Reptile Fight Club - RFC Clip Show #9

Episode Date: July 31, 2026

In this episode, Justin and Rob revist some past shows with our 9th clip episode. Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comIG https://www.instagram.com/jgjulander/Follow 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/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQWebsite: https://mprnetwork.transistor.fm/

All right, folks, welcome to the Niner. We're going to do a little clip show again on Reptile Fight Club, which is what you're listening to in case you click on the random button. I don't know what you're doing. Well, welcome, if so, and hopefully you enjoy the show. Stick around. It will be me and Rod today, of course. How are you, Mr. Stone?

I'm doing great. Excellent. Surviving the heat. I guess. Yeah. Nice rotisserie patina, you know. Yeah, we had a water polo tournament, so I was basically in a speedo in the water for four or five games a day and got a nice lobster red going. Beautiful, beautiful.

I had a classic farmer, you know, dad tan with just the arms and the neck and the face. And then I wanted a little bit of sun, but not that much. son on the rest of me. But yeah, good times. And we didn't. For IHS. Yeah, exactly. We did not fare well, so we didn't, we won all our, the first day's games.

And then the second day, we started out with a win or two, and then we lost the next two. So that put us out of metal contention, which was kind of crappy. But what do you do? What do you do? But it was fun. So can't complain. Yeah. But yeah, it was nice and hot, but the water was cold. It was like a ground-fed lake up in Rigby, Idaho. So kind of a fun little deal with floating courts, water polo, what do you call in fields, courts? I don't know. I don't know what a pool. Boosies, yeah. So we had, yeah, inflatable goals and sidelines. So kind of a different way to play. And it's like a four. on four, kind of like three-on-three basketball, just kind of quicker-paced. Don't stop after a point,

that kind of stuff. So it's kind of a crazy thing, but pretty fun. Helping with your conditioning, I'm sure. Yeah. And trying, tried out my new sleeping pad. So, you know, getting my gear ready for big, big trips where we're going to be sleeping on the ground at some point. So I got a pad that has kind of a built-in pillow, um, which, you know, I don't know if I'm sold on it. You know, I kept wanting to put my hands under something. The whole width of the pad plus the built-in pillow is a little large. So I just ended up putting a towel on there and putting my hand under the towel.

Kind of, I don't know, weird, quirky thing, I guess, to get to sleep. But I don't know, side sleepers have it a little rough, I guess. I do have a nice sleeping bag that accommodates people who roll back. back and forth from side to side. It's like an open, it doesn't have like a side zipper. It's more the top opening. And then it's got a built-in like blanket or something on, you know, like a quilt type thing on the top. So it's really nice that way too.

So that's been a good choice. And then it attaches or kind of has a sleeve that folds over the pad. So your sleeping bag doesn't fall off the pad. the night when you're rolling around. So yeah, called the back country bed or something like that. And now that you have a new one, I'm anxious to use your old one at IHS. Yeah, there you go. You can try out the pad, you mean? The old pad. Yeah, well, the whole kitten cabuda remember. You can't forget that when you pack. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, you can throw it under the seats. That's why I'll remember this time. Right. Yeah, just lift the seats, buddy. Yeah. Yeah, I'll definitely bring a sleeping bag and

and pad for you. Yeah, looking forward to IHS. That's coming up soon here. I mean, the talks look really great. So I'm trying to think, man, when am I going to be able to get out in HIRP? I guess after the talks are done, that's when it's time to go out.

So I guess that's what everybody else is going to be doing. So it'll be interesting to see what happens. Yeah, I don't know. I'm curious. I certainly will let Jordan take the wheel, both literally and figuratively on it, and just sort of accept whatever his intuition, experience, etc., sort of dictates, whatever he thinks will be best. Yeah. Yeah, just sort of go from there and, you know, it'll be fun either way, but yeah,

absolutely, I'm curious to see what that all looks like. Yeah, yeah, it should be great, But, yeah, it'll be a great event either way. So hopefully, you listeners out there got your tickets and we'll get to meet somebody in person at the 50th IHS. Good stuff. And I did get business cards printed to hand all of our HIPP royalty as part of the pitch to try. So when they say, who are you again? Who are you? What are you doing here? That I will have an answer and or at least something that they could retroactively reference and say,

oh, the lunatic who asked me to come on the podcast. Oh, nice. That's cool. Right on. So are they Reptile Fight Club specific? They are. Yeah. Oh, wow. Very nice. We can hand those out. Yeah. Yeah, that'll be good. They'll remember.

Yeah, we'll just have to. wait until they've been drinking a little bit and then go, you know, write the schedule on the back of the card and hand it to them. Okay, thanks for agreeing. Yeah, maybe, yeah, make them like appointment cards, you know, like you'd get it to the doctor's office or whatever. Like, yeah, you agreed to be on at X and Y time? Yeah. I could even come up with the consistent, you can make the perpetual studio link. Uh-huh.

Oh, these are intriguing ideas. I should have thought of them before I had to print it. Entrapment. You should have thought of them and told me. Sorry. Yeah. Well, yeah. Really dropped the ball on what I didn't, the project I didn't tell you about.

As I, as I tend to do, you know. Yeah. All right. Well, I guess we'll, I don't know, any, any exciting things happening on your end? Hatched. A couple snakes, which was really cool. A couple big snakes. Yeah.

So I'm excited for that. We'll give it a little bit of time. And then, yeah, be cool. Pretty cool. Yeah, very exciting. I got a clutch of jungles that hatched out. And so I just moved them out to the reptile room to get them set up on their own and all that good stuff. Wait for their first sheds, but they're looking good.

Got to love a jungle. That's one of my favorites for sure. Absolutely. Yeah. And then other than that, the Breddell's clutch I got looks like it's not faring too well. So that's not great. But how did they look for those, I forget, did you make mention of how they looked down here, like when you found them? Yeah, she wasn't wrapping them.

I mean, it seemed like she was just laying them. Some were a little cold, so she laid them earlier and they were kind of scathing. battered around. So yeah, maybe she knew better. And that's why she didn't wrap them. But they're putting out a lot of heat. A lot of them are going bad. So I'll probably have to go through and chuck the bad ones. Yeah. Hopefully there's a few good ones because that would be nice to have some bretles make it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's one of those. Yeah, the same with the rhino eggs, you know, where you just kind of keep checking on them every week. And it's kind of like, okay, maybe here's one that goes off for one or two or whatever.

Yeah. I was a little wondering what I was going to do with 24 of them. But now I'm hoping I want some. Yeah, I don't want necessarily that many. But, yeah, some would be good. So we'll see what happens. And it was kind of a bad timing on lighting incident. And so it seemed like they broke the bulb off the bait.

in the cage. And so I have, you know, lit with an incandescent bulb. So I, I replaced the, the fixture with those little G9 bulb fixtures. And so I replaced the, I, so that was like, okay, I got to have some time to do that. So I, you know, had to wait until Saturday. I couldn't get the base out, that kind of thing. So I just said, okay, it's been a couple days. It'll be another two days or whatever. But then, She was very gravied, and I didn't realize she was so close to laying because it's like two days after I got the bulbs replaced she laid. So that might have delayed laying a little bit. And so maybe that's the problem. I messed it up that way. So, yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Tough to say.

Did you candle them right away? No, I should have. But I just hurried and got them in the incubator. But, yeah. So we'll see, see what happens. I'm just. I suppose two minutes, three minutes is long enough. So pitiful fist is what you're referring to.

I had some pitiful fist this species for the first time, which is really cool. Yeah, that's exciting. But sort of, you know, what brings it especially to mind is I had sort of the same thing. I was actually up in Wyoming looking for concholor when they were laid. So I have no idea when they actually were laid. They were laid under the paper in the cage. And they had very few eggs to begin with. And I did lose one associated with, presumably just getting a little bit too,

right out, you know. Right. Yeah. But, yeah, two of them, which are very cool. Yeah, they're, they're impressive looking snakes. Must have been some huge eggs. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so they're supposed to have the largest eggs of any North American colubrid at least. Wow. I don't know what study would be done around this or lit review or whatever, because I think they're presented as being the largest neonates of any. North American snake of any kind. But, I mean, newborn Eastern Dinavocaks are pretty big, too.

And that was sort of what was running through my mind of like, okay? So, yeah, maybe it's a function of averages or weight, you know, sort of kind of retake situation. Are we talking about mass? Are we talking about length? Right. What is it? Yeah.

Well, I guess the simple way is to go find a, you know, recently born Eastern Diamondback, hold it in your hands and compare the two pictures to see which one's bigger, you It has to be posed the exact same way in your hands. Exactly. Or else it just won't work. I hear they're chill and their babies. Oh, my goodness. That sort of comes up in one of our Niners.

Yes, it does. Yeah. Something in that vein. We could talk about it a little bit. Yeah, should be good. I'm hoping I can have some recollection from a lot of these shows. on my aging brain. But I guess it's more about maybe your thoughts on the matter because...

I know. Well, at this point, although, as we discussed in the planning phase, we are nearly to the point where I have joined the festivities. That's right. Once we get through this, then I think the next time we do a clip show, we will be out. There will be a couple that are still you in Chuckles or you by yourself, but Chuckles theory. radically in here in spirit at least um but uh yeah so that's sort of an interesting interesting

changes been been a little bit of time which is good so yeah and i mean this is uh episodes 81 through 90 so we're nearing the triple digits so that'll be covered in the next clip show as well so the bridge over to rob and the hundredth episode Bridge to triple digits. There you go. Yeah. And, I mean, since Rob's come on, we've just kept it going. And, I mean, probably more regularity.

