Reptile Fight Club - RFC - Clipshow - The Ocho

Episode Date: December 5, 2025

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Welcome to Reptile Fight Club. It's your deep-voiced host, Justin Jolander, here. Sounding a little differently, I'm a little under the weather. So luckily, my illustrious and very brilliant co-host, Rob Stone, is here, and he can hopefully talk where if my voice fails me. But how are you doing, Rob? I'm doing great, freshly shorn. That's where I thought you would go with this.

Right. Very clean cut. That's the way it goes. It's not a political statement in either direction. It's one of these where I just really don't like the haircut process. So then I'll go to this and then it'll be four, five, six months before I subject myself to it again. And then we wind up, the cycle repeats. I'm the same way.

Yeah, during COVID, I had very long and ugly hair. But I think I prefer having shorter hair. But yeah, I just don't like the whole process of making an appointment. And the person I had cutting my hair, they left the salon. So now I don't have somebody that I know and trust, you know. But what do you do? So what I picked up is going to the barber. And this guy advertises 13.

ducks a cut. So it's not, you know, it's very, very cost-conscious. And it seems to be the same guy for probably a long time. So he really doesn't like it when it come in because I give him hippie vibes. And I think he has to get some, it's kind of a mixed bag, I would imagine, from his perspective. He gets the joy of, you know, giving the Elvis going into the military treatment to somebody. But he then has to deal with the aftermath of having done so. Right. Right. So it's a mixed bag. But I do give him. A generous tip, especially on 13 bucks. So, you know, hopefully it's a net positive for him.

Nice. Yeah. Well, yeah, I'm sure he's happy when you come in. Maybe not as happy as the gal that cut Eric's hair, but. Well, I was going to ask you to get the turnaround, but, you know, whatever. The lap sit. The lap cut. Sorry for the inside joke there.

You'll have to ask Eric Burke. He encourages you to ask him about it. Oh, yes. yes he loves he loves to tell that story good times well how's how's things with the reptiles

any all good no change you know the beauty of ectotherms is that we're getting colder here things are happening at a slower rate particularly in the not I mean heck even the West Indian boats things definitely slow down I was going to say blue root range

but yeah all across the board right they're all super responsive to the conditions and with the ambient room temperature going into the you know mid to high 60s on a daily basis they're all still out and active and looking for something and i just say no and we continue that on a daily basis so right i need to just like box up my extra that's the thing is as things stop feeding then i start piling up rodents but i rarely thaw rodents so i've just got a bunch of freezer burn rodents in my i just need to like send them over to Eric or Owen who were complaining about rodent prices and those poor saps that don't breed their own, you know, rodents send them some very cheap feeders.

Yeah, there you go. I'm sure they'd be happy and it would get, you know, would stop wasting them at my house. So I need to be better about rotating stuff. That's kind of the hard thing, too, is if you pile stuff up in your freezer, it's hard to get to the older stuff, you know. and so yeah and I've had really good production I think ever since I switched nozzle types I started

ordering the nozzles from triple L and they're really good for the watering nozzles I just had a lot of problems with the Ag Select ones they're the I don't know what the big difference is but they're the ones that you can't unscrew and

you know replace parts and things like that it's more of like a single unit and so they just seem to fail a lot less frequently. And when they do, it's like a slow, you know, like, oh, this cage is a little more wet than normal rather than flooding the whole cage when it malfunctions, you know. So it's kind of nice that way. I've had a lot less flooding and a lot better production.

And, you know, production with the rat slows down in the winter, which is okay, you know. But the mice seem to keep pushing, pumping it out. So as long as I keep them rotated regularly. Yeah. Rotate watered. Right, right. And I think on, you know, like on my March trip, I reduced my colonies very substantially. So there would be very few in a cage. And, and, you know, I could let them go for two weeks while I was gone and not have to, you know, just load up the food and have somebody water them while I'm gone and they're okay. So it works out. Yeah. But rebuilding after that, you know, it takes a little. a while, especially in the heat of the summer, you know, they kind of slow down then, too. Yeah, it's been been pretty good, pretty good.

Better in the rats than it has been for a little while and just no floods, which is a beautiful thing. That is a beautiful thing. I kept thinking there's a, there would be a great need for like a leak detection system, you know, So I thought about how I could do that for my own, you know, colony and then maybe trying to figure out how to market that or something. But, yeah, I don't know. Came up with a few ideas, but maybe someday I'll have to figure something out and help others that way. Okay. Cool.

Yeah. So, yeah, things are slowing down here. I need to get up some inland ads and start selling some of the inlands. They're looking nice. I mean, I held back a couple from the last, they're a couple years old now, or a year and a half or whatever, and I took one out the other day. It had just shed and was looking fantastic, just almost like a blue glow out of the box when I opened up the cage. And I'm like, man, that is a nice looking snake. So I think the selective breeding and the holdbacks and are starting to move that direction.

So that's been nice. That's awesome. Yeah. So it's always hard, though, because I'm like, I need to hold more back and see how they develop and things like that. But then you're sitting on, you know, two-year-old animals and you're like, I've got too many animals. I need to get rid of these. So, you know. paired a few things this week, so hopefully the season will go better in regards with

Aspeditis this year is compared with last year. So, yeah, we'll see. I've got a potential for producing a couple new species, new to me projects. So it should be exciting. Very cool. So good times. Well, excuse me. Yeah, I got this cold.

I went down to a master's water polo, you know, game night, whatever, and scrimmage kind of thing, and rode down with one of my teammates. And he was coughing the whole way down. I'm like, dude, what's going on? And then two days later, sure enough, I get this sore throat and start coughing. And so I'm like, oh, man. And now we've got a tournament up in town at Utah State on. tomorrow so basically hopefully i can uh be okay to play uh tomorrow and saturday we'll see how it's through and yeah right so it's the way it goes i guess this time of years always fun but now i

have this deep siltery voice starting to sound like phil got the phil vibes going absolutely you could you could sound like a lot worse people than phil love listening to old philly yeah so cool well we're clip showing it up again yeah the oh show the oh show i like it yeah it's a good title um so yeah what we periodically do is to go back and and kind of recap some of the shows the past you know or i guess the next 10 shows that we haven't reviewed yet and talk about kind of some maybe other ideas or, you know, opinions about the topic. Have thoughts changed since 2022? And we're still in the range where it was you and Chuck, which is more fun for me.

We're getting towards, I don't even know if we'll make a full show on the next one before I'm back. And then that makes it a little bit probably less interesting in some ways. But we'll see. We will persevere. We'll start getting guests in on the. clip shows for the input. Yeah. So yeah, I guess we can just dive in. No coin toss necessary, although it would be fun just to see, see who, if you can get one this week. Right. You get a little rough go? Tails. It is heads. Your luck continues.

Fortunately, yeah, I mean, actually, that was a lot of fun. I know it's probably been something of a weird listening experience. There's been a little miscommunication between Eric and I as to the exact cadence of when episodes had come out and we had a ton in the can and so I think there's been a bit of a jumble so we'll see how folks have made it through right where we had some stuff that was yeah it's certainly out of sequence and all I don't think it's impacted the quality of it in any way but we'll see if folks are paying attention or looking at it and then saying like wait you know you this was obviously before after you know a certain thing right you reference this in the show before it.

It happened subsequently and all those things. We do time travel from time to time. So it is hard to, you know, know, know which timeline we're in. Yeah. So, well, you know, I, I, I did, we, we definitely, you know, are not complaining about Eric's efforts because we know he does such a lion's share of the work here. We just record and ship it off to him. Ship it off.

And fortunately, it's, it's pretty low key. I think we try and make it that way. save extreme technical difficulties, you know, I'll make a note and then hopefully, again, it's, yeah, no, certainly on me of saying, hey, this is, these are issues with this, if there are any, and then keeping the order or whatever. And it's great that we've been able to basically stay on a weekly cadence. So, yeah, much appreciated. Yeah, yeah.

