Reptile Fight Club - Taxonomy w/ Phil Wolf and Casey Cannon

Episode Date: March 11, 2022

In this episode, Justin is joined by Phil Wolf and Casey Cannon to tackle the topic of taxonomy. Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comFollow Chuck Poland  on IG @ChuckNorriswinsFollow MPR Network on:FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQMore ways to support the shows.Swag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

Thank you. All right, welcome to another edition of Reptile Fight Club. I'm Justin Julander, your host. And with me, as always, wait, he is not here. So with me, not wait that he is not here so with me not today is chuck chuck is not here today we've got we've got a couple wonderful guests though you may remember them from such episodes as they've been on fight club before so it won't be any strangers to the podcast how's it going guys we got mr ph Mr. Phil Wolf, Mr. Casey Cannon. Hello. Welcome.

Thanks for having us on. Thanks for having us on. Yeah, yeah. So I got a fun little text from Phil the other night. Maybe a little backstories in order, but maybe not. I don't know if you want to disclaim that. That's all right. Let's just be blunt here's just be blunt here. We're, we're all adults. Casey Cannon, Billy Hunt and I were having an adult beverage on Billy Hunt's patio on, what was it? Saturday night. And we just started talking about taxonomy. And I said some things and Casey said some things and Billy laughed to himself and we're like, we should fight about

this. So I, uh, with no apprehension whatsoever, texted Dr. Drew Lander, Hey, Casey Cannon, I want to fight about taxonomy. And the next morning, luckily I got a response. So here we are, right Casey? Yeah, right. Right. Hey, I like the passion. I like, you know, we're going to, we're going to get into some good stuff. And I, I've got my feelings, of course, you know, the disclaimer, none of us are taxonomists. So this is all fun and games. But hopefully we don't offend any true taxonomists. But, hey, if you're offended, then, you know, maybe you need to grow a thicker hide.

Look, we're still going to read your papers. We're still going to love and cherish your papers. And we're going to preach about them, whether we like them or not. Well, some of them, yeah. Some I don't get too warm, fuzzy feelings about, but you know, yeah, that's, I guess that's the fun, but again, you know, we, we, this'll be a, this'll be a fun thing. So thanks for being on guys. Life treating you well. Yeah. Getting any, uh, reptile activity lately or. No, not a thing, man.

I still got geckos that are cooling. I went later and I decided not to cool cerastes because I feel like I've only had them a year. And I want to give them another year and make sure that things are going correctly. And we'll just leave it at that. Do they take a while to adjust to this side of the globe? Not that I've ever experienced, but this is my first time really, like this is going to sound horrible, but really caring about them because when they are set up right, they're so freaking hearty. They're bulletproof. Nice.

So this time I'm really feathering temperatures and feeding them more than I probably normally would just kind of get some weight on them. I changed my hydration practices completely. So like they've only drank twice in the past since like July. Yeah. So I'm really limiting moisture, limiting water and we'll see what happens. Nice. Nice. Yeah. I've always liked the Sarastis. They're cool. I, I, one of my favorite rattlesnakes is the Sidewinder. So, you know, anytime you have that kind of convergent evolution type thing, it's pretty sweet. Um, I, I, I, I'd never seen one in the wild for the longest time, you know, and I'd looked a few times and granted it was kind of like passing through and I'd swing by through an area, like dragging my family out in the desert at three in the morning, looking for reptiles in the middle of nowhere. Why my wife's freaking out, like, where are we? This is, this looks sketchy, you know? And I saw, you know, a couple plastered on the road, but I hadn't seen a live one. And then I did a couple

trips down to Southern California and like, there was no shortage of sidewinders. I probably saw 20 or 30 in one, in my first trip. And so it went from zero to 30 pretty quick. And then this last couple of times I've been down there, the plentiful supply. I don't know how I didn't see him before because I was in some of the same areas. It's like they're everywhere out here. Like, you know, you're almost like, oh, it's just another sidewinder. You're like, what am I saying? Get out.

