Reptile Fight Club - Should some species not be imported or bought?

Episode Date: January 26, 2024

Justin and Rob tackle the most controversial topics in herpetoculture. The co-hosts or guests take one side of the issue and try to hold their own in a no-holds-barred contest of intellect. Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!In this episode, Justin and Rob tackle the topic of Should some species not be imported or bought?Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comFollow Rob @ https://www.instagram.com/highplainsherp/Follow MPR Network on:FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQMore ways to support the shows.Swag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

Hi, welcome to the Solo Updip Top Fight Club. This is Justin Juhanna, your host, and with me is Rob Stone. Say hello to the people. Wave to the people. Oh, anyway. Blow them kisses. Yeah. Rob and I have an affinity for Simpsons quotes.

So those might be floating around here or there. You might have to look them up if you're not familiar, but we have, that's, that's a big part of our herp trips is Simpsons quotes. So it's, it's plagued Derek a little bit, but, uh, it's been fun for us anyway. And, and, uh, Owen gets into it as well. He's, he's a big Simpsons fan. Yeah. Owen loves it too. Yeah. For sure. When he's there, he's been ditching out on us. Yeah. All too, all too, uh, infrequent. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not going, but don't find anything cool without me.

Well, he won't listen, so we're good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. Any snow in your area, or are you guys as kind of wimpy as we are when it comes to the snow? I think we got a little bit on the 23rd, but it's been pretty weak snow-wise since then. We've gotten a couple days, so on Christmas Eve and then on Tuesday, we got some as well. Okay, yeah, we got a little, maybe a little bit more. Yeah, well, I heard it was supposed to be as good a snow year this year as it was last year, so, I mean, it's not great for the shoveling side of things,

but it was great for the herping in some ways, I guess, you know, there's, there's maybe some species that come out a little better when it isn't so wet, but I guess we'll see. We'll see for sure. Well, did you have a good Christmas? Yeah. Pretty uneventful, which is good. How about you guys? Yeah, it was not bad at all.

Picked up one of the battery-powered Brad guns so I can assemble cages a little easier without having to use a compressor. It's pretty sweet. So I'm pretty stoked. I love tools. I'm a tool geek, I guess, but yeah, my dad got me into the Milwaukee tools that are the battery powered ones. And that's been a game changer in a lot of ways. It's really fun to work with the battery powered tools, but in some aspects when they run out, that's not as fun, but I guess I've got to wait a little bit for sure. Yeah. Yeah. These days I've got probably backups that have cords too. So it shouldn't, shouldn't be the end of the world, but it's fun, fun stuff. It's good to spend time with family and see, you know,

the nieces and nephews, all that good stuff. So both are my parents and Heidi's parents only live about an hour away, so it's not too far. So we usually go to both the parents' houses on Christmas and visit with them. So that's a nice time. That's awesome. Yeah, I know. Really good.

Yeah. Now it's kind of the Between Christmas and New Years Should we go to work? Do we need to go to work? Is anybody at work? So it's been Kind of nice and quiet We've watched a few movies

Watched Blue Beetle today That was a great show I enjoyed it thoroughly I don't know if you watched Cobra Kai. Oh, okay. Yeah, sure. The main kid. He's Blue Beetle.

So that was fun to see him in another role. He's just a likable character. That was a cool show. Yeah. But other than that, we've just been kind of losing it. I don't know about what's going on. You always are informing me. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a fun, fun family movie. So, you know,

and then just kind of pairing up stuff and keeping the cooling going. Then it's kind of the slow season, so not too much to report on the herp scene, and for sure not in herping, so it's just kind of that low season. Try to keep excited about the spring. Let that motivate me to make it through the long winters. Yeah, for sure. I mean, although I will say that on Instagram lately, so part of it, right, part of what we're seeing is everyone, and I need to join this a little bit more going through photos from the past year that I hadn't gotten to

previously. And then, so it's clear what those ones are. The other part of it is people going to Thailand and DNT and stuff like that, seeing those photos. I think it's sort of in the same way, right, as the Australian python breeders, right, who are getting their eggs at the opposite time of people like yourself, where it's either motivating or demotivating to see the success and failures that other people are having. Yeah. I would like to do a herp trip over to Australia in like January or February, kind of the slower time of year and get over while it's kind of the heat of their season. Although, you know, you never know if it's, I did have somebody tell me that like central Australia just is go, it just goes off in like January. There's like, just geckos is, you know, thick on the road. You almost can't drive down the road. You almost have

to walk because there's so many geckos on the road. At least that's how it was sold to me. He's like, why are you here in October? You should have come in January. You know, that kind of fun little, only told in person in October. Yeah. So we might have to make it over there sometime, but yeah, we'll see. I guess my 50th trip is going to be in March. So that's kind of the fall ball type season. So right. A little bit closer. Yeah. We,

we could cheat a little and do it in February or January or something too, and consider it the same, same trip, but I'll have to see how things work out. I think when Dan Vermilio was on NPR, he had mentioned late January is a good time for WA as well. Yeah. I don't, I don't know if there's a bad time for WA, except maybe their winter, but I've had, I've had some good trips out there that have, you know, kind of the whirlwind cross country trips, but I found a lot of good stuff and it's been really successful trips,

both in October and November, but yeah january february would be awesome to be there too um and uh the the um frank colachico and who saw him yeah that was a little before us so that was what february right i think they're in march i think it was march and that's kind of what made me think february into like yeah the last week the the end of the first week of march or something like that it was right yeah they got uh in and out right before everything covid hit yeah yeah but they they had a killer trip found all sorts of good stuff so yeah yeah i think i i kind of like the idea of going over at different times and seeing, you know, different seasons and kind of getting to experience different

conditions, you know, that kind of thing. I guess January, February, March is going to be much hotter than October, November, but, uh, probably more road cruising activity than, than kind of the springtime, you know, there's less stuff out on the road. Yeah, I don't know if I'd like that with all the nothing to see during the day. You know me, we can eventually do a hiking versus, you know, I know you've done that, but not with me. Yeah, that's true. We do need to cover some old ground again, I think.

You've got some good ideas. Eventually we won't start there but we'll get there. There you go. Yeah well although the crazy spot right I was going to say that I did see on the other thing on Instagram was that Cyclone had come through above Cairns, like in the Cooktown area, into southern part of Queensland. And that flooding was pretty crazy.

I didn't see that. No, I haven't been on social media much lately, so I'm kind of missing a lot of these things. But that's maybe for the best at least on the post that it triggered it to me but uh i think there was a dead wallaby or something but uh yeah it's kind of i think i did that looks like something for sure yeah yeah not not great but uh yeah i mean that's that's kind of what happens in those areas i know uh when i was in ipswich uh troy kuligowski took me you know kind of on a tour i was in ipswich uh troy kuligowski took me you know kind of on a tour of the of ipswich and showed me like this mall was underwater you know

there were sharks swimming through the through the doors of this mall or you know pretty crazy like there were they've they're they're no stranger to pretty good, good flooding there. So, you know, I, I guess they're prepared for that or, or maybe not to that extent where their stores are underwater, but you know, that's probably once, once in a decade or, or hopefully longer storm, but yeah. Speaking of that, did you see the story? Maybe I don't know, it was sort of, you know you know international national to international news maybe three two or three months ago where i guess at a golf course uh in suburban brisbane that some flood a decade ago had trapped eight or nine male bull sharks in a golf course pond

imagine that right so then So then you're, you're off the shore. And so the, the story was, it was all these males and the last one had died, I think is where he caught the sort of the international aspect to the, the story or whatever. But I'm just thinking like, okay,

we're in Florida. You'd be used to an alligator, but the notion that, you know, if we were on a golf, it just makes you look at every body, body of water a little bit differently. The notion about it is actually eight or nine saltwater shark, you know, brackish to saltwater sharks in here.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. You don't want to go for your ball. Probably without a ton of food resources. So they might be a little feisty. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. Yeah.

Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. Some of those nature, I guess that's what results in things, colonizing islands and those crazy catastrophic weather events can really change the landscape or alter things to some extent. Nature is powerful, that's for sure. Well, um, Maybe, uh, I think I had a couple of dreams about that or where you go, maybe take a close look at the water. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I don't know. Yeah. That's, uh, when, when we were in Australia, we were going up to the iron range and we crossed the river. And I think I've told the story where I almost got trapped in the river.

Well, on the way back, the guys decided to go for a little swim. And so Rico is out there snorkeling, looking for turtles. And like, I'm thinking, is this the wisest thing we could be doing? But the water was nice and clear. I guess you could see a crocodile coming, but I'm like, I don't know about this. I did. I think I didn't get in the water at that time. Maybe I did. I can't remember, I don't know about this. I, I did. I, I think I didn't get in the water at that time. Maybe I did. I can't remember. I don't know. I, I sometimes probably take a little too many risks, but you know, the other guys are doing it so I can swim faster than them. They will be bait. I don't know. Right. As long as you're faster than Nick, you know? So, yeah, you, you wonder about those choices sometimes,

but it was interesting anyway. Yeah. Although I think that would be a dour note for a trip, you know, as much as it's like, well, you know, it wasn't you, but I think we saw that in the Southern California venture where it was like, you know what? Like, I think venture where it was like, you know what? Like, I think it's best if every, you know, we don't need to Marco stay this job. And how about we all return safely? Let's all stay alive.

Yeah, that would that would definitely put an end to the trip and put a damper on, you know, future trips for sure. So, yeah, that was for sure. That was traumatic in Southern California. Well, on that note, we ready to fight? No, not pleasant. Pleasant memory. Let's go. Start fighting. Let's see. So today's topic, I was listening to Jay Summers on Project Herpetoculture, and he was talking about some of the different imported species and how they're just imported and they slowly die and nobody has success with them and they're cheap. And so, you know, it's like kind of a throwaway pet almost. And so I thought about that. You know, are there species that just really shouldn't be imported? And, you know, whether they import them or not, should we as the reptile consumers be purchasing these animals?

So, you know, it's kind of a complex issue with multi-faceted things to consider but I thought it would be a good good topic for for discussion so that's what we're going to debate today and you know whether or not there should be species that just we just shouldn't support their import by by not buying them and and a message, I guess, to the importers that these are not things that we want to work with. So that's what we'll be talking about, kind of the yes, there should be species that we don't mess with, or no, I think all species we should try to work with. So does that sound like a reasonable

topic? 100%. Let's go ahead and flip the coin if you want to give it a call. Heads. It is tails. Didn't I win the last one? Beautiful. It is tails. I guess I, I have, didn't I win the last one? I think I remember, but yeah. Um, so let's see. I, I don't even know. I think I'll go with the side that, um, no, we should, you know, work with the species, especially if they're imported in numbers. So I'll start with that idea, I guess. And you'll take the no side. We shouldn't work with some of these. There are species that we should not work with. Yeah. If that's clear as mud. Okay. And I'll let you start. I'm with you. Okay. Okay.

Yeah, fair enough. So really to me, right, so there's two different aspects that gets us to potentially saying we shouldn't work with these. And the first would be if there's just a total vacuum of information where we're saying we actually don't know what their natural history looks. And this is probably relatively few and far between in terms of either we have animals from either that biome or a similar one that we could apply. Or there's natural history, there's literature that speaks to that particular form, either the species description or a description of something else in the same genus from a similar habitat, or things that we fully understand what they require, and it just becomes a question of whether we're

willing to do it or not, right? And I have experience sort of dealing with some of those things. There are some that are even further afield than what I'm used to. But yeah, the initial point would be kind of those to me are the two bases that we'd be looking at here of saying either we genuinely have a vacuum of information, which is probably the more rare of the two instances, and it's probably something that'll get filled, right, either by if they do become available in the trade manipulation saying, okay, does this, works and what doesn't sort of the historical basis for everything in captivity in some way.

Right. If we're talking about, oh, in the 1920s and 30s, they tried feeding bull snakes chicken eggs and that was deemed, quote, the normative item. And if you had to be a bull snake today, that's not where I would start for sure. But evidently it worked for some, you know, and all this. I was actually reading, there's a, the Staten Island Zoo from the early 60s. I got a couple, Caulfield had written a couple articles for the magazine, the zoo's magazine. And I was reading through those today. And one of them was detailing exactly that of his, it was one of his, maybe his first snake when he was a teenager. He had a relative who was living here in Colorado and had sent him a bull snake, a five or six foot bull snake. And it went into a winter frost, but he was concerned about hibernating. Oh, snakes don't do well if you keep them solidly, you know, between 50 and 60, which obviously is kind of crazy reading about where we're at now

and sort of our perceptions on these things. But he was keeping it warm, but it wouldn't feed because it had come, you know, based on its sort of inherent seasonality, whether that's epigenetics or actually the way it had been sort of conditioned for that year or whatever. But then come the spring, it actually wound up eating chicken eggs for him and he found, oh, well, they, it always did better when I was feeding them the sort of farm fresh, presumably he was presuming, well, they smelled more like it, but it actually liked ones that were coming out of the fridge, you know, on a hot summer day, it actually had a preferential

consumption of cold eggs as opposed to hot, you know, room temperature eggs or whatever, some there. But, you know, so that's sort of the first thing, right, where we'd be able to fill it in just by applying sort of standard techniques and seeing do any of these work. The other that I think is the greater percentage of situations is going to be, oh, it turns out they eat sleeping anoles, meaning it can distinguish by literally it's watching it breathe and say it's waiting for nightfall for the diurnal anole

to fall asleep. So it needs to be alive anole. It's literally moving forward. Bob Henderson talked about Grenadensis in his Neotropical Tree Bows book and that they would move, I forget what the rate was. It was something like they would progress forward an inch every 15 minutes as he's sitting there watching them, as they're watching this anole, making sure it remains asleep, because they're that uncoordinated or lack confidence in their ability to strike and feed or whatever it is. So they're literally watching it breathe, watching sleep breathing in this anole, and then they eventually get within an inch and a half or something and go for it. That's obviously not the same thing as tossing something a frozen thawed

paint, right? If we're talking something that's so ingrained to eat, not just a lizard, but a live lizard that is asleep. So obviously the standard of care or not even standard of care, but the sort of to reach that baseline, the amount of work that would go into is hugely divergent between that and a. Now, if you gave me a bullseye, you know, that thing's most likely to eat almost anything that you would offer, which which made the coffee a bit all the all the more interesting. So I've said a ton there, not necessarily a bunch of jumping off points for you. Take it where you will. No, I think, I think there are some good, good places to start for sure there. And, and I, you know, I do think that we do rely on old things that have been tried before. And just, you know, if somebody like Caulfield can't get it to work, who am I to get it to work, you know? And so we just kind of give up before we even try. And, you know, I think green trees are a nice example of that. You know, back in the day,

everybody thought, oh, they're green. They hide in the leaves to eat birds. That's what they eat, you know? And until we got the studies in the, the what the 90s and early 2000s on their natural history, then we found out, no, these are they're primarily eating mammals. And so, you know, oh, well, we can provide mammals. That's that's easy. And and then the other part of that is they don't feed very frequently. OK, well, let's provide less mammals, you know, and then maybe they won't die of obesity or hang their tails all the time or that kind of thing. Oh, they come from this area. Well, you know, back in the day, we didn't necessarily have reliable weather stations or they weren't placed very many places.

And so we had to kind of infer. But and maybe it was difficult to travel to the areas where they live. And some places still are difficult to travel, you know, like New Guinea, it's very difficult and potentially dangerous to travel there. And so, um, but you know, I've been to the iron range. I felt what it felt like in their habitat. And, you know, granted that was only a week or two out of the whole season.