I think we've been doing good about keeping the flow going. You know, we don't have any trips in the near future. So I guess holidays, you know, next week might be a problem with it being things. Yeah, we might have to do a different day, figure out, you know, yeah. And maybe, you know, the interesting thing is always, maybe sometimes it makes people more available. I know we have one scheduled for the week before Christmas, which is good. We'll be excited to do that one. And then I anticipate a couple more.

So hopefully it actually means we might have to do kind of break. from our regular cadence, but maybe we actually get folks having more availability in the holiday season. Right. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, I'm the same way. You know, I'm off of work during the Thanksgiving holiday as well as the Christmas holiday. And we just got a new president of the university.

The last one was kind of a flake. She came in and like got a scepter and a crown for her coronation as president of the university, which I thought was really weird. And then she bailed on us, like a year and a half in to her presidency and took a job somewhere else and kind of was weird. She like bulletproofed her office and like walked around with guards and she had somebody driving her around. It was just bizarre. I mean, I guess in contrast to the president before her who was fantastic, she's in my department. And, like, she did a great job.

She was very connected with the students and the faculty and walked around campus with no security. I mean, I don't know what she's worried about, you know. But so that was kind of a strange thing. So, you know, good riddance. But, yeah, the new president came in and he said, hey, I declare you can, you know, not coming into work between Christmas and New Year's. So, yeah, you know, that kind of thing. I think it actually saves the university a lot of money because most people take it off, you know, take annual leave and then they have to use up their annual leave.

I don't have that problem. I take plenty of annual leave. I'm trying to build it up because we've got trips coming up, you know, next year, I hope. So, yeah, so I don't have that problem. But some people have that problem and they're going to be like, well, now what do I do? I might as well take it off anyway. or take off the whole month of December, but yeah, it's kind of strange. Some people don't get it, I guess, or maybe they like their, I mean, I love my work,

but I also not going to let vacation go by the wayside. That's kind of foolish, too. There's a lot of life to be lived outside of the workplace. Absolutely. So, yeah, good to have the new president in. He came from where I did my undergraduate degree, so. Yeah, moved up up here, so good stuff. All right, well, topic number one, are Australian reptiles unique?

I'm trying to remember how this topic came into being. It's kind of a weird, you know, I think just, did somebody recommend this? It might have been a recommendation, but, and I, you know, I think they're, I guess, I guess you could say that about any, any place, you know, but where our interest kind of lies in Australian reptiles, to a great extent. You know, maybe that makes sense that we would cover that topic. But, and, you know, maybe I heard on a podcast people talking about how Australian reptiles were special or something, you know. And, you know, they definitely are interesting and special, but unique. I don't know.

What are your thoughts? Yeah. So it's interesting. As much as I'm a kind of the splitter personality, right, who would recognize the difference and recognize and highlight the difference when we're talking about are these two, you know, forms or species the same as one another, you know, I'm more likely to highlight how they're different. I would say that recognizing sort of the roles or ecological niches that different animals fill within their own environment, when I think, okay, well, when you'd say something's unique, you'd say probably jumps to my, In terms of an Australian reptile, you'd say, oh, a mullock, right, the thorny devil, that that's a unique animal. And it's like, yeah, well, simultaneously, I'm seeing all the commonalities with their own rhinosoma, right? Our horned lizards, where you say, sure, okay, they don't have as many of the adaptations to maintain and access moisture in terms of their body form.

The wicking. Yeah, they have some of that, right? But they don't have nearly as extreme aversion. But in terms of their role within the environment, I would see. those as being sort of equivalent critters that would, yeah, I guess that would be my response. What's the most unique thing that I would, simultaneously, maybe it's not even Australian reptiles, but it's all the monotrems and things. Those, you're probably a better chance of saying those genuinely are unique and they probably

just have mammals, right, diversify at a greater rate, so they've had a greater ability to diverge from their most common, you know, the nearest common ancestor that isn't in Australia. Yeah, and maybe having reptiles kind of at the top of the food chain, whereas in North America, we have large mammals and Africa, large mammals and pretty much everywhere else, large mammals are kind of the top of the food chain. And in Australia, you've got, you know, reptiles and to a large extent, and then birds, you know, there's not a lot of large predatory mammals in Australia. You know, that could be a unique aspect of reptilian. And some of the food webs are almost entirely... insisting of different lizards and snakes and things like that. So kind of unique in that regard.

And especially with the introduced predators, knocking out a lot of the native mammals, they're becoming more and more scarce, some, you know, even going, you know, by the wayside, becoming extinct. So, you know, it's kind of a, I guess, in our human modified world, yeah, there's some unique challenges there

and introduction of cane toads and kind of throwing a wrench into all of that as well. So I don't know. Yeah, there's there's some, I guess, you know, anytime you have an animal adapted to a certain type of environment. And I guess, you know, I always thought, oh, you know, the southwest, Utah, you know, some of the deserts are very unique. And then I go to some, you know, places in Australia or some places in Egypt or, you know, or in the Middle East. And I'm like, no, this looks very similar to, to my home. You know, this. this could be in my this could be in arches or zion or something like that so you know that's kind of the there are very similar habitats throughout the world and and there's animals that are adapted many in very similar ways and so you know it's hard to say anything's truly truly unique i was thinking about that for some nothing is or everything is i guess the way this would fall yeah right yeah yeah it's kind of an interesting question and

more of a philosophical topic than really something to fight about, you know, you know, but I guess, yeah, I guess frilled lizards are kind of unique, but they also, we also have the mysticus, the, um, what's the, staceous, yeah, the, uh, phrynekephalus. Yeah, yeah, which has kind of the frills on the side of his mouth, not, not quite as big or, or, uh, fancy as the frilled lizard, but similar, uh, threat display or, or, or trying to frighten a predator or something like that. So, yeah, that's, that's, I guess we can, um, maybe we should all go back and relisten to that episode to figure out what,

what the point of the distinction went. I listened to a little bit of it, but I don't know that I got the thread. So right. Or even better, let's go back to Australia and view the, there we go. The wildlife and see how unique things are. Yeah. Um, all right.

well next one is legality and hurt projects with billy's fiend um billy's a repeat guest and he's really very intellectual and and uh thinks very hard he just published a paper on on one of his thought topics and we need to have him back on to kind of discuss that and fight that topic as well so we like having billy on and um and i believe this one was uh like how some of the projects that come into herpeticulture or through you know back channels or you know black market type type gray market yeah and and i think his um example was dart frogs and you know how nothing's uh or you know exports are not allowed from certain countries similar to the australian situation but if you know somebody from europe smuggles them and then captive breeds them and then

sends them to the u.s and oh it's okay now you know and is that is that the case um i do have a better recollection of this one you know more complete and yeah you're summing up well and um yeah as ideal mixed feelings right right yeah so what what do you got what are your thoughts on that topic yeah i mean on the one hand right you have the idea of to the extent these things are already here right it's a question of sort of embracing and maximizing particularly in the dark frog context. If these are things that exist in the captive space, if you're choosing a moral, a theoretical moral high ground to not engage with them and then having them disappear, well, you may just be recreating the incentive for someone

else to replicate it going forward if we're looking at it through the lens that, you know, this is a thing that exists at least for now and that people are going to be interested in as a unique, different form. Simultaneously, if you're engaging with that commercially, then you're supporting it. So it's, to me, that's kind of a betwixt in between situation. So, and I think that's really sort of the moral quagmire, the whole thing. And I've kind of, I guess, I don't know the word, like, just kind of made it okay in my own mind, where if something's removed from captivity, for the purposes of captive breeding,

to make sure that nobody ever has to take that thing out of the wild again. I mean, it's hard to say that's a negative outcome. You know what I mean? Like, Bearded Dragons, there's no shortage of bearded dragons, and there will always be avenues for the most part for bearded dragons in the U.S. hobby. Were those, maybe some of the original ones were legally exported, and that's, you know, arguable. And that certainly comes into play.