And, yeah, lots more variety and guests. And so that's been really phenomenal. Oh, well, we're there. So I did hear you talk with Dom. And I would say we Shan, too, except Shan's audio didn't come through on the podcast player. So it's really fun. That was going to happen, yeah. Because it's you, it's your feed and it's Dom's feed, and then it'll just be silent.

Well, actually, what we hear is you reacting to what Chan says. Yeah. But yeah, so we have to infer the questions based on your answers. So hopefully you're acting with integrity relative to the questions he actually asked you. Yeah. Well, there's no way to know. I mean, you know. Who could say.

Yeah. I was worried that was going to happen. And that's kind of funny because I was their first guest. I know. There was massive tech. Yeah. Yes. I think this is, we've noted a trend here.

I think it's just me. Yeah. We, was it me that didn't come through on that one lost Ron St. Pierre episode? It was, yeah. Oh, man. Yeah, that's so weird that, yeah. I mean, I guess we should have trusted that the, the podcast format or whatever was right when it was saying that he wasn't being recorded.

because Dom saw that and just went, ah, let's just proceed. It's like, really? Shouldn't we make sure he's recording before we record him? But what do you do? He did say that, so was that live recorded as well? Yeah. That was three. Okay.

So it's possible. I didn't, I haven't, you know, failure on my part. I haven't looked on YouTube to see whether you can then hear it with Shan. So I only listened to the. version on Spotify. And on that, his stream isn't present. If you guys could hear him and it was recording

differently associated with like a single stream associated with that, presumably you can hear him. But we'll have to further research. Right. Yeah. And I think Dom said that like, okay, even if it doesn't work.

You may mention that was what was funny. Because I was like, okay. Yeah, I got to check out whether it's actually on YouTube. validate that assertion. So either they haven't fixed it or it doesn't work that way, one of the two. So unfortunate. Well, I guess if you want to have a listen. I would recommend it.

I thought it was great. Nevertheless. But perhaps all the more fun for it. Yeah. We'll blame Michael for ditching out on us. He would have fixed it. He would have figured it out. He's the young tech guy, right?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Man, I, you know, I was, I was looking forward to talking with Michael. He just seems so, like, tied into everything. Like, that guy knows his herptoculture and, you know, all the players and all that kind of stuff. Like, so many different areas, it's pretty impressive that he's so young and knows all these people and things. And it's pretty cool. Absolutely. Yeah. Not like us old weirdos that just like pythons or something. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. No, I mean, there's a lot of, there's just so many cool reptiles. I think that's the challenge.

It's like you can't, you know, be an expert in everything. But I don't know. I really like, I, again, I was walking to my office or dropping Heidi off at her office. I'd walk her to her office. And then I walked to my office. But there's this patch of milkweeds that is, you know, just part of the, the flora of campus. And we saw a few, you know, a few months ago, these bright red beetles crawling all over. And they had really long, like black and white striped antennae.

And they looked really cool. I'm like, what is? I've never seen that before. And it's like a red-thied milkweed boarer or something cool. You know, so I'm like, oh, that's cool. A new, new beetle, you know. I think we talked about that maybe last time. But we saw like four or five this morning on the, on that walk.

So they're just. That's cool. hanging out on the milkweed plants and I guess it makes sense. Yeah. But fun, fun stuff. I love discovering new, new little weird things like that that are cool.

Well, and speaking of IHS, Michael and then Michael Berger, so I saw it today, and he always is putting out this, content of this sort, but Michael had posted, Michael Berger had posted it,

um, old Glades Herp, like in the transition from just I'm doing corns at the house into the kind of clade syrup. We have more stuff going on. Price list from 1989. Oh, yeah. A Hank Molt list from 1991.

Both interesting in their own ways, right? And I assume certainly since it was still applicable to me, at least I was on the very back end of it, that you were also in the priceless universe. Did you ever receive priceless in the man? I did. I think I was a little more limited. because I only knew about zoo herp back then. I didn't know there was a big world of, you know,

importers that were bringing in reptiles from everywhere. So, yeah, I didn't realize that there were, like, those kind of priceless to get. I think I got some from, like, Cal Zoo or one of the big, you know, one of those, just a couple of them. And I think Glades was kind of one of the last ones that was still sending them. So I didn't know if you're on those lists for now. I never got on glades. And I think by the time I knew those things. And I guess in all, I wasn't really interested in the import stuff.

But I think I got some from Casey Lazz. I mean, I knew he had some. So I think I have a couple from Casey. I think I might have gotten one from some others. But most of it was online by the time I was heavily into the least purchasing. It was the rare exception, right? It was kind of in that space or printed out at a show or whatever. Yeah.

But I do have some zooherp ones from, yeah, that was pretty cool. In 90s. Yeah. Why is his name? Of course, his name's drawing a blank. You know, I'm drawing a blank on his name. It is you. Yes, it is.

It's right on the tip of my tongue. There's people yelling, I'm sure, the name. But, oh, my gosh. Louis Porras. Louis Porras. Thank you. Yeah. I tried to get him to come on to the podcast, but he's like, oh, I'm too old.

Yeah. So maybe someday. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think I encouraged him to write his memoir, so hopefully he's actually going to do that. That would be really cool because I'm sure he's got stories galore. I mean, that guy was the coolest guy. I mean, and his shop was the coolest thing I'd ever seen as a kid, you know, like, holy crap.

That was fun. I bought a, see, I think I got an Indicus monitor from him. And I should have probably listened to him because he had like some of the first bearded dragons in the country. And he's like, oh, you ought to check these out. I'm like, no, I want a monitor. Give me an indicus. Give me an aisle monitor.

Right. So I was like, I want him. I want a veranded. And then I got a star tortoise from him. And that one lasted. for a while but yeah it's what else i think i got a tagu as well uh all the good black and yeah black and gold tagu the tagu wixen or whatever it was it was i think that's what it was back then and man that thing was not a happy camper most of the time i remember one time i i took him

outside to give him a little sunlight and oh man he took off running i narrowly caught him like because he actually ran into the side of my grandpa's house and had to go one way or the other. And I predicted which way. So I kind of cut him off of the past. And he was headed for this big, like, evergreen, like, bushes thing. I never would have gotten out of there. So I was like, it was a very close call. And I'm like, okay, note to self.

They are not the same animal in an aquarium or terrarium in the house. Absolutely. One fun thing with that beyond sort of just either imagination or memory lane or half the fun right with the Hank Priceless is his in-depth descriptions that he would put for each different animal book in terms of either specific to that thing or sort of grand visions associated with a particular form or type or whatever it would be. and so that's always enjoyable. The other part of it that's always that I get a kick out of, and maybe it's a little bit cynical in some ways, it is it is always humorous to me. There's a lot of, I think, a tendency amongst folks to want to paint the past with rose-colored glasses, right?

And to look at it optimistically. And so, like, oh, I'm only, imagine if I knew then, what I know now, all these different things. I would highlight that I also looked at the U.S. inflation calculator. And if you look at the price of something in 1991, what it would cost you now is 146% of that, meaning almost double in a half. So that on the list where Hank has a pair of adult breeder Angolan Python's for $25,000 in 1991, that's $62,000 today.

Oh, my gosh. So, yeah. In terms of purchasing power, what, what 25 grand was then. So the idea that people like to toss out about how the reason things didn't, you know, become more popular or, you know, everyone didn't have Angolan pythons in 1994. Isn't necessarily that no one cared about them. It could be that, like, it wasn't super accessible. Right. Right.

And by the same. On that, when we just toss it out there, like, as a. Right. solely a function of interest that doesn't do justice to the fact that it's honestly amazing how some folks have kind of made that work and that some of that stuff, you know, did get into hands where they were produced because today, right, a lot of the conversation is, are Boland's Python's too expensive, right? They're not going to the ideal situations to reproduce based on their price. And I certainly understand that line of thought.

Right. I would just say we've sort of seen that in the past, right? That it's not, oh, everything used to be a utopia where everything was available to anyone with an interest. Certainly not the case. I mean, what, there's sunbursts on there for 15 grand. Well, then we're talking about, what is that, $37,000 in today's dollars? Right. Yeah.

Not that accessible. Yeah. I mean, what, that's a, you know, I wonder how much, what was the price of a, you know, mid-range Corvette in 1991 and were those, you know, less than that pair of moments. Probably like $5,000 or something, you know, like, and that was outrageous back then. Like, holy crap, I only paid $500 for my car. Yeah, it'd be interesting to compare the prices of different things and, you know, It is sort of fun.

Comparable to their time. Yeah. At least if you have a sort of sufficiently strange mindset like I do, then, yeah. Right. You're able to look at it through both lenses. They're simultaneous and stuff on there that's that is unavailable now that is inexpensive on those lists. Both things are true. Right.

Well, and two, also Hank Malt, like advertise things that he didn't necessarily have yet or that he thought he could be able to get, you know. Hey. Yes. So if, yeah, so some of that price might represent a need to be, to negotiate, right? So building in some wiggle room for the negotiation. Is that what you're saying? Maybe. I just remember seeing Glebo Palma on there on his list on the, it was a online list.

