Reptile Fight Club - Should we model hard times?

Episode Date: November 16, 2025

In this episode, we discuss the topic of keeping rpetiles in captivity and modeling the hard times that they may face in the wild. Is it beneficial? Or is it an unnecessary stress. 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

Hello, people, and welcome to Reptile Fight Club. I'm your host, Justin Joolander. And with me tonight, the stunker-brained co-host, Rob Stone. How's it going? Great. That's certainly something. I was all good. Watching Ozzy Herb videos, and they found a

stonker sized um i guess that's a size like big is stonker so yeah okay but that was applicable well i appreciate it yeah um all right well back at it again with a little uh fight this time we've done kind of a few of the grilling the experts and and some trip recap so we're getting away a little bit from the fighting so we figured we'd get back on that this time around. Yeah. How are things in Rob's a world? I suppose the only point of interest that we didn't, it actually had happened by the time we

recorded the last episode, but we didn't talk about it, was Brendan Hedegaard, previous guest. I think it just, at the point we're recording this, right, this speaks to the timeliness or whatever of our releases where we're at. I think it just came out. He and I went down again to look for the Colorado variant of either the western or desert Massasaga, depending how you take it. They've been historically labeled a question mark.

It's the far end of the western population. It'd be the northern end of the desert. So it's, yeah, it's interesting. Even going back to right and right, they're labeled as a question mark animal. Because they have kind of features of both the westerns are heavier set, larger meaning both yeah so weight and girth length then the deserts the deserts tend to have more of that a lighter background color and more of that whereas the westerns can look more like more like an eastern i would say especially some of those in mid-cansas eastern kansas can really

look like oh okay you know you can see that as opposed to being these um sort of isolated pattern elements along the spine. It has more of that sort of tiger-ish look to it, the easterns tend to have. So these Colorado ones are kind of betwixt in between both of those populations. So for now, at least for me being a Colorado guy, I'm counting them as a distinct unit, so still need to see westerns and deserts. For non-Colorado folks, I don't know that you need to be as pedantic and maybe just pick one or the other

that seems to make sense to you, but I know Brendan has seen deserts, but I don't think westerns, counting the Colorado's is different, and I've shown them to Dustin, who's seen the deserts down in Arizona, and I had seen them once previously, right, but not found it. It was not common venture, so it didn't count for me. But, yeah, so we had gone down there and actually a couple folks from a zoo in Connecticut that Brendan knew associated with some turtle business, whatever that may have been. And so we had met him up out east and they cruised out with us. And we wound up finding three of them and a whole handful of prairie rattlesnakes and all that. Oh, wow. So turtle business brings them out, huh? I guess so.

Got to be up to turtle business. Turtle business. Yeah. Maybe that's how Dustin already was on it. with the desert down in Arizona. Right. Yeah, so it was good. It was nice.

That was my fifth time in that area, probably fourth time where I thought I had a good shot. Again, one of those I had seen one, but it didn't count. So, I don't know. Maybe not doing too bad. The other, at least one of the times, I've seen DORs down there. Okay. So, yeah, a bit of a process. And I think the bigger thing than anything is that they're pretty seasonal, particularly this Colorado population.

So it's kind of a spring. and fall. And if that wasn't it, well, it was going to be at least another six months, if not, you know, 10, 11 before I'd have another chance, another pretty good chance to justify going down there and all that. So I was excited. That's cool. Yeah. Congratulations. So how are they pretty isolated from the deserts and the western? So kind of a island. A disjunct. Yeah. A population to the northwest of it you know northwest or well north of the um seems like the big population of deserts at this point is down by albuquerque and then uh so obviously pretty far north from that um this would be northeast from there and then um the kansas ones it looks like

you could probably get to the furthest northwest kansas population and from Denver and five and a half six hours something like that but the real heavy stuff is more central Kansas um southern central Kansas is what it looks like okay yeah they are pretty isolated I'm just just brought them up on on I nail there's not not much between I mean there's not you know you would think they'd have some records if they were there yeah yeah right seems like there probably are um Brendan was telling me that some eastern uh I think it was an Eastern Colorado County, there was a new county record for one that kind of bridges that slightly more than it might otherwise look like. But again, that's a similar animal and stuff.

Half a state away, pretty much, even if it's right on the border, it's still half a state away because they're, yeah, about central Kansas is where they kind of kick in there. So, yeah, I mean, that's cool. Nice. So, yeah, though, that definitely looks like something unique, at least right now. You know, who knows historically what that looked like, but yeah. Before, yeah, before kind of the last few hundred years or 10,000, you know, let alone, what glacial maximum and the place to sand and all of that. Right. Yeah. Yeah, it's certainly going, as I say, going back to right and right, they're marked as a question mark, going back to the Rubio book, right?

They're in there as a question mark. That's sort of the status. And that's why, you know, as a form surper, particularly in Colorado, to me it was, okay, well, I guess these count of something different. I just find kind of true forms of the other things. You guys not be in Colorado. I don't know how you take it. No, I mean, I think. What would you call it?

If you don't accept it, then you have to put an appellation to that one if that was what you count. You know, well, you just don't look for that and pretend it doesn't exist, I guess. Right. Yeah, exactly. Well, and their list is Turgiminus on NAD. They're in there as Westerns. Westerns. Although, does it have Edwards Eye, the deserts even separated, or is this an INAT?

Everything's a Western. Yeah, I think it is. Yeah, no designation otherwise. So, yeah, that's unfortunate, but what do you do? Right. That's how it tends to go on INAT. They, I don't know if they take a more, a more, I mean, they've got the, you know, the pygmy rattlesnake subspecies, so I don't know why they wouldn't have, you know, kind of the putative Massa Saga. I wonder if it is a function of sort of if you don't accept splitting them, including sort of a non, not, I don't know that there's ever been a name proffered for the Colorado animals that would put in this different.

you could even assign to it. So if you're not doing it as forms, then I don't know how you split and differentiate. Maybe they've just gone for the lumper approach on there to avoid the problem of saying, okay, then what is Colorado? Yeah, because, I mean, if anything, Colorado would be its own thing. Because, I mean, it does look like there's, I mean, there's some separation between, like, the stuff in central New Mexico and, you know, the Arizona stuff is even, almost more isolated out there, but that might just be, you know, as a result of grazing or things

like that, yeah. Modern effect. Right. And then, I mean, the rest, you could almost see kind of a continuous range except for in central New Mexico, but is that the same kind of thing or what? Yeah, it's always hard with human interruption. And I mean, even though they're isolated now, they may not have historically been isolated. So the effects on the, you know, DNA might not be be that dramatic or, yeah. So, well, still, I agree with you, forms, definitely, you know. Yeah.

They look to be something unique, at least in this snapshot of our world's history. Which is all I'm going to bother to take, you know. Right, right. Because, you know, obviously there's gaps elsewhere in, you know, different ranges and things, like, especially something like the Eastern Massa Saga that's been. pretty much extirpated from a lot of where it probably used to be. So, yeah, it makes it tricky to say where exactly they might come from. So, yeah.

Well, that's exciting. Yeah. Just working on, you know, getting snakes feeding. All the inlands are eating well. And so I'll probably put some of those up for sale there. They're looking good. And then I almost kind of want to hold on to them for a little while longer to see. see how they turn out because these are the um i got this really cool dark male from uh the maug line

and then i bred him to some of my aAR line females that are you know the half unrelated bloodline and so i'm kind of curious to see how they develop and maybe holding back one or two just take you know seeing how they they develop but really cool looking animals anyway um i and i've probably helping back too many anyway so Yeah, probably need to let more go, but what do you do? I don't know. Yeah, I just got back a bunch of ball pythons that I had out on breeding loan that really weren't, you know, doing much. And so he's like, yeah, get these out of here. I don't want them anymore. So we had sold several of the adults. And so that was kind of the last of them. And I wasn't sure I wanted to sell some of those. Like I think there's even a world's first in there. So whatever for that, whatever that's worth. You know, it's a cool-looking snake. But, yeah, we'll see. I don't know.

I just kind of threw in some tanks. We'll feed them up and see what they do. You know, I'm kind of on the fence whether or not I should produce anything from them, but we'll see how I feel in a month or two, I guess. Well, that's pretty fun. Yeah. Right. A change back to the beginning, right?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I've got a bunch of. of caging that I'm just about ready to populate, so I'll be able to give some of my, you know, holdbacks that are outgrowing there. There are other caging larger, you know, enclosures. And so that'll be good. Finally, getting getting things moved up and into more permanent housing. And so, you know, it's just one of those slow processes. Like I'd had these cages for a while and I just never had the chance to get them up and going and then like i'd start working on them oh crap i don't have

a you know a cord to wire in the light or whatever and like so it's just one thing after another and then i forget to pick up a cord on the way home from work or whatever so finally have cords and in fixtures and uh it's all ready to go so i just need to knock them out stack them up and throw snakes in them so that's awesome plan for this weekend i suppose okay yeah So things are moving forward well. I have one egg in the incubator from the Asper still, and hopefully it hatches. We'll see. I kind of candled it a few days ago, and it looked like it was potentially moving in the right direction.