So, but you know, there's people that go up there and study and record and, and those kinds of things. So we have more information now than we did then. Now, you know, you did mention there is a kind of, there isn't a lot of information for some species, but their relatives or similar species or species that have convergent evolution. You know, those kind of things can maybe give us clues and hints. Other things, well, let's see, what else did I want to hit on there? I guess the information, we live in the information age. Also, the conditions that the animals are in are much different these days.

And I do think that far less are imported, you know, there are far less importers now and there's far less countries that allow export. And so, you know, that's kind of fading away for either good or bad. I mean, you know, you can look at it like, you know, back in the day, they were just importing thousands of animals and they'd hold them at a collector's place and basically starve them to death and then ship them out. And then the people, the importers would get them and basically just try to flip them before they died. And then the pet stores get them.

And the pet stores have these half dead animals sitting in glass tanks, you know? And I think that model is slowly fading away. There are still some bad examples out there that have a trough full of green iguanas or something that are emaciated or not doing great or full of mites, those kind of things. And those things do, do still happen, but I think that's becoming less, uh, less and less as, as we, um, get better with different species. And I think one of the, at least, you know, one of the best examples of our time is the ball Python, you know, back in the day, it was considered a garbage export that nobody could get to eat. They failed to thrive.

They didn't do well in captivity. Nobody wanted to mess with them. They were just trash animals. And now they are the most popular python in the world and have all these wonderful color and pattern flavors, you know, to choose from. So, um, I guess again, for better or worse, they become the mainstay of the reptile industry, ball pythons and their, their source source associated pattern and color mutations. So, um, you know, if we would have just gone on the notion that, no, you know, these are garbage snakes, we shouldn't mess with them. But, you know, there's a bunch of folks that said, no, I really like these. I want to crack the code. I want to figure these things out. And they figured out how to breed them. And the captive bred offspring did much better in captivity and they weren't emaciated and sickly and parasitized or whatever. And so they, they fared much, much better. You know, that first generation of captive offspring. Now they're the, probably the easiest snake to breed in easiest Python to breed in captivity to some extent. So, um, that's, uh, I guess that's where I'd, I'd go is, you know,

if we, if you, if somebody wants to put in the effort, if somebody comes along and says, I want to champion this species because they're that cool to me, I don't want to follow in the path that everybody else has followed in. I'm going to try this species and make it work. I think there's probably a good chance you can do it with, you know, grit and determination. And maybe I'll get into that more later, but I've said enough for now. So go ahead and take it from there. Yeah. So I do agree that the notion of a champion of the species is really a big deal. It's not only the champion of the thing, but they also need to have a willingness to give a sales pitch on that, whether that's describing their care or what they're doing or putting offspring out there are probably both of those things,

especially in coordination of, hey, maybe for whatever reason, you don't even want to get it from me. You want it to be the cheaper import, but I'm applying my my technique or whatever i do think that that makes a ton of sense um and certainly ball python you're i completely agree that the sort of image of that species as a captive animal has totally turned in the 40 you know 40 or 45 years the last 40 or 45 years right where it's gone from from a narrower window within that time, but talking about when commonly available and sort of creating that image of being difficult to manage, difficult to get to eat, difficult to get to reproduce,

reproducing them at all as a big deal. So now, as you said, probably the easiest python to breed in captivity. You know, Well, I guess outside Australia. I'm sure in Australia, if you had one, it'd be pretty cool. The thing that jumped to mind when you talked about that, right, is that a species that was brought in in that same way, it occurs, I think its range is more broad, but it occurs within that same natural range. The Calabar burrowing python, what is it, Calabria reinhardi, I think is right. So those are a nest rating fossorial species that are really cool, right? In the sense, my personal predilection is for anything sort of the randomness of pattern, right? So if you're talking about something that's a solid, oh, dark brown to purple, and then with vibrant orange spots just sort of as individual scales throughout its pattern and this sort of stuff.

So a really cool-looking thing that also notoriously didn't do well. And while I would say they're doing a little bit better now in the sense of they are, despite being, quote, the burrowing python, one of two burrowing pythons with loxacinus uh in mexico as well not not a python at all uh but they're at lane um yeah yeah which is um get gets us into that framework um they you know there are some of those that i know uh underground uh, not underground, the Virginia Outback, because when they're getting these shipments of ball pythons and things, they're getting them that are then these Scalabar burrowing pythons that are laying eggs and they're hatching them out and selling captive hatching.

I have to assume that some of those are doing better, and especially, so there we go, right? There's two species that are kind of coming in the same way, ball pythons because they had mutations and the interest and all this stuff has really taken off. And they're probably, if you just looked at them and said, which is more of a generalist python? And if you applied sort of the standard python husbandry, which will do better, it would be a ball python. But whereas the calabars, excuse me, with the sort of fossorial nestrator, what's the ball python trope, right? Is that you got to feed them medium rats and nothing but sort of small to medium rats and nothing but those by the bushel pull.

I do, I would, maybe this could be a jumping off point for later right but the the captive predilection to say well one medium rat is cheaper than 10 uh fuzzy rats well there's probably going to be you know what what do people want to do they want to both from their the pecuniary both the money uh of saying well it's it's cheaper to actually just feed this one despite not being cheap but well they used to be 250 and i'm sure now they're who knows how much right but um versus saying oh well i i have to stand there and feed out 10 of these items that actually then that would rack up to eight dollars or whatever um for whatever reason that quite possibly being one of them uh those haven't taken off in quite the same way and so maybe that's an illustration of saying, okay, when we're talking about things that

then fit into a known or established paradigm or conveniently line up with what people want to do based on their time and finances and the way they want to set stuff up and all this stuff anyway, those ones that worked, but those are the two things from the same place that were in the same spot and only one of them is taken off. And it could be the morphs for sure. But I would say that those captive husbandry aspects aren't negligible either. Sure. Yeah.

And I agree. I mean I think diet can be probably the biggest hurdle to overcome. I mean, we have a whole industry within herpetoculture that circles around a particular group of geckos and their dietary predilections, you know, trying to match what they would eat in the wild and in a powder form. And I mean, that revolutionized and made them, you know, kind of on par with ball pythons in, in, in some sense, they're very easy to breed and keep. And for, for all intents and purposes, um, crested geckos were extinct to our knowledge, you know, no, we thought they were not in, you know, not existing anymore. And, and until somebody went out and found some and brought some back and then they have become probably the biggest pet gecko in the world, maybe second to leopard geckos, but rapidly overtaking them if they haven't already, you know.

And so, again, if you're willing to go that distance, you can probably get something that they will take or that they will thrive on. I mean, obviously there's, there's some exceptions, you know, like maybe snakes that are, that are, that specifically feed on blind snakes or something. That was, that was one thing I, I, I do reference this to the, the O'Shea snake book book of snakes where I was looking through this thing thinking man I thought I knew reptiles and here all these species I've never heard of and ooh that would be cool to keep what does it eat oh blind snakes you know oh well that's going to be a challenge and I mean they they have some workarounds I've seen that you know coral snakes are given kind of a liquid diet that they syringe down their throat and, you know, basically kind of keep them alive to milk them in a venom production thing.

So, I mean, it's possible that you could do that and keep them going, but that's not the ideal scenario. I don't know if anybody wants to keep a reptile that has to be tube fed, you know, once a week or something. So I do think we, we, that's part of keeping reptiles that keepers enjoy is the feeding aspect. And that's why a lot of animals are obese because we like to watch them feed, you know? And so that's, that's an interaction that we can have with our reptile. Um, but unfortunately, you know, that can be very difficult for some species. So, but you know, uh, I think there's a, and so we try to fit them in, we try to pigeonhole them into these boxes. Like, okay, I can afford a medium rat. So therefore I have a Calabar burrowing Python who I'm going to give a medium rat.

