Reptile Fight Club - Should we focus on keeping animals that require less energy? W/ Billy Sveen

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

In this episode, Justin and Rob tackle "Should we focus on keeping animals that require less energy?"  with Billy Sveen.Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comIGFollow Rob @ https://www.instagram.com/highplainsherp/Follow MPR Network @FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQSwag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

Alright people out there in Radio Land, welcome to Reptile Fight Club. I am Justin Juhlander, your host, and I am a little under the weather, hence the nice Barry White style voice tonight. Hopefully we'll get through this all right. Those darn viruses, somebody really should do something about those. Unfortunately, the NIH has shut down, so us virologists can't do much right now. So, all right. Well, anyway, Paul takes a side. How's it going, Rob? I'm good. I am good. Excellent. Yeah. And tonight we're joined again by a long time participant and listener

of the podcast, Billy Speed. How are you doing? I'm doing well. Dr. Billy. Going into some of those same NIH issues, but other than that. I'm not going to get into it because that's what we'll spend the whole night on. We could just switch the debate to what the indirect cost rate should be. No one else will care. Don't get me started on that one.

That's a barrel of monkeys that I don't want to play with. Yeah. Hopefully, uh, we'll be back to normal here soon. But, um, anyway, this might be a full-time gig here soon. Full-time podcaster. We might want to get some sponsors or something, bring back muttons, uh, power lifting gloves and yeah, gushers. I think they were in the mix there. But anyway Yeah, so we've got a winter winter wonderland happening here. So how are you guys doing things going well? Yeah, at least you're not on the class 3 kill storm yet. So that's good, you know You know, at least let's keep it that way and stuff. It's been cold here as well good. At least let's keep it that way and stuff. It's been cold here as well. There wasn't a lot of talk this time about polar blast, Arctic blast or whatever, but nevertheless

still sort of similar highs in the high single digits, low doubles or whatever. But yeah, maybe we're picking up. I don't know. Yeah, it was weird. I don't know if you guys had the whole 50 degrees a couple weeks ago and then down to 11, but yeah, it's crazy. I think just that, that, you know, swing is the most miserable part. You're like, ha ha shorts weather and then no, it's back to Arctic blast. Yeah, how's our things out in Minnesota version was like 30 degrees a of weeks ago and now back down to zero. Yeah. Yeah. It gets a little icier up there, doesn't it? Yeah. Crazy.

Well, warm temperatures are coming soon for me. Not to brag or anything, but I'm looking very much forward to being in the center of Australia in a couple of weeks. So very excited to get back out there. Yeah, although it was on fire or parts of it at least for a little while ago, but yesterday I looked and there was some rain, so that's encouraging. So hopefully we'll bring some critters out

and we'll get some luck on our side. But yeah, I was looking and there's quite a few lifers I need out there, so I'm excited. Cool. And you got a good out there, so I'm excited. You got a good crew going, so that'll be really good. Yeah, I'm looking forward to getting out with those guys and doing some urban. We had Nick Vine on here a little while ago, and he's going to come and join us too. He's going back over to school, and so he's going to meet us and I think he's gonna meet Jordan and drive up from South Australia. So kind of cool. Yeah. I'm excited to meet him in person

and see what he's made of out in the her field. So I met him in person at IHS. That's all cool. Yeah. He's delightful. He's really nice. Yeah. Yeah. Seems like a great guy. Yeah. So yeah, we really enjoyed having on here. So yeah, that was a fun nice. Yeah. Yeah. Seems like a great guy. Yeah. So yeah, we really enjoyed having him on here. So yeah, that was a fun episode. Yeah. Cool. And then just, you know, just maybe attempt you a little bit there, Dr. J. Aspen from your trip has accepted the offer in Reef, Florida. So, oh, shoot. He might be replacing me. Yeah, right? Maybe that'll give you a second thought on it. Yeah. No, I would love to. Yeah, I just can't swing it right now. I don't know. Not if I'm going to go look for other things with you in the future as well. I guess that's more September,

right? Or later in the year? Well, yeah. So it's right. We got so many different things going. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. the one I'm thinking of, the one you know I'm thinking of. Yeah, it's September. Yeah. So, but yeah, I don't know. Just want to get out to all of them if I could. But yeah, you got a lot going on this year. Well, I guess you're not going to Australia. Right. Yeah, there you go. So, you know, one Australia equals two or three domestic, I think. There you go. Yeah. Right.

Well, yeah, who knows? Maybe I'll have a lot of time on my hands here and I can go on all the trips. I just won't have any money. Anybody out there want to fund a herp? Right, sponsor trips. Sponsor a herper? For just $2 a day, you can sponsor this poor herper. All right. Well, sorry. Man. Yeah, something's

got me. But I guess it didn't really help much that I went and played water polo today either. So I thought it would clear me out a little bit, but it just made me like my oxygen saturation probably went down a bit. I'm having trouble breathing, but what do you do? It was fun All right. Well Herp collections doing well you everybody's staying warm I I think I might turn on my heater out there the the lights tend to keep it. Okay, but then it's getting kind of cold so

But things look to be moving in the right direction. And I'm thinking I might have eggs here soon. I saw the female blackhead had ovulated, so she'll probably lay right when I'm on my trip. Yeah, that's the timing. Yeah, exactly. Either being laid or hatching. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, herping somewhere, I guess.

Luckily, I've got a daughter who's pretty good with those things. Actually, the blackheads that I hatched out, not this last season, but the season prior to that, the ones with the little eyes and the incubator malfunction, I've got a pair that is doing fantastically well, taking weaning rats and growing pretty nicely. They're doing great. waning rats and growing pretty nicely. So they're doing great. I don't know what to do with them. What do you do with those genetic anomalies? It's probably not genetic, it's probably more of an in egg sort of thing. What do we call that? The doctor? that the doctor. Environmental. Yeah, environmental or yeah. So congenital, I don't know if it's congenital. Not congenital. It's not congenital. It would be congenital because it would be due to the birth formation process, but that doesn't tell you whether it's genetic or

not. Inheritable, right? Yeah. Yeah, I doubt it's heritable, but it's likely some congenital occurred in the egg due to the malfunction of the incubator. So we'll see. But yeah, they're kicking, they're doing good. So I don't know, I guess they don't need eyes to really do their thing. That's the one thing about snakes is most of them probably do just fine. I think that I was just reading the Bruce Means, Stalking the Plume Serpent, and he talks about that population of island tiger snakes and how they all have their eyes pecked out because of the birds that they feed on the chicks and the adults are pecking out their eyes and they're all

blind and stumbling around the island. No, they're doing just fine and fat and happy for part of the year. I think I watched the Marc O'Shea know, going back to that being on Amazon or whatever. I think it's got to be that same population because it's certainly tiger snakes going after those, those fledgling chicks or whatever. Yeah. There weren't, there weren't, I don't know, maybe that's one of those things that gets

overstated a little bit in terms of, oh, none of them have eyes or anything. I don't know. He found plenty of that eyes. They had some wounds and things, but not necessarily all these eyeless creatures. It makes for a better story if you have an island population with no eyes. Zero of them have eyes. Exactly. The way it goes, those stories. I told you, did we talk about that last time?

I've been watching all the Marco Shea episodes and yeah, putting lizards down his buddy's pants, Brian Bush's pants or whatever. Like, come on guys, please show me the lizard before you. Yeah. All right. Well, so man, I better stop talking here soon. But today we're going to, Billy sent in a idea for the podcast and we thought it sounded great and we're always appreciative of Billy's great mind and the things he comes up with are very interesting and debate worthy for sure. So thanks again, Billy, for the great suggestions and for coming on and doing the podcast. Thanks for putting up with me. And so today's topic, we got a selection of a few, so we'll probably have you back on here soon.