Okay. Cool. See how it goes. You've hatched them before or no? No, this will be a first. Yeah. So it'd be nice to kind of tick off a species. Yeah.

And talk about something that's super cool either way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the female's dark, like a black one, and then the male's like a white one. So we'll see what we get out of the egg. Yeah. I wish I would have caught that first clutch. That would have been nice to have a couple more eggs in there as well. But what do you do? And they can go up to like 80, 90 days, according to the literature. So we'll see. I'm about two months in. So could have as much as 30 days to go or as little as, you know, next week. We'll see. well it'll be texas carpet fest for a dead search so yeah i'm very excited for yeah it'll be it'll hatch out while i'm gone i'm very excited for that i'm looking forward to the texas carpet fest man there was some talk of eric and owen going oh yeah i don't know how serious they are but they were they were

seemed to be pretty you know serious considers seriously considering it if i could get the words out but yes we'll see if they make it down that'd be cool to hang you out with them again. Absolutely. See them. So always a good hang with those two. But yeah, I mean, it is kind of a bit of a hall for them, but it's just a plane, right? I got to do the same thing. So, yeah, looking forward to hanging out with Jordan and giving that talk. We'll, I don't know if we need to practice or something. Maybe while we're walking around in the desert, we can practice our presentation. But it should be fun. Yeah. It was good to hear Michael Taylor on the podcast with Eric and Owen and hearing kind of what's going on with his collection and what his interests are and getting to know him a little bit.

He's kind of the organizer of the. Right. I thought so. Yeah. I started that one. I need. I listened to the other ones that they put out. Actually, I got distracted by listening to Eric has started.

Oh, what's the, what's the music term for when you go back to remix? sing the old episode yeah that's right one two and three so it was him him alone owen and then the first luke episode it was supposed to be on a certain day and then was it wound up being after tinley you know they had a plan in mind and it doesn't happen and you're looking back and i'm thinking part one you know they said he was going to come before and all this stuff and i'm like oh i remember this you know as something that i've listened to dozens of times i'm sure you know at this point but yeah it was fun to listen to it in that vein and I guess Eric's trying to put up four of those a month presumably and how did it work he said put it in your podcast app I was like how do I do that

maybe I'm too old or something I don't know he's as old I'm as old as he is and he did it so right yeah well so it needs to be a podcast player that'll support adding an RSS feed it's not sort of publishing you need it needs to be able to draw from that site I just did a I click, if you go to that link, you can just play it within that, sort of in the vein of how you would play them on blog talk before. Okay. And that works fine. You know, it just plays it from the browser.

Yeah, that's exciting. I just want to make sure he's a completist on this. Right. And that there are none that he then decides to skip out on. Yeah. That's my real challenge is, no, the record is the record. Right. Yeah.

Even now, it's weird that, so he's playing the intro and outro that, he's utilizing now, right? He cut out the, and I understand why for a variety of reasons that go into that and I get that. But it, you know, I kind of missed it in a certain. It was never my music, but, you know, just the association, you know, it feels, it still feels a little bit off, although I think it's the right decision. Right. Yeah. Now, that's cool. It's, it is fun to kind of go back and I don't know if it's fun for them, but it's definitely fun for, you know. It's fun for the rest of us, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. that history and having having a permanent record where so many things are gone, you know,

like they just, they're here today and disappear tomorrow. So it's kind of a nice thing. I don't know. I guess I was working on the Aspedite's book, so I've been thinking about kind of that permanent record. And I went over to the library. I was over there for some reason and was looking, you know, through the reptile section or whatever.

it because I went over to my library and I hadn't given them a second edition of the carpet book. So I finally remembered to take one over there and I hauled the book over and they're like, no thank you. I'm like, what? I didn't know that was an option to say no. I thought you're a library. You have books. You know, I said, oh, like that's weird. I donated a copy of all my previous books. Like, you know, you don't want books. They're like, no, we don't want any more books. I'm like, okay, I guess I'll take it back home. So it's kind of weird. Yeah, I'm like, okay.

So then I'm like, well, are the books that they have going to be? So I went over and kind of checked out some of the books. They had a chameleon book by Peter Nackas. So I was like, I just scanned it in using that V-Scan program that Eric showed me and scanned, scanned in the book. And then I did one, the Beck book on Heel Monsters and Beathlet. Oh, cool. Yeah. So I've got those completely scanned into my phone now. I can read them at my leisure, I suppose. But yeah. And then got a couple new field guides. I got the new, I haven't gotten them yet, but I've ordered them the new reptiles of Australia. Is it Wilson? Who is it? Yeah, Wilson and Swan. I was on the right track there without even looking, darn it. Should have went with my got um but the new wilson and swan is out and uh should be shipping here at the end of the month or so oh cool and then i noticed uh brian bush had written a new guide on central australia so

oh interesting i love central australia so i had to pick that one up too and i like brian bush so yeah absolutely yeah so we uh we'll see how those look and i'm curious to see you know the new, all the new species that they've elevated since the last one. They always add, you know, 30 to 60 years, new species every time. And looking at that first edition copy that Nipper gave me, seeing all the, the, how few species there were back then, you know, it's kind of crazy. Maybe that should be the basis of a list, you know, is just, I'm just looking for what was, you know, just right out of circus. right be much easier to accomplish I think yeah yeah but that's cool so yeah I'd love to get back over to Australia sooner than later but I don't know right that'll happen yeah ideas but I think

not this coming here probably you know kind of big plans but that yeah takes time and money to put that together done yeah and my next target area I'm sure which is one of yours is going to take a little bit of extra cash to make it out there yeah so let's see how it goes I was just why yeah right right I was just uh watching a video by uh he what's I can't remember his name but he goes by newbies newbies wildlife or something like that and okay he puts out he's kind of got a calm demeanor you know he's not like over the top but you know showing some cool animals and they were in Cairn's area. I found a

jungle carpet coiled amongst the boulders of a stream bed type thing. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Nice looking carpet. So I don't know, just like, oh, I gotta get back there. I gotta go. I guess Lucas is headed over there, so that's kind of cool. Oh, is he? Yeah,

he'll be gone towards the end of the month. I guess it's a family trip, so not necessarily a herping trip, but he's planning on being in Brisbane and Can, and Sydney and was going to, like, rent a car in each of those towns and get out for a day or something. So, yeah, I don't know. I guess I would be like, yeah, I'm all in for the family trip.

And then I'd be like, we'll see you when we get back to California. I'm going herping. So hopefully you get some herb time over there. And, yeah. Interesting. Well, maybe on Sunday I'll hear about it. Right. Yeah, we'll have to maybe have them on here and hear about it.

Yeah. See, have a topic of like, do you go over for, yeah, family trip and do you get herping in or do you go on a herp trip and get family time in? Interesting. Okay. So we still get over there, I guess, either way. So get to experience Australia. Cool. And cool areas where you can find stuff for sure.

Right. Yeah. And right now it's a decent time to be there. Yeah. I mean, it might be a little early for some areas, but, you know, I think South Australia, it was a little chilly. Yeah. In October, but when I was there, but it was fine. We found plenty of stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. Lots of shinglebacks, that's for sure, in South Australia in October. Like, no shortage of those. I still got to see one, let alone, you know, let alone 40. Yeah. Right. Yeah, I guess when it rains, it's porters with some things. So, yeah, it was nice to have that be shinglebacks because they're such cool lizards.

Oh, my goodness. I can't even imagine the idea. Well, it says it all right, that they didn't become trivial even on 40, you know? Yeah, yeah. Obviously, that's all the more the case when you're not finding as much other stuff or whatever, but still. Yeah, but still. That speaks to it. I mean, it was trivial for our Australian friends there.

Like, what are you stopping for? It's just a shingle back. I'm like, hey. Let's get this straight. I'm stopping for every shingle back. I don't care. They're too cool. You don't appreciate what you have.

I'm going to teach you a lesson and take them away. Yeah. Take them where they'll be appreciated. If only that we're that easy, right? Right. Cool. Well, any other things? I guess we kind of get on it.

Yeah. I mean, so the other thing that jumped out to me, right, you were in terms of the context of the trying to donate the book and all that, or even what do books look like at this point and all that. I know that Zach was on the Calubrid Corruption podcast. That was a good, enjoyable episode that just came out. And they actually got into that conversation as well. So, yeah. Yeah, I thought that that's worth a listen. And as I said, they hit on that topic, too, and sort of how the role of books,

versus new media, social media, you know, all these things, getting people to, you know, take it in, you know, learning that information and stuff. Right. Yeah. It's tricky. Zach has very good words for you, complimentary words for you, as always. I'll have to listen to that one. You have to listen to here.