It's like Nerodi in the southeast. Yeah. And I was, I was, I was rolling along and I noticed there was a car on the side of the road. I'm like, oh, some other herpers. So I'm like, you know, stop by. Hey guys, what's going on? And the guy turns around and he's holding a sidewinder. He's free handling it in his hands.

I'm like, oh yeah, you guys have a good night. I'm out of here. I'm not having anything to do with you guys. Yeah. Oh my gosh. And I'm like, you're free handling it. And he's like, oh yeah, yeah. We do it all the time.

It's there. They're pretty calm. I'm like, still, you're free handling it. And he's like, oh, yeah, yeah, we do it all the time. They're pretty calm. I'm like, still, you know, ruin it for the rest of us, dude. Yeah. Oh, I didn't even know that there were so many subspecies or localities that until I talked to Matt McDowell, he's a sidewinder aficionado. He's kept a handful and bred him a couple of times over the years. And he's an Arizona guy. Yeah.

And he's like, oh, dude, there's not only is there localities, but there's subspecies involved. And I was like, wow, this is a rabbit hole I've not even known about. So yeah. Right. Cool little buggers, man. Yeah. They've done some, I have a hard time keeping up with the Cretalis taxonomy.

They've done quite a few changes and it's been a little, uh, yeah, I guess that leads us into our topic maybe, but it does. Cause it just goes to that whole thing of people liking the subspecies name and they just drop the species. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes that's appropriate, you know, like with the wheeler eye and synctus, there was enough data to show that, you know, it was time to elevate those as species. But, you know,

I think for a long time herpers had kind of known that. Yeah. And people in the captive world, the captive breeding and everything, we already called them that as it is. So it's not like anything changed for us. Change. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, and I, and I think, you know, things go back and forth all the time. I think, you know, well, okay, I'm going to save it. You guys, you guys get into it. So Casey, you got any coals in the fire right now? So this is my first year trying to breed ball pythons. So I'm getting a bunch of ball python locks.

You mean royal pythons? Royal pythons. There's nothing royal about those animals. They're majestic, really royal pythons. Yes. But, uh,

yeah, I mean, I've, I cooled down, uh, some sins in your boas. I cooled down the breadals pythons. I'm in a new room right now and

i don't know how to work that room like i knew how to work my old room so i'm not really it's too hot it's way too dry um i mean i'm seeing stuff cuddling right now but it's march 3rd right now and i have not seen a single brettles Python lock, which is bizarre for me. Yeah. Like any, any idea, just the room you're thinking or I think it's, I think the room's just too warm because I mean, I know people say like, oh, you know, you have to get things into the rhythm of the room. I think that that is a more complicated topic than people say, because I could bring an adult female Brettle's Pythons into my old setup. And like this time of year, like April, May, whenever, I'd have eggs this time next year from her.

The problem is I don't know how to work this new room. So I'm having a hard time with like established older animals that just don't like how hot it is. Don't like the look. I don't know what they don't like, but I'm also having an issue where I think I've kept my males too skinny you think I'm having a like you smile while I'm doing this I look at him like you guys are way too thin hmm yeah but I know how dry it is in there because I'm having issues with especially like my mail sends any aboa and my mail Sonoran gopher snake they're having issues in that room

where they get stuck shed on their eyes. Like they get eye caps stuck on them. Yeah. So I know there's just an issue there. So I got to figure out how to cool it down a little bit. So I hope I get some Brettles Pythons because that'd be really embarrassing for me if I get all Python pledges and no Brettles Pythons.

Yeah. Like I literally said it's going to be my big my biggest year ever i had like multiple blue tongue skink pairings i only got two females locked with them i have no idea how to read those animals so maybe they're gravid maybe they're not i'd be amazed i'd cry if i got baby blue tongue skinks like i would cry yeah um i was gonna try a pair of Sonoran gopher snakes. Um, I think that females ready to go. The males having issues with stuck eye caps on him. Uh, since any of last year, they would block up for like days at a time. And this year I have not seen a single lock out of them.