Right, right. part of it. Whenever we view these things as black and white, firm prohibition, that's almost never the case. There's almost always, they wouldn't be around to be marketed in that context if the answer was all of them were always smuggled. It's a gray market situation where like someone, somewhere got a permit for some of them. And then sort of everything got the veneer of that label. And even things that we think would fit firmly into a box where they've never been legally cleared or haven't been legally cleared in the last 25 years. Denver Zoo used to have shingle black skinks that had, you know, came with them, cleared,

you know, fish and wildlife paperwork that said, yeah, they were imported as shingleback skinks. No, you know, not an issue. Jamaican boas endangered species acts, I'd say he's won. Same deal, you know, so those things have come in. So it's oversimplified. The view that, oh, all X of Y, because, you know, You know, we've heard particularly in the Australian context, but, oh, well, those weren't even described when they were, you know, by the time Australia was closed for export, sure, but that doesn't mean no animals have been approved for export since that time. Right.

You know, whether it had that appellation, you know, different questions. And almost always the answer is if it was as simple as that messaging that, oh, they're just obviously illegal, well, then they would have been confiscated. Right. You know, if it was that simple, then the solution would be more simple. They wouldn't be here. So I always, my natural reaction is to push back on that a little bit and say, okay, well, it's probably a little more complicated and just recognizing how much I don't know, particularly when it comes to the, you know, personal wheelings and dealings of every person and institution in the world. Right. There's so much that we don't have visibility into.

Yeah. And I almost think that the legal stuff angers me more, where you're importing thousands of certain species that may not even do well in captivity. You're going to bring them in here for their slow, you know, miserable death. Slow deterioration. Yeah. And you're going to charge five bucks for them, you know, just this flesh peddling nonsense that goes on. And they're half dead at the table at the show, you know, and some poor sap buys one and it dies in a couple of. days, you know, and I, it seems like, you know, you have a very good chance of running into that.

I had that experience with a box turtle when I was a kid. I, you know, saw one at a pet shop. I fell in love with it. I begged my parents. They bought it. We brought it home and all of a sudden I noticed this hole in its, like, neck area. We pulled out maggots, like out of its neck cavity. And like, I mean, just a miserable situation. We tried to clean it up and nurse it back to health, but it died, you know. And I was just like, what the heck? Why? are they selling this a b why does it have maggots in it you know like what is going on here and so you know i i have a hard time being hard on a gray market that results in the captive bread readily available species that's well cared for commands a little bit more of a price because

it is captive bread and healthy doesn't have maggots falling out of it like you know give me a break with your morality if that's a pretty high part yeah so I, you know, I don't know, I think I, and you know, you don't want to say, well, make everything, you know, regulated or have no exports or things like that because, you know, it is important to get new blood for certain projects. But at the same time, like, who is it, was I was probably listening to you on the Reptile Rejects podcast talking about certain species that, where Cameron was like, I can't bring those in, you know, yeah, it's legal, but there's no infrastructure to go collect them. And if I do, they're probably not going to be in great shape when they get here if there's not a good system for it. So, you know, all those things taken together, it's like really hard. And I've had, you know, I had some friends that are that, you know, got busted or got in trouble for bringing in Australian reptiles and did their time or whatever, you know, did their, had their consequences. But, you know, they brought in and established all these wonderful projects that nobody else will ever have to.

bring in again, you know? And the stuff they established is now fairly inexpensive, affordable, and readily available. So, you know, I don't know, that gets my air up a little bit. There you go, Dom. There's a little anger and fire for, even though we're not fighting about it. I think that's kind of where I fall on that side of the topic. I may have brought that. I don't remember how if I was that tough on Billy, you know, they're like that fired up. A real key distinction, right, that you drew there is kind of, and that always is meaningful to me, is, are you bringing that in to flip it in and of itself, or is it sort of the, what we colloquially call the German model of getting a smaller number of animals to produce those sort of founder animals that become the genesis for that, or is it just a, is it the ring python, blind man's bluff ring pythons that are artificially depressing the price for ring. pythons in the united states based on the continued smuggling of baby animals right yeah that that was the yeah that that is where that came up is your interview with those guys so yeah that's that's uh you know

i guess the the question you know which which is which is better for the animals and which is better for herberticulture and um all those things i i definitely can't fault the folks the German model folks, where they're bringing stuff in, establishing it responsibly, and then releasing offspring. And I get to work with stuff that I never would have dreamed possible because of those efforts, even though they were, you know, functionally gray or even black in some regards, you know, it's weird just to have a government say, no, you can't have anything. You know, everything is prohibited. And for what and for what reason, right? Yeah. And then it's all the harder when we go to Australia

So one of the episodes that we'll have coming up certainly is Paul Duren when he comes back from his, man, it actually has given me sort of second thoughts about our conversation from last week in terms of, you know, where I said, oh, you know, Central Australia automatic downgrade because you just went there. I don't want to replicate what man, he is killing it. Yeah. He is killing it. Right, right. And so, you know, when we go there and see all the stuff that's just dead. on the road and it does become for who and for what is it that we have all these sort of structures in place and that's not to say i certainly don't advocate breaking those laws not something i would

do myself not interested in it um but it does you know give context to that even the shingleback idea right so you saw 40 live you know 40 plus live ones on your south australia trip how many were on the road and that was an issue you brought up even going back what a dozen years when your first W.A. trip. And you're talking about all the ones that you're seeing. And that's an animal that's or the Malcolm Douglas, you know, when he's out in far rural W.A. in the late 80s, early 90s. And he's out there with some indigenous folks who find the most beautiful looking WOMA

that I could possibly imagine and they club it and eat it as though it's, you know, for four bucks worth of meat or whatever. And it's like in the United States at that time, were there the mechanism to do so, you know, that's the gross gross product of that entire community would have been available to him for that animal. Yeah, and it seems like that's, you know,

and that's kind of a question, you know, I think the Owen Peli project, you know, that Gavin is kind of put on having that benefit to the indigenous people that live in the area where the Owen Pellies are from, you know, and they see that benefit of amplifying the numbers and giving back to their community and then getting there,

go ahead to release some back into the environment. What a cool thing, you know? So, I don't know. I mean, there's always, of course, there's, you know, two sides to every coin and somebody probably has problems with certain aspects of that. And, you know, that's fair. But, I mean, I guess I just see a net positive in that regard

of even some of the, legal projects or you know john weigel establishing caranada so they're one of the most commonly produced animals in australia and then you know we're legally exported to sweden and and then through through to the rest of the world and now we can have a very rare and you know difficult to find snake in the wild um in our living room so right um it's it's hard to find fault in that there are definitely things that fit into a box where there are absolutely more of them in captivity than there are in the wild. I would imagine the new Caldonia geckos in Lichianus, there are almost certainly more of them in boxes in captivity than they're in the wild. Right. Yeah. So, you know, it's, and I guess the extent you have to go to, I mean, hearing John Weigel and Gavin Bedford talk about how difficult it was to get the government to play ball,

to allow them to establish those, you know, potentially endangered, you know, rare or limited-ranged reptiles that are, you know, very rarely seen. Nothing was really known about them. And they went out and did all that legwork with the government, did all the legwork in the field to get them, and then did all the legwork in captivity to produce them. I just, hats off to those guys, you know, that's a rare, rare event. absolutely it makes those projects all the more special i guess i i highlight the silliness and what i just said myself i should have just highlighted that crested geckos that's obviously true

and probably by a factor of a hundred all right yeah yeah i did it i just watch uh some of dave calfman's uh footage and oh did he go out there yeah yeah he went out to new caldoney he did he did this a while ago, I think. He went with Quetzel and found, you know, crested geckos in the wild and leech on us. That would be really cool. Some other cool, uh, cool, uh, tree skink of some sort that was kind of, I think he said it's the first time it's been filmed. Maybe filmed in 4K or whatever, you know, like that kind of distinction.

You're right. This is the first time it's been filmed by me. A little, a little bit more rare than that. But yeah, it's kind of very cool. All right. Well, Are we ready to move on or you have any other? Probably. And say, okay, rodents, better to breed them or buy them. Go. So I think so long as you have, you know, you have the means and it's legal to do so,

that absolutely the ability to produce them yourself and time, right? That's the other function. It seems like mostly when people express it, it's a, it's the nexus of the ability to do it and the time to do it and interest in doing it. If those factors align, absolutely you should produce your own. I don't really think there's, in some ways, there's not really two sides to that. It would just be saying, well, I don't satisfy those criteria, so therefore I don't. Right, right.