But is keeping things that are better for energy efficient, captives, does that sound right? Keeping things that are going to be more energy efficient captives. Does that sound right? You know, keeping things that are going to be more energy efficient. Should that be a consideration? And I think there's a lot of good, you know, points on either side. So we give it a shot. So we'll, we'll debate the, yeah, the energy, if it's beneficial, if it's important, if it's reasonable to pursue that side, or maybe not so much. So yeah, we'll go ahead and Rob and I will flip the coin and we'll see who gets to fight with you tonight.

So go ahead and call it Rob. My classic tails. Tails? His heads. So well, with the voice impediment, I'm going to go ahead and bow out to you this week. So I would love to, and I'm sure I'll jump in with some topics here, there, points here, there, but I'll let you go ahead and take the lead. So Billy, why don't you call this one to see who gets which side?

Heads. who gets which side? So heads. It is also heads. So two heads in a row. All right. What side would you? I will pick that we should be mindful of the energy use of our animals. Okay. Sounds good. And then I also get to pick order. Yep. Yep. Yeah,

you can defer or? Yeah, I'll start. Okay. Cool. Cool. Yeah, so in part of what made me start thinking about this is that the way my practice of herpetoculture is, is that I essentially have free rein of what to do, but it has to be in this room. And this room is also where I work. So I realized pretty quickly, I, you know, when I, when I moved into this house three years ago, the only animal I had at that time was the one ball python. So I realized if I had a whole bunch of animals like that or warmer, I was going to be working in the 80s in my office at home, and that wouldn't be very attainable. So then I started selecting animals that were all much

closer to room temperature, especially the poison dart frogs being one of the main groups. And then in having a little bit of that framework and that inherent limitation into how I'm planning to build my population of captives really made me start thinking about this a lot more. Especially hearing people talking about how much their energy bill has gone up and all this stuff when they have hatchlings and have to double the amount of closures they have or all those types of things. For me, it's not that big of a deal and so there's definitely an economic aspect to it that's very nice, especially in today's

economic situation where a lot of things are more expensive and a lot of people are keeping that in mind. And we're, especially if you're intending your hobby to pay for itself or contribute to some degree, or this is actually your job, you know, the price of some animals is down too, because of, you know, this is kind of a luxury, not an essential commodity for our lives. So when the economics get hard, this is potentially a way to be a little bit more mindful of the

cost. And I think it also has some environmental impacts too, right? Like if you're cooling a big part of your house, but heating another part of your house in the world of climate change, not to get more political again. But now you're not being the best player in that way too. Especially if you're talking about on this one side of the room, I have my ackeys and on the other side of the room, I have my veiled chameleons. And so I'm going to like heat this side to over 120 degrees for a hotspot. And then at night, I'm going to drop the temperature

down on this side while having the ceramic cooler. And you can do all kinds of things like that that some people end up doing. And that seems at the baseline inefficient. And then is the argument, could you make an argument that it's actually not the right thing to do? Like morally, they shouldn't be spending that amount of resources in that way. I'm not sure if I'll go that far, but I think it's a thing I think about. Right. All right.

To you. Sure. Absolutely. So there's a ton there. And just for the context or the paradigm that I bring to the situation, I certainly would admit that I'm always an advocate for kind of that we should keep it amongst a group of friends or whatever, actually having diversity amongst what we are keeping, not just duplicating what everyone else is doing.

And having that tied to your natural climactic conditions to me is what I believe in. Right. I do. It's certainly easier to lean into what your conditions support. And that's sort of where I'm at now. But I do think there is something to, there's stuff to be said for here. So I think it's a good topic and I'm happy to advocate those positions or whatever, but just for the context.

Yeah, definitely. I think the fundamental thing is the question of keeping what you like. And maybe here's one answer, is with enough time, experience, exposure to different elements, what's available essentially in the hobby, it probably is something that fits into your conditions that you'll like, but that might not be the thing that you first hear about. Just yesterday, a buddy of mine was saying, he was here in Colorado, he was blown away. I guess he had no exposure to the idea of chameleons as pets, let alone the crazy color panthers in this whole market right now.

He's saying, oh, these are super cool and it shouldn't be that bad or whatever. The alarm bells, relative to my mindset, are ringing saying that is not an animal that I would choose as an easy choice, especially for not an obvious animal person, but a new lizard keeper or whatever. It was like, yeah, you can do it. There's going to be investment, fortunately, based on your other animal experience. We can talk through it. When I say, oh, that's going to be $400 or $500 to get that set up appropriately and

whatever, that didn't shut down the situation. It wasn't like, oh my God, I can't believe that. $500 to get that set up appropriately and whatever. That didn't shut down the situation. It wasn't like, oh my God, I can't believe that. It was like, okay, you know how this goes, so that's not unreasonable. But to your point, and to the point of the question, it's like, well, what are the inputs, the modifications you're going to have to make to the system? That could be overall, anyone who doesn't live on the equator. Keeping Indonesian reptiles outside in Indonesia works just fine.

It doesn't work so great where the three of us live. The energy input is a lot different, but depending on your location and where you're at. What those things could be is going to vary widely. I think that's really the big push against it. It's either like what you like, like what your friends like, like what the market tells you to like. And again, if there's a commercial aspect on your end, well, you can maybe do it more efficiently.

If there isn't the purchasing market, it doesn't necessarily... At least you have to be in scale and the appropriate scale, right? So Billy, to the extent that you're producing dart frogs, it's on a scale. There is a market for those things. It's not like that's going to be an issue for you. Simultaneously, if you were saying, oh, I'm going to do this on this massive scale, I'm going to be the new dart frog, I'm going to be the new rennetomea guy or whatever, that market is certainly more narrow.

It's weird, right? Then you're in a space of saying the market is smaller but there's less supply as compared to ball pythons or carpet pythons or asperdites or whatever it might be where there's probably a bigger inherent market but there's more competitors to supply that market. In terms of the environmental impact, I think there's really not that much argument on that point. To the extent you're working with something that doesn't naturally suit your in-room conditions, the more inputs you're going to put into that, there's a cost to that.

A lot of those are externalized. I think we just have to try and make good choices. To the extent that our action, heck, even going on her trips, Justin's going to Australia, there's an externalized cost associated with that activity and you just have to be cognizant. I think just being cognizant of that and trying to appreciate the benefit that you're getting from that is at least that's a positive step, you know, at least it's a lot better than denying the impact and just, you know, disavowing it.

So those are my sort of instant reactions. Yeah. I want to throw in just a quick, I mean, a lot of this, keep what does well in your environment or the place you live. That's kind of championed by Bert Langoworf. I remember conversations with him and I always just like to throw his name out there. If you haven't heard about him, look him up. There's some books, I think Russ Gurley published some books on Bert Langoworf, but just a really ingenious and one who really went the distance on that idea. So sorry, I just want to throw a plug in for

him there. Go ahead. Yeah, and I mean, I think that he's, not that I knew him personally, but in my awareness of him, he is a great example of like kind of the ultimate energy efficiency is keeping outside. Yeah.