Pump up the ego, though. Right. Yeah, Zach's a good guy. I enjoyed herping with him when we were out there in California and, yeah, riding with him and stuff he's a good dude um i had to set the record straight a little bit because i listened to nick on uh reptile rejects podcast and he invoked my name in something that i disagree publicly and privately with him on regarding nightoviruses he he always goes off on how nightoviruses are in i did listen to this yeah and i'm like no i mean there's obviously

some collections that have been decimated by serpentoviruses or nidoviruses, as they used to be called. And they are definitely, we don't know that much about them, which he mentioned, like, that's a good point. But we do know that they are lethal viruses in a lot of cases. We don't know if it's their natural host. And I, you know, I'll give them that. Like, yeah, when a virus infects a host, it typically doesn't want to kill the host. It just wants to use the host machinery to replicate itself. But, I mean, we don't know if, like, these are carpet python viruses that are jumping to green trees and then they're extra, you know, lethal or, yeah, or vice versa.

Or, you know, like with the COVID outbreak, right, we had a virus that wasn't a human virus jumping into humans and causing severe disease and a pandemic, you know, like seriously. And over the course of time, right, it's selecting to, you know, again, not kill its host, but it took it took time to get there exactly and that's kind of how it works especially when it enters a naive host population and obviously like in the wild like shingle back populations were crashing and dying because of a nido virus so there's plenty of examples like the murray is the murray river turtle was that a nido i can't i can't recall but it was a it was a related virus if you know or a similar you know viral outbreak so there are definitely examples where these viruses can be very deadly and can take out entire collections, you know. We saw that with the ball python, you know, serpentoviruses, nightoviruses.

And, I mean, I know people personally that have lost entire collections that were just so, you know, beleaguered from going down and finding more dead snakes from, you know, respiratory disease. And there was nothing that they could really do to help them. So now I get it like, yeah, don't go euthanize your snakes because, you get a positive nitro test. If you're seeing no symptom, right, if you have an disease, right. And you're not seeing disease, then yeah, don't, you know, I understand that aspect of it. But at the same time, also understand that there is a possibility that that nightovirus can be transmitted to another snake in your collection that might absolutely die because of that infection.

So, you know, just kind of flippantly saying it's a non-issue. stop worrying about it is is not that's not a healthy assing way to look at it you know it's like you need to you need to understand that sometimes it is a problem and sometimes it is deadly and sometimes it does decimate a collection so it is not a non-issue nick i'm sorry i will disagree with you as a virologist on this podcast right and it's one thing to if we're talking about babies that have had right because right non-transmission through the egg the you know um barrier and then associated with incubation, maintain separately no exposure. But if you sell adult animals, even from your, so you say, you're captive population,

you're not seeing any disease. But if you sell one of those adult animals and chip it out, and as you say, it does have that disease, it just wasn't symptomatic at all in your situation. Again, either same species or a different one, it could potentially be an issue. And obviously the same would be true if you got something from someone else, right, but then fit into that box. Exactly. And I mean, it's true that.

some viruses do evolve to infect, you know, one or a few, you know, limited host species, but there's definitely, you know, examples of the opposite being true, that they will jump and they will cause more severe disease in a naive and new host population. So, yeah, to say that, oh, they're just a natural pathogen that has been around for millions of years is too simplistic and to, and frankly, kind of a dangerous attitude to have because, you know, whether or not he's dealt with that, I, you know, I can't say, but he may in the future. And I'd hate for him to have to change his tune because he had something like that happen. Now, you know, with no real treatment options, you know, there's some ideas that are maybe

coming down the pipe. Yeah. But that, you know, those can also be potentially dangerous too. You know, the treatment could be maybe worse than the disease in some cases, but also, you know, the fact that you can quarantine or, you know, do work arounds like where you can work with sick animals last or on a different day or wear different clothes, things like that where you're not going to be bringing that for the rest of the exposure. Yeah, exactly. And you're reducing the likelihood of passage to other animals. So knowing if you have a night or a serpentovirus infected animal is also reasonably, you know, good. That said, I don't think I've tested, you know, I haven't tested my entire collection or anything like that. But if I do have any animals that have any symptoms of disease, they're isolated.

They're worked with, you know, last or on a different day. I work with, you know, juveniles always go first and then, you know, get to the adults and things like that. So just having that kind of workflow is very helpful and important, too. So I don't know. I'd just throw that out there. Well, and the other thing, it does always remind me, right, that, you know, chondros typically have been associated with, especially moving adult chondros has sort of always had a connotation of potential risk associated with particularly respiratory infections, right? That's a longstanding, you know, for the last 40 years. That's been identified as a potential.

hey oh yeah this always happens well so to the point that yeah it's not a novel virus but you know like is that stress causing that you know not new but you know maintained exposure to prompt symptoms of disease yeah right blood pyth and or or are right or are these species just sensitive to certain you know like carpet people jump into green trees and so the the ones that are in in carpet pythons that don't cause disease. Maybe they cause lethal disease in a green tree python. So, yeah, just because you haven't made that combination doesn't mean it doesn't happen. And it does, it's not a real threat. I mean, tell that to somebody who's lost their whole collection from nitobirus. You know, they're, they're not agreeing with you either. And yes, they are natural. They do occur in nature,

but they also cause lethal disease in nature is evidenced by that shingle back. The shinglebacks, yeah. Yeah. So it's not just a cut and dry like nightoviruses are a non-issue or they're the worst thing in the world. Like, obviously, there's gradations, and there's lots of different nightovirus strains. You know, there's unique strains in lots of different species, which, you know, if you have a mixed species collection, all the more reason to consider that, you know, because if they're close, you know, if a green tree python and a carpet python can have a viable offspring, they might be able to share a nightovirus infection as well, you know.

So I wouldn't I wouldn't I wouldn't I wouldn't take what Nick said is his gospel truth there for sure. I mean, he's right on some aspects of it. Right. He's dead wrong on others. And I would hate for your snakes to be dead wrong because you listen to Nick and consider it a not issue. You know, be aware of virus infection and take necessary precautions. Quarantine, isolation, workflow. Those are all important things.

So, yeah. Sure. And, you know, I dealt with some kind of, you know, infection in the past where I got some animals from a trusted breeder and, and I had animals that died, like, within a week of being exposed and getting the disease. So, yeah, I've dealt with this and it's not fun. And it's, yeah, it definitely demoralizes you. But it also, you know, wakes you up to the fact that these things can be an issue. So knock it off, Nick. quit

preaching the wrong information because, yeah, Nidal viruses, serpentoviruses are important pathogens of captive collections. At a minimum to be aware of and sort of engage with appropriate.

Right, right. And, you know, Nick doesn't listen to podcasts, so he won't hear this for sure. Yeah. All right. Oh, and there, you know,

I mentioned this on carpets and coffee, but there was something, I talked to Nick the other day, and I said, oh, I heard you were dead. Like, there was some, some other podcast that, like, I think some AI generated statements said that Nick Mutton had died, like, and I think it was Eric or Owen was like, is Nick, is Nick, okay? And Lucas is like, yeah, I just talked to him yesterday, like, he's fine. Some podcast was saying he's dead. I'm like, yeah, that's kind of a weird, weird deal. There you go. Okay. Nick Mountain is alive. I did chat with him and the rumors of his death are greatly exaggerated.

Greatly exaggerated, yeah. So, all right. Well, sorry, Nick. I had to disagree with you there, even though you're not listening. You could come fight. He could come fight about it. There you go. Yeah, come fight me if you disagree with what I'm saying.

All right. well, should we get into our topic? Sure. Tonight we're going to talk about, I guess, the extent or should we expose our captive reptiles to tough times? Nature is pretty brutal, and I think we tend in captivity to go the opposite direction and baby our stuff and sometimes to their detriment. So we're kind of going to discuss, I guess, the pros and cons of exposing your animals to hard times, you know. So I guess we'll kind of define that as we go and talk about some of the aspects of this topic. As always, if you have further thoughts or, you know, a different perspective on this, give us a holler and come on and fight out your ideas.

It'd be good to have you on. So, all right, well, we'll go ahead and flip the coin to see which side we take here. So go ahead and call it. I'll go with heads. It is tails. Yeah. Here I tried to be different for my normal predilection. What did it get me?

Yeah, I always go with your gut. I guess if you do the same thing, you're going to be right half the time. On average, half the time. That's not to say we can't get. ten in a row of one or the other but um all right well i will go with the in favor the pro side of giving hard times to your reptiles sure okay and then yeah that's all we need to do because it's just us i'm used to the double coin flip with a guest so yeah all right well um yeah why don't you go ahead and start us out sure yeah so i mean i think just to kind of frame you know cabin

the topic. The way I was thinking of it, right, is essentially it's really a question of what is our duty to these animals, right? That's frequently framed as essentially that we need to, quote, do the best that we can, right? And obviously there are multiple different angles you can play with in there. In the case of, and I think that's kind of born of our care for domesticated animals, right, where our obligations and the standards and the minimum, you know, the minimum standards and what that, what good care looks like is really well defined. So the question, I was speaking to Nick, right, because I know frequently either he has mentioned or then, you know, kind of people taking in that mindset have mentioned, oh, well, these snakes are becoming domesticated. So, well, what is this sort of classical definition of domestication?

