Reptile Fight Club - RFC Clip Show

Episode Date: July 12, 2024

In this episode, Justin and Rob have another clip show. Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comIGFollow Rob @ https://www.instagram.com/highplainsherp/Follow MPR Network @FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQSwag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

Welcome to the Reptile Fight Club. If you haven't noticed, this is Barry White, your host. I'm a little under the weather this week, so this will mostly be Rob's ramblings or Bobby's bemusements. I don't know, whatever we want to call it. So hopefully Rob will do a majority of the talking, although I can usually have a hard time keeping my trap shut. But anyway, I am not Barry White. I'm Justin Julander, and I'm your host with Rob Stone. So, yeah.

And it's time for another clip show. I'm always reminded of that Simpsons episode where they did the clip show. Sorry for the clip show. Never fear, we'll have stories for years. Exactly. Yeah. So that's always going through my head when we do these. But I don't know.

It's kind of an interesting or a nice way to kind of review what we talked about, have some insights, especially since that was back in the Chuck days. And so Rob probably was yelling at his phone some comments while we were doing the shows, possibly. So give him a chance to express his ideas on some of these topics. So, well, without further ado, I think we should dive in. What do you think? All right. So episode 51 or show 51 51 whatever you want to call them

we talked about caging uh so building your own versus buying customer buying caging basically so that was me and chuck debating that we introduced our first sponsor welch's fruit chews i think chuck had a mouthful of welch's Fruit Chews and he was not speaking well. So I had to laugh about that. Yeah, a little extra vocal texture for the show. Always good. Yeah. Sometimes appreciated.

Always good. Yeah, right. We had to bring back some sponsors. It's nice having sponsors. And Welch's, I mean, they were a great sponsor. They really gave us all the fruit chews we could chew well what are your thoughts on caging well i think my own lack of proficiency dictates me to be best situated in a purchase spot um i do man you see keith's stuff where he's made that himself it's truly incredible

and it's obviously you can customize it to your space it's held up incredibly well for a long time it's suited to his needs in his space and i do think there's a ton of beauty to that the obviously the contrary side is if you're like me where that's not necessarily your wheelhouse or where you're best situated it's probably going to be something where you either you know and maybe the answer is that i could could do it to a functional level but i want it to look really good and i probably don't have the capacity to build it that way and so it's probably inevitably going to lead to disappointment if i do it myself.

So that's probably where I'm at from my own personal perspective. At the same time, I know there are people out there who are situated to do it well and who do it amazingly. So as with most of these topics, people would be dissatisfied that I'm insufficiently fighting because I see a clear benefit to either side. It's really about uh the keeper and their own time and capacity yeah and also depending on what species you're keeping i'm sure the cages you buy are probably um geared more towards what you're keeping in them rather than what's cheaper what's you know that kind of thing yeah for sure right and obviously if you're going to do

like some sort of pressed wood that you're sealing or whatever that's probably not going to be best situated to use that for shinosaurus or some you know aquatic semi-aquatic to aquatic creature that probably doesn't make sense so um you know there's got to be alignment on that sort of stuff between the materials that you're either utilize that are utilized in a purchased enclosure or that you're utilizing yourself some of that is resource availability right i think i remember from the show even a big part of the conversation was the uptick in price on the raw materials so that maybe some of the savings that people often attribute for making their own i wouldn't pitch savings at this point i think it's's more about like, okay, you're customizing it to your space.

And if you're really skilled, then you might have the capacity to make something that even exceeds what you purchase at that same price point. But it's not like, you know, the old, how it used to be framed in the old days. Oh, you could make four of them for the price of one purchase one, something like that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, i think prices have kind of come down to a little more normalistic level i mean those those ridiculous prices during the pandemic and this show was back in 2022 so we've we're a little bit behind in the clip shows

i apologize for that but uh we um there was just that enormous price gouging that was going on just because, you know, production stopped. And so the demand was high, but the availability was low. So I think it was kind of a, um, uh, the, about the worst time to be building cages, but I think it's come back down a little bit to more reasonable levels. I mean, for example, like a, a sheet of chipboard, you know, just kind of the stuff that you frame a house with or whatever was like 15 bucks back in the day, at least at my Home Depot. And then it went up to 50 bucks a sheet. And then it's back down to like 20 or 25 bucks a sheet. So, you know, it's back to close to what it was before, but not quite as far down as it was. So, yeah, but I don't know. I think the biggest thing for me, especially now, since I'm trying to get more larger caging in my room, I bought a bunch of shipping crates thinking I would convert those into cages. And it's just it takes so long to do one. And I was hoping to

kind of, you know, get going and have kind of like a production line or something, you know, and do just knock out a bunch of them at a time just hasn't worked out. And they're just sitting, taking up room in my garage now, you know, it's like, now what am I going to do with these shipping crates that I spent a thousand bucks on? So I've, I've resorted to buying caging and then kind of, um, I guess adding things, you know, like fake rock work or hide boxes or something like that, that, that would match the natural history. So right now I'm getting a couple for Womas. I'm trying to improve their caging. I'm building some fake termite mounds that are like an entrance into a hide box that has a pipe that will have a humid microenvironment. things after the cage build is kind of the the goal now i guess but yeah it's a little hard to pay for caging i think that and and i do like to build but anyway that's kind of my musings as of late yeah certainly the benefits to uh and i don't think this will be a topic within the 50 episodes

51 to 60 but uh certainly a benefit to keeping smaller stuff is the the price point on just maybe that's one of the things that's so amazing right is um how much the price escalates just adding being a foot longer or whatever right so it's not just oh it's the same as one and a half of these it It's like, no, it's not reflected in the price associated with that. Instead, it's going to be double or whatever. So it's kind of wild that way. Oh, for sure. Yeah.

I always thought it was, you know, I look at cage builds and I think, now, why did they do that? That seems like a very wasteful way to do it. It seems like that would make it cost a lot more, you know, the, the animal, is it animal plastics or the ones that have kind of the, the round frame around the front where they just took a piece of, you know, PVC and then just cut out a hole and that's where the doors, you know, slide in and out of or whatever. But I mean, it's kind of a nice design because it prevents the animals from being able to push the edge of the door. If there's any kind of gap, they can't get their head in there because there's, you know, too small of a gap. But I'm thinking, man, that's a lot of waste. They probably could have done that in a different way and had the same result, just a lot

less expensive. But that's just, you know, it's probably easier to route out a hole than to try to join four pieces of strips together to do the same thing. I don't know. I guess some things are probably from a more rapid build or a more structurally sound build. Yeah, for sure. I wonder, are you thinking of the bowl file ones? Yeah, that might be it. Well, I don't, I can't remember. I bought them used from Chuck, so I don't remember what the, I thought, I thought it was animal plastics, but I could be wrong. Yeah.

I think that's mostly what he had. So I suppose so. Maybe I'm just not visualizing it right. But cause they kind of have that same and it used to be a square and then at some point it actually became rounded or whatever so i think i'm trying to visualize it even in my mind but yeah super interesting as you say it's kind of even within the manufactured stuff there's a ton of variability with different features that people either like or don't right there there are pluses and minuses to having a singular piece that kind of bolts down versus uh pieces of plexi that'll go that'll interact with one another um sure yep is there a litter dam how big is it all this stuff yeah yeah so yep i've

i've been buying a few of those uh dubia roach dubia.com caging that you kind of assemble yourself and they ship flat. And I've, I've been pretty happy with them for the most part. I mean, Utah is not the best for screen tops, but you can kind of stack them together and that, you know, eliminates that. And I can screw in a light, you know, fixture to the top of the cage and, you know, mount that there and stuff. So it works out. Okay. And I've been doing a few of those and, you know, fixture to the top of the cage and, you know, mount that there and stuff. So it works out. Okay. And I've been doing a few of those and, you know, putting in some additions to them to make them a little more sound and usable in Utah. But, um, those have been reasonable.