And so, you know, if you really want to push it farther, you know, I should have great tree frogs and tiger salamanders in big enclosures outside. And that probably would be awesome. But yeah, I mean, I think the externalized costs of so many of the things that we do is really interesting and is really important to keep in mind. And the way I see it, at least especially since this is very much a hobby and a passion for me, this is all luxury. And if, you know, if the

if the world starts running into significant problems or if my family starts running into issues, right? This is one of the first things to go. And I don't anticipate that. I really hope that's not ever gonna be the case. So to some extent, all of this is not selfish in a negative aspect, but it's a self-indulgent thing that I'm doing. And so there's an externalized cost to that

in time and resources. And so what does it change if I'm going from a 25-watt white light bulb to a 75-watt light bulb? And so I think there is that aspect of it. Another idea I've thought of when there is inherent externalities, there's impact on the decisions that we make to the rest of the world for all of these things that we're choosing. And not just within the hobby, but like especially within herpetoculture, that the idea of like a carbon offsets. So you're gonna, like a company that has to have polluting

or environmentally damaging components to make what they're gonna make. Like to make the car, they're going to need to pollute some degree. So they're going to minimize it, but they have not that they have to pollute. They're going to buy something like buy and protect an area of forest or buy something that will reduce that amount of carbon. So it's like buying the carbon offset in the market for that. I've had a little bit of that idea for herpetoculture and the idea of when you sell animals, you could invest it into not just straight conservation,

which would be remarkable and so much good would happen if a lot of people took that to heart. But you could specifically be trying to conserve natural areas that are and protect natural habitat that would combat climate change and help mitigate some of that. And I have no idea and I do some of that. And I have no idea and I do some of that. I help with some stuff that's going down in Ecuador with conserving some land and buying preserves. But I have no idea if it... I haven't looked at the numbers at all to have any idea if I'm actually offsetting any of the demand that my frogs have and I have no idea how you even do that math. But I think that kind of a mindset is potentially useful.

And instead of just saying like, how much can I, how much like money can I make? How much can or how, and also like what kind of corners can I cut in the husbandry of my animals? Potentially saying, how can I mitigate those externalities by investing somewhere else? Because this is what I'm good at. This is what I'm passionate about. I think that might be a way to meet in the middle to some degree. Yeah, that's a nice thought. Yeah, I think there's a ton there. So the other thing, even in the dart frog context, that comes to mind as you were saying

that is the whole idea that even some of these products have an externalized cost to them. So two light bulbs, right? The idea that you're purchasing a product that you could then can't just throw away in your regular household waste. You have to pay to have it processed appropriately. And we know what you should do. Yeah, absolutely. And we know the incentives of that incentives of that system, right?

Is that? Yeah, absolutely. You should do that. We can promise that doesn't happen. It does not happen. Yeah. You know, and so kind of even how like the how ethical is that product, right? That is essential for what we're doing.

But is that inherently an ethical product if you can't even dispose of it, right? Inherently you can't even dispose of it in the way that at least some percentage of the users we can presume are going to dispose of it. Yeah. Let alone the other rare metals and other things that people are using. Yeah. Yeah. The intake process to get them into that product in the first place. Absolutely. The amount of plastic 30-ton deli cups that are put into fruit fly cultures that people

don't reuse because they are filthy and smell horrible to clean. Wait, you can throw those away? I kept the same ones for years. What I do is I buy them from a restaurant supply store and get these like really, I have, I mean, they're like, they're not clear. They're really thick. And there, I let them get really dry before I open them and then they're easy to kind of flake out there. A bunch, a bunch at a time. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, there's all kinds of those externalities. I suppose it's a point for your side.

But the other thing that immediately jumps to my mind, and maybe it's just because I just went through this, I don't know, two months ago or whatever, but is the idea that the more you're reliant upon energy to protect, to keep alive, to maintain whatever you're keeping, the greater your vulnerability should the power then unexpectedly not work. That's something that I definitely ran into when we... Again, the stuff that I'm working with is not particularly sensitive to that, even to the point of...

So the power had gone out and then heading into one evening, it was out for 25 hours and I had a little propane in-room thing, kind of what Justin is working right now to try and keep himself okay. I ran that during the course of the day and kept it in the low 60s when it was single digits outside. Again, with my room conditions, the variability of that, the only concern was of course, I 60s when it was single digits outside. With my room conditions, the variability of that, the only concern was, of course, I had just fed three or four things within 90 minutes before the power went out.

That gave me greater concern than I otherwise would have had. But the point is power went back on. We went from the upper 50s to the low 60s and literally everything in the room was hanging waiting for food So they just thought it you know, I don't know a day-long solar eclipse or whatever With the temp going down a little bit, but if you you know, those are things that are really Able to handle that where if you're working with things that are far more sensitive or have heck I mean the the more dangerous the heat is more dangerous than cool. So if we're in a space of saying like, okay, you're trying to keep salamander species that

aren't supposed to get above the mid to upper 70s as a high end and you live in Southern California and it's the mid summer and the power company shuts off your power to avoid having wildfires associated with that power going down. I mean, it's just not... Those are gone. Yeah. Especially when you don't have basements and those types of things that are less common in that area.

I wonder too, with... A lot of people may not have a purpose-built room that they're keeping their animals in, but I had to build a room out in my detached garage when we moved to the house we're currently in. I just made sure it was very well insulated, so any energy that I'm using is at least kind of getting kept. The same with the cages, you're not just keeping in glass terraria, which are not very energy efficient, you know, holding heat in and things versus, you know, maybe thicker materials or insulated materials to

maintain that. Yeah. Yeah. I find that even just, and again, I'm not trying to get high, like basking zones for my poison problems, but I want a gradient and that in like two foot enclosure, and even just having three of the walls covered in cork panel insulates it so much that having the like big LED strip, like one of these strips on it, heats that top to 80 and the bottom is 70.

And so they get a little gradient just from that really low wattage LED. And I'm pretty sure if I didn't do cork on the sides, that a lot of that energy, especially since a lot of those are class, would just go away. Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, it's definitely something to think of when you're thinking about what you're keeping, what you're keeping them in, what's available to keep them in.

Maybe if you build your own, it might improve that scenario. There's a lot of different factors to consider. I remember in high school and then later on too with my bearded dragon having like 100 watt light bulbs in this 40 gallon aquarium with like a screen top on it or whatever I was doing at the time that I would be not thrilled about now. But I mean, now I think in my 120 gallon enclosure here for the ball python that has a custom hood that's made of PVC so it traps all the heat in. I think I put like a 30 watt halogen or something.

And that hot spot is probably not as hot as what the beard dragon would have wanted. But it gets in that top corner, if the snake goes up there and it uses every once in a while, it will get to well over 100. And then it keeps the hide on that side in the 80s and the hide on the other side is in the 70s. And the snake can pick where it wants because there's hides throughout. But I just think about how much more efficient that this enclosure is just because of the way it was designed.

Right, yeah. Also about the house we're in now is like, each room has its own kind of heating system. And right now it's like not functioning in this room so it's cold, but I don't come in here very often so I don't need to heat it when I'm not in here, you know? So I don't mind if the heater goes out. It's designed to be that way or the house just, well, the way it is.

They added on and yeah, they added on and just kind of didn't have it piped into the central, but at the same token, I think it helps because then you're not heating the whole house every time you turn the thermostat to a certain setting. So, you know, you can heat certain parts of the house and then if you go, if we're all in the family room, we turn on the gas heater out there and, you know, enjoy the warmth, you know, and then turn it off and leave the house. And then if you go, if we're all in the family room, we turn on the gas heater out there and you know, enjoy the warmth, you know, and then turn it off and leave the room. So, you know, I think the same can be said of our, I think about, uh, Peter Krause, he had that design, uh, for his own Peli cages.

And he had like a, uh, like a room of the cage where the heat lamp was. And it had an entrance and an exit. And so basically they could go up in that room like you were saying and get that high temperature and then leave and be back to the other temperature. So it took a lot less energy to heat a smaller area. Partition the actual enclosure. Yeah, and I try to do that with my cage designs now.