Yeah. I mean, I guess you can trade, you know, money for your effort and time. You know, you'd say, well, I'd rather just spend the money rather than spend my time. And that's kind of what you're trading. And I guess it also depends on the supply and demand. the risk of getting bad feeders from, you know, somewhere else. And that could be a challenge, too. I've had experiences with that where we've got some feeders that were kind of questionable,

and I fed them off, and then a snake would die. And you're like, what the heck? Like, I didn't think the consequences would be that severe. I thought maybe it would regurgitate it, but not die, you know. So those kind of things are, you know, there's some sketchy things that happen with some of the feeder rodents supplies. And I think when people don't have the supply to meet the demand, then they have to get them from... The more likely those problems are.

Yeah, right? Exactly. So, yeah, and shortages of rodents, it seems like there's less people that we're producing them and reliably and in numbers. So, yeah, that was always kind of my plan B if I lose my job at the university is to breed rodents. It seems like there's always a need and always a demand for them, especially if you can come in and offer lower prices or things like that. So I don't know. I did Benson, when he was, you know, living in Virginia, he got an inn at a, one of the

scientific supply companies that breeds rodents for biomedical research. And so they produced, you know, thousands of rodents a week, you know, that kind of thing. and they definitely have some excess that they don't sell or get too old or whatever and they call those and they just give them to somebody. But the stipulation is you have to take all of them when we, you know, have them ready for you. You have to be there ready to take them, have your own coolers, take all that we give you and beat it. You know, you can't resell them either. So that was kind of the thing.

So this guy said, hey, I just get too many. rodents i can't i can't use them also if you want to come get in on this you have to be here at this time with your cooler and ready to go and so ben would go out there and get a nice uh cooler load of rodents for free you know because they uh just wanted them gone kind of thing so nice perk if you can get into that inner circle i guess sure yeah that sounds so it's interesting right The other maybe a different variation on that that we've heard of, you know, there's what you talk about with stuff dying is issues associated with the processing, maybe of people receiving a not quite as firmed up deal as that, where they'll be frozen in this giant pile and then defrosted several times. And obviously when you're talking about, you know, fresh protein in that context, every time it's thawed, you know, and rebagged and all those things, it's greatly increasing their potential risk. is so safe ingesting that.

Yeah, that freeze-thaw cycle degrades protein and, you know, tissue. And so you're going to have potential issues there. I don't know. It's hard to think, like, what would cause that? Because, I mean, wild reptiles are eating, you know, DOR. Gereon, basically, yeah. It's like, how do they survive that? But feed them one of these weird rodents from captivity and they die of it.

So kind of crazy. But I don't know. I highly recommend it if you can do it. I mean, if you're, if you get, like I produce enough for my, my collection and, you know, a few here and there that are additional to that. And, I mean, it takes me maybe two hours a week. It's not, it's not a huge investment of time. And I've got it down to kind of a science where I, you know, have enough water that'll last a week. And unless there's a cage leak or something, then you run into those problems.

And I've had a number of setbacks where if one cage leaks, then that leaves the rest of the cages without water. And then their production goes down because they're dehydrated for a few days. So, you know, you still need to check on them and keep an eye on things. But it can be pretty straightforward, pretty easy. It's not too hard a venture to do. Absolutely. Well, and I suppose the key is, right, that they're mammals. They're not a reptile. So as reptile keepers, we're used to having sort of a relaxed schedule on some of this stuff. They're very tolerant in general. It's really being firmly in the farmer mentality, where the biggest key is availability and the ability to just sort of perform the daily routine thing so that nothing is extraordinary. Right. And then if you can do that, then And day after day, year after year, you're going to have success. Right.

And those, you know, freezer bags and the sealer, you know, the vacuum sealers, not expensive, you know. Especially chest freezers that doesn't, doesn't develop frost, all that stuff. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Good stuff. All right. Well, next one is, and so this, that topic leaves 22 behind and we enter 2023. So moving forward in time here.

Should you have a big collection? Should you? Depends on the situation, I suppose. What are your thoughts? Right, where you're at, what your motivations are? All those things obviously, you know, play into it. I know we're both kind of going in the direction of no, right? Or, you know, trying to enjoy both our time, the animals that we do have.

So, yeah, my answer at this point would be pretty clear. Although it would be different than my answer 10, 12 years ago. I definitely had a lot more then, and it was, well, we'll, were your motivators and that's really the question i think is like um it could be either but it depends what your motivators are and i guess the real key is just sort of operate accordingly do what it is that makes you happy so particularly as long as that's sort of an informed choice and really you know and that's i think maybe what that question is really getting at is that often the and erics talked about this a lot the uh enjoyment of the chase and the acquisition of those

new animals can sort of create this cycle where you're perpetually just sort of adding without re-evaluating why you're doing so right right and and if you've i don't know if you're like me and you get kind of attached to things even if you deem like the project like oh this is probably not for me you keep it anyway instead of moving it on to somebody else because you're like oh i love this animal i raised it from a baby you know like i'm not letting this go and i i you know so that's that's kind of a tricky thing too, but I need to be more callous. Get this thing out here. But yeah, that's, and I think I really like the idea of filling that chase hole, whatever

you want to call it, you know, with herping. I mean, you're finding new things out in the wild. You can observe them, take pictures, enjoy the experience, and then leave them to their own devices in the wild. and they will be happy and I mean of course nature can be brutal but they'll go on their merry way and you can not have to feed them and house them for you know the next two decades or three decades or however long they're going to live so I think the herping is a nice kind of balancer to make you think do I really need this or should I just enjoy it in the wild you know I think I'm I'm regretting

you know some things like i think i'd rather just see that one in the wild i i love them and i you know i'm happy to work with them but i think i'd just rather just see that one in the wild absolutely and i think it helps too with sort of keeping a healthy perspective when you see other people have great success you know it jumps to mind just this week uh dust and gran had hatched out uh centicoles yeah yeah congrats that whole you know that whole you know know, all that went into that and what that looks like and all of that. And it was really, really great to be able to look at that in the context of being super happy for him, excited for him, thinking that that's awesome and amazing and simultaneously having not even an inkling of jealousy saying, oh, I wish that was something that I had done or that, you know, was in my house or any of those things, I can just be purely happy for him. And that's really its own, you know, its own joy and treasure.

Right. Now, on the flip side, I will admit that seeing something in the wild makes me either appreciate it more in my collection or makes me think, maybe I do need to see that every day rather than just once a year in the wild or less, you know, like, I don't know. Just seeing that wild bretles, you know, hanging from a tree just and watching it crawl back up and going. to its tree hollow or higher branches or whatever it's like okay i really appreciate what i do have and i want to go home and give those animals a better better environment or up my game with them or something or appreciate them more whatever you know whatever the case may be um i think it can maybe go both ways you know seeing uh the kimberley rock monitors climb around on the wall

I was just like, how cool would that be to make a big, giant, you know, enclosure with rock walls and watch that every day. Just go sit in front of the cage and watch it like a TV or something. It's pretty cool. But even then, right, to be able to give that experience, you're going to be severely limited in terms of the number of things you could do that for. So I agree with you. Right. If it's like, oh, okay, I want to have a half dozen Kimberly Rocks that are filling the space that I otherwise would have, you know, dozens. Hire collection.

Right. Yeah. And I, yeah, that's, that is the, the challenge. And even then, you're still shortchanging them. You know, you're still not giving them. Yeah. I mean, you're removing a lot of the externalities that also mean that they need that much space. Right.

They don't need to cover that much ground to find the food because you're providing, externally providing the food. There isn't the risk of predation that requires all those extra crevices and all those things. You have the conditions tied in. So it's some of both, right? As much as it's less, it also you're externally supplying a lot of the things that make them require that space as well. Exactly. Yeah.

