to be lots of different types of habitats. So it's kind of cool. There's also another guy um i can't remember his name but if you get on youtube and you just google or you just put in like ornate uromastics wild or something there's a dude who lives in either like israel or egypt i think it's israel oh yeah and he has footage of just you know it'll be from way way away but with a really solid zoom lens and you just see a rock crevice and a little just the little ticker goes by and then all of a sudden you see like a little ornate just walk out from it and it's just sitting there it's bright green

with yellow it's just oh yeah that's my kind of youtube videos seeing stuff in the wild and yeah and just observing natural behavior that's that's that's so much uh you know it's like a phd project just watching you know like and taking it in and then trying to bring that to your you know captives and totally improving their life and also you know um improving your methods and along the way so yeah yeah learn about their natural history that's that's my favorite aspect of keeping these things be able to see natural behaviors and yeah it's happened i knew it was gonna happen those are beautiful cats thank you yeah he's for all who can't see a cat just walked by right meow a bangleangle, a bangle cat. Big boy.

Nice looking. Yeah. What's the wild cat? It's called Asian leopard cat. Okay. Yeah. They're all some percentage of hybrid. I think ours are, I think like F5 or F6.

So it's not, you can't really tell. But this one, the one that just walked in front of the camera, you can tell with him because he's got no funny business in him, man. It's all, yeah. He's just very like, you can pet me on the head. Yeah. That's it. You know. Yeah.

Cats are funny creatures for sure. They sure are. They sure are. They're a lot of fun. Yeah. Well, we'll definitely have to continue this topic, uh, and keep it going,

but this was really good food for thought and really appreciate you coming on and, and, uh, giving us thrown out these ideas and chatting with us here. It's been, been a good, uh,

good debate. Yeah. Same, same here, man. I enjoyed it a lot. I'd love to come on anytime and talk about anything that I'm qualified to talk about.

Yeah. So I, I love it. It was super, super fun, man. Uh, we'll definitely have you back on. Well, you, you put up a couple of really good, uh, good information or good topics. So we'll have to have you back on to, to talk about some of those. So cool. Sounds good. All right, man. Well, um, thanks again. We'll, we'll have you back sometime. We'll kind of shout out to Morelia Python radio.com. Um, all the information's there. Also follow Morelia python radio on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube channel, uh, all everything's at MP at NPR network. So there's my, uh, due diligence for the network. I remember this time. Eric, hope that was all right.

Eric will not be cussing our name yeah we need to we need to do it like the the um auctioneer style you know really fast yeah yeah yeah so phil what what about you how where can people find you find your uh work yeah so yeah everything whether it's a facebook or instagram it's just arids only a-r-i-d-s-o-n-l-y except for uh and knolls right yeah except for the nose that is dewey only according to camille yeah he says he says i have to do a totally separate logo for that one yeah yeah yeah arids only i really like that that that's a cool uh cool name yeah hey. Appreciate it, man. I'm a fellow desert fan, desert rat. I'm always out there as much as I can get out there.

If you're ever in Utah and want to go herping down in St. George or something, let me know. Heck yeah, absolutely. Sounds good. Let's do it. All right. Well, thanks again, and thanks to everybody out there for listening to Morelia Python. Reptile Fight Club. Who are we again, Chuck? Help me out here, buddy.

I don't know anymore. What a sad, sad finish. I know. Weak, weak sauce for me. From Phil, Justin, and Chuck, we hope that you keep fighting on and kicking ass. We're out. Fight Club. we're out Thank you. Bye.