I almost picture like a buttress root kind of sectioning off a part of the cage or something like that. It could look really cool and be neat to look at and then have a solid top over that where it holds in the heat in that area of the cage and then they can move to other areas where they want it to be cooler. So not only can you can be more energy efficient, but you can also meet their needs because reptiles do like a choice in a lot of these situations. They don't always want to be at 100 degrees, but they want to be at 100 degrees sometimes.

So you have to work around their needs as well. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the thing that jumped to mind, Billy, when you started talking about that, just in terms of how we visualize how we set up our cages is, and I think it's, I would have learned this lesson mostly from Robin Markland of Pro Exotics, who had gotten it mostly from Frank Reedus, that the idea that we don't need to make beef jerky machines of our cages, right?

And it doesn't need to make beef jerky machines of our cages, right? It doesn't need to be these. So especially talking about baranids, Odatria, right? So small baranids, although the bearded dragon would fit firmly into this box as well, of saying these are things that physiologically need to be able to access 120, 130, 140 degrees. The answer, Kent, is you can use a small light and build up to it, or you can have a 40 gallon that has this massive open space and you're seeking 120, two vertical feet of empty space that's at room temperature down, or you could get them the ability to get within three, four, six inches of that light and you could use a light that's you know A quarter a fifth of the energy right and so that was something that Robin was always advocating

You know generally and on the website and all these things was saying like yeah, you're not you don't need Essentially and even within the shop they never sold those bulbs that be like 150 watt You know ceramic spots or that you know, whatever it would be because those are scary Relative to how much energy is going through those things. It really is. It's a huge risk. Even outside of reptiles or through personal life, you meet people, someone who almost set their floor on fire because their bearded dragon cage, they set the thing down and didn't realize it or whatever. Those things are scary things. Whereas if you're talking about

Those are scary things. Whereas if you're talking about all the odatry I wound up keeping, I was using 29 watt bulbs and you just build cork stacks to get them within three or four inches of that, you could get 165 degrees. That's the beauty of cork too, is that it can take that temperature without burning, discoloring. Any of these, its smoke point is much as well above that, right, just in terms of the material that it is. So part of it speaks to making conscious choices about that, not using some plastic hammock

or something that's four inches away, like it's getting 165 degrees. But at the same time, and yeah, exactly to your point, Justin, just like we see outside, is like they do use it. Maybe it, I'd, the Glow or Die, right, would go and sit there and attempt, you know, where its body was sitting, I would attempt that to 165, 170. And it would go sit there for, you know, five minutes and then go two layers down in the stack and then go three layers down and then it's back to the top. And that we've seen that's what they do in the wild, right? That actually replicates their natural condition. That was just a huge

lesson for me of saying, oh, build up to the light. Don't just have so many of our cages in general, even talking about the bearded dragon and the 40 gallon, it's the same thing as I think of with the chondros, where there's the singular stick in the prototype 15 years back, condor cage, right? It's a empty square, a single stick, and they sit under this light that's centered on this stick. And it's like, wow, this is the least efficient use of this space that we could possibly imagine.

Like literally if I said, what's the least efficient thing that you could do within this box? That would be it. Yeah. And I think too with, you know, talking about the cork and, you know, if we're incorporating some of these kind of passive radiant heat, you know, when they can sit under the basking tap and they can absorb that heat and then after the lights go out, they're radiating that heat just like in nature, you know, the rocks are radiating heat

and some, you know, sometimes that's very unpleasant The rocks are radiating heat. Sometimes that's very unpleasant when you're herping in Texas and it's 100 degrees after midnight because the rocks are just blaring heat that they've soaked up during the hot, sunny day. You can incorporate those kinds of things as well. Fake rock work and stuff like that could definitely contribute to having that heat last longer than the lights on. Yeah, I mean, I think about having like insulating stuff around the outside of the enclosure to keep the heat in. And then the basking spot for my snake and for my little day geckos are very heat resistant, as you say, like cork, really natural wood, and some foam panel stuff that I put dry lock stuff over top so that it won't get to 200 degrees when it's only like a couple of inches from the light. But then

down at the bottom for the snake, I have a slate panel, like a shoot, a tile, like a slate tile that's for like landscaping that I've broken up and put on top of the hide so that that gets unnaturally – or not unnaturally, very naturally. It gets disproportionately warm compared to its surroundings because it's a conductor of the heat. So I think playing with that is another good way to design to be more energy efficient. Right. Yeah. And incorporation of leaf litter, right? Yeah. So using soils and leaf litters and those sorts of things. Definitely the thermo stability of those products as compared to newspaper paper towels or just the bare bottom tub or whatever it is, right?

Obviously there's just, yeah, you're maximizing every little bit that is all those inputs, you're maximizing them rather than just sort of... I do think there's certainly something to this that there's a lot of sort of trivial waste that's just sort of accepted as a byproduct of what we're doing. And yeah, so I do think it's actually really... It's right to call that out. And I think the, as you, I hadn't really thought about this for a while, the danger of these really high wattage bulbs.

I wonder, I asked my parents when they sold the house that I grew up in, what they ended up doing with that hole in the carpet in the middle of my room, where I sat down probably 100, 150 watt incandescent bulb, because it was a front opening or a top opening aquarium and the light was sitting directly on top of it and the animal would be two feet below it or whatever. And so I'd had to lift it off and set it on the ground in order to take the lid off to feed.

And I didn't turn the light off one time or I didn't put it back on right away or something. And I remember smelling the smoke and going up there and it didn't light on fire, but it burned a hole in the carpet. So I had to rearrange the whole room so that my bed would be over the top of it. And that wasn't in my mind. I mean, that's probably like 12 years old. And so, yeah, lived the next six years in that house with my bed, particularly in the middle of the room on top of that hole in the floor. I'll have to ask them what they did about that when they sold the floor. I'll have to ask them what they did about that when they sold the house. Right. That's funny. Yeah.

And I mean, it is a prototype experience. That's the thing, right? It's not intentional. It's not even really negligent. It's your setting up a circumstance where, almost inevitably, that's going to happen. Mistakes are going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. And if you don't think about those, you know, if you're, if, if nobody's talking about, you know, how we can make these more energy efficient or how we can reduce the wattage of bulbs we're using and how, you know, tips to, or, or new product development where, you know, this will use less energy and this will be able to house your reptiles or this is something you can do to improve this.

If nobody's talking about that, then you kind of make the same mistakes as people in the past and with some of the same terrible consequences of maybe a burnt down house or things like that. We don't want to just keep doing the same things because people have done them. We want to improve on what's been done. And I think that's the whole thing behind your idea is let's improve this and let's make it better. Yeah. And I really don't think that I'm not suggesting no one should have a bearded dragon or no

one should have an ACCI monitor because they're wonderful animals. But I do think having your breeder dragon right next to your panther chameleon is not smart, you know, because you could probably do it, right? You could like insulate an area and like figure out how to do it. But like that's silly. You should like if you're that invested in them, put them in different rooms. Or if you can't do that, pick animals that have more or less the same climate so that you can figure out an energy efficient way to keep an animal that requires a high amount of heat or an energy efficient way to get an animal. Maybe Panthers aren't the best idea, but like some cloud forest species that needs to get down to the high fifties almost every night or at least every night for many months of the year. Or keep it in a different room. I mean, I've got some Australian leaf tails.