So, I mean, it's, yeah, it is, I guess, wanting them to have that, you know, at least, at least room to move and thrive, you know, that kind of thing is, yeah. I guess I see people like Brandon Shifflett and Rare Earth, you know, his monitor enclosures are fantastic and just beautiful and get the job done very well. He's very successful. So, you know, things like that. Yeah, I guess they're doable. The racks of cattle troughs for sure. Right, right, right. And, you know, I guess the cattle troughs definitely made those kind of things more accessible.

And then, you know, Frank was very successful with those. So, you know, it's hard to, but I'd much rather stare at a well-designed enclosure rather than have a farming system that works really well to pump them out, you know, and breed the animals. But just, you know, tomato tomato. All right. Many other thoughts on that topic? No, I think that's a lot of it.

Yeah, I do feel bad for the guys who are not able to go herping, because they can't leave their giant collection. I feel really bad for them, you know, because, like, the joy that I feel herping. And, you know, I think Dom kind of mentioned that. Like, oh, you guys have shifted a lot towards herping. Well, I think in my personal life, I've shifted a lot more towards herping. Absolutely. And, you know, I mean, obviously, I've loved the herb trips that I've gone on.

But I think you really kind of gave me that perspective change or that view of, you know, of like, I need to get to know my own area and where we couldn't go to Australia. Like, why am I spending so much time and effort to get over across the ocean when I could be doing, you know, many short trips in my own backyard? And so, or exploring Texas or Arizona or, you know, seeing new things just close by, you know, a short quiet or a long drive near to where I am. So, yeah, that's been really enjoyable to get across the country. country and see what America has to offer and, you know, what Utah has to offer. I've lived here my whole life for the most part. And, yeah, I haven't seen everything in Utah yet.

So I've got got a little, a few more things to see. But, yeah, it's getting close. But very enjoyable. Absolutely. Yeah, to not be able to do that because I'm chained to a collection, you know, that's, I feel bad for you. Yeah. I've heard that from.

number of oh i'd love to go out there but i just can't leave my collection like wow i i i think when i like you said like when you think of reptiles like you should be able to leave a reptile for a couple weeks and not have it die or crash or you know be too far out of the way maybe you know there's a few exceptions to that lizards it's harder than snakes frog sure yeah yeah i mean but the other part of it right because i i do think Certainly with some specific examples that jump to mind, it's like it's more a function of their role within your life, right? So a lot of the people that say that, it's more like, well, that is the source of their livelihood, right? Right.

And so just the risk of being absent from it, you know, would be too great. That's true. Yeah. So I guess go into it with your eyes open. You know, don't expect to be a millionaire overnight and don't expect to, just because you have a lot of reptiles doesn't mean you're going to sell all those reptiles very easily and all those kind of things. You know, there's a lot of things to consider. Okay, to handle or not to handle with Noah Richardson. That was a fun topic.

You know, I think at least in my collection, I am not handling as much, you know, maybe during, cage changes and stuff, but I don't go out and just get at, I mean, I will. I have certain animals that I really enjoy handling and getting out. There's others that are like, you know, I'll get them out if I'm changing their cage, but I'm not necessarily, it's more like having fish, you know, versus having a dog or a cat or something like that. So I love to view them and enjoy them, but I think the stress or, you know, of them trying to get, get away from me or to, defend themselves against a perceived threat or whatever outweighs some of that enjoyment of handling them depending on the species of course yeah yeah absolutely i think my for me it's

pretty similar i would say that yeah you definitely have favorites you know that are uh certainly always always good yeah just it's get them out check them out and um kind of hang out with them not necessarily watch tv you know not that old but uh great you know to take them out really look at them and what I would say is that the more that I'm shifting towards naturalistic enclosures where I can see them demonstrating natural behaviors, the less my inclination to engage with them in that way. Right, right. I think it might be a little bit of a function of age too where when you're young and macho,

you've got to pick up everything, catch it, you know, and that's a later topic as well. So that'll kind of apply here. but, you know, handling stuff may sometimes fall into that. Taking it out, you know, around your town to show how cool you are and, you know, with your shirt off and your mullet blowing in the breeze, you know, could be. And then I can't say that I haven't done that before. I was in a parade with my python as a kid, you know, like my big Burmese python around my shoulders walking through the little town square, you know, on the way to the,

fairgrounds or whatever so you know i think it's it's all maybe within us but yeah i do enjoy handling uh reptiles of course but i also enjoy watching them and not handling them too so i think i prefer more watching than handling but you know it depends on the the species and my mood i guess i don't know you know i i hate to anthropomorphize and say they get something out of being handled. I've heard people, you know, claim certain things, and it's very difficult to say yes or no, you know, are they having a complete stress shut down response, you know, like going toward, you know, like a monitor, you'll catch it in the wild and it'll just like freeze and hold still. Oh, he likes me. He's relaxed. And then as soon as you put him down, he's zipped off, you know, he's out of

there. He's not sticking around to hang out with you because he loves you so much, you know. So it's like one of those can't anthropomorphize some of these things. But, yeah. And it was nice having Noah on. He's an NPR, you know, chat group member. Yeah. It puts in some good thoughts and stuff like that. So good to have them on.

All right. Next we had an Australian guest, Mitchell Hodgson, who put in a request to debate the topic of, you know, pet shops or even, you know, local breeders being able to sell giant reptiles, big species. So, you know, should you be able to buy a baby water monitor at a reptile show or something easily, you know, should it be more of a, you know, interview or whittling down of like, I'm sorry, this is not for you kind of thing? it seems like anybody with the you know the amount on the price tag is going to be ended over reptile in some situations you hear the stories you know especially like the hamburg reptiles yeah yeah get yourself a nile crocodile you can keep it in your bathtub for at least a year what do you do with it when you take a bath or shower uh put it in the garbage Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So definitely unique situations with giant pythons, giant monitor lizards, you know, tortoises. I mean, how many of those thousands of sulkadas that are bred and sold, you know, ever make it close to their adult size or adult health? And, you know, it's really kind of a sad thing to think about, you know, like how many of those giant. pythons those are giant reticulated pythons or 20 feet plus or whatever yeah that's um sad statistics so and very few people have the ability to keep those things the way they need to

be kept that's uh that's kind of a hard thing you know yeah because you want people to be able to enjoy and interact with the animals that they want i mean that and they're amazing Yeah. In their natural form, in their capacity, all those things. But yeah, it's difficult legislating that, making it, finding the line of best fit there is difficult. Right, right. And I think that kind of falls into the self-policing arena, you know, where you kind of need to, we need to kind of police ourselves in that regard and really not sell to minors or, you know, like, that don't. don't have a good plan in place for when this thing reaches adulthood or, you know, they don't

have the money to feed it, you know, a small goat or whatever, you know, like those kind of things should definitely be taken into consideration and what happens if they leave for school and they can't take their big, you know, reticulated python or their parents going to take care of it for them or are they going to find a new home and those kind of things. You can't just drop it off at a zoo or that's that's something people used to do a lot and they'll still do and and the animals just too many well that's the thing that jumps to mind right is so many of those giant reptiles have rather than having massive offspring so cuban bow is being an exception the most of them just have a whole heck of a lot of them right which then creates this incentive to be a little bit

more willing to engage you know willing to home things and situations that might not appear because it just needs to move either for financial reasons or because they're being the breeders being eaten out of house and home by them. Right. Yeah, it's definitely a challenge because I would not like to see them disappear from, you know, herpeticulture. They have an interesting place. And I think, you know, obviously like maybe seeing them in the wild, seeing them in a zoo might,

you know, scratch that edge to see a giant python. But I think that's a lot of times where we get that interesting. and be like, oh, I could, I could just see myself having that giant python and, you know, and, you know, yeah, when I was a kid, my parents let me get a, I mean, you know, like, what, 13, 14 somewhere on there, let me get a Burmese python, you know, and it was from the local pet shop and, you know, not very expensive. And I think he just wanted to get rid of it. And it was in a very, you know, overly small cage that he provided with the snake. I'm like, the thing barely fits in this thing you know like cage like oh no he you know he likes his you know that tight space is good for him I don't know about that so I'd let it you know I put him in a different cage and he was able to get out of it and then he'd turn on the lights and roll over the door handles and get out of the room and crawl around the house you know it's like that's not great either you know all the good things yeah so yeah that's a a very difficult topic um

I don't know. It's hard. Yeah, agreed. And I think, you know, being in Australia, he's seeing a lot of lace monitors, Parentis, you know, Argus, the big, hungry, you know, insatiable appetite, giant lizards. You know, that's, if they're kept correctly, that's another extra challenge, you know. All right. Well, the next one was with Eric Summer. We debated funner topic of lizards versus snakes, you know, which is kind of the better group. So that's a hard one for me.