They're fairly reasonably priced and, and, you know, I feel like I'm building them. Right. At least you get the assembly aspect. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. Caging, caging is always kind of that, uh, you know, that thing that we, I think herpers kind of have, well, at least over the last couple of decades, we've kind of thought, Oh, it's, you know, rack system. That's what we want to do. That's the answer because then we can keep a million snakes in a tiny space and we can produce, you know, rack system. That's what we want to do. That's the answer, because then we can keep a million snakes in a tiny space and we can produce, you know, we can be like Brian Barczyk or, you know, some of these big producers that breed a lot of stuff. So that was kind of

my mindset a little bit earlier on, you know, thinking, oh, that how cool would that be to have just so many snakes and, you know, wallsaging and and i think you know we're kind of sold that bill of goods a little bit and and i'm i'm glad to see we're moving out of that and moving into larger caging and things like that but and then the fact that you don't get to see them you know in a rack system you're not enjoying the animals you're keeping it's just kind of like a farm more more so than a than a cool animal that you get to watch and experience yeah exactly right i i had the same sort of experience growing in the hobbyist kind of with that being um a an ideal right yeah and yeah as you highlight right

then the enjoyment became in the production in the sale and all this stuff and it's like well those are no longer my focus points and so yeah i want to be able to sit there and enjoy them and not have to open the tub to to see it for a second before if we're talking about mountain king snakes or something they just shoot to the back and it's like yeah wow okay okay. Exactly. All right. Anything else to add on that one? No, I think that's really good. As with all of these things, I do think it'll be interesting maybe if we have additional guests come on to talk through it differently or even things that just change, right?

As you highlighted, right? Resource availability, price structure, different even amongst manufacturers,, maybe different things come onto or off of the market. I mentioned Boa File earlier. And, you know, he's not, he's still breeding boas, but he's not making cages anymore. Changed his life around and doing all this different stuff. So that was something that was around from well before me. And, you know, I've had several iterations of those cages. And then I just went on the website one day and it was like, oh, yeah, he's not making them anymore.

So that's not a, you know, we do see that with new and certainly right. We are a bunch of new manufacturers sort of constantly. And I guess it's not that unusual that there would be for all those new people. There's probably to satiate that or to create that demand that they're trying to satisfy, right. There are people falling off as well. Yeah. I wonder ifff might want to come on and chat about that that'd be really um enlightening to hear his experience with cage building versus breeding animals and could could kind of fit in that category of you know what's a better business model you know the animals right report like we just had a few few episodes ago or maybe it's been a little longer than that.

Right. Yeah, no, I think that's, that's a really good idea. I mean, let me write that down while we're there. But yeah, I think otherwise we're good to get to the next one in line. Okay. The next show we talked to Ben Morrill, had him on, excuse me. And we were talking about influencers in the animal industry. And I think this coincided, well, I know this coincided with the animal con, uh, the animal conference, uh, where all the animal based influencers or YouTube stars kind of got together. And I was, I was surprised. I didn't, I mean, we, we were visiting, uh, Bob,

um, Ashley's place on one of our herp trips to Arizona, the Arizona, um, New Mexico border and stopped by Bob's place. And he mentioned something about how he was busy with that. And I'm like, Oh, that's your show. I was a little surprised that he had, he was involved in that. Sorry, I just sucked in a fly. Oh, God. That was fun. Anyway, so, yeah. So we were talking about kind of if influencers were good or bad for the hobby in general. And so what's your take, Rob?

Well, that was pretty interesting. This is almost like a notes from the field there if you're just going to suck in flies, you know? So what's your take, Rob? Well, that was pretty interesting. This is almost like a notes from the field there if you're just going to suck in flies, you know. Anyway. Good stuff. Yeah, I don't know. That was certainly an interesting episode. It was surprising.

You know, just obviously you know Ben so well, and he always has a ton of interesting stuff to say. And maybe he usually gets pigeonholed into specific things based on all his expertise and all that but yeah so i did think that was a super interesting show um but yeah maybe not what i would have intuitively expected i think generally speaking um well i don't know right i thought of it in the context today and maybe this was alluded to in one of the various Facebook messenger groups that we're part of or whatever previously. But I didn't have the context to know about it. I saw that an influencer, so to speak, now that I think people in Florida or Florida buddies actually know. got was what looked like it looked like a broadbanded copperhead uh so i assume he's in west texas he uh got bit by a small a small one and then just was like the lord is with me i'll just keep herping and it'll be fine um and then he made a video where he's got holding one on its it's like i i don't know i do think putting think putting positive content into the world that animal influencers can do good things.

I do think to the extent that social media platforms incentivize negative behavior or engaging in problematic, risky behavior and this sort of stuff, I do think it's dangerous. I mean, we always go back even to the question with Steve Ir irwin and stuff of like a authenticity to some of that filming right oh we just happen to come across this bunch of i don't remember it was green tree pythons or was a green tree yeah something you know where it's just like oh and they happen to be hatching on this day and it's like well and they're all spread out along a branch of a palm frond or something

you're like yeah that seems legit. Right. And maybe, you know, the answer was, oh, we did actually find him a month ago. And then we have been, you know, watching him, you know, over this course of time or whatever. You know, I'm not. And that's certainly the visualization on that is amazing. Right. It's just the question for me is always, do you need to be dishonest about the context to have it be equally amazing?

And I would generally say, you know, to me as an audience member, the answer to that would be no. But that might not be right relative to sort of the social media demands. Right. Or what gets highlighted in this sort of thing. If it does have that context of, well, it's just the one in a million, one in 10 million, whatever it is, occurrence, as opposed to being, well, yeah, it was a really fortunate, you know, a lot of hard work, really fortunate. And then even

just the diligence of, hey, we came back every day to check in on these, and then it happened to be today that we could start filming and have this beautiful visualization that maybe we sweetened a little bit too right yeah let's spread out a little bit this one isn't quite sitting right or whatever um you know in some ways i really appreciate that work and hearing of the work that goes into it you know as we've said with guests on the show and certainly have said too many times to you to me i i think we under when

we just see amazing posts on social media the intrinsic we're desensitized to it we don't appreciate the amount of hard work and effort and time and money that went into doing that so to me i'm often most impressed i'm more impressed that oh you put in the diligence you found it and then you put in that diligence and you expressed it then with this it turned into this beautiful expression as opposed to just being a one in a hundred million shot that you just happen to stumble across this like one might be more theoretically amazing the other is more impressive yeah yeah for sure and and i i you know agree with that statement, especially regarding the venomous stuff. I mean, I'll give a video a couple seconds and if I realize that they're free handling, I'm moving on. I'm not, I'm not giving that another view or, you know, just drives me of, uh, um, the guy who got bit by the Cobra and was stump brothers with the other guy who got bit by a, you know, Meng Shan Viper at Crutchfields or whatever.