Open the window. Yeah. Some amnicola in my reptile room and it gets too hot for them in there. I mean, they survive and I try to keep them in a cool area of the room, but I'm just like, nah, this it gets too hot for them in there. I mean they survive and I try to keep them in a cool area of the room but I'm just like, ah this isn't too much for them. I just need to move them out of the room so I'll move them into my podcast area because it stays nice and cool down here in the basement. So yeah, just making those changes when you can to make it more energy efficient and helpful to the animals for sure. Well, and I think the other thing that this calls to my mind is I think we had

actually Billy when you were on maybe the last time we were talking about keeping sort of smaller things rather than larger things, right? And so this fits into that same box when we're having this conversation because all the things where I'm talking about, oh you know singular bulbs, singular 29 watt bulb and all this stuff, all of that is odotria or at least maximum size of a big odotria and smaller, where that singular bulb is sufficient for them to manipulate their core temperature with that single bulb. If we're talking about things that are bigger than that, where they're going to try and

heat up their entire body, their physiology is to just plop under it and try and get to their ideal core temperature based on that. They will burn themselves. One light bulb on a sufficiently large animal isn't enough for them to do that, but the way their exposure works, they're just going to sit there and burn that singular spot to try and achieve that result. They're not going to, oh, now I creep forward three inches and then get this effect. So you have to use a bank of lights. And that was Robin's whole thing relative to black-throat cyanide, that sort of thing. But at the same time, I do think it's kind

of a point against the practicality of those things or articulated pythons or whatever. It's like clorida or big animals. We're talking again, that much more you're back back in the sphere of that 150-watt bulb by your cumulative effect. In that same way, if you're then putting that on the carpet, presumably that would be very difficult to manage. Then you're just talking about this crazy complex feature, electrical feature that's scary in its own right when you just look at it, when you think about it.

I think in my own lived experience has been that we're a little too flippant about some of that stuff. My own push has been to try and move away, yeah, move towards what you're saying, not necessarily even for these same reasons, but just move towards things that situate better in the natural conditions of the room and you're not putting all sort of you don't have a whole host of 100 watt bulbs all over the room that that's probably overdrawing your power, you know or at least it or you know making I remember Frank also making those kind of indoor outdoor cages for the larger monitors so during the heat of the summer, they could go outside and bask. So he's harnessing the sun, and maybe skylighter or a greenhouse type setting.

There's a guy in Utah that did a big greenhouse. The whole greenhouse thing. Yeah, it has a bunch of fish and snakes and things out there. So, I mean, it can be done. It's just very expensive. So if you're trying to keep a lace monitor in Wisconsin or something, you're

going to have a lot of challenges around that. Certain times of the year, they might be able to go outside and get heat. But even then, like even in Florida, I think Ron was saying he was having trouble getting his monitors hot enough in the outdoor enclosure. I think with that cloud cover and stuff. Yeah.

So that's why Tucson's okay because it's 4,000 feet, right? So you have that verticality and you don't have that wet. You don't have the Florida winter wet that's so difficult to deal with. So yeah, I guess that kind of goes into keeping things that are suited for the environment where you live, especially if you're keeping a big monitor outside. I remember Burt saying, I was thinking, well, I can't keep anything. I'm in Utah. It's a winter wonderland up here during half the year.

So, he's like, no, Australian water dragons would do okay out there. As long as you brought them in during the winter, they'd be just fine outside for most of the year. So you just have to understand their natural history. Well, and to that same point, right? The thing that is I think what I forget the phenomena, right? But sort of the when we try and take a 3D object. Oh, here we go hitting another potential problem.

But when we take a 3D object and represent it in a 2D space, so when we're taking the world and presenting it on a map, it's always amazing to me the latitude of Europe compared to where we're at. So I'm sure part of Bert's response to you, Justin, would have been, yeah, well, you live in the equivalent of northern Spain or something. So there's plenty of herbs that live above there. You could pick something that would have, and obviously there's variability to that or whatever. Heck, it's the thing that was amazing to me. I went to Kyrgyzstan and it's

halfway around the world, but it's a similar, other than having 14,000 foot peaks on one side, it's surrounding Bishkek. But otherwise, it was just amazing to me, oh, wow, I'm literally halfway around the world, but at the same latitude and how similar then the conditions are. Okay, wow, so there are things that would be an equivalent that are probably cool. They're not ball pythons, they're not leopard geckos, they're not whatever, the things you would easily stumble into. But I think that was Bert's whole point was like, you know, you got to, and that he was

a champion for a lot of water dragons are probably the most popular thing that he was a champion for. And chinasaurus are- Yeah, because they fit so well and where he was. And chinasaurus are popular now, but they were not when he was champion. Right. You know. Flying into New Zealand, Queenstown, it reminded me a lot of Salt Lake. You know, we went up to a ski resort during the summer there and just the rocks and the

alpine lakes. And I'm thinking, this is just like Utah. You know, if only we could get some of their herbs over here, that would be fantastic. They'd probably do really well in this area. Absolutely. Yeah. I saw someone posting a pair of capture bread, show me a say around, Naltinus geckos. Only $15,000. That's it. If you want to grab those, go for it. Show me a say around. Naltiness, geckos, only $15,000.

If you want to grab those, go for it. All you have to do, and that's the thing, Justin, even when you said that, is it's like, okay, well you sell it. And there actually is a guy who was just on the Not Another Reptile podcast. I mentioned this a couple of times ago, but who has kept a variety of things. I think he's mostly a gecko guy, his, you know, but he's, you know, Asper was old news and all this stuff. So clearly he's always kind of been on the high end of this stuff, but that he's had a variable collection, but now I think he has fought five Altinas and that's

it, you know, but like, yeah, Justin, yeah, sure. You get to sell everything and then you get the geck get to keep them outside. And yeah, that's true. Yeah. And I think, uh, I think being able to keep animals that are like truly the natural environment of your, of where you live is the most energy efficient, like being able to keep them outside and all that stuff. But I think also thinking about the,

it's very cold here and there are herps that live outside, obviously in Minnesota, but the environment in our home is very subtropical, tropical, right? Like we're keeping it usually around 72 and we actually humidify to some degree because it's so brutally dry when we have the air conditioning on.

And so keeping understory forest floor tropical animals actually fits quite well. It doesn't help if the power goes out. They're not tolerant into the 50s or the high 90s in either direction, both of which could easily happen in half a day at different points of the year here. But they're energy efficient if the system's working as we've designed it for our comfort. Right. Yeah, absolutely.

And I think another thing you had said earlier, Rob, about there's these common animals that are highly marketed that people know about, and so they're the animals that people start with, but then there's all these other animals that can fit these little niches that people don't know about. And so I think trying to perpetuate them and having a selling point be some of the energy efficiency with them is something that I think people could leverage even more than

people currently are. Like I think of a lot of amphibians in that category. And this cave gecko that I have, I that thing is cool. It's very secretive. And so we'll see it's still so young. So we'll see if it gets a little bit more out and not hiding the second I walk in the room when it's dark. So we'll see. But it is I mean, it's awesome when you when you see it and very lively little gecko that essentially wants it room temperature and the lights provide enough gradient for it. And so I think there's so many cool animals like that, that need, the gradient doesn't need to be very big.

Yeah. I always kept kind of a little colony of Corylofus cilius, the eyelash, no, crested geckos. In my office at work, and that was kind of the big thing with them is you can keep them at room temperature, feed them a powdered diet. They're the easiest pet gecko to keep. I think a lot of people were kind of interested because they didn't have to buy heat lamps. They could do it a little more easily in Utah and they didn't have to heat it or cool it or all those kinds of things. Yeah. And it doesn't mean that you shouldn't have some lighting, right? Some, you know, like, yeah, it's like, I'm not suggesting that people keep like a cave gecko in a completely unlit tub, right? I'm suggesting, uh, you know, your led and

UVB might be enough to provide a vertical gradient because they can climb fairly well, or depending on how you set up, like a small microhalogen or something, right, to provide a little gradient. But that's nothing compared to even a leopard gecko of the same size. That is actually a very similar animal just in a semi-arid instead of tropical, almost montane environment. Yeah.