And if he doesn't take it, then, oh, they just suck. You know, they're, they're impossible to keep. And, you know, we, we need to, uh, not, not mess with these things. They're, they're just too difficult because we don't want to provide them with a nest of, of smaller rodents. You know, that's just kind of, I chalk that up to laziness or, or just trying to fit a square, you know, peg in a round hole or whatever, however the saying goes. Um, but I mean, people are having success with, uh, uh, rubber boas, which are essentially the same idea, you know, kind of a fossorial snake that raids mammal nests and, and people are breeding those and having success with

those and they're becoming, or they are very popular in the hobby and going for, you know, pretty good dollars is from what i've heard so um but you just have to work around and and again this goes back to knowing the natural history of the animal if you know their natural history and you replicate you know the important aspects of their natural history you can usually do okay with them um and i and I, I guess, you know, maybe I'll just kind of keep the comments there to the dietary preferences. There's, there's sources. I kept a horned lizards a few years back and, and, uh, I, I did really well with them until it came to brumation and then I failed, but, uh, they, they were thriving and doing really well, um, in, in the captive setting. And it was because there was

a commercial source of ants. You can buy harvester ants and just keep them in the fridge. They stay kind of dormant and then you pull them out and throw a few in there and they start moving around as they warm up, lizards eat them, you know, and you're giving them the natural prey. So there, you know, there are some, some options for that, you know, maybe some of the, um, different food markets that have some, you know, different, I think Owen buys what different fish and stuff or, or eels or things, you know, like that, that maybe certain snakes are, are, uh, have, have a preference for, and you can buy those at some markets or, or online or things like that. So our options for those are wider

than they have been in the past. And, and, and maybe, you know, sharing notes with people. I think that's the other side of that is when we do fail, we don't really publish. And this is the same for science. You know, if you, if a study fails, you don't publish those results. You know, it's, it just, nobody wants to read about something that didn't work. You know, you only want to hear about the stuff that worked or the new discoveries. And so similar with that is, is when we fail with a species, we don't say here's what I did. And I failed miserably. You know, we, we just say, oh, they're a crappy species or they're too hard or they're too difficult. So don't bother with them. And so I think that might be part of it too, either trying

to get them to fit into the, the minimum, you know, the minimal box that we have outlined in herpetoculture. You know, if you keep a snake, feed it a mouse or a rat, those are your two options, you know, laboratory mouse, laboratory rat. But, you know, now we've got, at least in some States, you know, soft furred rats and, and different gerbils or hamsters or whatever, you know, we can try different options there, both juvenile or adult stage or, you know, all sorts of things. So there's ways to make it work. We just have to kind of put in the effort, put in the work and, and, and there is some benefit of publishing your negative results, I guess, in herpetoculture.

What does it cost you? Maybe a web page or something, a link on your web page or something. So anyway, I've rambled enough. You can take it. Yeah, so the very last bit, I have plenty out of what you said, but that very last bit reminded me of a funny story. So when I was probably a dozen years ago or so, maybe time goes by 15 years ago, something like that. I was working at a liquor store and a guy there said, oh, I have a pet ball python that I can't get to eat. And at that time I had African soft-fed rats.

And I said, oh, well, just try this. You know, I just gave him one and said, hey, try this. It hadn't eaten for six or seven months and nails the hell out of it. And he said, I definitely need a lot more of these things. And I was like, this is right before I was moving and all this stuff. It was a funny, you know, a classic exactly to your point of like that was something where, OK, there was a captive challenge, but we had developed enough to develop the infrastructure to actually mitigate that challenge. But it was just the prototype scenario of this was in the, you know, single digit 2000s. But it was the same problem from the 1980s, you know, a digit 2000s, but it was the same problem from the 1980, you know, a 25 year problem. But now actually there was an easy, he wasn't aware of the answer, but there was an easy

answer that there was an infrastructure to support that could actually resolve the whole challenge itself. So that, that was really educational. You know, it was really clear to me from that of like, oh, okay, this is, this is a whole different thing. And to your point, really in terms of diet, be it, as you said, a crested gecko diet, I totally agree with what you said where even versus leopard geckos, right? In the 90s, leopard geckos were the thing bug and might benefit from it from a micro and macro nutritional level and all these things, they will do fine. They will eat even the dry food, like not even mixed into a wet slurry. They will eat the stuff dry, like, you know, fundamentally and do okay. Like that's literally what we're talking about where this is something that, you know, but again, that gradations of care, right, on the bare minimum standard, they'll eat this dry powder and then obviously need to be hydrated, right, associated with doing that. totally lap leopard geckos because for an average person right the ability to keep a powdered diet

in the fridge that then presumably they're mixing with water and adding on every other day basis or whatever to the enclosure is a whole different thing than having live crickets uh there was a uh i think there was a recent tiktok video where someone presumably unfamiliar with this ordered a box of 500 or a thousand crickets or whatever that my wife is showing me and uh my and he opened the box and he didn't do so in a you know trash can with tape around the lid or whatever where it's like yeah i saw that instantly and was like okay well i know where this video is going and that's that they're going to be crickets throughout his house and yeah that was the answer to that.

But between those two things, right, and especially that scenario sort of describes it, is if you have a leopard gecko, which most of the leopard gecko folks that we hear from don't have a, you know, in my own personal soapboxes, that there's an incentive to produce, to get too large, not to not have a leopard gecko or even a handful or whatever that they get too big too fast. And that's why there's such a burnout in that sort of captive husbandry or collection of keepers. Not the animals, but the keepers who are interested in it if they get too big too fast but um or that they feed it mealworms and then they become allergic to mealworms and stuff because they're exposed to 5 000 mealworms which is a little bit easier because they're not going to hop all over your house but you know it's a little easier to contain i suppose um but uh yeah there's there's no doubt as to why crested geckos are more popular broadly

is you don't have to deal with any of those sort of external factors associated with that. And I do I do think you make a great point that even more broadly from that. Right. That's sort of the industrial aspect of it. I know Alan's great guy. You know him really well. You know, you took us out there to a spot. He's a super nice guy. That's sort of the industrial side of the whole thing. On the opposite end, there's rice bean beetles, and there's black soldier fly larva, and all these different readily available – heck, do be a roach is right – that are deliverable to your door on a consistent basis in a way that they weren't a decade ago, let

alone 25, 30 years ago. Right. So I totally agree with you that the capacity to offer a much broader array to all of our captives is there in a way that it wasn't before. Right. The infrastructure is there to support it, whether it's the industrial side or the sort of boutique. Oh, you just want it rather than only feeding your goannas crickets, you want to be able to give them a different thing for every day of the week or whatever, right?

All insects. You could definitely do that now in a way that wasn't replicable beyond, obviously, you know, you had Burt Langerwerf and people of that same mindset who are innovating and producing all their own feeders, figuring out ways to make it work, cultivating them as cultivars in captivity that could be the progenitors of that stuff. But, you know, it's a wholly different ballgame. So I agree there. That being said, if we're just having a conversation on what's more produced now, what are the things that were impossible before when you brought up this topic? The dragon rat stank, right? The Xenodermis javonicus. who pokes around a lot of uh herp literature and things i don't think i had any awareness of their existence until 20 years ago right meaning that like those weren't even a thing of like oh you stumble onto the indonesian exporters page and there was the one there's a striped mandarin

rat snake on an indonesian exporters page in 1997 that it's like looking at that like, whoa, I'm sure that thing died. Again, to another point, we'll come back to that. But where he said, oh, I kind of look at that picture, and it already looks rough in the picture, and you're going, I think that thing was probably dead within a couple weeks of that picture being taken. But the xenodermists weren't even on there. I had no awareness of their existence,

let alone what they occur on Sumatra, where these exporters are. There wasn't even – there was so little awareness around it. You know, heck, I know Keith is big, really loving his Lampinotus at this point, the Borneo earless monitors, right? And through the late 90s, the ones I was aware of, there had been three that had been found sort of in living, in recent living memory, you know, and Cameron had gotten them. The last one of them, they just stumbled upon when they were digging a latrine in, you know, rural Borneo, Sarawak or whatever, right, where it was like, oh, okay. They were incredibly expensive and they died very fast because, well, that isn't necessarily the way you would actually keep it. Again, to sort of the point of lack of information, as it turns out,

oh, they love free-flowing streams, but they will estivate in deep soil. And that was digging latrine. That's how you find this one. And so if that's what you're trying to replicate, then you're sort of replicating what would be their estivation cycle rather than putting them into their active, you know, adaptable cycle. Lack of both, you know, that's kind of both things. It's lack of animals, lack of information, lack of anything to compare it to. You know, those two are, and I think the xenodermis, in terms of the way that people are keeping lanthanotus now, actually do pretty well that way.