And the answer, generally speaking, for the domestication of animals, is 10 or more generations. So when we're talking about Alterna, you know, or are Australian pythons, some of them might be getting close to that. Condra, some of them might be getting close. Leopard geckos, yeah, certain lineage is absolutely, and that might even be many or most of them, right, save for the ones that came in more recently as defined specific species and subspecies and things. All pythons, obviously, when you're driven by a morph, you're turning over and holding back offspring, you know, to get the latest morphs.

So, yeah, you're obviously going through generations pretty quickly because you're you know, moving on to the next one as quickly as possible to keep ahead of the curve or whatever. Yeah. So it seems like the framework for things that are sub-10 generations are somewhere between wild and what's considered tame animals. And I would say for the most part, with, again, with those few exceptions, some lineages, a particular animal of ball python, probably most pets or leopard geckos, probably most

bearded dragons, you know, in captivity in the United States, those might be domesticated, but otherwise we're probably talking about either wild, and that, you know, actual wild animals, the first, second generation, or tame kind of in that window in between. It's not as clearly established what the threshold for good care is, right? And is much more variable. Cats and dogs are very similar to one another with a couple captive care differences, but those things are pretty well established.

Same thing with all the domesticated livestock. But if we're talking about, yeah, the proper care of a bearded dragon versus a ball python that does look quite different so obviously it's there just isn't the standardization right so just just kind of putting that out there so one enjoys hammocks one does not you know one does not you know absolutely or at least less so it is funny whenever you're going to zoos and see all the ball pythons that have shoved themselves up into the corners of their enclosure you know that i've seen yeah multiple places which is interesting right for sure so um that being said uh i guess it's again we're in a more nebulous space this if we're framing it as doing

the best that we can what does that mean and for the most part people as you said take it as a state of um abundance while we know that the wild condition can be feast and fallow right for sure so um i think that's really i'm just trying to define even what we're talking about here and as long as those kind of frameworks you know make sense to you then i think we're fine with that as a starting point and yeah i agree i agree with the you know kind of the domestication approach and looking at it from that aspect because that also includes you know a feeding regimen you know where they're they're more likely to take you know commonly produced uh prey species like you know lab mice and rats or crickets or mealworms or you know kind of that limited number of

food items and then you know they're gonna take that right out of the egg kind of idea like a hog nose snake doesn't even know

captive bread several generations doesn't even know what a toad smells like anymore you know like they might recognize it as food but they might not also so you know it's hard to say

but so we've taken some of these species far away from what they naturally and I'm not saying that you know that's hard times versus easy times, but, you know, if they're used to eating toads and you're changing it to a rodent diet, are you giving them, you know, what they've evolved to eat, you know? And I mean, man, they went to a great extent to be able to eat a poisonous toad and not die, you know, capitalize on that rarely eaten food item, you know, at least whole, wholly eaten, you know. Some animals have found out if you flip them over and eat them their belly, it's okay. But yeah.

So I think we may be doing them a disservice, but keeping a ready supply of toads, you know, without collecting from the wild or introducing parasites or things like that can also be challenging. So, and I guess maybe that brings up kind of something I've kind of kicked around over the years is like, you know, that idea of parasites and natural cycles, you know, and animals. And you see like in nature, they can have a pretty, you know, pretty good-sized parasite load that really doesn't affect them too much unless they get, you know, overly stressed through, you know, extreme. hunger or you know you know things like that and then maybe that does them in quicker or something i don't know you know it's hard to say like they're not they go out quickly or something because the parasite load takes over if they reach a certain point so who's to say if that's you know if they've if they if they live with that in the wild who's to say if that's good or bad you know i guess maybe that's our our concept of like okay i wouldn't want a parasite on me so i'm sure they don't

want the parasite on them but maybe there's something that we're not considering or not factoring in or whatever and uh you know just kind of thought that went through my head i don't know how to how to model that in captivity if that should be a thing you know like yeah yeah i mean i think um i was listening to chris montrose on the expert in the idiot podcast i believe uh i think that i was relatively new or i was coming to it recently and uh basically the discourse around how much if it essentially what the paradigm should be in terms of

when you incorporate wild animals into your collection what that looks like. Do we heavily dose them for parasites or are we going to kind of let the extent that the cycle requires an intermediate

step that is broken inherently activity. Is there a utility to not treating those things and letting that cycle naturally break? maintaining the gut biota and things instead of just pumping them full of panicure and killing everything that's in there and kind of starting that cycle so just as you're talking through that with the parasite context i and that's always to be honest been my more or less approach to the extent that it can that it's viable right they actually you can break the cycle it's not a a it hasn't been

a goal of well i'd like them to always have it so that it right yeah but rather to say okay can we the minimally invasive and just sort of focus on the reducing stress and getting them feeding rather than nuking their system, right? Right. Well, and there are some examples of where treatment of parasites causes them to go into a panic mode or whatever and kind of conglomerate and plug up the system and cause the animal's death. So then it's like, oh, they just had too many parasites. Well, was it because of the parasites or because you treated them for parasites that caused that or, you know, or overdosing them with the panicure or something like that?

You know, those kind of things happen as well. So it's not as simple as like parasites good, you know, parasites bad, you know, treat them all or whatever. So it's hard to say. Or is, yeah, toxic, hasn't there been instances of almost like a septicemia or toxic shock associated with them having a large load? somehow I'm thinking either, you know, intestinal worms, something like that. Yep, like hookworms and the volume of dead, you know, organic material caught inside their body cavity then causing issues. Right. And I guess for those not familiar, some of these internal, you know, intestinal parasites have have a multi-species life cycle where, you know, when they hatch out of their eggs, they go into a fish. and then, you know, a bear eats the fish, and then the bear replicates them to the next stage,

and then they poop out the eggs or whatever, and then a human gets exposed. And, you know, so it's kind of like a, some of these are, look into it. It's really kind of a cool thing, you know, some of these parasitic, you know, worm or, I guess, internal parasite life cycles that involve multiple species. It's really intriguing and really kind of a. crazy thing. It's really kind of gross. Yeah.

How did that happen? You know, like, but it, you know, it makes some, makes sense in how they're past and things, but really kind of cool. I think, too, like in regards to the food,

I think just the idea that most, you know, we're kind of Python guys, so most pythons don't just have a regular year-round feeding cycle. You know, they have long periods of no feed and then sometimes where they're eating very frequently.

So, you know, do we, do we, if they're getting, say, 100 meals a year, are we feeding, you know, 80 meals in one month? And then, you know, the 20 throughout the rest of the year, like they might see in the wild, or are we spacing that out, you know, with like a weekly, or I guess that would be a biweekly feeding maybe 50 meals let's make it easy a weekly feeding you know that kind of thing and you know frankly like i think either way can work but what's better for the animal what's more natural what might promote more naturalistic behaviors or uh promote you know reproduction like it occurs in the wild and maybe we don't know everything right so maybe we're making a lot of

assumptions, but I would think that that kind of seasonal or cycle feeding might have some other advantages like stimulation of reproduction or, you know, another trigger for that reproduction in addition to like changes in temperature or light cycle or moisture or whatever. So I don't know, there can be some advantages to following that more, I guess, difficult from our point of view on the animals like we think oh they can't go for a month without eating that's that's inhumane you know but that's kind of taking that you know our of course we couldn't do that yeah anthropomorphic view of we couldn't do that so they shouldn't have to do that but if that's how they evolved to to live and to you know so i don't know understanding the natural things. I mean, that was a big, I guess, impetus for writing the Green Tree Python book was because there was that misunderstanding of what these animals were doing in the wild and how infrequently they eat in the wild, you know, and how infrequent the rodents in Cape York produce. It's kind of an interesting

thing. I was able to find like a paper on the different rodent species in the iron range. And they really didn't have a very high fecundity. Like they were doing these trapping, you know, trapping surveys of rodents in Iron Range. And they just weren't finding a lot, especially during certain times of the year. So I imagine these snakes are going for months without feeding. But then in captivity, we're feeding them and they're getting to be six-foot beasts, you know, like weighing a couple thousand grams. But in the wild, they rarely exceed maybe five. 500, 600 grams, and that's a monster in the wild.

So, you know, do we want to try to get them up to 3,000 grams and have them producing, you know, 60 eggs where half of them are slugs or, you know, that kind of thing? So I think there are some definite things to consider in that regard where following a more natural cycle, which would kind of go to their evolution and what they're used to in evolutionary terms and might make them a longer-lived, healthier animal in the long run if we're, I guess, in our anthropomorphic view, being mean and giving them limited food during most of the year, but feeding them very heavily in a certain, you know, period of time. Yeah, absolutely.

So there's a lot there. The couple things that jump out to me. The first thing, right, is recognizing the question of, does this align with their natural conditions? Right. So those aren't necessarily the same for a lizard versus a python versus a boa versus a colubrid. So I, and I think it was Zach again, I was, so it was probably on Calubrid, Calibro. or it was that same cluberid corruption, I don't know, at some point. He says so many, on so many podcasts and so many intriguing things.