So I guess sometimes we oversimplify it and say, oh, this is all you need for this animal, you know, instead of… Well, that's true for every direction of everything. Yeah. Right. Right. And I think people try to sell that as part of it, you know, and I don't think, you know, any reptile is as simple as a lot of people try to

make them out to be or is carefree and no maintenance type pet. But I think you're right that that is a selling point of Crested geckos. And that actually wasn't high on my list because I've actually never had a Crested gecko. so it wasn't on my radar, but that's absolutely right that it is a selling point. But I think more species can be leveraged that way. Like, I mean, I was hearing more about like rubber boas. Like those things sound so fascinating. I don't think I'll probably ever have one, but the way their natural history just sounds

incredible. Oh yeah, they're in my backyard. Well, not technically, but yeah, just 15 minutes up the road, I can find them readily. And I mean, they're basking with snow on the ground, you know, they're crawling out and yeah, it's crazy. They're pretty tough animals for sure. But not commonly bred. I mean, there's such a wide variety of reptiles. Whoever the PR people for ball pythons and boas and corns, they need to maybe branch out on some of these other species. But at

the same time, I guess it's like we talked about in previous show, you know, there's so much information out there that I think people just feel more confident because I'm not just listening to one person, I'm listening to 50 people who keep the same thing and I can ask them for advice. And so that, you know, you really need somebody to kind of champion a new species. I think Frank Payne has done a really good job at that and getting the word out there on other cool species besides the top 10 or 5 or whatever. I'm pretty sure it was on, I mean this is a tangent, but I think it was on Project Herpetoculture with Alan Rapasci where he talks about the process of building up

the Crested Gecko situation. I think that's what it really takes to get something to launch, right? Being willing to keep back thousands of animals and essentially flood the market at what, like 10% of the cost that people were currently selling them at and then all of a sudden anyone can have one, right? You know, that's a huge amount of capital and investment to put that in. It's a completely different mindset than what 99.9% of us are doing when we're breeding animals in our house. Yeah. But I mean, that's, I mean, and I think out hazard bet that that's what that type of thing,

maybe not one person, but that type of thing has happened with bearded dragons and ball pythons and the other animals that are these like widely popular. Right. And yeah, you go back 30 years and you know, crested geckos were thought to be extinct and ball pythons were impossible. Well maybe more than 30 now. I'm thinking of when I started 30 years ago. Yeah, but you have no one can get a ball python to eat.

You know, keep in captivity. They were horrible, you know, they were trash snakes. They were just cheap imports that nobody wanted. And, you know, that's, that's definitely changed. And now they're touted as the best pet, you know, python where, you know, are people keeping them how they should be kept or, you know, everybody has the hoop dreams of being the professional breeder that has a rack full of ball pythons. But, you know, do we, do we need a paradigm shift for that as well? You know, we're, you know, I don't know. It's crazy. Well, and some of the inherent downsides. So we were talking about Alan, right? And

I think it was on that same show that he had made mention, or maybe it was when he was talking Justin, he had come on here with Ron, that, what, so it was when he was talking Justin he'd come on here with Ron That What so when when he was kind of in the heyday with that what a cat came in the room or something Yeah, hundreds of geckos dropped their tails. Yes Yeah, you almost need that kind of domestication process like ball pythons and crested geckos. I mean, they're, you know, I wonder how they do if you released them out in the wild, you know, in their current state captive bred state. Pretty crazy how far they've come and how easy they are to keep and breed and all the crazy, you know, different patterns and color morphs and things. And I think that process, I mean, this is a lot of speculation,

but I would imagine that that process was accelerated for Crested Geckos being bred at that industrial scale by one person. Yeah. Right. Right. Like, there's no way. I mean, he talks about he's specifically talked about selecting for some things, like selecting them to not drop their tails. But then he's selecting for other things, certainly. And he's doing it within his own bloodlines and then flooding the market with them.

And so that's like hugely impactful that to make them have that genetic drift from their founding group in New Calistonia. impactful to make them have that genetic drift from their founding group in Eucalstonia. Right. And not only the breeding of the animals, but presenting a diet for the animals. Yeah, and so if you simplify that down to some degree, and so now it's the animals that tolerate that diet,

that tolerate this temperature, that thrive, and they're the ones that are going to continue to reproduce. Or even when you're talking about thousands of geckos, the ones that reproduce twice as fast are going to become the winners. Yeah. And we have that unnatural selection in our herb rooms and deciding who they're breeding and what they're producing and that kind of thing. How often they're producing and if they don't have desirable color traits, they kind of get

rotated out or sold off or whatever. That's really an interesting process to see how that comes to pass. It doesn't happen very often. I think that's why there's the big five or 10 or whatever. Others could be in that, but they just don't have something. Something's missing. They don't have the appeal or they don't have the following or they don't have a champion or they haven't been producing numbers where people can't avoid them.

Yeah. I think geckos are probably what I know the most of, geckos and frogs. But I think about some small hardy geckos that would be just as competitive as leopard geckos. Especially if you go back in time before there's all of the morph craze about it. craze about it. But why it's a leopard gecko instead of a fat tail gecko or a cave gecko or some of these other really cool small terrestrial geckos, I bet if you went back in time and you found someone that was willing to do that Alan Rapasci process with it, make a deal with a big box pet store, you would have those geckos and stuff. Yeah. And I mean, it does take a durable animal, like a bearded dragon, where they come from just harsh environments that have huge swings in temperature and moisture and all sorts of things.

And then where you compare that with something maybe from a tropical rainforest that lives under a log and has a stable. I mean, cave geckos are probably, are more sensitive than leprechauns. But it's like a pictus gecko. Those are like the thorny scrub forests of Madagascar. Those could stand right there with.

Oh, and they have, I think. I mean, I guess they're so easy to breed that they just... They're so easy to breed. ...when you're at a house and home that you blink, you know? So yeah, things like that are part of the trick. But I guess I attribute it somewhat to that kind of lack of curiosity, maybe, or... Maybe. it somewhat to that kind of lack of curiosity maybe or just give me a formula. I just want to follow a recipe and keep this animal live and maybe make some babies down the road. But if you explore, then you can find the animals that are more energy efficient.

And also have something more interesting that you talk to people at reptile shows and like interesting that you talk to people at reptile shows and like if you ask them what was your first pet or what are you keeping now 90% of it is one of those top you know 10 animals and it's kind of sad you know kind of a monoculture you know but I like diversity so diversity is the spice of life you know yeah absolutely no I think you know some of, right, is why aren't things around? To some extent, just because it's been a point that we've pitched previously, I know Eric Burke talks about this a lot, we've talked about it a lot, is that there are sort of inherent factors that just make them slightly harder, right? So in the context of fat tails, right, they're slightly harder to incubate.

You get slightly less fertility. You start to, you know, it's just slightly harder. And that's, it just seems like, you know, yeah, they were really popular even in the late nineties, right? That was all, all these things we're talking about. Picta, you know, these, all these things were on much more even footing than they are today. And it's, well, it's just a, an amplification of all that slightly harder, right? The slightly easier has led to the growth there and slight diminishment, you know, elsewhere.