I just, you know, I, I just like, I don't know, guys, is this the right message to send, you know? And I, I don't think it is, but I guess, you know, and, and have I free handled or picked up a venomous snake? Yeah, I, I have. And, you know, I, I was, I as or picked up a venomous snake? Yeah, I have. And, you know, I was, I as careful as I could be, I'm not, you know, taking unnecessary risks other than picking up the snake, but, you know, one was to make sure you guys got to see a coral snake, you know, and it was a small, and I figured a bite would be very, um, uh, you know, very unlikely occurrence in that situation. And so I, I figured the benefits outweighed the risk. And so I made that decision and, you know, there was no negative consequence to that, but, you know, on the off chance I would have gotten bit, that would have been

pretty crappy day for me, I'm sure, or, or end of my life or something, who knows, you know? Right. And you weren't, well, I guess the difference is, right, you weren't filming it and doing it strictly to kind of trivialize it or to almost make yourself better than the animal, right, or raise your credentials relative to the animal or, you know, at the animal's expense or whatever. So that was about, hey, this is my one shot to to get this thing and taking in that um risk calculation seemed like an appropriate thing to do uh you

know the contrary situation happened to me right with another coral snake different species much different size in florida on our trip in october and my risk calculus was like i'm not going to grab this thing because this could very easily go the opposite way. And again, I wasn't filming, you know, none of this stuff, none of those factors come into play. But it's like, OK, yeah, we're in each interaction. Whether you have tools or not, you're engaging in a risk assessment and trying to figure out whether this is a good idea. And it seems like sometimes maybe if the camera's rolling, the risk assessment goes out the window and you just sort of react. You're trying to get clicks rather than trying to educate or or you know entertain a good choice

for yourself yeah make a good choice for yourself for sure so um how will this look when this video comes out and rather than being a question of oh am i you know is this like uh phil's venomous etiquette videos or is this something that a random person who's not interested in snakes will have this appear on their for you page and be like, whoa, look at this crazy guy doing crazy stuff. That's crazy. Yep. And I want to throw in there to your kind of ideas on the negativity. Sometimes it's involved in herping videos. I think that can be a um, uh, downside ready, go, you know what, you, you know what, what I'm talking about,

you know? Yeah, no, absolutely. Just again, maybe it comes to my perspective to be about minimizing the animals, um, where we just say, Hey, if you know, Oh, it's just another X. And the answer is most of the people who are watching that video, right? Often, whether it's 98%, 95%, what do we come up with? That facts are, you know, figures are persuasive when presented, you know, non-sourced facts feel persuasive 85% of the time, right? Something like that. But, you know, so the vast majority,

to the point I'm making here, the vast majority of people who are consuming that sort of content, perper bro content, if I can call it that, right? And aren't going to see, haven't seen and aren't going to see the species. So if people are then trivializing, oh, it's just another X.

And I certainly understand that feeling, right? There are things that maybe if you're, especially if you're making a video in your local area and you've already seen either that day or over the course of your life, a lot of those animals, it isn't the one in 100 species. It isn't the, wow, this is totally amazing.

Everyone's going to be super impressed that I happened to find this thing that I was probably targeting and said, oh, it's just another one of these. Most of the people taking in that content are not situated to see even that, you know, let alone the very special one, right? And I'm sure they would be equally or more so impressed by that very special one just based on the reaction. But I just feel like a lot of those videos do the animals an injustice when they minimize those things. And heck, with our experience in the field, it'll sometimes turn into we just don't take pictures or we don't take as many pictures or we don't use the camera.

We'll just use a cell phone or whatever. And, you know, that's probably that same thing. It's just we're not filming ourselves doing it. So that, you know, there not uh that same message then being presented of like oh it's only a this anytime you would find yourself saying oh it's only a this i think that's disappointing and as i highlighted when we had blaine mazzetti on i think he does really well never doing that now i think he's he's forcing the issue for himself some of those times when he's like oh another glossy snake you know but he always puts that in the context of, but at least it's a snake.

And his whole goal is to go find snakes. So it's not his target. It's not what he's looking for. And he's seen hundreds to thousands of them, but he still says, Hey, another snake, you know, that's exciting. First snake of the night, that sort of thing. And I think that positivity is, you know, something I really want to support. Yeah, I agree. And I think too, I mean, those of us who go out herping, you might see one snake in a night. That might be the only snake you see that night and get excited about it. I mean, a snake is a snake, you know, they're,

they're not commonly encountered by, by their design, you know, their, their goal is to not be encountered. And so, yeah, if you see a snake, be excited about it, whether you've seen 50 of their relatives that day or not. And I will I'll go back to that story with the leaf nose snakes in in California where I saw so many that it was like, oh, it's just another leaf nose snake. I'm going to not stop and look at it or take pictures or things. But I didn't necessarily appreciate that. That was kind of a rare event. You don't usually see, you know, 30 snakes in a night or especially that many leaf nose snakes. And I haven't seen them since. So that's, that's something that if I would have realized in the moment, I might've been, had, had enjoyed that a little more. And again, I wasn't filming myself either so yeah right yeah totally

but yeah to realize i i think that is and that's just human nature right is we don't know what we don't know and we talked about this even going back to when you were in wa and you found the right if you if you then would come to note right that it's always the do we keep moving do we snakes are moving you know do we do we keep moving do Do we keep moving? Do we go on? Or do I really savor this moment? And if you had the hindsight of this is the only thing you're going to see tonight, I'm sure it would have changed, you know, sort of. Not changed feelings because it's so exciting.

But relative to what am I going to do here? Am I going to spend an extra 15 minutes just watching it crawl around? You know, that sort of thing. Or, you know, I'm positive the answer to that would be yes. If you knew going into it, this is all it's going to, this is your, you can either do this or you're going to be watching empty highway. Exactly. And that's, you know, that's the gamble you take with herping trips. And so, again, back to that idea of if you find a snake, enjoy it because snakes are hard to find. You know, sometimes certain species more than others, of course. But if you're putting yourself in in the habitat where you're going to find those common species, expect to find them and be happy about it, you know, because you're still finding them.

They're still abundant. They're still common. You know, that's a good thing, not a bad thing. And I think promotion of that idea is, I think you make a good point with that, that that needs to be celebrated rather than like, ah, it's just another one of these. Or, oh, it's not my target, so I don't really care that much, you know, still get excited. Yeah, my cynical perspective becomes, if that's how you feel, then you got to expand your field. You got to go looking for other things, go someplace else or find something better to do with your time. And I know that's, that can be sound pretty harsh, but that's genuinely how I feel. And so like, if the only thing, you know, if nine out of 10 things you find are not gonna, you know, fill your bucket,

then go do something better with your time, man. Right. Yeah. Yeah. If you've lost the passion, find something else to do. All right. The next episode was a clip show. So in honor of that clip show, we're going to flip the coin just to, just to flip a coin. Go ahead and call it Rob. Tails. It is heads. I can lose again.

Well, you won last time. So I was just trying to see if, you know, that luck was switch your way or if it's, maybe it's just going to be a back and forth from now on. All right. Episode 54 was, uh, the idea that filled herping makes you a better keeper. Um, so I, I kind of thought, you know, along the lines of, yeah, I mean, it definitely helps you understand snakes better, but sometimes it can complicate things and make you think, oh, I need to worry about this and this and this and this. And, oh, I can't match. And by the time you've figured or thought about all the possible variability, you're like, well, there's no way I can effectively, you know, house this animal with all the choices and wonderful things it has in nature. So I'm just going to give up and

not keep them but i don't know what do you think and sometimes the recipe works right so kind of that point that you're highlighting sometimes we can overthink stuff and over complicate things that maybe you know we're having uh as i said the recipe works especially with multi-generation captive bred animals that it's like okay this can fit and there are parameters we can work within those parameters make it look more or less uh naturalistic or whatever and there are things we can play with that maybe will be informed by um not even field herping so much as just uh education right reading up on the places that they come from what is what does that look like trying to make the even if it's just the picture in the background i i almost think just the visualization of the animal in its enclosure puts it in my mind at least into a into that context and it almost not only increases my

enjoyment at this point of it but i think it it does make you really think about it in the sense of okay how would this animal what is its role within this landscape? You know, how does it fit in? How does its pattern make sense relative to this space? And we just kind of, so the Flippin' Tin podcast approaches this idea kind of on their regular cadence when they talk about this. I think it's one of their regular questions that they talk about with people. And the thing that had jumped to my mind, both processing pictures and then thinking of pictures within the context of the show, is that it's amazing how often the amazing and then amazingly unsurprising where you just say, wow, this is the least surprising thing ever. That on natural form animals, the coloration and pattern really makes sense within their broader context where

it's like wow okay that is why it looks like that it almost disappears and even if we're talking about oh banded versus striped animals and this sort of thing what's the visualization it creates within its uh ecological niche right is it sitting on rock okay well maybe the banding makes more sense is it in long grass? That striping can give it sort of the visualization as it pulls away. It just sort of recedes from the scene, all these different things. Yeah, I think that makes a ton of sense. And as I say, maybe that's not even field herping so much as exposing yourself to knowledge about where these things come from. And often our best context for that is, you know, I'm thinking of temperature regimes,

you know, back in the olden times when we didn't have great weather station data associated or even information about where explicitly things were coming from. We would say, oh, well, the weather in Jakarta is this. And it's, well, that has very little bearing on the condition in, you know, the Bird's Head Peninsula of West Makua, right? And so, you know, both in terms of what does that environment look like? Obviously, they don't live in Jakarta. And then what are the temperature conditions?