Yeah, yeah. And I'm like, I don't think he has those, but, you know, no, maybe, maybe so. I don't know. He had some channels. The next thing I saw on Facebook, amongst the things from Michael, was a identification group from the Northern Territory. And it was two pictures from Burkai of the Glawardai form. Oh, really? Yeah. What is this thing?

All right, well, there you go, buddy. Yeah, yeah. Good on you. But, yeah. That's cool. That's interesting, too, in the context, right, of seasonality and time of year and all about it, saying, like, oh, well, you know, this speaks to, again, maybe the dry, not so much cold, but the dry season up there might be an easier time to turn out those critters. Right. Just feel leaves less distraction less for them to hide amongst.

Right. And I have heard that like when I was in, you know, looking for Glouardai and Komenura, he's like, oh, yeah, come back in the winter in June or July. That's when they're easy to see and they're all over the place. So I think, oh, good point. Yeah. So that's always the struggle, right? It's trying to hit the right season to see as many of the, when you, as you sell, when we're interested in so many different things. Right.

Sometimes it's, well, I want to go in July to see X, but we got to. go in August or September, October, December, or whatever it is to see, you know, A-D-C. Right. And that was kind of the impetus, you know, to maybe hit some areas during the winter just to see the monitor and the branded life. But I don't know. I guess, I mean, I still saw one in October, which was extremely hot. And, you know, some areas were closed down because it was so hot. So, I mean, they're still active pretty much year-round. And, you know, we kind of heard the same about indigo's, like, in Texas. Like, the good time to see them in Texas is in the winter. And so.

I think that makes more sense in the context of being these giant black snakes that probably, you know, in the summer, it's too hot. You know, it'll just be full operating, past full operating temperature within a mere moment or two. Yeah. Right. early in the morning. Yeah. But in, yeah, November, December, that's probably more doable. Yeah.

And they'd need to maybe bask and get their temperatures up and be out longer for to be seen, I guess. Yeah. Detectability. Right. Right. That's cool. Well, yeah. There's, that's fun to think about the history and all that kind of thing.

So I guess we'll get on with our history and talk about episodes 81 through 90. That's why they pay me the big bucks. Speaking of which, Eric, where's my check? Okay, well, the first... Some iteration of that to come on. Yeah. The first one we'll talk about is what constitutes a morph. So we talked about that, right?

And I think when people here morph in, in herpeticulture, they think of a, you know, simply inherited thing that they can make money off of, you know, or that looks, you know, consistently different and they can reproduce that in the offspring. So, but I think that's the most fundamental part, right, right? Is it does sort of imply an ability to reproduce that look, whatever it is. Yeah. But, I mean, scientifically speaking, I guess some morphological variant can be just anything that is a little different from the norm.

So, you know, and that could be something that's passed on by several genes or, you know, not passed on heritably at all. Or I don't know if I can think of any examples of that, but, you know, possibilities, I'm sure. Well, okay. The things that would jump to mind, right, especially thinking of the Rossamarche book, right? there was the berm with stripes on it based on incubation, spikes in incubation. Oh, sure. Yeah. Yep. Hep for dolphin head. Hep for tiny eyes in my case. Right. And you might get lucky and not have actually like a physical deformation associated with just getting a pattern of abnormality. Yeah. But because that's not actually genetic in nature, then it's a cool looking animal. And those are always interesting too, right? Or even the chimeras.

Right. If you're in a spot where it's what is the. extra value of an animal that in and of itself is a special showcase animal as a morph, right? It'll stand out. Right. But there's no hope. There's no genetic component to it. Well, does that have extra value? Probably yes, but defining that can be difficult and is really probably a function of, that's even more than anything.

How much does it appeal to the person who's willing to buy it? Right. Right. I mean, they just want to have a really special looking animal, even if there's, you know, no hope of reproducing it. There's certainly a market for that, but probably less so. Most of that space, most of that morph space is probably at this point, at least when we're talking about new markets, is going to be, you know, people hoping to reproduce it for themselves and become involved with that. I do think now, right, at PetSmart has mutation ball pythons and fancy, quote, fancy ballpipathens and things.

So it's not that there's never an interest in morphs, locustic Texas rat snakes, right? Quite notable within... Corn snake morphs. Hobby, albino, yeah, a whole variety of corn snakes, you're correct. So, albino leopard geckos, all this. Once they're established, once they've been thoroughly, thoroughly gone through by that hyper-specific breeder community,

then, yeah. If they're beautiful, then presumably there's a market for them. If the only thing that was cool is that they were different and, oh, you can make these other cool things, then maybe those go down to the normal price or even less. It was on your show, right, where you're talking about, did you guys talk about how spider, you know, the spider mutation at this point is actually disfavored, right? Right. So much so that they're probably worth less than a normal. Yeah. And I think, you know, the big example of, you know, something that's maybe not heritable that's really expensive would be like a two-headed snake.

two-headed turtle or something like that where people just like the oddball look. I mean, two-headed turtles look pretty freaking cool. They're really an interesting-looking animal. And so, you know, I think that's part of it, you know, where you can have something that nobody else has and kind of a crowd draw type thing. I know Barcheck had some of his reptile zoo, right, two-headed snakes and things like that. I think of the, there's a, I think it's the oldest or certainly it's very old. There's a steakhouse in Denver that has a whole bunch of taxidermid critters and things.

And that amongst that they have bicephalic snakes and stuff like that. Yeah, it's just to your point as the curio. You know, an ultimate curio is a, you know, taxidermid two, three foot long prairie rattlesnake with two heads. Yeah, that's pretty, that is pretty special. Yeah, I guess they have value even after their death. If they, you can sell a taxidermied version, you know. Right. I know when I visited Casey Lazzick once, he had a two-headed turtle.

It was really cool again. Yeah, it's like a red-eared slider or something. But, yeah, pretty neat looking. I think that's probably, those are probably more common just based on their reproductive capacity, the number that are produced globally on an annual basis, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know what the appearance was. But yeah.

Like if there are hundreds of thousands of those turtles being produced globally. Yeah. Although, I suppose while we're here. in other news, in related by other news, is this, all the issues that have been happening in China in these reptile farms that have gotten flooded out. And then they've got crocs and venomous snakes and king rat snakes and all this stuff, literally just getting washed out into these blood waters. I didn't, I hadn't seen that.

Yeah. That's not great. Yeah. That is not great. Huh. Man. Yeah, that's something. I mean, that's Harold's back to the Florida.

and, you know, the whole Burmese Python thing and all that kind of, you know, all the invasives in Florida. It's kind of the invasive capital of the United States, at least. Kind of crazy. Yeah. And, I mean, it does, the other thing that, obviously, you know, terrible human implications on that stuff, even just sort of the instant reactions. But it also makes me wonder if there will be more. more resistance to having those sorts of businesses in places going forward, right? Certainly in those communities, will they want to, you know, oh, it's fine if you have a pit full

of king rat snakes or cobras or whatever it is. But if, I mean, we've already seen how it can go sideways, like, will it be that much harder for them to set up those businesses again going forward, either in that place or, you know, with people's, I'm sure it's in the news. Well, I don't have a great grasp on what, you know, news media looks like in China in terms of whether people are seeing it. But if they're seeing it, like it might make them skeptical of the, you know, the equivalent business that's in their neighborhood. Right. Yeah, that's a tricky thing.

I mean, I know, you know, some big breeders that moved to Utah and tried to, you know, Just say, well, it's my right to do what I want on my property kind of thing. And then they got booted by the city and voted against them kind of thing. And they had to rebuild somewhere else, which, you know, that's not an ideal. Yeah, exactly. So lost a lot of money and had to move. And, you know, yeah, that's something that I'm sure these big businesses have always had to deal with, especially when you're saying, yeah, I'm going to bring hundreds or thousands of snakes into your neighborhood or your town or whatever, you know, people are.

It's not a great, it's not a great look. And that's before we're talking about something like this where you actually see eco. Yeah. And the responsibility on these farms or businesses to make them, you know, escape proof in regards to the wet weather systems of the area. You know, Florida is a great place to probably raise a lot. of reptiles, but at the same time, you know, there's a reason for that. They can get out and establish there. So, yeah, I guess we can talk a little bit about that down at the last one of the night,

but maybe we can move on to the next topic. Anything else you want to talk about in regards to morphs? No, I don't think so. To me, as I say, I think the fundamental implication is, is it reproducible? And if it's not, then is it just something so appealing that people will be interested in it anyway? I suppose the last thing is the conversation folks have around locality, the junction between locality and morph, right? So the idea, I know Craig Trumbauer's talked about it quite a bit, just the idea of if you're perpetually picking tens, even if you started with animals that were collected in a given space, if your animals, then two or three generations later are not, or either all comprised of tens, right? that's not actually representative of the locality.

So that's sort of an interesting conversation. I don't know if any of that moves you, but that's the other element. I mean, that's a great, great example. That is the jungle carpet python where, you know, they all kind of start looking the same because people want to have the same goals in breeding, so they're going to select the ones that look like the ones they want to make. And so, yeah, I think there is definitely something to that in that same vein of producing morphs. And I guess even a selectively bred project can become a morph project to some extent.

The more are you in line breed or inbreed, I guess kind of alternative versions of the same thing, the more similar they're going to look. The idea is selective breeding, right? You're not arbitrarily picking two animals to go together. Right. That's the, you know, within Craig's construction of it, which I think makes a lot of sense. saying, well, if you actually, if it's purely sort of the historic implication of locality or whatever, then you would pick two fives and put those together. Right, right.