Yeah, completely agree. Yep. But I think like from like an energy standpoint, if you were really cognizant about that, and you wanted to, someone wanted to invest into, you know, maybe not making thousands of animals, but maybe making hundreds of animals, and then leveraging that with kind of the way like Frank Payne does, where does where he has a really clear marketing angle for advertising that these are good captive animals. Or the way like, I mean so many people do this, but like Phil Leets I think about doing that and same with like Roy Blodgett about like his animals.

Like they're showing you these best qualities. And like if you're interested in X, Y, and Z, here's a good animal for you. But if you're interested in ABC, here's a good animal for you. Right. And so if you, you know, take make a massive colony of Peridora picta, which you could do in a few years, you know, potentially you could show how needing a smaller heat spot and being half the size of a leopard gecko, maybe you want one of those instead, right? And maybe someone could do that. Yeah. But you have to have that kind of foundation around it too.

Sure. They are smaller, but they also require pinhead crickets instead of the ones you get at the pet store easily. Those kind of things where... When you're breeding them, yeah. Yeah. Or you're trying to sell babies that are eating small meals or what. That's true. The other thing I think that Frank in particular, I don't know if he's still selling, is still in league with the cage manufacturers, right, in terms of making those cages out of the

political yard sign stuff that then would go on the paper tracks. The leap. Yeah, the leap. Yeah, I don't know what they're doing. Yeah, I'm not sure if that's still a thing or not. They haven't updated the page in a while. Really? Okay.

So, but just that the idea, I think that he does really well or effectuated really well is both putting out content in terms of what those essentially not only saying here's the animal, but saying, saying and showing really explicitly, maybe including like pitching the product of like, this is how you can keep it, right? Making it simple, especially leaning into, you know, in this energy efficient context of like, not just saying, oh, find a bulb, saying like, here's the bulb, you know, that sort of thing, and really facilitating sort of, here's how you can keep this animal effectively and including specifically, okay, all these products.

And obviously, there's going to be more or less utility, depending on where you live, how similar it is to Western PA, these sorts of things, right, where he's at. But, you know, I think that's another part of it, too, is he's just between his videos and then the products he at least was selling. I think he did a great job of trying to express not only this is cool, and it's doable, here's how it's doable and being really explicit about that. Yeah. I think there's lots of opportunity for people to do that, to have influence in that way, whether that's true market influence or whether that's a competition like this where you're

saying people should be more mindful and there's lots of ways to do that without saying, no one can have a bearded dragon or no one can have a uromastix, no one can have a varanid. There are thoughtful ways to do it. Yeah. It's interesting too to see some people trying to establish certain hard to breed species and sometimes that just doesn't go the way you think it might. You think, oh, we can do it with all these others, why is this one different? Some just don't seem to make it. I remember watching a talk, of course the name name's gonna fail me. But he was talking about Taylor's

fat tail geckos. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, yeah. And oh my goodness that just hearing about how difficult it was to to keep those and to, you know to have the babies survive, let alone produce the babies. It's crazy and how closely related they are to the regular fat-dialga. It's so strange, right? I'm sure the initial herpacultural response was, oh, shoot, we've even seen it with frinosoma.

It seems like it basically only works with the osteseo, right? The really large Mexican ones. Where the whole idea is can we feed them something else? Because then again, there's the guy, Justin, I know I sent you this, I forget which podcast it was on. Maybe it seems like a Project Herp, but I don't know that it was. I think it was the animals at home. There's a German keeper who works with rhinos home and feeds them harvester ants and the colonies

Built into the walls. Yeah, I thought about that in the context of you know, the thorny devils if you could Establish their food source and yeah, then yeah, but yeah Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. No, no No What I was where I was initially thinking is I think the initial herpetocultural responses, sure, they do that in the wild, but we can get them to eat crickets or whatever. And Taylor I being an example of like, no, that won't work. Or Phrynosoma, the same, the Osseo or whatever. No, that's not going to work.

Physiologically, they've spent millions of years evolving to do this thing. You can't just say, sure, but I mean, shoot, we kind of do that with snakes, but I think snakes are more plastic on this than a lot of those species. Or at least some of them. Some of them are more plastic where we'll say like, oh, well, we can still feed them mice. Or now you just feed them hairless mice and it's fine or whatever.

Maybe not some of those really small, fossorial snakes that really only eat other little- Queen Snagging, moltedrayfish and this sort of thing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that might not work. Right. And I did keep some of the short-horned lizards for a while, the... Not Douglas-eye, but the... Fernandas-eye.

Fernandas-eye, yeah. They did very well. And you can actually order harvester ants. So I would just purchase harvester ants and you could, it wasn't, it wasn't difficult. Like you just keep the, the tub of, you know, a thousand ants or have them in the, sent you in this plastic container. You keep that in the fridge, pull it out, pull out a few. Don't, don't let them land on you or sting you or bite you cause it's very painful, you

know, and then throw them into the horn lizard enclosure and they'll eat them and life's good as long as you can keep the ants contained. And, you know, sounds ready for Petco. Exactly. You know that. Yeah, there is a way to do it. But yeah, is that for everybody? Probably not. Is that for Joey who wants a lizard and he's begging his mom? Absolutely not. You know, like, is it for people who really want to put in the time and effort and, and even then, like, you know, I, I, where I failed was their brumation. I'm terrible at brumating lizards for some reason. I don't know what I'm getting wrong, but you know, so I lost a few and I, a few. A couple of the ones I had collected had babies. So,

I sent them off to Steve at the zoo. He was going to see if they could house them or keep them or whatever. They collected some ants that had been poisoned or something, so it didn't work out well. But anyway, the idea that you can do it, but it's a lot of pain, a lot of anguish, and a lot of difficulty to keep that going strong if you're lacking certain things or trying to fit them in a square peg in a round hole type thing too. The other thing that I was thinking of just in terms of as we were talking about, or as I was talking about Frank, and kind of him setting people up for success by showing them what they could do or even offering a product that then essentially is here you go, you're

ready to walk away with this. The tables that are always amazing to me and I think do really well at reptile shows are the dark frog tables either where they are also offering or next to someone who's offering pre-planted, ready-to-go terrariums literally just that frog. Especially most of those aren't plumbed so you got to be a hand-missing situation for a lot of those because it's not built to be into the structure. I don't know how profitable it is but but it's certainly a lot of work. But those things, I think that's sort of the ideal combination or scenario of saying someone

turns up, wants a frog. It's actually not that hard to set up a tank, but the ability to just plug and play makes those so much more accessible for a lot of people. Yeah. I think Josh's Frogs has made a market on that. That's another great example of a company who's really found that niche and provided people what they need to be successful and those kind of things.

Might cost you a little more than doing it yourself, but it's kind of that idea of plug and play, or here's the necessary equipment, go for it. And here's how you do it. My guess is most people that take that route, they get the crested gecko and then buy the 20 gallon conversion converted kit, whatever, that's already set up for you and take it home. Either that's where it stops.