And Eric Summers was involved with some desert tortoise research, so that's kind of fun to have him on. And I really like desert tortoises. So, you know, talking about that species is near and dear to my heart. So, yeah, it was fun to discuss, you know, to just, I don't know, I like both of them. I can't pick a favorite, I don't think. So, trying to think if I could only keep one animal, it would it be a lizard or a snake? I mean, lizards obviously take a lot more effort and time and energy and food and, you know, whereas snakes are a little lower metabolism.

don't need to eat as much and you know those kind of things so some advantages for my lifestyle the snakes win out for sure because i do much better with the snakes than i do with the lizards because i don't have as much time as i i would probably need to be more successful they're all healthy and happy but i just don't produce them you know as well as i could so that's i guess um they don't i don't necessarily need to produce them but you know it's kind of the i guess we've missed or that's that's kind of the thought process why get one when you can get a pair and breed them and you know that kind of thing so maybe getting out of that mindset would be helpful too and you know then i could just keep a lizard for enjoyment rather than but then are you

shortchanging the lizard it's not able to um meet itself evolutionary potential of multiplying itself. So I don't know. Do you have a preference? So I think in fairness, for me it would probably be snakes. There are certainly lizards that I'm super interested in, right? In the context of veranids, particularly odatria stuff, Neferruis, the Oedura, Naltinus. for sure, you know, the former racadactylos.

But on balance, you know, particularly, I just think of it in the context where I feel herping. I love watching lizards engage with their environment for sure, but nothing gives me a charge the way a snake does. Right. Whatever it is, be it a garter snake. It could be, it is different, a different level, I think, for me. personally right yeah it is uh that's i i guess i just love them all you know like give me both of them

i'll take a lizard or a snake if i'm not seeing anything i'll take either in in the herping context but sure um yeah what i'd get most yeah i mean depends on the the type the group if i'm seeing a parenti forget about it like yeah you know but you know if i see a rough scale python that would equal you know seeing a parenti i would think or a bretile like yeah yeah exactly justin today you're going to turn up one but only one of a bretile right and if i've seen a parenti already maybe i choose the bretel or you know it just depends or you know i don't know if i could only see one what would i want to see yeah that's that's a sophie's choice right there yeah but i guess that's the beauty of it is you can see a lot of different things

or see miss on a lot of the things you want to see you know that's that's always an option for herping too so or go to the zoo and get a get a fill tick see stuff and and yeah i get to enjoy it there no no harm in that for sure all right next we talked about reptile hydration so um i don't know I think, I guess maybe I'm a desert rat, so I think in a lot of terms in animals in the desert and seeing some of the, you know, just disgusting, filthy pools that, you know, the animals have to drink out of because there's no other water source for miles around or being in somewhere, you know, that has nice, clear standing water, you know, that's replenished. And I don't know, it's, I think a lot of reptiles are evolved to be without a lot of water in their environment. But when you transition them into a cage with limitations and, you know, a dehydrating bulb in the corner, you know, like, I think there's, there's a lot of, we need to provide things with, with hydration as best we can. And in a form that they recognize.

I mean, I still have my mind blown by, I know what you, he, you know what I'm going to say. Yeah. Peter NACIS, his interview on, NACIS and in his interview on chameleon, the chameleon, what is it? Academy Academy podcast. Yeah. Yeah. Camellian Academy podcast where he talks about chameleons getting their hydration through fog. You know, that's such a cool paradigm shift.

And they're just neat. So I think that can be a challenge in a captive setting to, you know, understand how they need it. And there's some reptiles that just really don't need a standing dish of water. Got to consider that. Yeah. And I mean, so much of that depends upon our sort of broader environmental conditions where we're keeping them. Right.

There's so much conversation around how you keep. desert species if you're in on the east coast particularly southeast um i was listening to uh frank pain on the gecko podcast uh gecko exchange podcast um and they were talking about actually franakephalus uh okay was i think the main main sort of thrust of the of the episode and but he was talking about timon species and out sort of his conditions associated with overwintering them in addition to the franocephalus. And he was talking about trying to mediate the moisture available to them in hibernation, right? Because they need to have some access to moisture, but you certainly wouldn't want to keep them cold and wet, right?

That would have deleterious effects. So it was trying to find that balance. And even as he was talking about it, I was like, well, so much of the key, I'm envisioning him being up in, generally speaking, Eric and Owen's neck of the woods. And the ambient humidity that's there compared to what we have for you and I, obviously we're going to have to engage this a little bit differently and more dramatically than what he's doing to have the same level of success. Right. And I think too, like thinking about reptiles that live in the desert, you think, oh, they need an arid environment. But you think about something like a woma that's in a very arid environment, but they're under the ground 75% of the time, which is 90% humidity. So, you know, are they in an arid environment or are they in a micro climate that's much more humid and much more? And so, and how often are they out in the arid, you know, time or are they out after rains or are they out when it's, you know, the dew point hits or whatever? So, you know, it can get quite humid in the, even in the desert at the right time of night or the right time of the year.

So, yeah, there's a lot of considerations that are very different. difficult to replicate in captivity. Another kind of paradigm shift was listening to Ron St. Pierre and his interview, where was he on? Was he on with you guys? Anyway, he was talking about, you know, going out and as soon as the dew point hit, all of a sudden, all the annoles were coming out. And, you know, where he's catching him for the pet trade, that was like, you know, these invasive species for the pet trade, that was kind of good knowledge to have, you know. and how do we adapt our captive settings to accommodate things like that, which definitely are very important in the wild, or are they even important in captivity?

You know, do you have to replicate certain things? Sure. Well, and the other two things that jump to mind, right, are the idea of reptile egg incubation. Right. And the challenges associated with Aspedites amongst other species where it's like you're looking to find that, sort of replicate that ability to have a super high humidity. without actual moisture that's going to cause deterioration in the shell, right? The ability to find that nexus is really important.

With some things, others are far more tolerant, right? The other part that jumps to mind is I do think a lot of going back to sort of old-school herb-keeping, herb struggles, those sorts of things, is the idea that how much of our, of the issues that we run into with our captive animals are a symptom of long-term prolonged dehydration, right? When we're talking about egg binding, things like that, of saying, okay, is this actually is dystosia a function of prolonged dehydration, chronic dehydration? Yeah.