But in terms of feedersers my understanding is they do well if you have the capacity to feed them like the appropriate size tadpoles okay so we're right in that space of like it's not only tadpoles it's tadpoles of the right size so that has to be that as much as i mentioned okay well we have the capacity now there is the industry in place to support all these different feeders the capacity on a weekly basis to have the tadpole of the right size that's probably something you're going to have to take ownership of yourself meaning whether it's going to be dart frogs or uh cricket frogs or whatever it is okay but then do you have the capacity to have the right size all the time will they take it frozen do they need does it need to be live is it a question really a movement more than it is um you know scent or um prey presentation or or whatever right there's a whole million different

factors there as you said uh you've been going for a while now i've gone for a while go ahead anything you like out of that out of that yeah no Yeah, no, I, I, I agree. Like, um, yeah, you might crack the code with xenodermis and, and get them, you know, eating tadpoles that you're producing captivity. But then if you're going to go ahead and reproduce those and sell them to other people, you need a solution for them as well. Other than saying, okay, now also set up a, you know, a colony of cricket frogs or whatever species, you know, you find them to, to enjoy, you need to find a way to make them. And that's

kind of what I talked to Ron about a little bit, because, you know, he's, he's kind of experimenting with keeping some of the Corallis and, and some of the, uh, green tree pythons and things, um, changing our paradigm with those and keeping them differently. But, you know, I was, I, I kind of thought, well, is this broadly applicable or people are going to be able to replicate your methods in their snake room in, you know, North Dakota or wherever they live? Um, is that going to be applicable or is this a Florida only thing, you know, keeping things outside. they live. Um, is that going to be applicable or is this a Florida only thing, you know, keeping things outside. So that's kind of something that, and, and he was on top of that, you know, he's thinking, no, I will be able to, you know,

figure this out and scale it and make sure that it's worked out before I just release my results and progeny to, to the public. And so that's kind of the challenge of people who are revolutionizing keeping, I guess you could say, if you're able to support that for others. And with some things, like if it just requires a certain food item that is readily available and you can commonly get at your grocery store or an Asian food market or something, then great. You know, that, that, that could be something that, you know, is, is a little easier to implement, but something like a tadpole specialist is, is a little different story. You know, you're going to have to find a way to either freeze, you know, freeze tadpoles, get them to eat frozen thawed tadpoles, like you said, or maybe some kind of powder gel food that, that smells like tadpoles, you know,

that has tadpole in it. So they recognize that as food. So, you know, there's, there might be creative options to get them to overcome that hurdle, but that's kind of on the champion of the species to some extent. And, and maybe there are some that just, you just can't overcome that hurdle easily enough that it takes hold and other people run with it. Because I don't know who wouldn't want to keep a Xenodermis, you know, the dragon snake. They're just really cool looking. I mean, even though they're not from Australia, I would consider keeping those things. They're just awesome looking.

They just looks like some primitive, you know, dragon-like snake. Their name's perfect for them. So, and, you know, dragon-like snake. Their name's perfect for him. So, and, you know, you see him at the shows and think, oh, that's pretty sweet. You know, should I give it a shot? And then you're like, well, you know, I'm not ready for it. I haven't done my research. But that's kind of maybe the impetus for some to go home, do the research, figure out what they need, set up a colony of frogs or whatever, you know, and, and experiment and try them out, you know, that kind of thing. And, and I think, um, if they're not imported, we don't have that option and there's no way to, to change that, you know, and, and if they're

imported in low numbers, that's probably better than bringing in thousands of them just to sit and die and languish in captivity. I don't think a lot of these are good for the pet trade. And I would think that a pet store, well, you'd think that, but it's probably not true. The pet stores would on the general part, general side be wanting to sell animals that thrive, that survive. And a smart pet store probably can thrive and survive just off of feeder sales or tank sales or supply sales rather than the animal sales. You know, I think we have it in our mind, a pet store makes its money off of pets, which it probably doesn't, you know, I mean, PetSmart's a great example of that. How many dogs does PetSmart sell? Zero, you know, they might

place some dogs from the pound or things, but they don't they're not selling dogs. They're just selling can be supported by the captive bread market, you know, that might limit us a little bit. And maybe we do sprinkle a little bit of imports in there. And I think that's maybe what's reflective of why we have less imports. But I think that champion of a species has to figure out how to make them widely available to the, to the other people. Yeah, I think that's probably where I should shut up, but that can be the challenge. For sure.

And I think you raise a great point that certainly what we're seeing that's imported, probably for a variety of reasons. Some of it is probably the extent to which the demand for reptiles as pets generally is being satiated by what's being produced in captivity. I think that's not wrong to say that there is some replacement there, particularly at the sort of most basal levels where we're not talking about, obviously, most of the people that you and I are talking to on a regular basis about this are people who are really into reptiles and who are most interested then in the things that are considered to be or have been considered sort of through our time in herpetoculture to be rare and exclusive, right? That's sort of invariably where the mind goes. And some people,

maybe if they're really commercially focused, their mindset doesn't go that way. But for the most part, right, the desire always goes to the thing that from when we first started was the unattainable item, right, that now maybe isn't quite so unattainable. But I do think you're right that generally the quality of imported stuff has gone up. I think there's been a streamlining of what's available in general, meaning that I do think there's less randomness. There's less sort of, oh, hey, what about this? Not that it doesn't happen, right? Matt Most invariably – he knows a couple of these folks.

And he's sending us pictures of like what do you – what snake in the world do you even think this was? And it's, okay, this is the country that it came from. And it's like, okay, well, here's a fun exercise, a fun puzzle for sure, where it's not, you know. And there aren't, well, it's sort of the betwixt and between, where it's like, I would say generally there's not that many things that would fall into that categorization. At the same time, if you look at Marcochet's book of snakes, is it 5,000 different swans that are in there? Or is that the number of total snakes? It sounds about right. And something like that might be total squamates. Yeah, either way, right? Whatever it is, the answer is 60% of that book, most people who are even really into snakes would it's like, OK, you could approach this from the we know maybe theoretically where it's from.

We can apply. What do we know that's from there that seems to be from a similar ecological niche? What would we do if this turned up on your doorstep? The first answer is probably don't let it bite you. But I do think in general that your point is spot on, that there has been a streamlining of what's available, but what has been available is better quality. They're not languishing for weeks before they're being sent out. They're not coming across on a boat, right? All these sort of infrastructure things are supporting what is available is probably much better situated to do well. Heck, homoheropitans, right, where those were a thing that historically were considered to be essentially doomed from the start and not even with a clear cause where they just sort of dropped dead.