Uh, breadals they're cuddling. It's way late. Like I should be seeing multiple locks by now, but they're cuddling now. So who knows? Yeah, that's, uh, I don't know. I feel for you. Cause that was my year last year we moved and I built my new reptile room and I'm really happy with it, but there are some things I'm still learning and trying to tweak. And it's almost like it's too hot in there. I've got it too well insulated, but I can also open a window and let in some really cold air in northern utah you know so it's not too hard to cool things down if i want to but i i usually have to run the ac pretty much all win or all summer so yeah it's kind of a yeah and

none of my carpets went last year but i i know i've got a gravid jungle female and hopefully a couple inlands i've paired them up and saw some locks. And so hopefully that's the case. And I'd like to have a couple other carpets go as well, but we'll see how it goes. You never know until the eggs are on the ground, I suppose. But I mean, my jungle female is about ready to pop. She looks really big. And then I've got a couple Aspidites. My female blackhead, Western blackhead is very large. She's getting close. And then I've got a couple Aspidites, my female blackhead, Western blackhead is very large. She's getting close. And then a female woma, the eggs are actually approaching, you know, moving down and getting ready to be laid.

So I had to expect those pretty much any day. So hopefully it'll work out. That's the issue that room though, is the second I turned on the heat, that room went from like 40 to 60 percent humidity to like 10 like you can make beef jerky in that room yeah yeah so even for species from a very dry environment like most things i keep you know i keep the more wet species in racks so like i'm able just to pour water on cypress mulch yeah yeah that's that's helpful yeah i mean mean, that's the story of the life down here in Utah is just very low humidity. It's very crappy in some ways, but in other ways, it's kind of nice. And I think some species adapt better to that or do better in no humidity situations than they do in very humid situations, especially if you're keeping desert species.

But I don't know, listen to Ron St. Pierre though. I've kind of rethought that with all the, you know, do and talk of dew point and that kind of thing. I've, I've been spraying some of those desert animals at night, you know, getting them, getting them that moisture in the evening or in the morning, that kind of thing. Yeah. Eventually when I have the, uh, pseudo serastis all set up in like a real enclosure, cause they're in, they're in crap now, but it, i'm waiting on cages from black box and uh when i do i think i'm gonna do a i think i'm

gonna put a mist king on them for like four seconds every day 25 minutes before the sun comes up yeah right so they can get that yeah because it's gonna get over a hundred degrees in there by 9am, you know, so it'll just zap that out. So I think I'm going to, I think I'm going to try that. That's probably a wise thing to do. I, I saw, um, a tortoise breeder that had set up a little, uh, humid hide area where they pumped in, you know, a Miss King flow into a little hide box. So the tortoise could go in there and get high, you know, and get that hydration humidity, like a false burrow type situation. And I that's ingenious you know and you know they they're showing that that's more more of the cause of pyramiding than like the diet and things like

that so it's kind of cool yeah that's awesome yeah i was actually thinking about doing like a fogger like i can't remember who makes it but the one that has the clear hose it's like an accordion hose do the fogger but have it come in at the bottom. So it's just a layer of fog on the bottom. So it sticks to rock and stone and stuff. Maybe for like five or 10 seconds just to get the fog in there and then stop. See what condenses into dew. Yeah.

Get that kind of layer. I mean, anytime you wake up in the desert, you're oftentimes coated with dew, and that's very important i think to those desert reptiles so yeah i've been thinking a lot about that ever since i heard ron's episode i need to figure out how to make it practical you know so you're not having to buy a mist king for every cage or something that might be a little pricey i can imagine well you you guys ready to do some fighting? Yeah. Let's kick the tires and light the fires. Okay.