I just kind of drew the parallel there of saying if we have a sense of where they actually live and what that looks like and what that entails i really think that does inform it whether um it requires seeing them to appreciate that or not yeah i mean within 20 miles you can have huge variations in temperature and weather and climate you know look at you know barfoot compared with uh you know red rocks or something that just or not red rocks but anyway you know what red rocks or something that just are red rocks. But anyway, you know what I mean? Like close by areas in low desert versus a montane area. You got very different things, but very close together.

And so, yeah, if you take temperature from one, you're going to be messing up your animals from the other. But getting into the environment and helping you feel kind of what they're there. Now, of course, that's a snapshot. And if you're not going back, you know, once a, once a week or once a month for a year, you're probably not getting the full experience, but you can get more experience than you had before you went there. I think that's a very important. Yeah, absolutely. That's, that's actually super interesting. So it makes me think of, you know, I was the Debbie Downer for Nipper on pyros associated with this, right? So out of the last trip, not the 2023 trip, the mating pyros right before the two that you found on our 2024 trip. But he was describing that context and it really changed his expectations or his thought process around this.

And I do think there's positivity to that, right? So we're seeing the plus side. The downside that you highlight there is I was going, I promise this has been such a, this coming into May of 2023, this has been such a wet year. I promise you even normal Mays look nothing like this in this area. So it's almost, as you allude to, that it's like your snapshot could be misguided or, you know, sort of misdirected based on, well, that was what it looked like that one time I was there. And he's, you know, we're having conversation on this. And I was like, yes, that's certainly true. But this is absolutely an extreme of what that environment could look like so just just bear that in mind absolutely it's

informative but it's informative of like a the very wet end of what that place would look like yeah so when when we found the one on this trip uh me and thomas uh we had run into blake and and he had he's he made the comment by this time last year, I'd seen six pyros and I haven't seen one yet, you know, this year. So, and, and that's getting kind of late in pyro season or spring pyro season or whatever, or at least diurnally active pyro season. So yeah, definitely the, the pre the prior year, 2023 was a, you know, bumper crowd form. And maybe the answer becomes maybe maybe you know i'm the one who's misguided in the sense of saying if that is the conditions where we're seeing them

and there's sort of this uh at least visualization of abundance maybe that is what how we want to keep them right maybe that's the optimal um yeah right so so maybe that's not right. Maybe it's that we don't, it highlights the point of, um, maybe our snapshot, it could be a, um, you know, ref reference a real extreme outcome, but maybe that actually in that context means, yeah, keep them like this. Cause they're doing great. They're feeling great. They're loving. We're seeing them either more or later than we normally would and all that stuff so i don't know as as always you know cosmic octopus it's complicated right super interesting i did find a really interesting um it's like a historical weather app so you can go back in time and look at the highs and lows and humidity and, you know, the rain patterns or whatever that, that day or that week, or, and you can look at and say, okay, there was a record from this day of this species. And then you can go to that location, look up the weather and for that day and see kind of, okay, are there, are there trends or, you know, and, and I think as herpers,

we want to put ourselves in the environment at the optimal time or the time when we're actually going to see something and not just drive around. I mean, locally, maybe that's not a big deal. But if you're flying halfway across the country or halfway across the world, you want to maximize what you're going to see. You don't want to be there in a less effective time. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, that's amazing. It's almost, that feels overwhelming almost, you know, it's, it's amazing that this information exists is almost overwhelming of

saying like, wow, if I, that's just yet another rabbit Warren that could be crazy to go down. Yeah. But I, and I think you can gather that as well on, you know, for example, again, with, with Thomas, where he's seen a hundred pyros, you know, he has a good feel for when he's going to have a good chance of seeing a pyro. And when it's probably not worth looking unless, you know, you just want to get out on the hike and enjoy the environment. You're probably not going to see a pyro, you know, so that's. Or it happens to be the date we planned six months in advance. And it's like, well, we're looking either way. Yeah. Yeah. We're here. We're going to check and see if we can find something. And if we don't, that's, that's okay too. Cause it's a beautiful area anyway. So absolutely. Okay. Well, either way, get out and herp. It's a, it's an enjoyable experience as long as you're not destroying the, you know,

habitat. Don't, don't leave rocks on, you know, put the rocks back if you're looking under them, put the logs back if you're looking under them. Let's keep the wild in good shape so people don't walk through and go, oh, it looks like a bunch of herpers were here. You know, we don't want to be a byword. All right. Next episode, being married to a herper with my lovely wife. Um, I'm sure you've heard, uh, from time to time being married and how that may put a strain on your spouse. Uh, any comments there? Yeah, I think as, as you highlighted in the show there did really well, it is, you know know it is a burdensome thing from that i

you know a burden that i'm implying you know whether it's captive stuff or or going out and all this different stuff and the answer is i just genuinely express appreciation admiration because it's not you know it's it's not a sacrifice yeah so i i really appreciate it. Yeah. And I think that the opportunities that it sometimes provides, you know, for example, I took Heidi with me when we went to Australia. Well, she kind of said, I'm coming with you to keep you safe because I don't trust you off in Western Australia by yourself. So she came to keep an eye on me to make sure I didn't do anything too stupid. But that trip was my um, my, my flight

and everything was paid for by, uh, the, um, scales and tails folks, uh, joy Kuligowski and, and, uh, her wonderful sons and just a great group of people. But they, yeah, they flew me over to give a talk at the scales and tails festival. So we kind of tacked on that trip beforehand on our own dime, of course, to go to Western Australia before the Scales and Tales Festival. So all in all, we were there almost a month. It was a long, long trip. That's amazing. Fantastic time with Heidi.

And, you know, and it was a little rough on her. And it was a learning experience for me because I'm like, well, this is kind of my trip. You know, I shouldn't have to tailor it to you. And that was the wrong attitude for sure. So I think, you know, if you keep that in mind, this could be a really good experience. And, you know, how can I make it a good experience for both of us? And, you know, just as an example,

I didn't necessarily prepare very well for it because, you know, we go road cruising the first night. And then the next night, I'm like, all right, let's get ready to road cruise. She's like, we're going again. I'm like, Oh honey, we're doing this every night. You know, that was kind of one of those things. So I could have done better for sure to make it a better experience for her. But I was so, and again, I've admitted this, I'm pretty selfish when it comes to my time and herping. Like I want to spend every minute I can and not, you know, let anything slow me down. I'll, I'll sleep when I'm dead kind of idea, but yeah, so definitely keep your spouse in mind and yeah, express gratitude

and thanks. I think that's important. Absolutely. Anything else on that? No, I think that that's my big picture message. And I think the example you highlight is also very prudent of saying, you know, involvement and involvement in a way that makes sense is certainly a good thing, right? That's the same with any interaction. Yeah. I've got another opportunity in a couple of weeks. We're headed off to Florida to go on a cruise with my family. And we're going to go a few days early to go.