You know, Chuck obviously has done super well. Shane has done super well. Plenty of people have done super well. Those two that I'll especially call out here, the zoo itself, Oklahoma City. But those used to be sort of perceived as a lost cause despite being a scrub python, which are probably about as adaptable. If you meet the absolute external ranges of the conditions where you could keep them in, those should be super adaptable and do really well. And the answer to me that's evidenced by all the success that's been had is that really was a function probably of there wasn't, as I understand it, there wasn't a consistent exporting station from there. inherently, meaning going back from they were described or perceived as a form by the U.S. herp hobby, let alone science, let alone indigenous folks, whatever, right? But perceived

as a distinct item, maybe basically 30 years ago, that 30 years ago, without an exporting station in that area, the journey that those would take from the wild to sitting around to eventually catching a boat to go on six different flights to then come to the United States, just in terms of liver, kidney function, dehydration, all those things, is totally different than what you'd see on an animal that was collected. That if you said, hey, I want to, it it might it will cost seven or eight times more but it is quite possibly that same number of times more likely to do well than it would have at the time i think most that's probably profits to people that aren't you know aren't the

people actually collected and whatever but uh that's a whole different that's a whole different kettle of fish for us to go down but uh no, I think that you're on point there. Another note that you had made early on, just as a callback to this, I think it makes sense to be force feeding stuff in the coral snake context, right? I know Schmitty has had a couple of folks on quite a few times to kind of talk through that process, producing Eastern coral snake antivenom, all this stuff. As someone who did not grab an eastern coral snake when I was in Florida in October, because I knew enough to not put that on the potential plate, because of those conversations, it makes sense in that context at the same time if you were doing that every week with your animals, and not even as a, it's one thing, right, if you have an animal that won't start, but if that's sort of the perpetual forever, that we've probably hit a limit where either you need to be able to accommodate what it wants to eat, or that, to my mind, is probably something where there's some moral responsibility not to be trying to do that. You have to go either fully in or fully out outside, absent the,

you know, obviously there's a very, um, you know, um, uh, motivating reason to do it in that use case. And I totally understand that I'm totally support it, but just as a private keeper, you know, obviously we're not in that space. Yeah. And I wonder, too, like, I mean, a lot of these food sources we have are probably because there's a fishing industry. You know, it's not because somebody's saying, well, we need to grow crickets for the reptile people. But, you know, that might have changed and things like that may be available just specifically for reptile needs, particularly the roach species or some of the mealworms, alphobas, like you mentioned, bird langoworf. You know, we've we've gotten good at producing some of these things. I mean, I found out just completely by accident that if you throw some mealworms in your roach bin, because you don't have anywhere else to put them, they thrive in there and they produce. And I've got, you know, mealworms and roaches now in the same container and I can offer, you know, a little bit more variety to my animals. And they're

basically just perpetual. As long as you throw some green stuff in there every once in a while and keep a bowl of brand there, they're pretty easy bulletproof things to, to reproduce. So that's kind of been a game changer with my lizard keeping because, uh, either I didn't have the money to order the crickets on a regular basis, or I didn't want to spend that money, or that I was ordering too many and half of them would die. So I'd get disillusioned with that. Or I've looked for other alternative sources and they haven't worked out so well. You know, so I, I tried those red runners and it seemed like they had some kind of sticky web substance coming out of them. And the lizards didn't seem to like them. Like when I put them in there, they'd eat one or two and then they'd kind of say, okay, that's enough. I can't eat this. And I think there are some species that may not, uh,

have that same, you know, they don't care what it tastes like, you know, they'll eat whatever. I think I heard it might've been on project herpetoculture. Again, they were talking about the mealworm beetles that most stuff will not touch those, but certain species just went right after them and didn't, couldn't give a crap, you know? Um, but so, you know, there's, there's a little bit of, um, experimentation, I think when it comes to establishing a species, because you might find like, oh, they love this food item and they prefer this food item to other things. And that could also be a bad thing, but maybe that's kind of the secret

of getting them started is having this commercially available insect that nobody had tried before or something, you know, I don't know. But, um, the other, the other side of that is, uh, um, if, you know, if those, those things are, are available and you're, and you're finding the thing that helps them survive. You know, that, that's critical, right? You need to find those, those critical parts of their natural history. I think one of my favorite examples, and you put me onto this and we've talked about this before, is that Peter Nekes, Nekes interview on the Chameleon Academy podcast. And I wonder how many reptile species this could apply to, you know, I think about this in the context of Draco.

And that was kind of what, you know, that species that started this whole thing was, you know, thinking about all the Draco that are imported and then just are basically doomed to die in captivity, at least historically. And I know that recently there was some success with these. Oh, gosh. The name is failing me now. Help me out. So Frank Payne, and then there was someone else who was on

Project Herpetoculture Someone else was on there I think he's in Ohio or something Who has done well with them as well And I think ultimately I don't know that Frank's Are still going

I think he might have abandoned that project And it proved to be difficult But maybe it's something like that where they get their moisture from a fogger or, and that's the only way to get them to, to get moisture. It's similar to what Peter Nekas was saying, but, and, and, you know, so things like that, when we have paradigm shifts or changes in our understanding of how certain things happen, um, yeah, that could be a game changer for these things. Maybe that's all they need to survive. Or maybe the newer crop that are coming in or coming in under

better conditions aren't quite so emaciated. Or I do think there are some species that just can't tolerate that sitting in a box or sitting in a, you know, in a import facility or export facility waiting to and just not being fed or not being housed properly. I think they just can't bounce back from that. And I think a lot of the early work with green trees was kind of like that intensive care. You know, you got to keep them over water or constantly hydrated or something like that. So, or they just die. And so then we kind of said, Oh, that's how you take care of them. You know, you've got to keep them over, you know, it's kind of that idea of somebody in,

in the critical care unit at the hospital is not going to receive the same care as you have day to day. You know, it's, it's intensive care. It's, you know, not meant to be long-term. And I think sometimes we get confused by that because the methods needed to rescue an emaciated importer much different than the day-to-day care of one of their captive bred offspring, should we be that lucky? So, you know, those kinds of things could play into this as well. And maybe the long-term intensive care could actually be damaging to the animal or, you know, make them this as well. And maybe the, the long-term intensive care could actually be damaging to the animal or, you know, make them fail to thrive in some instances. So, you know,

it's, it's a really kind of a difficult thing and it requires a lot of forethought. And I think that's why it's just not done very often. You know, we want to, we want a care guide. We want a care sheet. We want something to tell us what to do. We don't want to try to figure it out by ourselves and spend the money and risk losing a lot of things. And I think Ron alluded to that where with the anoles, you know, he struggled to find once he figured out kind of, oh, they need this to lay their eggs in. Then he had no problem getting eggs and hatching eggs, you know, but before that it was a struggle. It was kind of hard. Um, so there's, there's different things that can really, um, you know, once you crack the code, then all of a sudden they're easy. And I guess that's the, the problem is, you know, it's always, you know, hindsight is 2020, you know, you, uh, it's a lot easier to say, well, we have course they needed that, you know, who would have not have thought of that? Although they went for 30 years with nobody thinking of that, you know, it's so much easier to say on the on the other side.

Well, of course, that's that's all they needed. But, you know, well, you didn't crack the code. And, you know, maybe there's so there could be a lot of species out there that just need that aha moment. I'm going to try this and have a, have a good enough sample size and show that, you know, Oh, that did work or Nope, it didn't work. And I'm going to, you know, put it on my website or I'm going to put it on, you know, a podcast so people can hear down the road. Okay. If you're trying this species, you know, maybe don't try this, or this didn't work for me in this situation, you know. So all these sharing of information is really useful. Of course, social media makes that

difficult in a lot of ways. You know, it's hard to have a permanent record of things like this, unless you do put it on a website or something, you know, and people just don't go to that effort a lot of times. It's and I'm not exempt from that either. I don't have a lot of my failings on my website either. So I can't really criticize anybody for that. But that's kind of what's needed if we're going to champion certain things. Right. And even then, some of that, as much as both you and I have learned from different

websites that have existed and the internet archive that exists, archive.org, is really cool, right, in terms of looking back on both sites that we're familiar with and those that we didn't see at the time or only saw later or whatever but it's still transitory right i mean i think of um rico's website that had so much information right and it actually uh darlene and whomever had maintained it for a long time as it was but uh it's gone now and you can find it on the internet archive and it mostly works right sometimes with the way people were doing pictures uh god help you if you had photo bucket and whatever but um you know for the most part some of some of the the bare bones of that at least

somewhere between bare bones and full body are are still visible but uh even that is i mean heck it it sort of is amazing to me right right, to bring it all back to the front end of this. I was able to order online and receive and now reading a pamphlet, not even, a four-page newsletter from the Staten Island Zoo from more than 60 years ago and be reading it today, right? That's very available in a way that a website that was designed five years ago, if it's someone who then got out two years ago, is probably already gone. So the permanence of that really is pretty amazing. And then you have folks like Eric, right, who is printing out websites and has this binder of all the different things that were of interest and all that. So to some extent, this was the last point that I had, you know, sort of as we'd gone through this, and it's a slightly different sphere of this, right?