Sounds good. Let's go ahead and do the traditional coin toss to see what side you get. Pro or anti-taxonomy. That's what we're going to be chatting about today. Whether taxonomy is just a load of dung or if it's actually a wonderful institution. So, all right. Who wants to call it? Casey Collins. I think it always is heads. So let's do heads. Okay. That's interesting because Chuck claims it's always tails. So, and it's tails. So Phil, you get to choose what side you're going're going i'm gonna take the pro i'm gonna take taxonomy is awesome okay taxonomy is a wonderful institution i'm gonna play the part

as a belligerent anti-taxonomist for this i guess you need a long mustache so you can curl it you know yeah the anti oh see phil you picked the wrong side. You got the wrong one. Well, I guess you can curl it in anticipation of supporting taxonomy. Maybe the taxonomy is the ill institution. Yes. All right. As the coin toss winner, you get to decide if you go first or second, Phil. Casey's going first. Oh oh i'm going first okay

all right i think the biggest thing people need to remember about taxonomy is that it's not a science it is a system of classification that uses science, human opinion, and like a general idea of how animals look and how animals act. So much of it comes down to the opinions of scientists and it changes all the time to the point where the whole idea of taxonomy when it was created in 1758 was we'll all talk about the same animals

and we're all going to know what we talk about because we're all going to use latin and there'll be no confusion and we'll know exactly how they like how related to each other and the problem is it doesn't do any of that where you read a piece of paper from i don't know 30 years ago and they'll be talking about, I don't know, for some reason, all entries are, um, I asked this, I asked this, yeah.

Or something like that. So, or, yeah. And then, I mean, to name a new species, you also have to go through every single old museum specimen to make sure that

somebody in 1812 didn't find one of these, put it in a jar and give it a name. And then that's the name it has to be because it's the oldest one. And I mean, the way you find it, the way you name a new species is what it has to be published and sent out a hundred different places, a hundred miles away from the place.

The, uh, paper was published at, isn't that how it is? That's like, and this is from 1758. i think it has to be distributed just distributable to to people who are interested you know it can't just be you you publish it and hide that away in your in your closet or something right it has to be freely available to other

people interested so yeah yeah that can back in the, it posed a big problem. Now it's really easy and you can make up your own journals and you can have your own, you know, uh, you can steal something and name it after whoever you want to name it after. And your dog, for instance, you name it after your dog or,

you know, your favorite high school English teacher or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, the whole thing really seems to me is the biggest problem with taxonomy is Yeah, yeah. like we should, which is we should probably scrap it and get rid of it. We're doing the classification equivalent of strapping a jet engine on a horse-drawn buggy

because we're afraid to change anything. All right. Well, that is a very interesting take. Let's hear what Phil has to say about that. Okay, an interesting take. First of all, it was 1758. Thank you very much. So 1758. And your ideas, although sound, I must disagree with, because yes, there is a lot of opinion, but the opinion basis is of those of a modern way of

thinking who are not subscribing to the rules of taxon. Because when Linnaeus wrote this out, he had rules and steps and guidelines. And there are classes to this day that people can take on how to perform the acts of taxonomy appropriately. So you have to follow the rules, whether it be naming itself or combining ancient Greek and Latin, or just the way that you catalog what you're describing, there are rules. And even though we have DNA, those rules still apply. So we can take in the modern world in the 21st century, we can take the ancient, because we will call it ancient, right? We'll take the ancient rules of taxon and we combine them with the modern way of thinking with DNA and scale counts and whatever feather arrangement, however you want to phrase it. And we combine the two together and we extrapolate the data that we have.

Now, DNA is awesome if you're using the right kind of DNA, right? Because I can do DNA for one thing. I can do DNA for another and get different results from the same animal. So and at the same time, we're still in our infancy of DNA. So, you know, in the next 2030 50 years, it's going to be infinitely better. And we may get to the point where we say, you know what, Casey was right, the rules of taxon per Carl and Mayes is caca. And we'll just go off of the numbers on the on the spreadsheet and the numbers in the pie graph. But until that is a definitive, which it never will be because science is always adapting and always evolving, we have to stick to the rules

that were originally described, right? And originally laid out for us to use as a template, if you will. And if people want to alter the template, that's cool, but they still have to stick to the template. So to say that it's a bunch of nonsense, well, the whole point of it is describing things. It's catalog, right? Because we as humans need the classification, we as humans need the cataloging of everything, right? So that we can tell the difference between one thing and another. So I feel a taxonomy is a very big thing

in our world, right? As well as the ancient world, because we can't really know how things were unless we look back, right? And how do things get their names? Well, there's rules and there's a system of guides to go back to what it was. You know, Scott Iper sent me a clip from a book once. And sorry, there's a plane going over my head, guys. You know, Scott Iper sent me a clip from a book once. And sorry, there's a plane going over my head, guys. No worries.