And one of the days we're going to spend driving down the Keys because that's what Heidi wants to do. And I'm okay with that, you know. And she's going to go to the Everglades. She wants to go to the Everglades, too. But we're going to go on a couple of trails that she's a little nervous about. Maybe hopefully see a rattlesnake or two but we'll see what happens um all right uh we we definitely appreciate our wives they're absolutely that is an unequivocal message yes yes for sure all right number 56. This was, we had Daniel Yates on talking about all things. I don't know if we ever got to the topic or discussed the topic. It was, is the industry about the keeper or about the animals? And I made the comment, we'll have to rein you in, but I don't think I ever was able to reign him in. He just kind of went off. So some very notable quotes in there and some interesting ideas from Daniel.

He sure approaches things from a different point of view. And it was interesting to hear some of his ideas, but definitely was me just kind of, I think you could hear me give up at some point, just like, okay, it's off the rails and it's not getting back on the rails. So we'll just uh let him let him get his uh information out there and his ideas out there and boy he did yeah absolutely i mean i always think it's interesting right when when people have unique perspectives or different perspectives than my own you know some of those things it's like

and this happens a lot when I listen to reptile podcasts. I'll say, okay, I'm 85% with you. Again, with the convincing spur-of-the-moment statistics. But yeah, when it's, wow, I'm mostly there. Or even the opposite. When I'm, okay, I don't understand where you're coming from. I do think it can be helpful in terms of prompting me to think it through and just say, wow, that's approaching this from an angle that I've genuinely never considered.

I need to make sure that I'm approaching those sorts of things with an open mind and saying, okay, let me critically evaluate, is this something that's been a uh on my part for not having considered approached it in that way you know my bias puts it so that i've never even considered that so yeah i think there's a value you know value to anything that comes out there and it's you know we just all have to have an open and critical mind and And, uh, yeah, this certainly, there were definitely things where I was like, okay, I'm either, I mostly are largely agree. And there were things where it's, wow, I've genuinely never considered it from this perspective. And that's, you know, again,

not, not saying it's wrong. It's making me say, Hey, should I, do I need to do that? And I think too, in regards to, I guess, you know, where he was talking about, you know, some of the things that he would do with his bearded dragons. And I think about kind of the beardy mamas out there and is their experience with their reptiles any less than my experience with my reptiles. They may be more in tune or more concerned about the one versus, you know, my, my experience. So, you know, I don't think their ideas and views should be discounted, but yeah,

definitely some ideas can be challenged and we can definitely do that in a positive and uplifting way rather than, you know, saying these people are crazy or they're doing it wrong or whatever. So, yeah. But definitely, uh, uh, an interesting episode for sure. All right. The next one, uh, checklist again and RFC bill. So Chuck couldn't come on. So I had my lovely wife fill in again. She was in two episodes in these 10. So, um, we kind of talked about a little bit about, um, William, William Filipec had been on NPR and talking about his sex ratios and things like that. So, um, it was really a cool show and got me thinking about, you know, setting up an experiment to kind of test this because my experience is the opposite of his.

He was having male heavy clutches and I was having female heavy clutches and thinking about, you know, could incubation temperature have something to do with this? You know, science, as far as we know, says probably not. But, you know, science is often wrong and that's the beauty of science is it changes and evolves as we get new data. And so, you know, I still kind of have that in the back of my mind. I'd like to test this someday, probably when I have a little less hectic schedule and a little more time on my hands. Uh, but, uh, someday I'll,

I'll get into doing designing an experiment and testing that out but so that was kind of the the main things we talked about there um i don't know any thoughts on your end yeah absolutely so i think you highlight really well that um you know just the the open mindedness open mindedness to data, right, to accurate data, and then we just need to not be married to particular ideas, right? We just have to take that in and try and honestly assess where does this take us. In terms of my own experience with pythons, I haven't seen that. And that sort of maybe aligns with the experience that you've seen.

That being said, we do know that it occurs in some species of reptiles, and I've seen it in species of Asian rat snakes in my lived experience. So, you know, I guess maybe I can kind of relate to them in this context, although, again, probably the number of data points on that are more limited, and my share of the data points is probably higher, certainly higher than any one of us with Pythons. Right. So maybe I can be more confident in that. But that doesn't mean it's persuasive to other people. And certainly it hasn't been critically evaluated.

There was one particular animal that that I thought I did actually referencing then again, I did get it genetically tested to say, okay, if theoretically this seems it was a snake that visually appeared to be female, was probed a median depth deeper than a normal female, not shallower than a normal male. And the question was going to be, and I think ultimately the unfortunately with the animal i think the animal wound up passing away so i got a shed sample but i think then it wasn't sufficient to drive a result so as far as i remember we didn't get an inclusive result that would have validated it but the um the question was going to be how that was going to interact with the test that Ben does, right? Effectively, the real presuming as we do the markers that he's identified, right? If we have a valid data sample, if in those things we could have something that genetically tested as a male and produced eggs,

then we could say, okay, well, here's pretty solid evidence for we have a genetic male that has produced eggs. Well, it obviously has female structures, and not only structures, but sufficient to actually produce an egg, let alone fertile offspring or whatever. That would be the sort of thing that would suggest, okay, absent there being a problem on the testing side, that maybe we have a genetic set that's being overridden by incubation temperature. Again, which we do see in reptiles. I don't know that it's proven in any snakes. Again, I think it happens in Oreocryptophis, Porphyratia, and in Rhynchophis, in my lived experience, incubation temperature

seems to result in higher ratios of one sex or the other over decently significant sample sizes. But I think that would be the only serpent where that would be true, which would, to my mind, then suggest it probably happens more broadly. We just aren't aware of it. Rather than saying, oh, it just so happens to only occur in these. It might be something about snakes of that area. I don't know.

But certainly we know it happens in other swamites. Sure. Yeah. And I mean, I think about the fish example with those, what are they, the big forehead fishes? Well, are the ones that can change, right? They change throughout the course of their life. Truly wild, right?

Or if there's not a male present, they can fill in that gap with a female and they become a male, a functional male. So it's incredible. I think, yeah, just the wildness, we are aware, we know of some of this stuff that's just so wild that to me it would be close-minded to unequivocally sort of that opposite point of saying, no, this can't be true, the absence of lineage or whatever, but we know that wild stuff happens that you wouldn't imagine. So I guess that puts me to be more open-minded to those things, though it doesn't make me any less, doesn't make me require evidence to substantiate that any less. It's just saying I won't dismiss it out of hand.

Yeah. Yeah. It's exciting to think about all the discoveries that are out there waiting for somebody to you know test them uh thoroughly and and you know figure these things out it's pretty cool but i don't know science is is exciting in that way but all right of methods right the ability the practicability of any of this all this stuff you know it's not just saying oh well the the you know the fish example you highlight oh that must mean that you know my one observation of this one thing yeah makes it true it's just saying okay well

maybe let's what's your what's your data make your. Let's see if we can validate or disprove based on a larger sample. Yeah. I think, I think the, the reason that kind of caught my attention is because Will was kind of saying, you know, Oh, maybe that's the way it is in the species that they're just male heavy because they're small pythons and they get eaten real fast or whatever, and maybe they need more males. And so, you know, if without my observation of female heavy clutches, he, he might be led down that avenue of that assumption, you know, and, and maybe there is, you know, it doesn't have anything to do with that or it's genetics or whatever. I just have a pair that produces females in larger abundance or whatever,

you know, or might also be true. Right. I mean, that, that wouldn't, again, I only, I'm not saying that it is, but that's the sort of thing that like, um, someone not open-minded to this topic might say unequivocally, no, I've never heard of anything like that. So I'm going to totally dismiss that as even being possible as opposed to saying, well, let's evaluate the evidence. Right? Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's the better attitude to have. And I think too, I mean, for all the negative consequences of morphs on the hobby, we've, we've discovered some pretty cool reptile related, you know, breeding genetic inheritance modes, whatever through morphs. And we couldn't have done these studies without morphs, you know,