But there was a discussion essentially that how we talk about Python internal organs changing so dramatically based on the process of ingesting and digesting food, that whatever the conversation was, it was highlighting that Boas are not even as extreme. if at all as pythons despite both being voids that it would not be it's actually not exactly the same it's not a exactly parallel there right so that if we're if we're talking in this context of saying oh i'm modeling their natural conditions and right in that case we do if you're talking about a python that has sort of up and down regulation of all their internal organs associated with ingesting and digesting prey yeah you're actually doing them no favors by just causing that to be continually switched on over the course of the year with weekly feeding you're not doing them any favors for sure but if it's a colubrid that definitely doesn't

have that same scale at a minimum of up and down regulation that not feeding them on that frequency you know might actually represent the distinction from the natural condition so we just need to be careful that we're actually applying it appropriately defining that and i think to me on that you would raise this topic, and I think the hard part is just making sure it's actions with information and intentionality, and just making sure that there is actually alignment, so that we're talking about it, what's the distinction between neglect and a conscious and a choice that reflects their actual natural condition? It probably is that it's a conscious choice and that there's alignment with other features.

So if we're talking about it, you know, seasonal feeding, burst feeding associated with these conditions, then when you're not feeding them is in alignment with when you're also lowering the temperatures, you know, potentially lowering the humidity, that all of those factors are in alignment that suggests that conscious decision, conscious choice to be operating in this way, as opposed to, yeah, I just didn't pay attention to them for two weeks or I was prioritizing other things or whatever it was. Yeah. And I think to that point, I, you know, I agree that, you know, with the, you know, with the pythons and yeah but i i'm uh Gavin bedford did some research where he found that

that wasn't really triggered at least in whatever species who i think it was all of pythons or something he was looking at um it didn't trigger that increase in in organ size if it was under 20% of the animals right you know so smaller meals even more complicated right right or or maybe if you feed you know five smaller meals that equals one larger meal so it would increase it you know i don't know that he did all those exactly yeah do you let each small food of bulls get digested completely before you offer another one are you offering you know five in a week and then doing the same thing as you would be someone and and yeah is it good to ramp up uh you know for a month or two you know versus the whole year you know is it good to have that and then

have it not be there you know like right i would suggest my own own personal predilection is yes. That is actually, you know, and would align with sort of how I do it, right, is that I do think that ramp up and ramp down is far preferable to, you know, particularly when they're up, when it's up, then you feed the heck out of them and then you let them down regulate and, yeah, there's feast and fallow, right? We know that for many species, that is a natural condition, particularly island bow, you know, again, even if there is a distinction in the upregulation, down regulation from bowes and

pythons there's still like we know in those caribbean boa constrictors right there's two times a year where there are prey animals appropriate size they're available yeah and the rest of the year there is not yeah there's there's plenty examples of that too you know those the tiger snakes that is a channel island or you know where they they eat those you know nestling birds and that's about all they eat for the rest of the year so they've got to get their meals in and you know and um there's those examples of the the cotton mouths that are like the size of tires because they sit under the bird rookeries and just eat they're just covered with bird crap and they're fat as a tire because they you know fledgling birds that follow the nest all day so you know there's there's some that

uh and i mean obviously pythons are are meant to be sedentary ambushed predators that don't necessarily move a lot or, you know, depending on the species, that's more or less so. But in general, you know, these ambush-type predators are used to going long periods of time without food. And to give them regular food very often is probably not going to be beneficial to the animal's long-term health. So unless maybe these changes are occurring as we domesticate them, you know, maybe. And obviously, that's a part of domestication where they're, you know, breeding in off-season. So their seasonality is is being reduced and going away versus, you know, keeping that seasonality, you know, are you hampering domestication if you're giving them those more

natural, you know, things? And also, you know, varying temperature. Like I think if, you know, if I can jump to the kind of a next topic. The, you know, when we were cruising around in the, you know, the northern, northern Queensland, and it was, you know, 70 degrees, rainy, kind of miserable, almost cold compared to what we were used to, you know, where it's fairly warm over there. And it was, you know, maybe even high 60s and we're just like, oh, we're not going to find any snakes. And then there's a jungle carpet bite on crossing the road, you know, feisty as ever and doing just

fine at, you know, the 70 degrees. And I think all the jungle, well, you know, all two or three of the jungle carpet pythons I've seen in the wild have been kind of on that more misty, rainy, cold nights, you know, versus hot. Right. Seems like more reptiles prefer that kind of. And are we, again, you know, hampering our animals' health and longevity by giving them a constant. constant 80 to 85 degrees their whole life, you know, should they be given 60s and, you know, even maybe 50s for some species, you know, temperatures, certain times of the year or overnight or whatever, you know, seasonally. Obviously, that can have a huge impact on like a diamond

python. If you don't provide them with that cool temperatures, they can have shortened lifespans. They'll die much easier earlier. And if you treat them like a regular carpet python, you know, a jungle carpet python or something, they're not going to live very long. You're going to have problems doing that. So I think that's another example of how beneficial that can be to kind of keep them under those wild circumstances. Yeah. Question for you, you know, because it's like I'm not even sure. were where I would have first heard this, but it certainly sort of maybe falls into the category of conventional, or unconventional, I don't even know, herp wisdom at this point, right?

Do you think thermal capacity or thermal plasticity within an animal, is that akin to a muscle where their capacity to handle that change could atrophy if you kept them at the 78 to 82, you know, and then, oh, well, something that otherwise would have, their, their species would have been, oh, normally they're able to tolerate temperatures down into the 60s, but in an animal that's never exposed to that, is that a capacity that atrophies, or is that something that's going to be retained regardless of how it's being maintained? Like with that animal potentially gets sick, you know, it spends the first 10 years, we'll call it, of its life, in the collection of someone who keeps 78 to 82, and it's a species that normally, has the capacity to go from 60 to 90, let's say, but hasn't been maintained that way its entire life, has spent its lifetime sort of living within that optimum, optimum condition. Does it retain the capacity to do that, or is it vulnerable to potentially get sick if then it's exposed to what its normal condition would normally have allowed?

Right. And I guess, you know, defining, you know, what sick would be, you know, has it just like, pick up the sniffles or, you know, there's always the framing was like, oh, it makes them, that's why say atrophy, right? Because it's almost like their capacity to handle it has diminished based on the way they've been maintained. And say it, you know, stresses them. Right. You know, physiologically. So then they're, then, you know, bacteria might have an opportunity to colonize areas that they normally wouldn't because if the animal's healthy. Yeah. I mean, I think there, that could definitely be a factor. You know. I don't know, I'm trying to think of examples of if that's been demonstrated, but, yeah, I mean, if you've experienced that where you've seen those wild swings through your whole existence, you know, you're probably able to handle that a lot better than, yeah, exactly. Whereas if you all of a sudden have had this, you know, comfortable, you know, consistent living and then all of a sudden you're exposed to that harshness, I worry about myself. Like if, you know, I'm used to air-conditioned home or a heated home and then I have to live out in a tent for a year or something. Like, if I'd survive that, you know, if I'd want to survive that, I think we've gotten softer for sure over the generation. So, yeah, are we doing that same thing to our animals or not? That's a really good, good question, good thought.

Yeah, I don't know. And does it benefit them to give them a wider range? Right. are you making them more uh are you encouraging that heartiness you know that again we've we've seen the the context of you know the different variables that can happen i was just thinking of when the power went out for 23 and a half 24 hours in my house when it was a single degree day and in December um and the Caribbean bellies and things were uh so it got down into i did have the little um room heater so evented room heater situation to try and

maintain some temperature to it but they probably at least had some exposure into the mid to low 50s and power came back on and within whatever it was half hour 45 minutes they were all hanging ready to be fed right yeah no it was you know it's still in the upper 50s right yeah i mean there's there's reports of you know green tree pythons being you know higher elevations in in new guinea or Carpet pythons in Australia that are out at near freezing temperatures, and either they got caught, you know, out when it dropped and they just didn't have the energy or mental capacity to find their way home or, you know, whatever. But it seems like if they, I guess you can see that in animals that are, have evolved to live in a consistent, you know, 70 to 80 degrees their whole life. And then you put them in a situation where the temperature falls, they don't know what to do. they'll just stay out and die you know like they they don't know what cold is basically you know

and if we could do that to our um animals over time yeah exactly where they wouldn't have that capacity but lose it but we've lost it yeah and i imagine if they can change you know so much dietarily and otherwise i think that's you know a reasonable assumption to make that you know we can kind of weaken them that way over time as well as through through the domestication process that's the way you look at it yeah i think that's reasonable right and the other part of that too is maybe some of what gives them that capacity to be um plastic right in terms of what they can handle in the wild is then that they're actually outside getting uvs but not only is it sort of what does it actually look like on the warm up so even if we then do warm them up it's not

warming maybe it's not tearing all those multi-factor you know benefits that allow them to make it through so yet another complication yeah yeah and again too like is that uv exposure seasonal as well because man in central australia it gets as soon as that sun is up it is hot you know there's no bretles out basking you know in the but but in the winter absolutely they're out basking you know trying to get get to that you know and what does that look like how is that moderated by cloud cover what's the variance on that do we to even have the capacity at this point to replicate, like, that's so many questions, right? And it brings us back to the question I know we've asked before, where it's like, is it better to think you're, to try and fail and think you're doing something, but actually be falling short, than it is to not try at all in the context of, okay, I'm providing UV and I'm doing it.