Or just randomly select the ones to pair together. Yeah. But you wouldn't be preferentially selecting in terms of what you were keeping. Color and pattern and things like that. That's a good point. Yeah. And also the fact that as things get more available, they lose that kind of unique charm to them. And so it's a weird fine line between, you know, supply and demand and worth and all that kind of stuff.

They all kind of go hand in hand. And so unfortunately, you know, as a morph becomes more available and typically with, you know, things that are passed on in an incomplete dominant manner where you can make them very rapidly in the next generation rather than having to wait out and hit odds to get a recessive trait, produced, then you're going to see the value of that project go down pretty quickly as the more people produce it. So as they get more popular, they also lose value, and then they become less popular by the same token. So kind of a strange... Until people stop working with them because they're less popular and then there's a resurgence. Yep, yep. And then, you know, you might be lucky to even find them anymore because nobody's working with him. No, that perpetual nobody out there.

The straw nobody. Right. There was an incredible jungle carpet python that I saw on INAT. I think I might have, I thought I need to get a picture of that for Eric. So I think I snapped just like a screenshot of it, but really cool looking snake. I'm like, man, that would be like one of the coolest jungles in the hobby if that were available in the U.S. But it's crazy the variety that you can see in nature. And I guess if people saw that and went, ooh, I want to make more of those and they selectively bred for those, then they'd probably become less popular over time.

Well, and some of it, too, there is an aspect of sort of taste within these things. And some of that is it's almost if we have, I think of the Jamaican boas, right? where kind of to an average viewer, the ones that are really popular come from the Sam Crutchfields, at least that's with whom it's associated, the really orange animals that are on their front half that then have a super calicole multi-pattern look on the back half. But within then, amongst then the cognacenti of subflavas, then that's sort of unpopular because that's the very gauche common opinion is, oh, the orange ones are cool. And so then the people who are really into them is often this mentality of, oh, well, we have to like something other than that, which is obviously really cool. So we need to like the yellow ones or the silver ones or the ones that are different from the ones that the average person being exposed to them think are really neat. So that's another sort of interesting phenomenon that happens.

So with that jungle, is it that it's actually more beautiful or is it that it's different? And because you have a real appreciate, a very fine eye for a jungle carpet python, that you particularly like that one. The other thing that it jumped out to me as you had said like, oh, you know, this might become the most popular one, but maybe only amongst sort of that even smaller percentage of people that have seen all the, you know, sort of stereotypically beautiful ones and therefore appreciate this one even more because it's different from that. Yeah, for sure. And I guess that's kind of what it all boils down to for the most part is something unique or different or eye catching that deviates from the norm. One other thing. Oh, yeah. Go ahead.

Yeah. Just while we're here, it was fascinating. I meant to highlight it. So the snake catchers podcast, this is a couple guys who go collect snakes in South Australia for call-a-all-hits and things. and they went on a trip to the NT and to Singapore. And when they were up in the NT, they actually did some field recordings for the podcast with folks. And one of them was a vet who, a vet in the NT, who had done work with the Territory Wildlife Park, I think, up outside of Darwin. Yeah.

And there was a lot of interesting things there. He was talking about providing care to the Owen Pellys that had been taken from Peter, which was interesting. And I think including sort of palliative care for the last remaining one, it ultimately passed away, which was interesting. And he talked about it as being really stressful and all that. But I think it was on that show. Certainly it was within this sequence of things that they made mention of the fact that the snake catchers in the northern in territory at least, rather than being paid by the government. So they were functionally being hired by the government, but that the pay was the ability

to collect and keep and disposition as they wanted, whatever they were called out to collect. Oh, wow. And that that was the way that the albino carpet, I think, it was either the albino carpet and or the albino olive, one of the making their way into the trade, is because it was a snake call out and the recompense for the snake catcher was the ability to keep and sell what they got called out for. That's interesting. Yeah.

And that's on the trade. Which podcast was that on? It's called the snake catchers podcast. It's these two guys down outside Adelaide. Yeah. But yeah, it was a recent one. If folks, you know, go and investigate it and listen to the last handful of episodes. episodes, whatever, you'll definitely hear it in there, but it was, it really jumped out to me.

You know, it was like, oh, this is, it finally gave it context, right? And we've, we've seen that before. And I didn't remember Scott's opinion on it, but I remember him, well, I think he was upset about, like, there was some blue tongue or something that was in, you know, coastal, eastern coastal habitat somewhere. Right. And, you know, it was in someone's yard and, oh, we're going to collect it because it, you know, obviously can't thrive.

and his point was, well, it's an adult animal that has survived to this point that doesn't really hold much water or whatever. But it was just sort of that, you know, legal question of, well, how does, how was it that these founder animals were permissible? And it was super interesting that I believe it was the Albano carpet. Yeah, that would make sense. That's how it came into captivity is because it was a snake callout and the fee for the callout is you could do what you wanted with what you collected. Wow. That's cool. Wow.

That's an interesting thing. I'd never heard that before. Yeah, I hadn't either. So that was fascinating. Cool. All right. Well, moving on to the, yeah, the next one. Yeah.

Those are good distractions for sure. Minimum cage side requirements. And this is Chris Chaffin, that came on talked about that. So he had proposed that one, if I remember correctly, and had some good insight into that. I mean, obviously, I think that push from the bar check era of, you know, snake bites TV and showing row upon row of rack systems and, oh, look, how many snakes you can keep in such a small space and, you know, look at this retick in a, in a box or a Burmese python in a, you know, on these rack systems. And it's like, okay. They can breed as long as they both

make left turns. Yeah, exactly. So that's, you know, and, and I mean, obviously, kind of upgraded things as he built his zoo and kind of moved out of the more breeding facility versus, yeah, commercial into the zoo space and had giant elaborate cages, which was, was a nice change for the better for sure. Definitely a cool image. I think, yeah, to me, right, the big part of that, when it's more about the messaging and messaging that it's really cool to build an elaborate visually engaging displays where you can see your animals doing the cool things that made you want to have them in the

first place. Yeah. That's probably a better message to be spreading than to say, look, you can shove them into these small containers and have have more of them. It's, well, you can enjoy, you can enjoy more. Right. If you kind of put them in the space where you let them exhibit more natural behaviors simultaneously, right? They're hatchling, you know, hatchling corn snag probably won't do great if you just tossed it into eight by four.

Right. Right. Exactly. If, or I should say, you're going to have to work probably, you will have to work harder as a keeper to have it have success in that space. Obviously, it can, but you're going to have to really work to make sure that that happens. You can't just sort of let it loose and say, oh, it'll figure it out. Right. It's surprisingly difficult to replicate nature in a box, you know. And so when you say, well, this is what they have in nature.

Yeah, but they also have a lot, a lot of more thing. They can do it's a little, you know, they can wisp themselves into these little pieces of bark. They're not just sitting at, as we can attest, certainly I can attest having never, found a live corn snake in the wild. They aren't just sitting out when you walk the wilds of central Florida. They're not just sitting out. Yeah. And, you know, they have 50 lizards within the square, whatever area that they're living in,

and they can have a wide range, you know, and where you have to feed them and find them to feed them, that can be a little difficult or put it in the middle of the cage and they're on the outskirts or whatever and having a hard time finding it. So I guess based on one of our last interviews about the Ridgnos rattlesnake that had two bullies, food bullies and was eating a tree lizard, you know, that's pretty cool. They can probably grow and do their thing pretty quickly, but also a lot of them get eaten. And so, I mean, there's also that argument like, and, you know, I think there's a fine line in that ethics and in keeping. and your goal in keeping, like if you're just trying to supply the pet chain and pet trade,

then you're not going to be able to have many, you know, elaborate cages. You're going to have to have pretty bare bones. And, you know, it's kind of like a farm more than it is a herpeticulture or an enjoyment. You know, it's like more like a job or, you know, farming chickens for their eggs kind of thing. You're just making more snakes to sell the public or whatever. The people with a platform don't necessarily need to be encouraging everyone to be shifting to that sort of commercial production space. Right. That's when you run into the pyramid scheme territory of like, buy for me so I can make more and make more money and then you can make some and make money and tell them to your friends. Yeah, exactly. And the more you sell them to, the more, yeah, money you make.

So that's kind of a difficult thing. But obviously, you know, if you can, And you should consider that and think about that. If you've got a large snake, you know, give it a least its length in a cage space. You know, if you've got a eight foot python or a 10 foot python, you know, shoot for eight foot or 10 foot cage. That's kind of within that python space because, you know, so much of that is, it's all these confounding variables where it's like, sure. Yeah. Even just the difference in girth between a six foot large python. an 8 foot large pipe than 10 foot large pipe is radically different, right?

So it's not only their actual length, it's the amount of mass they have at those sizes. And certainly as you increase mass, to me, it's more a function of mass even than length, right? So a wild caught jump here retick that's six feet long. Well, I've seen those males, and they would keep their an inch and a half across, right? That doesn't necessarily, oh, anything less than a six foot cage that's fundamentally insufficient. Not probably not, from my perspective. But I certainly, you know, agree relative to sort of the framework you were talking about. Yeah.