They're a person that has this gecko for a decade and they do a great job and that was their experience with reptiles. Or they decide to expand it and they don't keep doing that. They'll realize they want it drilled. They'll realize they want the ventilation different. They'll realize that that acrylic door isn't as scratches and they want it to be a sliding class door, you

know, so like they'll learn that, oh, buying this for $200 was a deal for convenience. But like, actually, I want it. I want you want the uniformity of a room, right? Even we get into that, right? That's the aesthetics. It's like, yeah, you know, there are people who want everything to be the same. And then you have other people where it's just everything is a mix, mishmash or whatever and it's, you know, personally, that would drive me crazy. I don't know, but it's personal taste, right? And it's kind of, Billy, even looking in your room right now, that's probably more your style is the eclectic, you know, all over the place, but it fits and it fits the aesthetic and vibe of the situation. Yeah, no, I have a very crowded aesthetic. I describe it as walking into a tattoo studio versus a library versus a zoo, combine them

all together. But yeah, it does actually kind of drive me crazy how my enclosures aren't efficiently set up in the space. And so it's potentially a project for this year is to take down this bookshelf and start consolidating things. Well, that's the challenge too, is once you've kind of committed to something, to converting the whole room to something else is monumental sometimes. And it's just like, almost too daunting to undertake. So, you know, I've been trying to chip away at my reptile room

to make it, you know, larger cages, larger, you know, enclosure for the animals and things. And it's difficult and it's slow and I'm impatient. I want it to be done. And then if you decide to put in some fake rock work or the whole nother time consuming event, sometimes it's easier just to check it all and start over again. And from an energy and waste perspective, there is some aspect of if you're going to have a larger group, like having an efficient way of doing it is good, but there's also some aspect of you don't want to do it three times. You want to do it once and have it last for a long time. And so that's the way I think about it right now, is that I'm experimenting with what types of materials

and layouts I like on small scale before I invest into doing a bigger project. And then I'm gonna start with half a wall, not two full walls or something, right? And then we'll figure it out because yeah, doing it to decide that in a year I need to redo it again is not energy efficient. Right. And that was part of, you know, my first go around building a reptile room is I did it

a certain way and I realized all the flaws and, you know, issues that I had with the way I did it and how I would fix those if I ever had the chance to do again. Then when we got the house for in now, I was able to start over from the ground up and do it the way I wanted to do it. It's been very nice. I am much happier when I go in my reptile room than when I went in my old room. I was like, oh, this is horrible.

I would have fixed this and I want to fix that, but I have no room. And yeah, it's kind of crazy. That sounds like a good topic for another conversation of right. What's essential and what are the downfalls of designing a room? I probably need to hear that one. Yeah, that's, and, and I think you're going to make, you know, even if you've done this for 30 years and you know what you want, you're still going to have some things where you go, ah crap, I should have done this and now the floor is down and how am I going to pull

up the floor and put, you know, level it out in that depression or whatever that was in the room that I didn't have time to fill in or whatever, that kind of thing. Well, and even thinking about it with the leap conversation or whatever, maybe the product that you then envisioned within the space, maybe then the product doesn't exist anymore. Again, I don't know whether that's the case or not with Leap, but I mean, shoot, any of the reptile caging things we've been in, we've seen that there's turnover in that space.

You know, and it's even for once, it's been around a long time. Yeah. If you're not building it yourself, then there's always the possibility that even, you know, the the bowl file, Jeff Ronnie, right? It was a business from 20 years before I got into reptiles through until five years ago, and he's still breeding snakes, but I don't think he's making cages. You know, it's just not how he wants to spend his time time now and it's like, well, okay, if you had a whole room full of those, then at some point, you're probably going to be transitioning

some of those out. Now, what are you going to do? You have this whole plan that was based on this product being available to you and now maybe it isn't or heck, I mean, even the legislation around the light bulbs. If your room is set up in a certain way and then all of a sudden there are just the law changes such that you can't use what you were using before. You can't even access it. Even the best light plans can be put astray by those practicalities.

Yeah. That could be a challenge. Well, any other topics we didn't hit on that you, we need to get out there or we have a pretty good fight on our hands. Good. All right. Yeah, it's been fun. Very cool.

Well, yeah, really appreciate you coming on. This is a fun topic. Yeah, it's always great. Yeah, it was fun. Remind people where they can find you? Yep. On Instagram, Creepers Herpeticulture. So the, you know, what, that Greek root of herpetos is to creep. So Creepers Herpeticulture on Instagram is the easiest place. It's technically also on Facebook too, but I don't check that very often. I'll just go to my Instagram. And yeah. Cool. Yeah.

Happy to chat with anyone there. Yeah. Nice. Well, any cool things that you guys have seen in the reptile world? Any new things you've learned or cool things you've seen? I'll start out with one. In the Messenger MPR message boards, Casey Cannon put up a picture of a Flinders ranges, carpet python, gammon ranges, carpet python, whatever you want to call them, taking down a yellow-footed rock wallaby like a young one or something and the adult was kind of watching on. It was an iNaturalist observations. So kind of cool. But yeah, again, one that I would have loved to have seen but

missed out on. Yeah. But fortunately, Jordan got to experience that species in the wild and had that really cool story. If you haven't listened to Jordan's episode, go check that out. It's a fun one. So yeah, really cool to see natural history events, especially in species that I really, really enjoy. So that one was cool. Any other things you guys have seen or heard or cool podcast episodes we need to check out. Yeah, go ahead, Billy. I think there's been, I mean, I spend way too much time listening to Reptile Podcast, so there's so many good episodes. I think the, you had, I mean, I think you're like Ask the Experts series has been really fun to listen to and the, I'm blanking on the name, but the most recent one with

the amphibian decline and talking about that. Yeah, Joe Mendel. Yes. Maybe think of an amphibicast episode recently where they had someone talk about the Sierra Nevadas and how chytrid moved through that area and a little bit of light in the darkness of being able to find subpopulations that resist and persist throughout the infection and how you can essentially naturally propagate them and And you don't make the arc, you go out and you find the animals in the wild and you move them and you repopulate ponds is what they're doing this year in Nevada.

And that was really cool. It's an amazing episode that I recommend everyone listen to. Check that out. That sounds really cool. And I feel like, Rob, I heard you talking about some of these podcasts, but the expert and the idiot and the gecko exchange. I feel like I've heard you mention both of those, but I've been really going back in time and listening through a lot of those and they're both doing

great and have such great content. Yeah. And that, not another Reptile podcast. Yeah. And it's on my list. I haven't actually listened to any of it. I need to. I should add that.

Yeah. He's just, he's a super sweet guy, does really interesting stuff. So yeah, I would recommend that one as well it's funny that you mentioned that Billy because so I guess what I would say is the Colorado partners in it in amphibian and reptile conservation. So co-park there's the park generally, right? There's a lot of different chapters within the US but just had their annual meeting They have a couple of field trips throughout the year and then they have one annual meeting. I haven't been able to go previously, but they just had it at Denver Zoo this past weekend. Man, it was really cool. It was a day full of presentations and

then we were hanging out at the Reptile House and all that. Just a great group of folks. The funny thing was one of the presentations was actually on exactly what you're talking about, but Kittred, essentially boreal toad status in Colorado, various populations and things. And the same exact thing that you're talking about, it does seem like there are subpopulate or populations of them that are resistant to Kitchred and they're moving toads around and all that same concept, same idea that you're mentioning in the local context. So that would probably be my most recent event. The other thing too is obviously just planning trips and stuff gets you deep into the weeds on a lot of this stuff.

So maybe too early to talk about and we'll just have to see how it plays out. But a lot of those things are exciting as well. And then a couple of, we have a couple more shows planned out and all and super excited for those. There's a ton. There's good stuff out there for sure. Right. Cool.

Well, and speaking of which, we appreciate everybody listening here and thanks for your support. If you got any good fight ideas, contact us. Let's get it. Yeah, take it to the mattresses. Eric's out enjoying the warm weather right now. Looking at lizards out in the islands on a cruise. So hopefully he gets a nice relaxing trip and this might be a little later because of that, but we'll see. So yeah. And I guess that's the reason he's not going to Australia with me. So I'm a little bummed out about that, but good on him for taking his wife on a trip.

So more power to him. But yeah, thanks. Thanks for the NPR crew for hosting us and being the umbrella that keeps us dry. And we'll thank you for listening. We'll catch you next week for another.