Sure, but you're providing too much or in the wrong manner. It doesn't actually work, you know, all these things. Is that better than not providing? probably but it's hard to say it's still imperfect because you know i think it's too we've come across some um husbandry regimens that have been almost like an emergency room where like with the green tree pythons where they came over on a boat and by the time they got here they were so yeah just so terror like you had to keep them over water just to you know keep them hydrated but if you do we need to do that now with our captive bred offspring or animals that are flown over within a couple

weeks of being collected probably not you know they're probably don't need that uh that husbandry style is probably just akin to like you know a baby's born hurry quick get it to the ICU well does it need the ICU or you know does it have a condition that requires treatment in the ICU or you know are you just being overprotective or worried or just following a care guide because that's what it told you to do you know and you're not thinking those things through critically that's i guess it's hard because you you like the animals. You pay good money for the animals in many cases, especially these days. You know, even the imports are like a couple thousand dollars.

It's pretty insane for depending on the species. But then, you know, so you pay a lot of money to outfit it and to put it in an enclosure. Are you going to, you know, give it the tough love or whatever? Are you going to try to baby that thing to keep it as happy as. possible so it will produce babies for you in the future you know that's kind of the I get I think that what what that mindset is up against is like you know yeah we should give them what they experience in the wild unless it could potentially you know do anything to harm them so I think we've kind of moved the the pendulum has swung to that side of it where we're babying them and

keeping them at ideal all the time and giving them as much food as their heart desires, and then we wind up with these slug, bearded dragons that are way overweight, can't even hardly walk, you know, their bellies are dragging on the floor, and then we're thinking, oh, this is a happy pet bearded dragon, you know. So I think that's the extreme version, of course, but, you know, for sure. And do you have the experience, confidence, resilience, where if you do then put up your kind of tough love enclosure on social media, and you. get, you know, people that are, you know, the soft can't, yeah, you're getting grass for,

you know, doing it wrong or whatever by people that are falling into, yeah, you know, they, they need their hammocks, they need to be overweight, you know, overweight, you know, overweight looks good, that sort of idea, you know, that cultural. That's what everybody's used to, you know, yeah. You know, do you have the capacity to, uh, stand up, you know, against that? Even just confidence within yourself and what you're doing to sort of resist that. Is that a challenge for new keepers? we know that it is right and it's not a social media thing evil we saw it on the forums you know that was a classic forum problem of a new keeper who's excited you know the folks you know whomever it might be telling them how they're doing it wrong yeah they're just excited about their their doll furniture and their enclosure and you know what it's just enrichment you know you like to sit at the tea party what are you talking about yeah fluffy likes it

Well, as a new smell that might smell like your guinea pig also, you know, maybe it does. Right. You never know. And, you know, I mean, there's a lot of different ways that people have successfully kept reptiles, you know. And sometimes you, I always use this an example. And, you know, I saw a talk about Boland's pythons and it showed them in the wild and how they use this giant garbage pile of their shed skins and feces and old plants. And they make a nest in there. where they spend most of their time, the females, you know?

And then they show their cage and it's pristine, white, you know, if any poop gets in the cage, they hurry and clean it off. And it's like, did you not just see where they came from and what they want and what they're used to? You know, are you freaking that thing out? Because every time it takes a dump, it's like bleach smell for the next week. You know, like, come on. You know, I think sometimes we can overdo it.

And then I've heard of, you know, people just, like, throwing new shaving, like Homer Simpson style, you know, putting the new newspaper over the soiled newspaper. Yeah. And, you know, they, the snakes have tunnels under through their, you know, rotten, you know, bedding or whatever. Pretty narrow. But they, but they do great. You know, they produce offspring. You know, some of these difficult to breed species are all of a sudden producing offspring and like, well, what are you doing? I'm just kind of, you know, letting them do.

I don't know. It's hard to say if that's, you know, what is beneficial, you know, do they like their own smell? Do they like to have like a home base? Like, this is where I feel comfortable. I have my own smell here. Or every time they soil the cage or they're on newspaper or something they're not used to, you know. Substrate could be another thing like is this naturalistic for them or what they're used to or what makes them feel secure. And even then it's getting it right, though, right?

So just because just because it's newspaper versus a particulate substrate doesn't mean it's the right particulate. Exactly. It's been an issue for a long time. For sure. Oh, does it live on fine-grained sand? You know, is it a Sarastis that shuffles down into the sand? Is it the sand dunes? It's, you know, that's probably more of a rock dirt sand mixture.

Right. Yeah. Or like the Pilbara, you know, some of those geckos in the Pilbara where it's just like rock, you know, pebble substrate. And, and also, you know, like the microflora of where they come from, you know, I always got a kick out of that one, right? Yeah, exactly. What's yogurt going to do for a snake, you know, is it even bacteria that can colonize the gut of a snake, you know, that kind of thing. And, and I mean, a lot of juvenile reptiles will eat the feces of the adults, you know, tortoises are notorious for that. Chuck Wallers are different, yeah, especially if they are herbifference.

Yeah. Then they need the bacteria and the gut microflora to help. Yeah, digestion. So those kind of thing. If you're, if you're, again, cleaning too quickly and the poor babies can't get those needed bacterial fecal pellets, you know, then I remember my first, one of my first pets was a desert tortoise. And that thing would always eat its feces. Like it was like, stop eating your poop. You know, I didn't. Didn't notice the, but, yeah, I mean, like some, like rabbits or coprophagagic where they'll eat their feces, you know, up to a certain number of times to get the nutrients from each subsequent passage through the intestinal system, you know, like the first pass, they don't get much out of it. Like, yeah, they don't have that built-in structure, so they need to eat it again. Exactly, yeah, which is a real crappy way to live, but pun intended. I almost had it eaten dog food. You can sit there eating can after can of dog food until your tears smell like dog food. Yeah, I mean, there's so many aspects of, you know, how things change when we bring things into a cube, you know. And, I mean, sun, sunshine is not, you know, replicated in a UV tube or, you know, any complex lighting system, you know, taking your animal out.

into the sun for half an hour a day. But it can also result in their death if you're not paying attention and you just leave them out in the blazing sun and there's no shade. Yeah. So, you know, the sun can kill as quickly as it can benefit an animal, you know, same potentially with a UV2, maybe over a longer period of time, but they can also be damaging to the eyes and things. So we don't just want to have a plug and play necessarily for everything. You need to pay attention and, you know, educate yourself, understand why you're using a UV tube or, you know, what you're trying to replicate and, I mean. And do you have a meter?

So your check, what's the quality control on the product? Does it? Or even, was it a bad bat, you know, if you're, right, there's so many externalities. Could be putting out nothing. It could be doing no benefit for your animal. Or it could be the wrong, you know, put it out. Or it could be too high. Yeah.

Exactly. Yeah, but the, maybe the cheaper, cheaper UV tubes from, you know. Yeah. might be detrimental. Yeah. So. It actually actively is killing your animal. Right.

Oh, I'm spending that. Well, you sure, but you didn't spend enough. You know, you spent more, but not enough. You're the worst. Exactly. Yeah. I was thinking about that the other day. I was assist feeding some pygmy pythons.

And I, wow, they were, so I would kind of put the little mouse leg in their mouth. And then they eat it the rest of the way. But they just don't want to take that first step. So I was taking them. And then I would take them out. side and just kind of put them in the sunlight while they were finishing their food, you know, give them a little UV while they were eating their meal. And I thought, I wonder if this would be stimulating, you know, where they're, hey, I'm associating this feeling of happy UV

vibes with eating rodent. I don't know. It didn't, didn't work. They didn't. So long as the hawk doesn't wear over and cast a shadow cousin. Yeah. Yeah, but you can definitely see a change, especially in like lizards, yeah, when you take them out into natural sunlight versus in their cage with just a heat bulb or a UV tube. Yeah, there's night and day differences. And I learned the hard way when I was a kid. I had a tagu and I took it outside and like about five minutes into its basket, like decided to take off. And they are fast animals. And so I'm chasing full speed behind this thing. And luckily it was headed right for my grandchildren. parents house next door so it had to turn right or left and so i'm like well i can cut it off

at the turn if i pick the right direction and i picked left and it went left so i was able to catch it before it got into like the these uh this big evergreen bush thing that i would have never gotten it out of so yeah it was kind of scary i'm like okay note to self don't take it out and just let it sit on the lawn you know it on the leash when i think exactly yeah uh put the hammock where it will want to run to the hammock. But yeah, I don't know. I guess there's a lot of ways you can do it. But I think consider at least, you know, I would just, I would just encourage, like, knowing about their natural history.