You know, 16-foot reticks in drawers probably doesn't work. Yeah, yeah. Even if you're getting them out, you know, regularly, they're still just, well, and that's also, you know, you can say, well, they're a ambush predator. They're used to sitting in small, confined areas for extended period of time. But, you know, again, they also have a breeze and, you know, room to move if they choose to and things like that. Right. I think there we're starting to underestimate for our own, you know, selfish purposes. Right, right. That actually looks like. Right. And I mean, if you are a commercial venture and trying to produce snakes for the pet trade or whatever and you need to produce, you know, 10,000 snakes a year, obviously, you know, you're going to have to.

maybe cut some corners or do some things that maybe other people would say, oh, you're horrible, terrible, you know, puppy mill or whatever. But I think there's, you know, maybe the thing that I've come to see is particularly problematic within the ball python space is sort of the diminishment of the idea that like producing hundreds is normal, hundreds or thousands is normal. So when you say, okay, if you need to sell 10,000 snakes to continue in a year to, or produce and sell 10,000 snakes in a year for your. business to go. Your business, you probably should be working with either different snakes

where you have to sell fewer of them or maybe take a look at your scale. It's one thing if you're a gourmet rodent and you literally have contracts to sell to Petco, PetSmart, whatever it is, right? And you're, you are obliged to fill those big box stores and there's X amount that will go out on a monthly basis. That's, that's one thing. But they're probably are, the demand is probably only two or three or four or five places that are like that in the whole U.S. Yeah. That's the exception of the rule for the most part. I think most people probably can provide better.

And, you know, we've talked about this in the past. It's difficult to shift wholesale and change all your cages overnight, you know. Oh, absolutely. Let's give people grace. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Exactly. And I think as long as we have that mindset of I want to move to.

better, you know, for my animals. I think that's the way to look at it. I guess the part that I wasn't saying clearly as clearly as I would have liked is certainly we remember hearing conversations of like, oh, I'm a small, small time ball python breeder. I only had 60 clutches this year. Right. That, to me, there's an incongruity between your summary or level or, you know, how you frame that and the truth, right? if you're talking about needing to sell 300 of anything, that's almost one a day. Yeah.

Yeah. That's not nothing. Right. Even 100 is one every, you know, three and a half days. Think about it that way. That's, you got to sell two a week to stay on pace. And that's not, yeah, that's not easy, right? That's not something that everybody can do and, and, and, or that there's a demand for that from that many people.

Like you said, probably only. board a handful throughout the country, you know, in some ways. Right. And everybody sees like, ooh, I want to be like this guy. I want to produce hundreds and make millions and be this big, big name in the Ball Python industry or whatever. And I think, hopefully we're kind of moving away from that more and more, but, and people are realizing the reality of it, that it doesn't just happen overnight.

And you really have to, you know, be, be a certain kind of person to make that happen. and have some ingenuity. You can't just follow the trends or whatever popular morph of the day kind of thing. And I think, as I put a number to it there, right, I think even when he had talked about it on NPR that Nick had said something like his either average season, something, whatever, was in that sort of 300 range. And that really puts a fine point on it of saying he needs to sell a snake a day. Yeah, right. And that's why he's on the phone, you know, pretty much constantly, you know, like, I don't want to do that. I think, you know, you kind of have to make that apparent to people like they don't just sell themselves.

You got to put in the work. And for, yeah, selling a snake a day, you got to put in a lot of work and a lot of time and energy. And yeah, I don't know. It's crazy. Yeah. Okay. Well, yeah, good, good things to think about there for sure. All right, best first venomous with our old buddy Phil and Scott, Iper, and talking about venomous snakes.

I remember listening to this one when it came out. Okay. Yeah, it was a good episode. Yeah, it was fun to hear Phil and Scott debate. Yeah, absolutely. And that one became, that was more philosophical rather than actually kind of picking a species, I think. Right. I would, yeah, and I think it was within the context of snakes.

I would probably recommend a heal a monster to somebody. If that was on the table, that would probably. Or a hog nose. Or a hog nose or a, oh, you know, a veranid. Like, you know, those were things that kind of jumped to mind. If we allow the cheats. If we didn't, my own lived experience at this point in terms of seeing stuff in the wild is, You know, a legally sourced captive bread, clobber eye or lepidus is probably what my answer would be.

A price eye if that was, you know, permissible and available and all the, you know, assuming legality in price are not an issue. Right. But that's probably reflecting mine, you know, North American bias in the sense that, you know, we've been spending all this time with Crotolus. Yeah. Or even, you know, it's true. As long as if they were feeding readily, they were of a good size, you know, captive bread, but also a good size. Heck, one of those beautiful Carolina red pygmy rattlesnakes, you know, if it was taken de-frost,

defrost to prey, that's probably a really cool captive snake. So not legal in my state. I don't do it. So don't have real. Not legal in mine either. So, yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I don't have an answer like either Phil or Scott, where they both have.

ample venomous experience. Exactly right. My experience is limited to the wild. So that's why that sits in my mindset. What I was going to say is for Scott is in Australian where all the stuff they're working with is a Lapid's. And his level of comfort with that probably says, oh, you know, Red Bailey Black Snake is probably, you know, a docile version of that is probably sort of the front of an intro that makes sense to do. I don't think his choice was essentially there isn't one and you got a man up and all this stuff, I think, as I recall it. But, you know, if we're just trying to give a specific answer to it, those are probably, you know, my answer from a North, biased wild North American perspective would be one of our montane crudalids.

Right. And there, I was watching a YouTube video the other day and it was some sort of Temple Viper, what are those tropid? Tripodalamus. Yeah, some sort of Southeast Asian. Yeah, tropidalamus. The Wagler Eye is the one that called the Temple Viper. And it seems like those are very low potency venom. I mean, obviously, if you're allergic or something like that, it's going to not be a good bite either way.

And I think that was kind of Scott's, you don't know how you're going to react. to venom. And so, I mean, obviously, the best, best, as we say, foreign protein is form protein, man. Right. Right. And the best case scenario is having anti-venin on hand and all, you know, being responsible that way or at least having a source for that or, and being able to pay a vet, you know, a doctor's visit in case you are bitten to get anti-venin there, you know, that kind of thing. But having that plan is is very important. And I think that was largely what was hitting on was having a plan and having, you know, the resources to do it properly. I think both of them probably promoted that as well. But yeah, it seems like somebody out in the wild was just handling this temple viper. Like, yeah, there bites no big deal. But I'm like, you know, there's a chance it could be a big deal. I always thought like cotton mouths and copperheads were not very toxic, you know, in terms of venomous snakes. But Terry Philip was telling me, oh, this guy

got bit by a cotton mouth and was dead within, you know, a few hours. Like it really hit him hard and he died of it. And so, you know, it's, yeah, in general, they're a little less potent, but in the individual. Yeah. All those things, you know. Right. So, yeah, just something you don't mess with. I mean, obviously that's kind of common sense, but, you know, common sense is lacking

a lot these days. Well, goal number one for all our trips is all appendages out of all amounts. Right, right. And, I mean, I had a close call there in Arizona. I think that was the trip that I did with Steve and Chuck and Dustin, and we camped out. I think so you had alluded to something when we reached out neither day, and I didn't remember it. So it must have been. Yeah.

The Mojave that I got a little close to taking a picture with my phone and it felt the, you know, the wind from its fangs. I brush my knuckles and I'm just like, I'm an idiot. I need to use my Zoom. Yeah. I mean, this thing launched off the ground. So, you know, having that appreciation or understanding of their behavior and knowing their capabilities is probably very critical too. So, yeah, I learned my lesson and I keep much more of a distance now. But yeah, I kept a couple rattlesnakes as a kid. I raised one up from like a button. You know, it was a, back, back when I didn't know it was illegal. Yeah, exactly. And they were, they were great snakes. And one, like, never rattled, found out the guy, because once I found out it was illegal, I gave it away to somebody. And that guy was free handling it. So,

I'm not sure I've made the right decision. I'm like, oh, no, I hope this doesn't come back to, you know, bite me or bite him and bite me. thereby, but I never heard from him again, so I hope that's against me. So what way or the other? I didn't hear from him again. Exactly. Well, obviously there's variation within temperament and context and all those things between different things, but we've certainly seen that where there are some animals that are unwilling to bite sort of given any provocations.

and then there are others that are the opposite. And we've definitely encountered examples even within species or forms, you know, with that huge range. For sure. So I was thinking of con-color based on your example, right? And saying like when Brendan and I were up there, there was some that were totally, totally plastered,

just looked to get away or didn't move at all, you know, as we're trying to take a picture of it. others were would uh you know well we've seen that in utah as well we'd be happy to put a tooth in you so right yep yeah and general rules don't always apply to each individual so exactly right yeah that guy i rolled up on holding the sidewinder on the side of the road down in southern california i'm like yeah i don't think there's any plane of fire that's a great idea no and i see a lot of those videos like people like i always instantly skip them i'm like if you're free handling in the wild, you're a moron and you need to be skipped. Like, I'm not going to give you viewing time,

you know, that kind of thing. Particularly there we're talking about snakes in the in the U.S., right? You know, Australia, you know, it's a little different thing. Right. Right. Holding a rattlesnake in your hands is, I mean, I don't care how experienced you are. You're, you could potentially Yeah, you're taking a bit or damage the snake and flinging it or whatever, you know, when it goes to bite you or something. So just, not great either way. I suggest not doing either. Yeah.

Okay. Move on or anything else? Yeah. I think that's good. Okay. West Coast versus East Coast. That was in the field. We were in the field in Utah, right? Yeah. Yeah. Was that the first trip, I think?