As opposed to, you know. Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's, there's a lot of things that are not well understood. And like you said, they depend on where you live too. like he could have an issue that somebody in another state like what are you talking about there's no issue you know i have i don't have to add water to my incubation medium i just pull it out of the garage and it's plenty hydrated it's perfectly hydrated yeah absolutely or even yeah in that same way right the idea that oh rosy bow is in the southeast you can only offer them water once a week or you know

it'll overdo it i've never had that issue right i don't keep them at this point but you know previously never ran into that issue whatsoever could keep a water bowl in there all the time and because my ambient humidity was sufficiently low I never had it run into that problem right right yeah a lot of a lot of things to consider there with reptile hydration that's a good good topic that is a good yeah I might have to go back and listen that one see what we talked about um all right to catch or not to catch. I alluded to this one. And I think, you know, I wonder if that depends on if you were raised on Steve Irwin or not, you know, like picturing yourself diving into the sand to catch that monitor lizard or something as it tries to escape into the spin effects. You know, that kind of,

I wonder how much of an influence somebody like Steve Irwin would be on whether or not people are wanting to catch things in the wild and because i mean that's that was his big thing you'd get out there get hands on the animal show the camera you know that kind of thing it'd be snapping it or biting him or whatever you know and it's like just added to the excitement you know and um i don't know i guess depends on what it gets you excited it depends what it is you know what the context is how many you've seen or what yeah absolutely so many variables that go into it i would say generally speaking, yeah, it's always pretty fun, you know, where it's legal, permissible, and safe. Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, get that wanker shot, you know, you with a big smile on your face,

enjoying your first interaction with Species X is kind of a fun thing for sure. I'm, I guess I'm, as I age, maybe, I'm getting less and less inclined to grab stuff. I'd rather watch it do its thing. first, you know, like see what it's, for example, like there were many times I could have grabbed that Gloward Eye, the Kimberly Rock Monitor. And I mean, I was up right next to it. It's climbing right in front of me. And instead of grabbing it, I just sat and watched it and filmed it and videoed it. I mean, obviously it's illegal to grab them, but plenty of people grab them, you know, so just to get a better look at them or whatever. But I didn't see a purpose in it you know i really like the only thing this is going to do is make it leave as soon as i let it go

right and i would rather interact with that and watch it for longer and just see it hunt and catch stuff and i mean that's one of the things uh that the the um enzo kind of showed me was that you know if you watch them you can see really cool behaviors he watched them catching frogs in the leaf litter i didn't know the kimberley rock monitors ate Frogs, you know, like you wouldn't think of. Like a frog is a meal for a Kim Rock. So it's kind of a cool thing to think about. You could see something new or interesting or make some observation that you could publish in her purview or something, you know.

Sure. I mean, so much of that, right, is context dependent. Right. Yes, your context of watching Glowardai running about on a canyon wall is entirely different than something that you flip under a piece. piece of tin right which is different from road cruising something where it's like in those instances you have you probably have to interact with it or it's just gone right or you're actually actively encouraging it to get off the road or whatever it is so that you can keep going even but uh or inadvertently becoming a dirty free handler because you can't see the head and you don't know if it's a water snake

a hog nose or a cotton mouth as it goes down as it goes down a burrow you got to grab it and yeah see what it is. The curiosity is too great. I got to identify this thing. And either way, it turned out to be a new species, you know, so it's kind of cool that way. It's not a Florida cotton mouth, so it's, you know, a different in that regard. It went up to me. Yeah, you've got one that I don't. Another form, right? Another form that I do not. But, you know, I think there's some instances, of course, where it's, you know, cool to be able to interact with it in that way. look get a closer look you know that kind of look at it at it right otherwise it's gone right if you don't do that then it's opportunity yeah exactly yeah there's um and you know it depends on the individual too i mean um and sometimes you're not going to be able to catch catch it anyway i mean the prenties in in central austria were a good example of that you know we the one that aspen and i saw hung around and like let us watch it and take pictures of it for a good 10 15 minutes whereas the one that the other guys were in the lead vehicle and they saw it by the time we got there you know they were taking pictures from a distance and we we got there and kind of slowly got out of the car to try to get some photos as well and then it just bolted you know took off and we didn't get very close to it at all and it was out of there like no coming back no second chances for photos or anything so you know depending on the individual too you might not even have a chance to to hold it even if you

you could and it was legal. Yeah, exactly. So, and, you know, there's a chance that I probably could have jumped on that Prenti that Aspen and I saw, but we had such a nice interaction with it, you know, the only reason I'd want to delay its departure would be to get the other guys to be able to see it and interact with it as well. But again, once you release that thing, it's just going to bolt anyway. So you might as well enjoy and see what it does. Maybe you're going to observe a new behavior like tail-shaking in a parenti that I never, you know, knew they did. So kind of a cool thing. Very much so, yeah.

Any other ideas on catching or not catching? I guess the potential to introduce, you know, germs, you know, like Kittred was spread by researchers researching frogs. Or, yeah, introducing your acid acidic skin to a, sensitive amphibian skin is not great either potentially transferring snake fungal disease from snake to snake if you're not washing your hands in between handling snakes that uh milk snake we found in pennsylvania that had urban new jersey that had the first time man yeah had some snake fungal disease going on we we made sure to very you know very carefully and thoroughly wash wash

wash that off before any other interactions with snakes. So those are considerations as well. You don't want to be spreading things as you're going through herping. Cool. Any other thoughts on that or moving on to our last topic of the night? This was with our good friends, Chris and Aspen. And this is, the topic was sharing herb spots. That was.

I remember this one. Yeah. Yeah. And it's a, it's kind of a tricky one too, I think, you know. I think overall, when I herped with Chris and Aspen, they were very, you know, readily showed me their sights, you know, that they had come across. But when, you know, they knew of some other spots that they kind of alluded to and I was thinking, well, when are we going to go to those spots? They didn't take me there because it was somebody else's spot and they weren't, you know, they were shown that in confidence. And I think that's, that's exemplary.

You know, we shouldn't be. If we've told somebody we're not going to share that spot, then we definitely shouldn't share it. So, yeah, that's a. And I guess, you know, it's hard when you think, well, I'm not going to do anything to it. I'm not going to treat it poorly. But you never know if you bring somebody that, you know, I think that's probably the reason people don't share spots. Yeah. Is because of, you know, when they have and it's gone.

bad that they didn't expect that person to come back and just collect everything out of that spot, you know, and that could happen, uh, or, or if they inadvertently give it to somebody else or put up the GPS coordinates for that find or something accidentally, you know, in a podcast, uh, that could, uh, be, uh, risk, you know, in that regard. And I mean, unlike birds, you know, you can give localities for birds all day long because they can fly away and go somewhere else but um reptiles are a different matter you know sometimes they're found under the same board or rock or something year after year after year so that's yeah makes it difficult that way yeah absolutely and i would say too the interesting thing with that can be how

things uh wind up circling back around where it's like oh if if there is then a trust built up So there's even a violation of that, theoretical violation of, oh, well, I'll just show this one person because I really trust them. But ultimately, it comes back around to a discussion of the, you know, person, whisper down the lane who winds up talking or engaging with the person who actually was the first person theoretically to innovate that spot or whatever. Brendan and I had a little conversation around that where we were trying to figure out, oh, yeah, it was a place X, Y, or Z, you know, in this specific. sort of context of it and he's like what brought you there you know or whatever and I'm forthright with him

and it was like oh well that's two levels of you know that was this person someone seeing it from this person who saw it from this person who he had talked to it about or whatever you know and not a big deal in all good people with well intentions and obviously then staying within the circle sure but it's still

an awkward moment where it's like right how did you hear about this yeah exactly and you don't necessarily want to rat out who shared that spot with you that's what i mean yeah the whole thing's kind of well and i i think it was jordan that kind of brought this to mind when we were herping down in southern california he said you never know if your spot's going to become a walmart in a year or two you know so what's the harm in sharing a spot and letting other people enjoy that assuming you know you trust them that they're not going to go collect or

tell a collector, you know, about the spot. So, or, or in certain things, instances like, maybe like gray bands, you know, where most of the land is, is, uh, inaccessible, in excessively and, and you're only seeing a snapshot on the, on the cuts. And, you know, if you're sharing information, more people can gather information. And, you know, and, and if there's kind of a free-sharing society versus a carefully guarded, you know, secrets and things like that. And then also, you know, placing board lines is somewhat controversial. You know, there's some arguments to be made there. And maybe we'll visit that in a future episode.

But, you know, those. Yeah. Those kind of things can also be, you know, seen one way or another. And so you've got to be careful with that kind of thing. And I mean, there was nothing worse than going to Australia to look for wheat belt, Stimson's pythons, and getting onto the rock escarpment and just seeing scars of cap rocks where people had just gone in with crowbars, ripped up the rocks, you know, displaced them, moved them, you know, just flipped them over, didn't replace them,

just to collect kind of a smash-and-grab idea just to make a buck, you know, go flip that snake and sell it to somebody and make some money. That's, that's probably the worst case of, of that I've seen, you know. The Xenada stuff can run into that pretty badly as well, because it's essentially the same context, right? Where you're just talking about a non-renewable, certainly within our lifetime's resource, you know, where it's, yeah, it's selfish, you know. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I guess, you know, money makes people do stupid things, which is very unfortunate.