twins and things that have, have different mutations, you know, within the set of twins is kind of a cool thing and, um, can kind of lead us to, to identify different traits or different modes of inheritance. And I think, uh, one of the most interesting one was the banana ball Python with the sex-linked trait. It was pretty crazy. And do you remember for how many years people just thought, Kevin's just lying. And that was the default response. And maybe this is what I push back on is that sort of mentality of like that was so distinct from people's lived experience that they just assumed,

okay, this has to be a marketing play. You just have to be lying. And then, in fact, right, once there was then the opposite gender produced, that's all it would make. You know, it's just totally wild. Totally wild. Yeah. And then when more data becomes available and everybody's having a similar

experience, it just, you know, kind of says, okay, maybe he's on to something. Yeah. Maybe people need to go back and retroactively apologize for calling him right yeah all that time i would love to see that happen in the reptile industry you know yeah that doesn't happen very much that happens yeah all right uh next one was uh this was a fun one uh talking about different temperature regimens with Lisa Farina. I really like Lisa. She's got some really great insights into reptiles in general and is really attentive to her animals

and makes really cool observations. So it was nice to have her on. We were talking about varied temps versus stable temperature regimens. But yeah it was it was great we need to have her back on get some more good uh lisa info out there but she's she's very successful too and in her uh keeping she's produced some you know traditionally difficult to produce species and um this is just really a really great keeper. Yeah, absolutely. Totally agree.

Love the positivity, you know, love, love kind of fresh mindset and approach. Yeah, it's really fantastic. And I agree with you. Hopefully we got to come up with an excellent topic to ever come on and chat through. For sure. For sure. So I don't know what your, what's your thoughts what's your thoughts on varied versus kind of more stable temps? Kind of the constraints of my room forced me to be a believer in variable temperatures and sort of the seasonality across all things.

And I think fortunately at this point the stuff that I have really aligns with that and situates well with it. So, um, you know, that kind of highlights the topic of keeping things that do well in your conditions, right. And how that can make your life easier, or you have to, you know, the incentive becomes to dramatically change and modify your conditions if you're going to keep something that wouldn't naturally suit. So yeah, for me, uh, I think also there's a little bit of a, and this has been highlighted, you know, from even going back as far as, you know, when Terry had come on, I was talking through, and that the conditions at Reptile Grounds are more, it's always, or even at Terry's house, right, it's presented places, there's one is more fixed than the other. Even if the ideation is, hey, this is what we're trying to do. There's more inputs or outflows that are required to try and make that happen and to greater or lesser success. Right. So I do think there's there's certainly something to that. I'm not discounting that approach, but, you know, just I pretty much embrace the natural flow and just try and make sure I'm keeping guardrails on what's happening.

Yeah. And I mean, you know, some species have evolved in areas that are pretty stable in their temperatures. They're not fluctuating wildly. You know, you pretty much have 70 degree, you know, with a five degree variance up and down throughout the whole year, you know, and you're living on the equator and then others, you're having a 30 day fluctuation from day to night, you know, it's, it's so yeah, definitely dependent on the species and, um, what's your, what's your goals are. If you're trying to keep like Terry trying to keep, you know, 50 different species alive in the same room. If you're trying to keep, like Terry, trying to keep, you know, 50 different

species alive in the same room, then you're looking for those commonalities or a similar temperature that keeps everybody happy. Or, you know, if you're trying to breed a colubrid or, you know, a temperate colubrid, you're going to need to cool it down or you're probably not going to have repeated success with that project because they're just adapted and evolved to to do well in that environment at the same time they might live right and certainly at the gardens right that's the goal so it's like okay what's the driver of you know what's the driving goal is it production or is it to have a beautiful living collection and as always it goes back to understanding the natural history of the species.

You keep knowing what, you know, where they come from, what they, what, what they utilize different temperatures for, you know, if it's for males to produce good sperm, they need a cooling period. So if you don't provide that cooling period, you're probably not going to have great offspring from that male. So, you know, understanding things like that is probably very important to your successful keeping. So I guess aligning your inputs. Right. So like, OK, if you know, hey, I the room experiences volatility.

I don't want to be feeding as I'm feeding heavily as I'm going into a coolant. Or as I know, the room's going to drop down. That's probably not a great, I need to have alignment amongst my various inputs. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, also to some extent, you know, reptiles are not coming out at all hours of the day. They're choosing their preferred temperatures. And I think that's kind of what Terry was hitting on with is finding that, you know, zone of success for as many species as possible is that most species are only active when it's kind of in that range. And so, you know, that makes sense to shoot for that in your captive environment. But, you know, that's a snapshot of part of the year, maybe not the entire year. Well, and we talk about it too, that are we

seeing base level dehydration in animals that never get too hot right so if their basking temperature is never too hot they bask constantly and it creates this underlying dehydration right so as ever so many different competing right factors to consider it definitely gets very uh very difficult and very complex you know and that's the beauty of nature is it's not a simple, you know, give them 80 degrees, they're good to go, you know, unless you're trying to keep everybody happy and alive, then give them 80 degrees and they're good to go. And then just be responsive to the data set that you're getting. If, okay, that's working,

then that's, that's data, right? If it's not working, that's data as well. And I really liked those studies like, uh, Rick shine did with the diamond pythons where he followed them at different times of the year and said kind of what environments they were in and what, um, you know, methods they were using to thermoregulate because thermoregulation is the key with most reptiles. And especially for a temperate weather python you know it's going to be very important to their success so if you understand that you're gonna do pretty well so yeah any other ideas on that topic Oh, too many. Well, and I start, yeah, I just love the, honestly, I, I, my sort of driving paradigm is a recognition that the complexity of nature exceeds our human capacity

to understand it. So I just always try and approach it with that perspective. At the same time, I recognize the limitations within our little boxes. So, yeah, yeah, for sure. And that's, you know, that's a huge, huge part of it is, you know, we have limited space and it's very difficult to give them a 30 degree swing in that limited space because we don't know how they're buffering themselves against those thermal swings and things like that. So, yeah. All right. Uh uh next topic was uh i think this was this topic was as in a little bit of a poke at chuck this is dominique carbonara uh carbon new carbino carbino i think that's how i i'm sounds right sorry don't but uh breeding to everything with the cloaca, because Chuck loved that phrase so much. That muttonism.

Yeah, exactly. The muttonism. So I think just the idea of if you have something that you, like a morph, and you want to get that morph out there, just breed it to everything in your collection you know every female you can get it to regardless of if it's the same subspecies or species or you know just get that morph uh into those animals and that's kind of the idea of of that in in the long run i think was that that happened as a result of the morph craze and so that was a consequence that down the road we had a bunch of mixed, you know, blood carpet pythons. That was kind of the background. Even if it wasn't clear at the time, right? So if you're talking about coastal carpets, right? Jags, oh, that's, am I able to all, you know, anything that I have that's labeled a coastal, right?