I believe so. Well, it was Nipper, you, Eric, Dustin. and me. Well, but we were all on both. So I don't know that that. What's that? We were all on both. So we haven't found out a team member that would.

Oh, we did the same group twice in a row. Yeah. But I think it was the first one because I would think, yes, I'm pretty sure it was the first one. Yeah, that was in 2023. So I have to match up photos. Anyway, it was a, yeah. It was 24 that.

We went on our grand tour, right? I think so. Yeah. I think so. Sounds right. Okay. I'm bad with dates like I am with names, but aside from a few key dates. Which often coincide with those trips.

Right, right. Yeah, I remember my Australia trips a little better than I remember my U.S. trips, but that's just because it takes so long to be able to save up. up and go to Australia or something. I think it was a resounding win for the West Coast. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, there are, I think ultimately in terms of our herping preferences for findability, observability, shall we say, conditions, what we're used to, all those things, I think as a group, we tend. where we tend towards west coast. The advantage that the East Coast has on some things is that there are species that live on the East Coast that don't live in the West Coast.

And if that's what you want to see, then that's where you have to go and that's what you have to put up with and train with and all that stuff. You know, pine snakes don't. We have gopher snakes on the West Coast, but we don't have pine snakes. And the good thing about gopher snakes is they're a lot easier to find. But that's also kind of the bad thing, you know, in some of this. Right, right. Any snake you can find is a good snake, you know. Any snake is a good snake, but some snakes are still more, you think about them a little bit more than others.

Right. The, I think the East Coast, you know, they've got Florida and there's a lot of cool stuff in Florida, a lot of unique things and a lot of invasive things that you can see, you know, there and not have to travel. to Southeast Asia or something. But I mean, you know, I love herping all over the country and I've gained an appreciation. Mostly thanks to you, you know, showing, you know, inviting me on some trips and going out with you guys in Pennsylvania and that kind of thing. Yeah, fine barons. Yeah. Yeah.

Seeing some cool stuff in Pennsylvania. Yeah. I mean, there's, I do think there's almost. everywhere has something cool. Right, right. So yeah, I'm glad we're not limited because, you know, I'd probably pick the West Coast just because the lack of ticks and that kind of thing, but I do like a lot of the stuff on the East Coast and looking forward to exploring more, you know, in the more eastern areas. But I do like the public lands and the open spaces of the West Coast a little better, but what do you do?

Yeah, it certainly fits into my own preferences. There was a cool, cool, I guess, article, popular news article that had come out by a Scientific American, I think, recently that was talking about all the different, well, it was highlighting ticks, ticks in different regions and the risk that they represent, but the biological risk they might represent to us. And as much as we talk about Lyme disease and Alfa-Gal and Rocky Mountain spotted fever and all the, man, there's a whole ton of them that I didn't even, I wouldn't even aware of, right? There's something that like it, they get the ticks if they chew on an infected woodchuck or something and then they bite you, then you get this thing that turns into, what's the brain swelling? Encephalitis.

Encephalitis. Take more than several ices. Yeah, where it's like, you know, at least so obviously there's distortion in the reporting on it, right? And they talk about that. But like it's something like 48 of 60 reported cases were fatal. Yeah. Yeah, that's a BSL4 virus. It's a scary one.

Yeah. You don't want that TV. I mean, that's old world. So you're not getting it in either the East Coast or the West Coast. But there might be different. Forms, yeah. There's like Minnesota. Poison or deer tick virus, things like that.

Yeah. It was just like I was, then I was poking around on it and it was like, oh my gosh. Yeah. Again, the miracle that we're actually still alive with all the things out to get us. Right. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, there's some nasty bugs out there. So obviously we try to take our precautions in, in, in, um,

gear and stuff, but it's really hard to prevent those ticks. I think that one, one of the things that was a little bit different or that was presented as being, and again, all this, you know, it's popular media presentation. I don't know, you know, the extent of which. Exactly. That's, that's entirely possible. Nevertheless, the idea was, unlike most tick-borne illness where it requires attachment for a significant substantial period of time, the suggestion was with this one, that,

it can be transmitted if they're on you for 15 minutes. Wow. Feeding for 15 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but with the suggestion, you know,

that could be initiated. Right. Pretty rapidly. Yeah. Not like, you know, we talk about them in 24-hour context. You know,

I think that's mostly lime. I mean, we think about it that way. Right, right. Yeah, the suggestion with this was like, I mean, I don't even know,

what it's suggesting other than like good luck yeah thank goodness they're not too common i mean the the cases yeah even that the number viral and stuff yeah right the entire u.s through the course of the year at the most you know maybe it was even single digits this year but um still pretty wild yeah crazy stuff but i mean yeah her being good, wherever you are, get out and hurt. Ticks be damned. Ticks be damned. But definitely take precautions. I mean, same thing with mosquitoes. There was a funny anecdote at a virus conference I went to. There was this researcher and he was studying West Nile virus and it was during the big outbreak in the late 90s, early 2000s. And he was out at his mailbox and getting bit by

mosquitoes. He and his son and his neighbor were kind of chatting at the mailboxes and they were getting bit by mosquitoes and he kind of joked and said, ha ha ha, ha, we better go in or we might get West Nile and all three of them got West Nile. And then they published a story in the newspaper, West Nile researcher gets West Nile, you know, like kind of an embarrassment to him, you know, whatever. And then somebody wanted to do a follow-up story and see how it worked. And they called the same name but a different spelling, you know, hey, is Dr. Peterson there? Oh, he's passed away. So they published the story, West Nile researcher dies of West Nile. And the guy's boss calls him and is like, are you feeling okay? And he's like, yeah, why? They're saying you're dead. So they had to do a retraction on page seven.

My demise are premature. are grossly exaggerated. Yeah. So be careful, I guess, take precautions. And also the meth-up folks on the side of the road trying to get you to stop your vehicle for them. You know, that could be sketchy as well. So it makes it hard. Okay.

Well, the next one is instant gratification versus. a less instant delayed gratification versus holding out. Yeah, I guess I can't, I'm trying to remember the context of that one. But that was Lisa Farina and Noah Richardson that had kind of come up with that topic. And I mean, I don't know, Lisa Farina is one of the one of the shining stars in her culture that she is, she is on top of things. She's like doing so well with the species she works with and is just very supportive and on you know um yeah just a class act in the the reptile field and that was pretty great as well so it was great to have those guys on and uh i think uh if i remember correctly it's kind of the context of you know just buying something or or should you

wait and plan it out and and get things ready for it so um yeah and and i think a lot of of times. And I think we've all maybe fallen victim to this where you see something and you're like, I may never be able to get this again or, oh, that's a great price. Maybe I act now. And instead of later and we do it, you know, before we have something ready for it. And that's probably not the, it doesn't end as well as if we're preparing, you know, doing the research, putting in the time, finding, you know, the right animal from the right person and having a setup all ready to go. You know, is that kind of, to your memory, what they, they were chatting about? Yeah, I think so.

Yeah. And the, so the thing that prompts to my mind from that, and I agree with you. And I think that's mostly fair. I guess there are times where it is truly the only time that something will be available, you know. Right. And I forget the exact example. But I remember looking it up at the time, and this would be, well, probably nine, 10, 11 years ago, something like that. Cameron had gotten in a shipment of some South American lizard that's like endemic to one of these small islands.

And literally as part of their diet is consuming like guano of some variety, you know, from some sea bird or something. Right. And that was like I had never, ever seen them. before and never again after that was literally that was the opportunity to do it or even i think the last time i was at tinley and we were talking about this maybe keith was talking about what he was doing with chinosaurus and stuff but i remember that that last time um it was during the period of time after shinosaurus had been moved to cites one so that they would no longer be amenable to import for commercial purposes and there was a european fellow

who, you know, had a very European setup of all the, it was something, I want to say it was 18 or 2 dozen Shinosaurus, with all the sort of parent picture, all that, you know, they're very elaborate and all this stuff. And they cleared that shipment, but it was either actually or almost certainly the last shipment of Shinosaurus that would be cleared for commercial purposes ever to come into the U.S. And that was, you know, the opportunity, that day was the opportunity. I remember the last Daytona, second to last Daytona I had been to, there was a bunch of platysterine and megasopholum, the Chinese big-headed turtles. Big-headed turtles, yeah. And there was a sort of commercial dealer table that had a whole bunch of them. And then even the next year, they didn't have any, because, you know, it just sort of happenstance that they'd had them.

And so Brendan, had Inger, when we were either going to or from Wyoming or while we were there, he, I was asking him, oh, or, do people work with those? Do they have them? Do they still exist in the hobby? And he said, yes, actually, and that there's a whole variety of complexities around that, you know, that he went into that they're totally wild. So it was not, certainly not the right time to purchase them, but it was like, yeah, there are those fleeting moments where it's like, it is now or never. Right. Whether it's the right time or the wrong, you know, or whatever. Right, right. Aren't set up, to your point, that might be the only time. But if you're not in a spot either financially or in terms of your infrastructure to keep up, well, that just means it didn't work out.

And it's possible that it just won't. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, to some extent, some things that go away, probably go away for a good reason. You know, they're either too difficult or have special needs. Yeah. The idea that not everything is equally suited to be a captive animal. Yeah.