So hopefully any listeners of this podcast are not engaged in such immoral behavior. Absolutely. Our fighters out there. No, no, no. Not interested in that. fight to be honest yeah replace your rocks people and and you know if you see somebody that's not not respecting the landscape and you're out with them you know correct them say hey you know when you're herping with me i expect you to see you put the rock back you know and you know we went through

one area i remember and it was like a bear had come through looking for meals so he's flipping rocks and breaking open stumps and things like that which i mean it's natural that's what happens and he probably ate any snakes or lizards he found if he was able to catch him you know so I guess nature may do that but I don't think that's a justification for people to do that because right and even then we tried to flip some of that step back and whatever right right so yeah and I mean there's nothing worse too than coming across the board line where somebody's flipped it you know from where it's been to where it shouldn't be you know they don't replace the boards or whatever and so I don't know be be ethical when you're when you're out herping in general maybe yeah yeah in general in your life ethical behavior is much better than non-ethical behavior you may not make as much money but you know you might not be able to have our love and respect there you go what's more important money or love our love and respect yeah but also be somebody who's

who can be trustworthy with a spot that's not going to ruin the area or things like that. And it's funny, too, when you, some spots that people are like such heavily guarded secrets, you're there and all of a sudden somebody else shows up or a busload of people shows up. You're like, oh, yeah, this is a unknown spot. Wink, wink, you know, like, yeah, so it's kind of funny when people think they have a special spot. And it's like, you know, some well-known area. And I think there should be some areas like that where especially, who was it? Was it Zach that was talking about the board lines out in Colorado?

Like, you know, go there for your first experience. See one in the wild. It was Brendan. Yeah. Brandon, yeah. But then leave it alone. Like, okay, you've seen it. Go find it the hard way now.

You know, the board lines are kind of the easy cheating way almost, you know. It's kind of like road cruising versus hiking something up. It's a lot more rewarding to find it out in the natural environment and predicting when you're going to find one out on the crawl or something or finding it, you know, in a rocky out, you know, ledge or something like that versus finding it under a piece of tin or an old board, you know. I don't know. Just my feelings on that.

All right. Do we cover it? I think so. Excellent. Clip show complete. The Ocho. The Ocho is finito. All right.

Well, any cool things in herpetic culture or herpetology lately? Yeah, I just listen to the most recent wood-fired herping podcast, which is good. I know we made mention of it when he was on with Mike Pingleton. Certainly an interesting episode. he was talking to Kyle, I think that's right, of Pop Milk Herping on YouTube in the thing that I listened to today. Really interesting, lots of ideas there. Either fight topics might have to reach out to one or both of them. There's definitely, definitely a lot's interesting there, so I would recommend that as something to check out. Yeah, that's the main thing that jumps to mind.

Nice. I need to start that one. I've got it a favorite. but I just haven't listened to it yet. So I need to get on that one. I did enjoy listening to you and Eric both separately on Reptile Rejects. That was fun to hear you guys do your interviews. And I always seem to learn something new. Like there are things that you talked about. I'm like, I didn't know that or I hadn't heard that.

I hadn't heard him talk about that. Or at least I don't remember him talking about that. You probably have. And my poor memory is let it go out and hear get pushed. out by other information but yeah good job on on your interviews it was really enjoyable to listen to so yeah it was fun we kind of that one in particular we were all over the place and talked about a whole talked about podcasting as much as anything else so right yeah that that was a lot of fun you know they're both fun guy you know michael and dominic

are fun guys so that that was good um we'll see i'm the thing that's been amazing to me i I recorded with Adam from the expert in the idiot six or eight weeks ago. Oh, really? And it still hasn't come out. And I think that was a function of our audio quality. I think he is just such a planner, has such a schedule, is so far in advance, so far in the can. But it's going to look like, you know, I'm on all these podcasts simultaneously. You know, we talked about making the podcast round.

And it's like, actually, whenever it comes out, oh, there won't have been this overlap. He's just so far ahead that it kind of creates that impression. so yeah oh that's cool yeah i suppose the other thing you know alluded to this earlier man super uh super happy for paul and his family and the folks that he went to australia with yeah those pictures he sent in us the i'm yeah well nipper would say what i'm fizzin with jealousy yeah yeah right yeah i mean october is a good time to be in central australia And other areas, yeah, they're finding some good stuff. And it's been fun to see them have success.

You always hope that, you know, somebody's big first trip to Australia is successful. Sounds like they're with a good group, you know, good guide that's taking them to some good places. They're turning it up, man. Yeah, yeah, I'm excited to hear, see his camera shots. And, you know, we've been getting some previews with some cell phone pictures, but it will be need to see the big big boy camera shots is big boy camera and to hear about it because that's right you know that is half the fun it's sort of like what is what does this entail it's one it's almost it always feels diminutive when we see it in the content the daily update or

whatever it's like I'm sure there's so much more to I can't even imagine some of those moments based on what we've seen so I'm excited for him yeah and and I mean it's it's nice to get well I will let him talk about it more, you know. I'll have him on the show and he can chat about his trip if you'd like. We can find some topic to fight about, you know, whether or not you should go to three different regions within your trip. Yeah. It's kind of a neat undertaking to, you know, I guess maybe you'd call that a Jordan trip, although I think they're flying. Jordan flew a little bit between, but yeah that huge you know expanse all the way across australia crossing multiple states which is not an easy feed in australia like it is in the u.s where there's only five or six states right

um i i'm also enjoying lucas's videos he's quite the videographer uh lucas so i haven't seen this what where is it on youtube yeah he's he's released some of the footage from finding his coastal little diamond and now I saw he just put out the last one. Where was he on the third? Oh, up in the tropics. So, yeah, pretty

fun. He just does it. And what does it? Remember his YouTube thing? What is it? I think it's his business name. Centralian. Yeah. Exotics, right? I think so. I can, I think I subscribe to him so it comes up on

my feed now. So I just Wow, calling me out here. I made it as well. You don't seem to be as much on YouTube as, yeah. I'd like to, but just I need to make more time for him. Right. Centralian Exotics, yeah. And he just posted his latest video with Lace Monitor, Scrubs, Pythons, and more.

So, yeah, check out Lucas's feed. He just has a really, it's a, he does a fun job. It's more like a vlog than like a, you know, I'll do like a video and just show the reptiles. there's no interaction with me or my you know i'll have some voiceover but that's about it you know but he's putting in little special effects and sound effects and fun stuff like that so he does he does a really good job they're very entertaining so way to go lucas yeah i don't i don't want to see it it's not a star wipe so well i think my voice is about done i'm ready for some some sleep and hopefully get rid of this cold sooner than later.

But, yeah, it's been... For our next instance, yeah. There you go. Yeah, it's been fun chatting the topics with you. And we'll, uh, hopefully you guys enjoyed hearing us recap the shows and, um, let us know what you think about the recaps or if we should have a guest on to talk about some of these or something. I don't know.

Um, let us know if you have any ideas or topics for Reptalfi Club. We'll acknowledge the podfather, Eric, and all his great efforts. Yeah, that's been really fun over the last few weeks is just seeing their frequency increase and, yeah, seeing that reinvigoration. I think we all go through that where it's just like sometimes the herpeticulture is a drag, especially if you've got personal things going on, you know. So I think we got to celebrate the times. when people are on a high and enjoying it and having a fun time. And it seems like Eric's back in that saddle and enjoying it again. And it was kind of hard to hear him contemplating, you know, finishing and being done with NPR.

I don't know. Well, I think we would have dragged them back anyway. I don't know if that was an option, to be honest with your father. Right. Yeah. You can rest when you're when you're dead, Eric. Oh, my goodness. Yeah.

So go check out, you know, NPR. and all the associated podcasts. And thanks for listening to us, rant and rave and fight and love fest, whatever you want to call that. So we'll catch you next time for aftite fight club.