Regardless of how they look, to the extent that we have information about where they're from, all this different stuff. And, yeah, I think even the coiner of the phrase, right, is kind of in a spot relative to that in the sense of saying, okay, well, it's a good thing that he's also really done a good job of keeping projects within projects as well as, know in that instance he was uh crossing those projects and now you know what what does he what does he do relative to that i don't think he was really taking brisbane's to to jags you know he he really appreciates this he's a splitter as as much of a splitter as anyone i know and certainly he uh i think could appreciate that those are not the same thing and those being so distinctly different but at the same time within the mutations and things you know the

exanthic well you know where does that fit although those are both probably northern animals so i guess um you know it's really the the uncertainty it's probably the where it becomes more of a question you know out of the stripe stuff and all that the old lineage striped stuff yep and this i mean this goes into you know ideas with like green tree pythons and you know localities and locality gray bands and how how particular do you want to get or is it just all snakes in boxes so who cares you know just make a pretty looking snake i guess everybody has different goals and different ideas of what, what they want to keep. And that's a healthy thing. And I think to, to argue that one is better than the other is probably where the fault lies, you know, to say

being a purist is more important than, than being a morph guy or whatever is, you know, I think there's place and, and value for both. And I'll still go back to one of my favorite carpet that I've ever seen was like a five or six way cross. And it had like inland and coastal and diamond and jag and jungle and all in, you know, one snake. And it was a gorgeous animal. It was a really nice looking snake. And it made me think, Hmm, do I want to start breeding? But I mean, it was one in a, in a hundred probably snake. And, um, so I don't know, you know, there's, there's definitely, uh, different, different, uh, avenues for people. And I mean, we're kind of discussing on the boards recently about hybrids and why are people making these hybrids? And, and again, I mean, who, who really cares in the long

run, you know, unless, unless they're jeopardizing some, you know, our access to localities, pure snakes or something like that, you know, uh even that you know it's their just their their decision and um why shouldn't they be able to produce those hybrids but yeah i mean i guess the one the thing that always jumps to my mind right is that we just have when we do that we need to recognize that a can't be undone there's no amount of um reading back that will ever say not maybe it mattered maybe that matters to you or maybe it doesn't but that's uh incontrovertibly true right there's no one once it's been done there's no one doing it and i do i mean we've seen it with uh variable king snakes the lampropeltis leonis that it was

a big thing to sort of either based on information either intentionally or unintentionally based on limited information right i don't want to commit the sin of uh utilizing 25 30 years of retroactive knowledge and applying to 40 years even of retroactive knowledge and applying to that context but we we do know now that in the 80s people were breeding tricolored snakes amongst one another and it does make a random what's labeled as a variable king snake today um since those are animals for with few exceptions right there are not lineage animals going back to before mexico closed to the legal legal or illegal or whatever to the origin of those animals in captivity. There are only a handful of lines that are sort of known with surety.

And if you just arbitrarily have someone presents a variable king snake, even if it looks like being a variable king snake, they have a variety of presentations. But sort of any weirdness at all with the instant reaction is, well, I have no confidence that that animal is a Lampropeltis leonis. It might be a hobby leonis, and that has about the animals that they're working with for it to be fun for them you know a lot of the variable king snakes that are available for sale

you wouldn't be able to have that level of surety around because that's what was happening and so I do think when someone's doing it in the moment it becomes well I'm honestly representing it you honestly representing it has nothing to do with its descendants 30 years later. It doesn't. Certainly, if you intentionally mislabel what happened now, that's only going to make that

more likely to happen. But you could be as honest and transparent about this as you want. We know that that barely holds up, you know, on a resale of that same snake, let alone 30 years down the line, what's happening, especially if it's something that isn't so visually, it doesn't make an offspring that sort of sends up yellow flags. Yeah. Right. And I think too, like this goes back to, when I was writing the first edition of the carpet book with back in 2010, you know, our idea of what made a certain carpet Python was based on our limited experience with. lineages and maybe a few pictures in like the Barker's book or something.

You know, we were focused on what we had in our hands and what was in front of our face. So if something fell out of that and, you know, really going to Australia and finding some of these snakes in the wild made me think, wait a second. You know, this looks nothing like what I would expect a coastal from this area to look like. It looks completely different than I had in my mind was the box that we drew around coastal carpet, you know, and just seeing the variability. And then with the advent of, you know, some of these photo hosting sites where you can look at Australian herpers pictures, where they're taking pictures of a range of different carpet pythons from the same area. And there's a huge variability and we're like, okay, we don't know what we're talking about. You know, we're talking, you know, based on a very limited experience.

Yeah, absolutely. And certainly that more than anything just discourages to, you know, engage in arguments based on that limited amount of information. So I've seen Brisbane carpets that look like the textbook Brisbane carpets and those that do not. Our first gelatin carpet looked like a citrus tiger. The second one looked like what we have in the hobby here is gelatin carpets, textbook. But I think, so certainly I wouldn't go in you know we see it i think the worst offenders are the diamond python people in the united states right in terms of

saying oh that you know you who live in australia within that range don't you know i my knowledge trumps yours you know or that you know whatever that's obviously absurd yeah that's sort of the absurdist extreme on this um yet on the other right, that doesn't mean citrus tigers are from gelatin. You know, just because that phenotype can come from there, there's in the absence of evidence to that, to substantiate that, that doesn't mean, right, we've seen that with the opposite plenty of times, right, where the, I think even the Cape York spotted pythons, right? I forget who it was giving this context, but it was like, oh, yeah, I was there when those original animals had come in and Person X sold them to the barkers. And they didn't have the label. And they said, well, that's what they look like. So that's what they are or whatever.

And that's not to say that that's wrong. But like that happens. That's a specific example of something that has happened a lot. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, going off of phenotype is always kind of a dangerous avenue to take to say with certainty, this phenotype means it's this, especially with carpet pythons or Australian pythons in general. I mean, that's very difficult to to say and there's just so much variability that's and and you know i i think that's again you know with our with our 30 years or 20 years hence uh um more evidence and more knowledge we can we can think oh that was laughable back then but man there were some pretty heated and highly argumentative debates back in the day about purity and lineage and what is a certain carpet pipe on,

whether it was pure or whether it was mixed or whatever. It was pretty funny to think about now, but pretty serious to a lot of people back then. Yeah. But I don't know. I think, you know, and I, you know, one example of my experience, I bought a pair of Cape York spotted pythons and then hatched out some granites. And I'm like, well, they're not pure if they're hatching out granites as far as I know. So I got rid of those, you know, and that's, it's just kind of what you, uh, what's your goals and what you want to keep. I did keep a couple of the

granites cause they were cool looking, but, but I'll sell those as granites, not as Cape York spotted. So, but I mean, they did have the look of Cape York spotted. So to say the look is everything, you know, that's not the case. Who got fooled with the, uh, the car plots and some of those hybrids, you know, that look just like funky carpet pythons, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of things that happen like that. All right. Well, the last topic and the final topic of our clip show today was episode 60. We talk to you about how of animal rights issues shape the hobby in a good way

or a bad way. And I mean, of course there's, there's ideas on both sides and you know, what to, to that topic as well. What do you think? Yeah, as I remember listening to this one a couple of years ago now, I mean, it's really tough, right? And so I do think to the extent that anytime people are cognizant of the impression that their actions create, that's probably a positive thing.

Right. Not in terms of a fear response, but just like an acknowledgement of, hey, how I'm doing things does matter. I think there's value to that. At the same time, there are things that might give a a certain impression but with knowledge and experience might not be quite as um you know negative or derogatory or appear as you know it looks like this but actually that situates well with the animal's um natural history or whatever it might be right so that it actually makes sense and um that's always a difficult balance to strike. And I think basically the line that I would choose to take on that is just saying, if you're being solely driven by your sentimental bias, one way or another, you're probably not a,

not sufficiently impartial, you know, your, your judgment is clouded on either end. Um, that's probably I guess what I would have to say. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, the fact that there are very few puppy mills or at least, you know, they're, they're under, they're not gonna, gonna provide pictures and things like that you know the the the idea that that's decreasing and people are looking for well-cared-for animals and things like that

versus just like i don't care just give me a give me i just want that type of dog you know i don't care where it comes from they want to know the parents and the lineage and see pictures and where they were raised and their first breath and their first meal. And I, and you do see a little bit of that coming into the reptile hobby, which is not the worst thing in the world. Now, you know, of anyone that produces more than a couple of clutches a year, you're not going to have that information necessarily, unless you're very detail oriented and have a lot of time or, you know, and I think that's where maybe some of these professional breeders can have an advantage of having all this information,

knowing the animals well. But I mean, obviously somebody who produces an animal is going to have a lot more insight into how it's doing and what it's acting like or whatever, because they hatched it and they've had it its whole life rather than somebody who's just bought a clutch of animals from a breeder and is trying to flip them. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, simultaneously, right? Maybe if it's a flipper whose whole goal is to bring those animals from a difficult stage, you know, a non-feeding in a species where that is a non-zero challenge and bring them to be like a really super marketable, excellent looking animal.