Yeah. It might turn out that you, based on your own peculiarities and set up in situation or whatever, be one of the few that are actually suited even though it's generally not suitable or not commonly suitable but probably not to be honest yeah that's tricky but yeah i i'd love to look at those big-headed turtles they're so crazy looking yeah i always thought oh i want one of those you know i remember seeing them as a kid and thinking they were the coolest looking things but then i found out later that they they're very difficult to keep happy in captivity right so he was saying i think that's true relative to you know a musk turtle or something you know but um that it's actually they figured out

sort of how to do but i it was something like they do this sort of beak trimming behavior on themselves and you need to support them by like putting in certain types of rocks and things like that and they'll engage in this behavior that is fundamental to them. And they will do it and you can, yeah, can have success with them and all these, you know, these things. But yes, they're very particular. They require, you know, moving water and with certain requirements or, you know, fundamentals to it and all these different things.

But, yeah, very fascinating. That's cool. Yeah, fun stuff. Well, we need to have those guys back on, especially. Lisa, she's just, yeah, really a delight to visit with and talk to. Again, that was great, too. Seems like she really takes in a ton of content, which is really cool. So it gives a lot of sort of opportunity to think of new ideas. If you're exposing yourself to all this extra content, that fosters thinking about those things. So I think that's really helpful. Yeah, for sure.

That's just sitting in her own head, you know? Right. She, She does do a lot of thinking about things. And I think one of the observations she made, I think it was maybe just in a chat, but she said something about she tried warm water with her reptiles versus cold water to see which one they would prefer. She said most of her snakes went to the warm water basin versus the cold water basin. I thought that was really interesting. But I love it when somebody thinks of a cool idea like that and then does the experiment. to see, you know, what the preference might be. And that's, that's pretty awesome.

Keep it up, Lisa. Yeah. All right. Well, next one, hiking up versus road cruising. I think we all know where you and I fall on this debate. Road cruising has its place for sure. But the thrill of hiking something up, seeing it in its natural environment, rather than on the side of the road is much better. You're not seeing DORs. is often, probably by 10. You're less likely to get Diorred yourself. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's much safer that way, unless you're, yeah, on a sketchy trail or got lost

or something. There could be some risk there too. Indeed. But, yeah, hiking up is fantastic. I really enjoy that. Some of my favorite finds have been ones that I've hiked up or seen in kind of a trail setting rather than on the road. But I also had some fun interactions on the road as well.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And some things are just easier to find on the road, and others are very impossible to find on the road. You know, they just don't go on the roads as much. I think there was a study of shovelnosed snakes where they did transects. They had some people road cruising. for them and they had others hiking in the sand dunes and like tracking them that way and the ones

that were hiking found you know tenfold more than the ones road cruising yeah it was kind of an interesting thing i did a little experiment where we were out in southern california cruising around you know road cruising at night and and when we'd stop to look at a sidewind or something i'd do like a big loop you know kind of around the car into the habitat and look and i found a a shovel nose snake that way and some other thing. Almost stepped on a rattlesnake that one time when we were photographing a sidewinder. So, yeah, you got to keep your eyes where you're walking. I guess the safety situation there is, I guess you could hit it and run over it.

So its safety is probably a little worse off if you're in a car versus on foot. So anyway, anything to add. there? I don't think so. I think folks know what you feel on that. But again, get out and explore, get out in nature. Oh, I saw something interesting about, and you know, there was some researcher. And I didn't check the veracity or the validity of this, but it was like trees release something that helps improve immune health or something like that in people. It was an interesting concept, but maybe being out in the forest among trees can actually help your health. So whether or not it's true, it's probably a good idea to get out.

Certainly sounds good and feels true. If you need an excuse, use that, I guess. I got to go out and get the tree juices in my lungs. Stick it in my vein. Hook it up to my veins. All right. Next up for life or re-home with Billy Sveen. I'm not sure if this was our first show with him,

but we've had Billy on a couple times. And he's easy. Yeah, in that same box, lots of interesting ideas. Yeah, yeah. Thinks things through really well. Very thoughtful and ingenuitive in his thinking and just always a pleasure to have on the show. Very well-spoken, smart guy. I mean, he's a doctor for crying out loud.

So, but yeah, it was good, always good to get his ideations on some of these topics and thoughts about, you know, how that works. But I think the, you know, obviously the main thing of this is if you lose interest or you obligated to kind of keep that animal and take care of it until the end of its life or the end of your life, I guess. Not much you can do if you're dead. you can't really. Or is it okay to re-home with somebody who might be a little more passionate or excited about that project? So, yes, things to consider. I'm more of a keep it until, you know, it's for its life and try to give it the best life I can. But, you know, I don't often move on adult animals. I usually tend to maybe keep them. And that might be not a great thing. Maybe I should re-home a few things here. there. But I just, I go to sell something or get rid of an adult animal. I'm like, well,

I've had this for five, six, seven, eight, ten years. Like, I don't know if I can get rid of it. I really enjoy this animal, you know. So, but again, it might be better with somebody who has a little more excitement or passion. But yeah, good topics. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a good one in the sense that there are a bunch of different directions we could take that. I'm sure that, you know, again, that sounds like a billy idea because, you know, there are a bunch of different directions that go from there. I think if you're not invested in it, that it's to everyone's betterment that you move it on, right? If you're, we've seen that when people are kind of burned out, right? And if they don't have the enthusiasm for things, then we see, you know, a diminishment

and care that's being provided for stuff and, you know, even emotionally, if not actually, right? You know, some folks are able to, you know, keep pulling the rope even if they're not really feeling it, you know, which is good. But that's probably, there are certainly instances within that space where, you know, to everyone's betterment if it, you know, there's someone who could offer a better care. I think that they certainly are not emotionally attached to us in the way, you know. Right. Cats or dogs, you know, things that I think really, I mean, we see it, right, even when we go away instead that, you know, those animals are responsive to that and show emotion around that. And so I think that is a space where it's even more serious. You'd have to be that much more clear.

And the consequences are huge in that space because if animals get turned into shelters and things, there's only so many times that that happens before. or it seems there must be something wrong with the animal, even if it is not the animal's fault, right? It's just his circumstance. So I think that's, you know, more clear in that space in a reptile space where we produce animals to sell or, you know, do sell animals and things. If someone has passion for it and is super excited for it,

that doesn't necessarily, you know, the hope would be that we're keeping them well enough that, you know, sometimes the animal, their lifespan will exceed the interest, you know, exceed that person's interest and maybe there is someone, you know, they can go to a different spot and be a spark of joy for the other person. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

For sure. I saw a really interesting YouTube video that was going through the wildlife rescue and rehabilitation Center. It's in India. It's called Van Tara. And it's 3500 acres of facility, like rescue facilities. And I mean, phenomenal enclosures, diverse, you know, species, mammals, reptiles, birds. I mean, just got everything. and I mean, it's extremely impressive. And I mean, obviously, if you have a billion dollars or more, you can, you know, do that kind of thing. So, but pretty impressive that the, I can't remember the name of the guy, but yeah, used, used his money to, yeah, save animals. And there were some that had, you know, physical deformities or that were, but all of them are

rescued animals from some facility or another throughout the world, mostly from India, but throughout the world. So pretty incredible stuff. I think what's his name, that Forrest Galante was involved with it somehow, but he was featured in the video that I was watching of this. I think the guy was like a bird guy or something, but he didn't know the reptiles as well. So, but kind of crazy. So I guess that kind of falls into the rehoming. Don't rely on a billionaire, I guess, if you lose interest in your animal. Absolutely.

Still try and make good choices on the front end, absolutely. Yeah. But, yeah, always great to have Billy on and hopefully you'll have some more ideas for us in the near future. All right. Next is, am I a herpetologist or herpetoculturalist? when do you cross the line? Does it require a PhD or a master's degree in herpetology to call yourself a herpetologist? That's a question I've thought a little bit about. You know, what does it take to be an expert? I think a lot of herptoculturalists spend that, you know, 10,000 hours and are truly an expert.

and I mean, herpers, you get herpers that know probably more about the natural history of a species than anybody in the world, you know, if they care enough about it. I mean, I've got friends that have seen thousands of, you know, milk snakes or mountain king snakes in the wild. And it's pretty impressive when you can, you know, go back and back to the same or explore new areas looking for them. And I mean, Jordan's a great example with the Rosie Boas of his youth and, you know, all the stuff that he's finding now. And so, yeah, I think that's, if you're a true expert in some area of herpetology, you know, I think that's reasonable to say you're a herpetologist. But I guess the academics might disagree with that. And being an academic, I will have to disagree with me. myself and say no.

I disagree with yourself. Yeah. I mean, and to that point, like back in the day, people didn't have to have a PhD to go be a herpetologist. They just had to have that drive and passion. You know, the paper wasn't necessarily required to get a job at a university because it wasn't as common to have a PhD back then as it is now. So I don't know if they can call themselves herpetologists.

Yeah, I think I would say are you engaging with the field in a scholarly way in a deliberate, you know, mostly meaning conscientious, deliberate. And so that would fit into all the sort of practitioners that you specifically mentioned. Right. Because they have publishing and, you know, publishing your findings. Right. Because, I mean, obviously the initial descriptions of many species back in the 1800s are nothing to write home about, you know, they basically give a very vague description and even less specific. Yeah, yeah, they have one or two individuals in their hand.