So when we're talking about Eric having the binder, that's a cost of time, right? Time and effort. The limiting factor that I see for a lot of these species is really the cost, be it the time and effort or actual the financial to do it, right? So if we're talking, as I started with, with the granodensis, that as little hatchlings, their inherent desire is to watch for the anole that's asleep at night so they can inch up on it and then go for it. Anole, invasive brown anoles shipped from Florida are readily available to quality that didn't exist a decade ago. That is, I'm willing to stand on that as a fact, right? So that 10 years ago, there was one or two sources, and they're exactly what you're talking about, of like these were collected and brought in here sometime between six months and today. And literally, they'd be shipped, and half of them would be dead in the bag, which means it's not that they died from having the shipping process.

It's that they had been – they had achieved that point where that was the culmination right because i can say that because then now nowadays you have folks who go collect them to order and they get shipped out and literally they're all alive and look awesome when they come in i've had the stark contrast between the initial sort of presentation of that and the you know the the new iteration yeah the thing that is important there, really not that the ones that were half dead, where half of them were dead, not even that they were all half dead, half of them were dead. The cost isn't that dramatically different. But in either instance, we're talking about an overnight FedEx box from halfway across the country, plus the cost, actually,

the effort to go into that. So we're talking about those are, you know, the price I'm paying for those after you factor in all that is more than someone's paying for a medium or large rat at this point, and people are certainly complaining about that. And that's, you know, a week on any of those things that are eaten. So I think there's a cost to it, be it something where you, and even then, right now, in the same way I mentioned a while ago with how you get a box of crickets, now you've got a box of 50 anoles. Now you really are talking about setting up a cage or two or whatever with planted vivariums, and then you're catching them out of there. You're trying not to have them shoot out the gap and all this stuff. All of that is cost in both money and time and effort.

And so in terms of mainstream popularity, mainstream availability, the answer is certainly that there's someone out there for all these things that will go to whatever length. uh benjamin uh no thomas price right benjamin bucks in stolen world who was the fella i so i had seen him back in daytona the daytona issue that's described in the book i was there with tom um butterbean the character from the whole of this crazy tattoo german guy who tattoos you know on the bottom of his feet and problematic stuff and all that oh i i was there i i saw that that whole scene so that makes the that portion of the book extra interesting but uh you know what he was instrumental in uromastyx thomas i bit as parviacula uromastyx princeps uh i believe um all those things at some point between when the book came out and a handful of years ago because so he's on facebook we're but we're no longer friends um apparently um i remember seeing him right seeing him on there and he had the Galapagos marine iguanas that eat the algae off of the rocks. Yeah.

Now, talk about an illegal as hell. For sure. But the level of care and work, right, of saying like, okay, the level of care, work, expense, ignoring the legality or illegality of that, that it's like to have a pair of Galapagos marine iguanas that need to be maintained in a saltwater environment. Essentially, the saltwater fish tank, and now you have iguanas that need to eat the algae off the rock, right? Talk about how extreme can you get? It's probably the same amount of cost and effort and work as it is to have a 2,000-square-foot building of colubrids it to be within the grasp of other people that are out there in the world for you to sell as offspring to and all that.

That really is the crux of the problem that, you know, we're talking about today. Yeah. Well, and yeah, I will definitely concede that there are some species that should not be collected and sold in herpetoculture. And marine iguanas are probably the best example of that. You know, there's probably very few people that could keep those. But, you know, not to say that it's impossible. And I, you know, I don't know that if there are any in like zoos or private hands that maybe could keep them like, you know, kind don't think that they have a monopoly on keeping tortoises and turtles correctly. But I I'm pretty sure they do it better than than probably ninety nine point nine percent of keepers out there.

And they have a lot of knowledge contained in that group and they succeed, uh, and they have the drive and means to do so. So, you know, there's definitely things like that to consider. And, and a marine iguana, I was looking at the, uh, Houston zoo website. My daughter's in Houston right now, and she was talking about maybe going to the zoo. So I was going to see what they had there. And they have a Galapagos, uh, exhibit. And in. And in the map, it talks about an area for the tortoises and the iguanas. And I'm not sure because they have like a sea lion environment. And I was thinking, wouldn't that be cool if a zoo displayed some marine iguanas and had kind of like an insurance population if they could keep them successfully outside of the Galapagos

in case, you know, there's some volcano or something that wipes out the marine iguana population on a certain island. I don't know. But, um, or the sea levels rise and they all drown or, you know, it's who, who's to say what could potentially occur. But, you know, if there was a way to have even a zoo, I think that would fall into this discussion that there should be some places. There shouldn't be an animal that nobody can keep anywhere. There should be maybe a zoo or something that could potentially have an insurance population or find the way to make things work. And I think hellbenders are a great example of that where hellbenders were very threatened in the wild and now they're doing fantastic, um,

in these captive rearing scenarios in zoos, excuse me. And, uh, you know, they're releasing them back into nature by the hundreds or maybe even thousands, um, in certain areas. So, you know, those kinds of things are encouraging. And, and I So, you know, those kinds of things are encouraging. And, and I think, you know, just to say, well, you know, there's, there's no hope for the hellbender. No, they, they went out and figured out how to keep and breed them in, in a captive setting. And I think, you know, that could potentially be something that a regular keeper could do. You know, they might be able to successfully care for a hellbender. And I'm sure there's a lot of herpers out there that would love the chance to keep a

hellbender, that kind of thing. So I guess legality aside, like you said, I think there's somebody that could probably do that. But whether or not that's for broad application in the herpetocultural market is another question altogether, man, something's down the wrong pipe. But, um, you know, I, I think that all falls into it. You know, if you have enough passion, enough drive and enough, and the means to do so, you can probably make anything work. You know, if you, uh, of course, marine iguanas would be on an

exponential level harder than just about anything else, but there's probably somebody that could make it work and do it and breed marine iguanas and have a whole pen full or something. I don't know, and find a way to feed them what they need, but that would be definitely a next level challenge to do so. But yeah, I don't know. This is definitely a fun topic to think about. And I'm trying to think if there were any other points that I had that I wanted to bring up. But I think we covered all, I covered all mine. Did you get all yours out there?

I think the only thing I had was early on when we were talking about this, there was sort of the question of does sending a message, meaning a refusal to buy these things, particularly in the import context, does that work? And I think the answer, particularly in the new sort of streamlined universe where there isn't nearly as much coming and not from nearly as many sources, I think the answer is yes. Like I've even seen that with a couple of specific examples. Like I know that essentially Cameron refused to buy Erie and Jaya carpets over a certain size, whether, you know, when you get those sort of two and a half, three footers, something like beyond that. He didn't want them. He wouldn't purchase them. So they stopped sending them with a Lafayette sub radiata to the not the radiated rat snake, but an insular form rather than being sort of the mainland and into the insular rat snake that came in probably, I don't know, 30 or 40 of them came in. The ones that I had actually came from the Tulex, so terium were imported in 2006, 2007, something like that. Obviously, they had gotten some from a source, so someone was shipping them out. But those were a thing that they're generally very much a rat snake connoisseur who's interested in the thing for the thing, not because of their either pleasantness, pleasant disposition,

or beautiful color, or any of these other factors that would make them appealing. Those were available and legal to be shipped, but they weren't shipped because it was recognition of the lack of market for that. So I think in the streamlined marketplace, there's even more capacity to, as you said, sort of, and Eric always says, sort of vote with your dollar in. A lack of take up of those things will, especially in our new state, will result in less of that stuff, which is almost certainly a good thing. Right. So there's the downside. When I say that, right, that's the good theoretical good thing for the animals in the wild. The downside of that is that it's not sort of feeding the populace, so to speak, with a limited take. So who knows? Does that result in deforestation?