Like, I don't, I guess I'm so interested in that, you know, that I just can't fathom somebody getting an animal, not knowing where it comes from, not knowing what it does in the, wild or what it you know kind of habitat it comes from maybe we don't know for something but this day and age it seems like we know for pretty much anything you know you can even get on i naturalist and find plants and you know insects and mammals that are around it that have been found near to their area i i really like um oh my gosh why do i always try to say names before i think of the name uh roy blodge it um rye arthur blot and talk, you know, how he, uh, is trying to get plants and feeders and, you know, all sorts of things from the same place where the snakes come from, you know, so they,

and, you know, co-housing them with different lizard species that come from their natural range. You know, it's really a cool thing. And I really, uh, I like that thought process, you know, I, who knows if that's beneficial to the animals or not. I can't see that it would be harmful, you You know, like they probably appreciate that effort, but, you know, kind of a cool concept to try to match what they would experience in the wild. I love seeing that at zoos, too, you know, multi-species enclosures where they've done the research instead of just like, oh, they both come from Africa, stick them in the same enclosure, you know, that you see sometimes. But, yeah, when it's really thought out and they've taken that natural history into consideration or may have even. seeing them in the wild, seeing them in the same habitat together. You know, I'm like, hey, let's put these two together in an exhibit.

You know, that's pretty cool. Yeah. I mean, well, there's a real complexity. I suppose, you know, it's not even a contrary side because I agree with you that that's really cool. The key condition to make sure you're, you know, not having deleterious effects is just saying, you know, your example with the agurnia, right? What is it, Zignitos, and Epsosososos.

where it's like those are those are from the you know very similar habitat at a minimum similar area at a minimum but when they were maintained that way they were operating completely differently and it wasn't the benefit of either right when they were being maintained simultaneously in the same enclosure yeah yeah you definitely have to keep those kind of things in mind that some things don't mix and and just because they seem like they should or just yeah they're both from you know rock habitat right it doesn't mean it's going to work yeah exactly or you know maybe the cage was too small. Maybe it would have worked if you had them, you know, on separate ends of a room or something. Yeah. And, you know, obviously that all kind of plays into it, you know, the size of the enclosure and things like that, you know. Lots of things to consider, lots of things that you can do to improve the outcome or the beneficial environment of your captive animals. Again, conscious choices, I think is really the aspect that I would come down most for a moment. does what you're doing reflect the conscious choice that a lot you know is it a bunch of aligned

variables that you're trying you know where you're um accepting and responding to the feedback that you're getting from the animals on the system or is it just neglect that's right that's the question right yeah yeah that's true i and i do like the term i think uh either terry phillop or ryan young or somebody came up with the calculated neglect where you know you're you're doing it for reason you're not neglecting them because you're you don't have money to feed them or something you know you're doing it because they don't eat during this month in the wild or something or during this season in the wild and that can then make a good choice for you as a particular oh i actually want to work with this because that fits naturally to my availability or seasonality or whatever

it is right that that's great you know why we should be keeping what what works best for us instead of all trying to keep this mono you know contiguous monoculture yeah now there's there's a thing that'll work best for you and what you can provide and then just be responsive to that. Don't just say, nope, I agree that I'm never feeding in November regardless of the temperature, regardless how they're responding, regardless of their body condition, whatever it is. Right. There's another kind of cool example of, you know, temperature regimen and things like that.

Twoitars were thought to die if they got over 70 degrees, you know, and that kind of thing. And so, a zoo was keeping them constantly, you know, under 70 degrees. And if it got, you know, over 70, then they would turn on the cooler and, you know, missed them or something like cool them down. Freeze them down. Exactly. And they just were not growing much. They weren't reproducing or anything like that. And so they thought, well, let's see what they're doing in the wild.

Let's watch, you know, and they saw them out basking it, you know, 90 degrees or whatever. And they're like, oh, so sometimes they can do that. and they're not going to die, you know, and so, and then they actually set up a system where the sensors would replicate, you know, what the exact temperatures that were happening in, in New Zealand, you know, in a given area where two atars are found. And so, and then, you know, they set up basking and skylights and stuff. And all of a sudden, the animals are coming out going, thank goodness, we can finally bask. We've been in this, you know, frigid wasteland for long, way too long, you know. So, yeah, I think if we go with conventional wisdom sometimes, that can also be dangerous because, you know, somebody had a Tuatara dye because it got too hot, you know, it doesn't mean that, you know, sure. Exactly.

Or were there confounding factors to that? Yeah, exactly. And I think a lot of times we have those kind of herpeticulture, you know, conventional wisdom that just doesn't match reality. Yeah. monitors were that way right you couldn't have a monitor get them over a hundred you know exactly and then frank came along and said the frank dynamic blast them 150 and they're fine you know you just have to give them the option to get out of that 150 and they're no problem at all yeah it was also the mechanism of heat delivery right obviously right 150 degree hot rock that's a huge problem 150 degree you know uh spot you know flood that doesn't have a pinpoint you know that's completely refracted yeah that's perfect yeah or several lights that give a broad basking area yeah yeah yeah lots of things to consider But I, you know, I think this is a big plug for learning about the reptiles you keep, learn about their natural history, find out where they come from, go visit that place, you know, just experience it. See what they're doing in certain times of the year if you can.

It makes it just more rewarding, in my opinion. Not that you have to. I mean, maybe we, maybe we're hampering their domestication by trying to keep them more. Feeding into these activities. Yeah, we should make them be it, you know, 80 to 75 to 85 degrees their whole life and give them this pampered weekly feeding. They can reproduce all months of the year, no big deal, yeah. So I don't know.

I guess it could go either way. That's the beauty of these topics, right? There's no one right answer. We're not dogmatic. Especially this one, because I think fundamentally it's sort of like we're in the course of the conversation. of established sort of a, you know, a major terminal endpoints on either end of the direction. Right. It's like, okay, if you're in here and it's a conscious choice, there's so much flexibility in

what works for your animals in your space. Yeah. And you, too. I mean, this is not entire. I mean, it is about the animals, but it's also about our enjoyment of the animals. Why would we have them if we didn't enjoy them or want to experience them in the captive setting? and so if that means you want to give them a hammock and that's that's your prerogative you know

I don't I don't know that it's going to necessarily be non beneficial of the animal it might look horrible to people who enjoy naturalistic settings but hey it's not about us it's about you and your animal and your enjoyment of that animal and and their enjoyment of their captive right so long as there's not a risk you know when I make a hammock thing I'm going okay well as long as they're not getting their a a they're males aren't too long because the substrate's improper, so they're not being properly worn down. And they're catching in the hammock and it rips off a finger or whatever it might, you know, that sort of thing. Like, yes, as long as those aren't a problem, then absolutely have your hammock. Yeah, yeah, exactly. No, nobody's going to shame you here for having a hammock. Maybe a little bit of joking, but that's about it. Gentle ribbing.

Cool, cool. Well, any other things that come to mind or? no i was yeah i was curious what what way well so i say no i did when you mentioned the topic prompt me to remember our conversation with wolfgang over at bob's place in arizona and a point that he had brought up was the um at least based on sort of the limited sample size of he had the students out there and what they were finding um based on that anecdotal evidence he was saying yeah this summer it seems like they were finding far fewer young animals, kind of young of the year or even yearling type animals, and he certainly remarked

on the relative lack of gopher snakes. We did see one over the course of time, but just as a relatively, usually pretty abundant animal down there, particularly certain times a year, that it seemed like this year there were fewer young animals that they were finding. Usually we find disproportionately more young animals. I know when we talked to Bob Zappalorty, right? he said, well, there's always, what, the young, the young, young, stupid ones. He had a, yeah, they'll be out at any time, yeah.

There's always the dumb ones. The little idiots. Yeah. So usually you find a disproportionate number of small ones. And other than that Big Ben Patch nose, was there really anything else we saw that was? The Mojave Cross thing, that was a juvenile. Yeah, probably yearlings. Yeah, probably yearlings.

But everything else seemed to be. pretty bolder adults or we did see a hatchling mud turtle or i did i guess i saw it yeah you guys weren't with me when i saw that one but it was like the size of a quarter like it was very small maybe a little larger but yeah probably here this year's young you know just hatched out because the water's hit something i don't know yeah yeah so it it just made me you know we were we didn't really even talk kind of hit on that but it certainly is you know even it's one thing to say a lot of what we're our discussion was on sort of the consistently seasonal fluctuations and feast and fallow but there's also just change either changes over time in terms of what that see the length of that seasonality the degree the harshness of that seasonality um and you know certainly is that causing how is that affecting the local populations of things both sort of when we're talking about transitory short-scale things or if there's longer-term impacts.

And when you say, okay, remodeling this, it's like, well, are we going to model the Canelo Hills-Pichuofa situation, you know, of this year over the course of a year? Are we talking about how many times do you feed them, you know? You still feed them, but how much, you know. Right, right. Yeah, because obviously nature is brutal and you have years where they may not be a lot of reproduction or, yeah. I mean, this was the, I think they said this was the driest or hottest year on record, hottest summer on record in Utah. So, you know, it was not great for herping.