Or maybe it's the context of a captive hatched, a young wild caught or a captive hatched animal. Pro Exotics did this for years with a whole host of different species right of saying yeah we're going to go hand select these animals and we're going to work with them and maximize their attractability their presentation make sure they're well adjusted you know all this different stuff i do think there's value to that so you know again the whole uh the point of import is honestly relative to that you know and presumably the relative value that that's being put in and provided and how people are taking it is going to be reflected in the price point for which something's offered and the price point then the buyer is going to be willing

to pay so there just needs to be an alignment between those two things right saying that you know one captive hatched uh blood python is not the same they're not all the same they're not indistinguishable there's a whole host of different factors relative to um you know a prospective keeper's ultimate enjoyment of that animal that are going to be deserve a different price point right based on the work that goes into them the natural uh the inherent factors in terms of their pattern color uh their inclination to feed how that's promoted their attractability or attractability relative to how they've been manipulated all these different things like they're they're not all equivalent and usually

they're there's um you know price is the principal distinguisher there and sometimes it's just information other times it's genuinely like you're, this is a small, a, uh, what's the, oh, um, Reptile Mountain, um, is a local breeder of blue tongue skates who, I think he has a phrase that I was trying to boutique, a reptile breeder, something like, uh, I'm trying to think of the exact terminology, but, um, and he did a really excellent, he has a YouTube channel. Um, but, uh, he has, you know, kind of a, a nice term for that, that it's like, okay, that that is one experience as opposed to purchasing from um you know a wholesale outfit obviously the price point is going to be different and i do think there's a justification for that yeah definitely that's, that's, you know, move the movement towards larger caging and more, you know, naturalistic keeping.

I think it's kind of a double edged sword, but it's definitely got its pros and cons and, and is moving in a good direction. And, you know, of course, when they, like you said, when they take things out of context or where things don't match up with reality, like they're saying, oh, you have to put a water dish in every reptile's enclosure. Some reptiles just don't drink from a water dish and you could have a water dish right in front of them and they're going to dehydrate and die because they're not getting the water in the way that they, they are evolved or adapted to get that water. So, yeah, sorry. I was trying to, oh, TC Houston, the reptile mountain guy. Yeah. I, I like his stuff. He's a, he's a good dude. Um, and seems to do a really good job. I he's a former professional AZA zookeeper focusing on conservation, propagation, welfare, and ethics. So I think he does a pretty good job of doing that in a positive manner rather than trying to beat people down, showing people how it can be done.

So, yeah, one of those good examples out there. Well, any other thoughts on that topic? No, beyond saying, hey, maybe it would be fun to have TC on. Yeah, yeah, for sure. He's a super interesting guy. Oh, definitely. With a lot of cool ideas. So maybe that's another one.

As we're mediating here in the podcast. For sure. TC, if you're out there, think of a good topic. And we'll contact you or something. Absolutely. Nice. All right. Well, another clip show in the books. Any other topics you want to hit on? Any cool things that you've seen in herpetoculture in general? Yeah. So I got some new books, but for today,

maybe we had talked about this last week or the week before associated with a different off-air conversation. But Craig Trumbauer had, when I was talking to him about West Texas locales to go to, he said,

well, you're familiar with the right and right handbook of snakes of the united states and canada and i said i'm not please explain please elaborate um and it winds up being a book from first published in 1957 a lot of subsequent reprints mine is from fifth printing uh 1975 but it's a two volume set available on from used booksellers for $20, $25, $30, something like that. It's just totally amazing. So there's a level of depth and detail and information, including exact field notes associated with particular specimens that Klobber collected in the 1930s,

details associated with different, you know, the first, it really goes into detail around the leaf nose snakes, right? The spotted leaf nose and the whole detail of, oh, one time they thought they were common. And sort of the transition point from, oh, they were thought to be uncommon and certainly uncommonly common to then sort of the Knights of Abundance, like you highlighted earlier, you know? So I would wholeheartedly suggest those, right? So I'm almost 65, 70 years, 65 or 70 years late to the party, but, uh, you know, new to me and certainly something that's got me, what's got me excited. That's got me excited. Cool. Yeah. It's, it's, uh, I don't know. I, you kind of got me into that a couple of years ago with the clobber books and, you know, rethinking and, and, you know, coming, thinking about it, I,

I had read, um, and just loved his, you know, handbook of snake or keeping the keeper in the cap, uh, in a Coffeld one. Yeah. Sorry. Coffeld. What did I say? Yeah. Well, you said clobber, which is, you know, I had said clobber, which is also, you know, fits in the same box, but very different presentation. Yeah. Yeah. No, the Caulfield book. Sorry. Yeah. Keeper in the kept. And that was one that I'd read as a kid and just devoured and thought it was the coolest thing. And then reading snakes and snake hunting. hunting and i mean obviously there were some outdated methods including vernacular like all this different stuff but yeah to me but it's

very valuable magic of it you know as much yeah certainly there are valuable uh tips and sort of promotes ideation and then the you know there's also just a beauty to it yeah yeah and kind of that romantic uh you know thoughts of exploring untamed or unknown wilderness and finding species that are you know new to most people and you know potentially new to finding the same things in those same spots which happens way more in uh sort of the relative to the Arizona stuff that's detailed in the book than it does with the New Jersey. You know, our New Jersey experience has been has been pretty grim. the like highly specific locations that it was, Oh, this was a disused building, you know, that he's describing from 20 years before 20, 25 years,

being disused 25 years before the publication of his book that we're reading 65, 70 years later. But we've been to those same buildings and there are still remnants of those structures there. And it's, there is a magic to that. Yeah. That's, it's very cool. And, uh, yeah, just reading it and saying, I've been there and I've seen that same snake in that same position on a rock or, you know, whatever it might be, but, um, pretty, pretty cool to think about. Um, and, and I mean, another motivation to get out there and find stuff. And, and I mean, he, when he talks about the pine barrens, he talks about the difficulty of finding things and how

we can find a corn snake and, you know, things like that. So it's, it's, it's, it's perspective. Yeah. It's real, you know, it's, yeah, it's a, it's fun read for sure. So some of these old, old books are still have a lot of value, even though they're maybe a little bit outdated. It looks like you can find those Handbook of Snakes of the United States and Canada online, like Rob said, on some of the used book dealers. Cool. I'll have to check those out as well. How about you? Just trying to get over this cold. sealers, but cool. I'll have to check those out as well. Just trying to get over this cold, but I don't know. I'm still still riding high after our herb trip. Uh, that was a lot of fun and a lot of, uh, I, now I mentioned to get out again,

I guess be a couple of months and well, it'll be good for you, right? Yeah. Hopefully it'll, it'll be. And you know, again, I'm not going to push Heidi too hard, and we'll try to get to a couple trails. But if she's not comfortable, we'll probably take off and try for another day. But I'm excited to get back to the Everglades. It's been a decade or so since I've been there. So it'll be interesting to see.

I haven't been, so there you go. Okay. Another experience I'd'd yet to have but aspen gave me some really nice uh helpful hints and um so yeah thanks to aspen he's such a good guy um but yeah i'm excited to check out um florida and then you know get out into the bahamas and see some cool fish or whatnot and try the flow rider on the cruise ship. See if I can beat myself up, uh, good trying to surf on the flow rider, but all right. Well, um, I think that's a good spot to end on and we'll thank Eric and Owen and the NPR crew for hosting the show.

And we'll catch you again next week for another episode of Reptile Fight Club. Thanks for listening.