The cosmic octopus, the overcomplexity of everything, right? The multidimensionality of everything that there is. But in a very – the most basic way, we would say like, oh, that's a good thing that there aren't these sort of extraneous items that there isn't a market for being imported. If we followed all of the roots back to the, or, you know, roots back to the tree or whatever, maybe it's more complicated than that. So the answer certainly is, but in the most basal way, that's probably a good thing. Yeah. I, there was, there was one other thing that, that occurred to me as well is, um, as we, uh, you know, I think a lot of keepers are afraid to compete with imports because

one imports come in at much lower prices than they can probably reproduce them for. And, uh, so, you know, trying to compete with those prices can be problematic. I have seen kind of a change a little bit where people offering captive bred offspring, they're actually selling their offspring at much higher prices than an import. But people are willing to pay the extra money to have lower risk and things like that. And I would hope that people producing some of these, anybody producing animals is happy and willing to maybe replace something if it dies within a certain amount of time or things like that. You know, if you're a captive breeder, usually you're pretty good about wanting to help out the person that's getting the animal to succeed. Now that doesn't exist with an import because you're buying it from a pet store or from an exporter or importer or whatever. And so you're not really getting that, uh, personalized, uh, help and support system, I guess. They don't care whether you succeed or not, because then you're going to come back to them and buy another animal,

you know, if, if that first animal dies. But, um, so I think, um, you know, we never know when something's not going to be imported anymore. And so if there's a, a commonly available animal that you think is cool and that you're just afraid to compete with import prices, don't, don't be afraid. I think that's, uh, something, you know, a message I want to put out there is like, go ahead and work with that animal, work with what you love and don't let some kind of, you know, pyramid scheme idea of, I need to make money off of this influence that decision. Because if you can do well with a species, you're probably going to make enough money to at least feed it, if not more. Again, you know, kind of referring back to the interview that prompted this discussion with Jay on where he was talking about, you know, red-eyed tree frogs.

He said, you could, you know, if they're not imported or even if they are, you could easily make a couple hundred thousand dollars a year just breeding, you know, one species of frog and, and, you know, that kind of thing. And so I think maybe from the aspect of, you know, should, should certain species be imported regularly? If they're being captive bred at high numbers, then the answer is probably no. You know, should, should any animal be imported in huge numbers? You know, I guess we need to think about the sustainability, but there's probably another resounding no that we don't need to import, you know, millions of animals at cheap rock bottom prices kind of thing, you know, because that just leads to the idea that they're not, that they're worthless or they're a garbage animal or those kind of phrases that have been floated around. Because most reptiles, I mean, we're in this because reptiles are cool and there's a million different, well, not a million, but there's several hundreds or thousands of really cool

species out there that we could potentially keep and price shouldn't be factored into that. If you think it's cool and it's worth five bucks, hey, that's great. If you think it's cool and it's worth 5,000 bucks, hey, that's great. You know, once you get it in your own hands, you can do with whatever you want with it and sell it for whatever price you think you need to, you know, that kind of thing. But the fact is that some of these, uh, imported animals disappear and then they rapidly disappear from the hobby because nobody had the forethought to say, what if they aren't imported anymore? I really like these. I want these to be available to, to my children or my children's children or whatever, you know? So I'm going to go through

the effort of establishing these and, and making sure that they're available for many years to come, even if they're not allowed to be exported from their country of origin. So just another kind of pitch for that mindset, you know, keep that in mind that they might not be imported anymore. I think what the monkey tailed skinks, they were imported. They were, you know, a hundred dollar pet store animal. And then all of a sudden they stopped and they went to a thousand dollar animal, you know, because they were rare and people realized how cool they were when they weren't in every pet store, I guess they went, Hey, where are those really cool skinks?

I never bought because they were only a hundred dollars and I didn't want to compete with import prices or whatever, but, and then they kind of had a resurgence where they were imported again and those prices fell a bit, but they were still, you know, a couple hundred dollars or, uh, to, to get them from the importers. And, and so, you know, that changed pretty quickly and you can't predict it. So you might as well establish stuff when there is an influx of fresh blood or if you get some kind of inkling that something's going to stop or you know or you just really like that species so i think tokay geckos are a really nice example of that and granted you

know maybe the morphs or whatever help a little bit with that. But I think people just genuinely like tokay geckos and the imports are pretty, can be pretty feisty and nasty and, and bitey. And whereas the captive bred animals can be sweet and, you know, just handleable and, and great. So I guess it just depends on a lot of different things, but work with what you love, not because it's worth some perceived dollar amount. I think I'll, I'll end with that. Anything else to add? Yeah. Well, that's fabulous. I'm a hundred percent aligned there. Yeah. I didn't catch that. You kind of broke up, but I think, I think we're at the end. So if I got it correct there. Oh, no, I was just saying, yeah, work with what you love.

So that's literally it. Cool. Well, hopefully, you know, this has been a helpful discussion and got some ideas from it. And hopefully you'll be motivated to get out there and get that species you've always loved but just thought it was too cheap to bother with and work with something cool to hopefully potentially down the road improve the situation with imports. Any cool reptile news or happenings in the herpetocultural world? I saw on Instagram a couple of posts. Oh, are you frozen? I was talking about finding

black pine nuts. I can hear you fine. Okay, I got you back. Can you hear me? Okay, maybe we just cut it off. Yeah, my thing is starting to get fussy. I don't know.

No worries. I heard you talking about black pines and finding them in the wild. Yeah. Some recent activity there. Yeah, maybe we'll save it for next time. We'll save it for next week. I can it for next week i can find the link and don't have to try and find it or whatever so we can just have eric cut it at the end and yeah that works um well i'll throw out the kind of the the end stuff then well i mean i i was

looking looking at some of the reptile news it was kind of a little bit of dire stuff coming out right now, but there was some indication that one in five reptile species is endangered of extinction or from either habitat loss or from climate change and things like that. And then the other one that was, uh, some lizards are being born old, which was kind of an interesting way to put it that, you know, that the hotter temperatures and things that the nests are exposed to is, is kind of reducing their, their lifespan or something, if I understood that correctly, but kind of maybe not the most exciting things out there, but something to be aware of.

And that could shape things. There was another story about how rapid speciation of reptiles has occurred during periods of global warming or warming temperatures. And so, you know, I guess it's kind of the adapter parish type attitude that sometimes this earth takes and we're accelerating that clearly, but you know, the fact that hopefully things can adapt and survive or change so they can, they can persist, but kind of, uh, different times we're living in, I guess. And, uh, something, something interesting, I guess, to, to think about. Um,

yeah, I guess we'll, uh, thank, uh, Eric and, and the crew Owen and, and for, for, uh, you know, hosting the website or not the website, the podcast and, uh, appreciate their support. And hopefully, uh, um, Eric's doing well and, and, uh, bounce back from some of the challenges he's faced lately, but we really appreciate his efforts in keeping this, uh, going and yes, leave with that. Check out really pythons radio, Facebook, Instagram,

all the socials, their website, all that good stuff. And, and listen to NPR as well. Um, but thanks for listening to reptile reptile fight club and we'll, uh,

catch you again next time. Thanks.