I'll tell you that, like, during the summer for the most part, it was just very dry and there wasn't a lot of things moving. So, you know, that's year to year. As opposed to, what, 23, when it was one of the wettest in at least the decade or 20 years or whatever. Yeah. And two, I think about, you know, Shine's lab work with the water python showing that animals born in a good year. It usually had more offspring over the course of their lifetime, lived longer, you know, those kind of things. Like they did better when they had a good head start, you know, lots of food, lots of heat or water, whatever they need, you know, those kind of things. So obviously what year they're born in can maybe it could. lasting impact on the rest of their lives you know they they get stunted early on you know um that could also have an effect of you know if you're feeding your hatchlings frequently and and you know they grow quickly that's probably more going to be beneficial in the long run within limits of course but yeah yeah um i think benson found in his research that he couldn't they they couldn't feed ball pythons too much

or something like that. Right. Up until some point or even forever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think like at least the snakekeeper was not feeding, overfeeding their ball pythons.

Like they probably could have fed them more. Yeah. There was no correlation of like, okay, you're feeding them too much. They're going downhill in their progress. So some species are just designed to do those kind of things or maybe the capacity to domestication, you know, processes further along. I don't know. It's hard to say. I'd still say those are only tame, not domesticated.

Right. Well, I mean, compared to, you know, 20 years ago when you couldn't even hardly keep a ball python alive, let alone reproduce them year after year, you know, at 18 months and on or earlier, you know, like it's crazy. So we've come quite a ways in that regard as long as far as. And that's a function of both things, right? Some of that is the animals themselves. Some of it is our approach to them. Yeah. So it's, you know, there we have, again, compounding factors. It's both sort of our, how they were being approached, who was working with them, how seriously they were taking it, what were their methods. And it is also the animals, right? Anything that's got spider in it, you know, this number of implicit generations and all the right. Right. Yeah, exactly. Fun stuff to think about and definitely the kind of consider both sides, you know. Yeah. I think there, you know, the pendulum swing. the way of you know more key you have to keep them naturalistic or you're arming them in some

way you know or those kind of things and i mean there may be something to that but maybe not maybe you know in our quest to to domesticate these things that's the way it goes you know you look at all sorts of domestic animals and what happens as you go down that path you see you know piebalds and you know all sorts of different phenotypic changes occurring Big guys, smaller nose, smaller snouts, yeah, yeah. Floppy ears, yeah. I mean, that doesn't apply much to reptiles, but, you know. Those earless lizards, the little flaps are getting.

They're getting huge. Getting huge, man. Look at the flaps on that lizard. All right, well, yeah, time to move on to more academic thoughts. Anything good, herpetolum. logically or herptoculturally you've seen over the past bit? Yeah, so well, and this will be going after Nipper's Heart when we were staying out at Bob's Place. I did get the new Northern Pine Snake book from Joanna and Bob and Michael.

So I've been reading through that. That's been really good. And when we were talking to Chuck, your buddy, Chuck, at Bob's Place, he was engaging Dustin in a conversation around sort of the old school herb authors. I had, I was, we were talking Coughfeld and then, um, kind of it went from there. and he had mentioned Minton, who's out of Indiana, I think, who was a name that I'm actually not super familiar with, but he's saying, oh, you know, Conant and Caulfeld Conant, Pope, Dipmars, you know, sort of the classic Rup writers and that sort of book-book style. And, you know, I said, well, right and right, and he's, you know, he was basically giving me, well, that's not a book book, you know.

and um but he came to agree and um but he said minton and so yeah that was a new name for me and there's a uh i think it's venomous reptiles and maybe it's giant lizard something like that but the point is you know sure enough eight books you know books from the 70s for five dollars or whatever and it's like yeah so i'm going to check it out and then it seems like there's a more recent biography or autobiography. I think he's actually was, so I think he deceased in the late 90s, early 2000s, but he was the son of a U.S. senator who then was a Supreme, or a congressman, who was then a Supreme Court justice, who made him, he said, oh, you know, I want to be a herpetologist.

He said, he'll be a doctor or a lawyer and like it, you know, or whatever. So he was a doctor, and kind of in a Richard Ross way, had gone, travel the globe, but then wound up working with his, they were in Pakistan for a handful of years, and so he's heavily associated with the reptiles of Pakistan. So anyway, those are, those books are coming, and future notes and thoughts, I'm sure. Nice, yeah. No, I picked up the pine snake book, too. I haven't picked it up to read it yet, but I need to do that.

Yeah, exactly. I guess I can say I've been busy writing and hopefully going over a blue line soon, kind of the final proof of the book, the field guide to the reptiles and amphibians of Utah. I'm excited to see that come out. Hopefully they fix it, and it's a beautiful, wonderful book, but we'll see. But yeah, I'm looking forward to getting that one out the door. And then I've been writing more on the Aspedites book, so it would be nice to wrap that one up to you. I know. It's kind of been like, I don't know. It's a, I've just, I don't know why I haven't written faster on this one. I think when it was Nick and I writing, you know, we'd kind of spur each other on. Like, hey, I wrote 10 pages a day. How much did you write? You know, that kind of thing where, you know, you just don't have the, you know, frequent check-ins and things and talking about, you know, okay, what do you think about this concept? And we just don't have that as frequent with Lucas. And I think that may be.

part of it, you know, and he's busy and we're busy. And, you know, if it's not on the forefront of your mind, you kind of put it off and forget about it. I'm also working on revamping my carpet python poster. I kind of want to get some copies printed out for the carpet fest and have them down there. But I'm, I was not happy with how the inland and the gammon ranges carpet python turned out. And so I redid the gammon ranges. I'm in the process. I'm in the process of redoing the inland. So I'm sorry if you bought the poster already, but doing a revision of it and also trying to make it a traditional or more common poster size. So if you want to put it in a poster frame or something, then it'll be easier

to do that. So I'll try to make it like two by three or something. So it's more readily available poster frame. Exactly. So I know it's kind of a pain sometimes with posters you know trying to put them up on the wall or something i did see kind of a like a cool idea it's like a magnetic hanger and it clips to the top of it and the bottom of it and kind of hangs you know like uh so it's just by the weight of the frame it keeps it straight and nice so i thought i might try that that style out and see how that works but yeah okay so i don't know just uh that's kind of where where my head is getting ready for the carpet fest i actually uh when we were at Bob's, I picked up a couple cases of books and sent one with Jordan, so he'll have

some of the second edition of the carpet book at Carpet Fest. So we can, you know, so if you want to, I'm sure you'll be listening to this after Carpet Fest, but maybe, I guess it might come out before. Maybe you will have purchased it at Carpetest. But I will have books there, whether or not this is helpful information now when you're listening, because when is now, right? You could be listening this in 50 years and maybe hopefully i don't know we'll see but yeah i counted up i think we're around 165 episodes or somewhere on there so keep plugging away i guess we'll get to eric and oan numbers in another 10 years or whatever however long they've been going but yeah yeah kind of wow i mean so the content and again so you'll have to check it out to go back and do it especially since it's

not available on blog talk anymore, but the, you know, it should, I'm sure it really hits home for you because, oh, well, you know, Justin and Nick can't be here to go to Timley for the book because they're in Australia, you know, and I know that's good and bad, you know, there's plenty of good and bad that comes with that, but like, that fixes, that's got to fix that time in your mind very clearly of how long ago that was, you know. Yeah, it's kind of crazy. And, you know, I would be fun to listen to some of those older episodes where we're talking about, you know, and see how far we've come. So I think it's Luke again and then it should be Ben and then you and Nick, so it should

be within, if Eric sticks to the schedule, should be within the next four or five weeks. Right. Yeah. That'll be cool to hear how we used to, how we used to think or what, you know. How you used to think what you're, you know, the NT Kakadu, you know, what you did, all of that. Right. 15 years ago, that's a, it's a while back, you know, yeah, kind of crazy. The whole thing's, yeah, it's kind of wild that you'll be able to listen to it with, you know, particularly, as I say, particularly you guys being, being the guest that it's like, yeah,

just the capacity to view back. This is what I thought. You know, this is how I described it. This is, it's really cool. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty fun. I mean, kudos to those guys keeping it going. I mean, it was interesting. Like, I tuned into carpets and coffee while I was driving to a work dinner. So I chimed in kind of quick, you know, at a stoplight or whatever. But, you know, I'll listen to it today as well. And just good to hear those guys talk again. But, you know, kind of hearing some of that, you know, real life from Eric, like he almost threw in the towel, sold off all the snakes and got out of the podcasting business.

It's like, oh, man, you know, that. would be a huge loss. I'm glad he got revitalized and got excited about it again. I mean, obviously, there's things that happen in life that just take us out of it, you know, and you may not have energy for reptiles or, you know, podcasting anymore. And we get that, you know, it happens. And there's no, no shame. And, you know, and especially in Eric and Owen's case, It's like they can turn in the towel and they've have a huge record of good things that they did over the past, you know, 15 years that not many, none can match and, you know, not many can even come close to. So that's pretty cool, pretty impressive, guys. I guess it's an honor to be a part of that, you know, to be on the NPR network and consider them friends.

You know, that's really a cool thing. So what a good example they've been. It makes me want to keep going and keep putting out some good stuff. But who knows, maybe I'll burn out and I'll be out of here in another 10 episodes. We'll see. Prove me wrong, children. Prove me wrong. All right.

Well, we'll call it a night. And thanks for listening. We'll catch you again next time for Reptile Fight Club.