Right. Yeah, they might have thought it came from somewhere where it didn't come from, like in the case of the Perthensis, the Pygmy Python that is nowhere near Perth. So, yeah, lots of things, I guess there. But I don't know, I guess it depends, too, what you're doing. Are you studying and finding new information out about these things? things in the wild and, you know, or in captivity that might relate to their natural history, or are you just producing a lot of them?

You know, like, I think definitely that's an easy thing to say, oh, I'm just breeding them, then you're a herpeticulturalist. If you don't know where they come from and what they do in the wild, then you're herpeticulturalist, and that's okay. I would encourage you to be more like a herpetologist and learn, you know, the natural history of the animals you keep and so you can hopefully meet their needs to a greater extent that way. But yeah, good stuff. Anything to add there?

No, again, an interesting, interesting idea, right? Some of it is semantic, but I think there is a greater depth to it than that. It's not purely semantic. And I think you hit on it. Okay. Can reptiles be domesticated? So I think there are certainly examples where we're working towards it. Some of the, I think the standard within livestock is 50 generations on things that typically are longer.

They're not necessarily year-over-year turnarounds. But I think particularly where we've a few examples like leopard geckos, right, where we have the hobby leopard gecko that is not an that is a multi-generation hybrid, you know, across multiple different species and subspecies. That's a unique entity that, at a minimum, is on its way towards domestication, right? It's not something that exists in the wild. And there are certainly either intentionally or unintentionally, we've selected for traits that make them more suited to captivity, make them more likely to reproducing captivity, or at least have selected for traits. that were naturally present that do make them more suitable.

Right. Yeah, and the signs of domestication include, you know, morphs and mutations and things like that popping up or becoming more of the norm. And even structural features, right? Right, yeah. The thing that jumps to mind there, right, was Anthony Caponetto used to be really big on the structure

within crested geckos in terms of saying, do they have good formation relative to wild type having big, in the males, having big, crests along the side of their head and, you know, the certain sort of wild appearance, as you would call it. So formation, you know, when you talk about breed standards and things, actually that was trying to be more like the wild, right, not have this sort of cultivated form that was clearly different. Well, and when Alan Rappashi had the first big group and was breeding them, you know, what, a cat came in the room and me out and they all dropped their tails simultaneously,

you know, like that kind of thing. Yes. That doesn't happen anymore. You know, they lose their tails much less frequently and not at the drop of a or the meow of a cat. The meow of a cat. Yeah. The purr of a cat.

So, kind of crazy. And, you know, I think, you know, body form, you know, like we talked about with. Yeah. More muscular or wiry, I guess, when you're handling it versus kind of limper. and, you know, the dogs are a classic example where their ears get floppy. They're not up and, you know, at attention, they're more floppy ears. And also asynchronous breeding, they don't have a breeding season. You can get clutches throughout the year.

And so, you know, a few different species kind of fit the bill there, I think. And, you know, we're moving at least closer or if not there. Right. There's a few examples, right, especially those that have a quicker turnaround. Right. And that's why I said the leopard gecko where you're over here. I mean, we are getting towards the point where you could be getting close to that 50 generation in leopard geckos in some specific lines. Right.

Right. Okay. Well, the last one of the night. What should we do with invasive species? That's a tricky one. I have a hard time because, you know, I always think, well, it's not their fault that they're here. And so I have a hard time, you know, running something over just because some idiot put it there and it doesn't deserve to be there or something. But I also understand the damage that they can do on the native environment.

And so, you know, it's, I guess it doesn't do much good to curse the people who brought them there in the first place. But, and I think, too, it depends on if they're truly invasive. there's another term for those that don't really compete with the native fauna and flora. Yeah. Yeah. Are they meat on the landscape? Are they a threat? Are they toxic?

Is it just a competition? Yeah, there's an entire spectrum of risk to either the ecosystem itself, our utilization of the ecosystem or the natural, quote, natural, right? Yeah, right. Which, and I bring that up, right, to highlight the idea that we do tend to view things through the snapshot of our own spot in time, and obviously a lot of these things are the product of flux, right? Right.

Right. There's even something 10,000 years ago when evolutionary time is not that long ago, it's a very long time for me. So, yeah. And that's certainly a bias that most of us kind of inherently carry with us when we view, okay, what is this supposed to look like? We have some mental picture in our mind that almost certainly if you go, well, almost certainly if you go far enough back in time, isn't correct.

Right. It didn't look like that. And that could be a, well, the entire environment, nothing would be recognizable, right? North America underwater or whatever it would be. Yeah. You know, there's over the scale of time, I think it's. everything's probably different, but, yeah, again, like a good fight club question, there's a right, it's not a clear, it's not a clear answer, you know, in the toad context, I guess,

I just become hopeful that the crows figured out and figure out they can eat can'toads from the bottom. You know, that's fine. Simultaneously, like you, I know, can also be dispirited by the idea that they continue to move west, and it's a source of concern or wanting to go not have. have an NT experience, right? Where it's like, oh, 40 years ago, it looked entirely different. There were Mitchelai literally all over the top end, and now you have to go to a couple hyper-specific spots, you know, to even have a chance to see them.

Although it does seem like maybe they were getting bounced back in Queensland and stuff. It only took 100 years from when they were first released. Exactly. To get some dedication. How they get more naturalized or, you know, part of the common landscape. but yeah, that's a tricky thing. And, you know, what is natural invasion? Because, you know, there are definitely examples of something getting blown onto an island,

and then all of a sudden it's the dominant thing. And, you know, nature has to find a balance over time and, you know, may look completely different than it did when it started, you know. So it's not a cut and dry thing either. And as someone who likes insular boas, many of which probably, probably got there in such a context, right? There's only, they basically, it's these homogenous populations that seem more or less identical to one another.

Well, that probably is a small founder population that came on, yeah, from a rafting event or a storm event or whatever it was that was, you know, the prototype single-gravid female or whatever, you know, 10,000 years and you got a Hog Island boa. Right, exactly. And, you know, not, I guess to say that it's unnatural because humans do. it, well, we're still kind of part of the environment. I mean, are dingoes natural? You know, they were brought over by their, yeah, the colonizers of Australia,

the Australian continent. So, yeah, it's a, I guess. What point do they shift, right? Uh-huh. It just highlights how much of it is our own interpretation, impression, and feeling on the issue. Exactly. So, you know, you think about, I think about in terms of rock art where,

You know, there's this old indigenous rock art. And then you've got the early pioneers that scratch their names next to the indigenous rock art. And then you've got idiots, you know, spray painting their names or scratching their names in the rocks. And it's like, well, is that really. Yeah. Yes. When in that chronology, did it become, did it shift from being? When can it be an artifact to historic, to a historic artifact to the graffiti, right?

And where is that? Where's the line? Yeah. Yeah, the longer you get away from it, the more it moves towards historical instead of, you know. So an interesting topic for sure. But, yeah, I mean, there is definitely a good thing about removing them from the environment. And I know some people have, you know, like the bullfrogs in the southwest, they don't belong here. And they've been introduced.

And they're definitely harmful to the other creatures that they share habitat. with. So I know some folks will take them and use them for feeders, you know, take their legs and feed them to different animals. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I guess as long as it's ethical, you know, you're humanely euthanizing them, you're not torturing them or, I mean, you know, we don't want to turn into it. And ideally, both ethical and for a, you know, ethical consumptive use, all the better. Right. Right. Yeah, like the coin purses and stuff in Australia that are made of cane toads and things like that, you know. Yeah. So good things to think about. Some fun topics. That'll do it for this episode of the clip show. But yeah, thanks for talking those through. It's some, it's fun to remember the conversations. And I would like to go back and listen to it. It's a little painful for me to listen to myself. But hopefully it's not as painful for you guys to listen to me as it is for myself.

But I did hear that snake talk is going away that they've. Yeah, I listened to that episode. Although it seems I wonder what it is that he has in mind. Right. So obviously there's a little bit of. So I don't think he's changing his role within, yeah, within the Orient Society or anything like that. And he's, I think, been doing this, you know, as part of his job, question mark. I don't know.

You know, or even if Avon is his own interest, but to kind of push forward that, you know, for the greater advancement of that agenda. Not to imply anything negative, just, you know, speaking frankly. That, I don't know, as I did listen to it, I thought it was interesting. But the whole, you know, stay tuned makes me wonder if it's just sort of a pivot to a different structure or a different context. He's presenting it differently. I don't know. Right. hopefully removes the hole if snakes are special creatures we know we're listening because we like snakes.

They are listening because we agree. That is true. Also, I highly recommend that Kimberly series. If you haven't taken the opportunity to watch that, go to PBS.org. You can watch it for free right now. I don't know how long that will last. It might be behind the paywall soon. but really fun. I mean, I have some critiques, but overall it was just amazing footage and really fun to see. I think my biggest critique was they didn't educate much. It's more like they don't say what you're looking at all the time. Yeah.

So it's more of kind of a storytelling thing, you know, that kind of thing. But it's really some fantastic footage. So, yeah, check it out. anything on your end do you want to promote or talk about i think today i just was running my mouth on the front end and just sort of interest first all my little anecdotes and points of interest yeah i didn't say i didn't i don't know that i saved one right for this for this segment no worries well i guess that'll do it for us then tonight thanks for listening and thanks rob for making the time to record. This is fun stuff. So we'll keep it going as long as we can.

Absolutely. All right. Thanks, Eric and Owen and NPR. And we'll catch you next time for Reptoff I Club.