Scott Iper sent me a clipping from a book that basically said, you can change an animal's name as long as it's changed correctly. And that is paying homage to the first describer or paying homage to the person that discovered it and yeah you can name it after someone's dog but that's not part of the rules so if we change bufo to ranella the reason why we change bufo to ranella is because ranella was the first name and now we're going back to the original because we've decided that it's completely different and we're reclassifying it so yeah there's there's a lot of opinion there, lumpers, splitters, all that jazz. But when it comes down to brass tacks, there is a template, there are rules and they must be followed to be done correctly. And we can add DNA and add modern science to that. Yeah. One of those examples that I was kind of excited about, but that I had to

lose that excitement was the Owen the Owen Pelly Python, where they did the new work, found out it was kind of more aligned with the carpet Python clade, gave it the cool name, Noirin, which is the Aboriginal name for the Owen Pelly Python. But then another group came out and said, nope, you can't do that. You got to go back to Nick to Filo Python, the big, long, weird sounding name. So I was I was kind of hoping for Noir and to take hold. Yeah. And that goes that's the same way as like Ayers Rock and Uluru. Right. So to some extent. Right. So so Ayers Rock was given a name by settlers who had come there and they didn't start it there they weren't there for millennia

you know so the population who is running the joint decides unanimously okay we're going to name it uluru because that's its correct name if something like that happened in taxonomy i wouldn't be against it yeah it broke the rules but it's still if everyone's in agreeance with it rock and roll yeah but then it goes to that's everyone's in agreeance to it following the same guidelines. And trying to get everybody to agree on one thing is very, very difficult. And I think that was the, one of the problems is that this, that Nick Tophilo Python was named by Wells and Wellington who were seen as kind of outsiders and, you know, usurpers to the Australian taxonomy.

And so a lot of Australian taxonomists kind of ignored a lot of the names that they proposed, even though after a while, most adopted, and they're generally widely used today. But yeah, it's a tricky thing. All right, Casey, you gave you a lot of stuff a lot of, a lot of stuff to respond to. Wish I'd written more of it down. So when you keep coming back to saying it has to follow the rules, it has to fit inside these boxes because that's what humans want to do. That's not what nature does. Nature doesn't fit in boxes. Nature doesn't want to follow any of your like preconceived notions of these two are going to run parallel to each other and they're different things.

They're not. They want to cross. They're going to cross because nature is messy. It's static. It's liquid. Nature finds a way. Yes. Life finds a way.

Yeah. I mean, you even go back with extinct species. Then it's like a whole nother level of messed up where we don't know if like the population over here you know we don't know if like homo habilis or get your phone you know looking over like ancient humans we don't know if homo habilis is one species or multiple species covered off over you know multiple areas because they can be separated by millions of years is this one from 3.1 million years ago the same species this one from like 1.1 i don't know so again we're trying to use this whole system of classification, not only for modern animals,

but also for bacteria, which bacteria don't make any sense for taxonomy because how do you even figure out how to define a species in something that reproduces asexually? You know, how do you try to class? I mean, this is your thing, Justin,

how do you even classify carpet pythons because you can look at it's like yeah there's dream there's gene flow all up and down the entire coast of australia without a lot of barriers i mean there's a few but it's like a thousand years ago did those barriers really exist did they really matter and then you can also say like hey carpet pythons are all you know my opinion is all carpet pythons are one race. Oh. That's not my opinion right now. I'm going to explain my opinion on carpet pythons where I can understand that argument.

I have a very, very hard time accepting that a Papuan carpet python from the southern tip of New Guinea and a diamond python from the northern part of victoria are the same thing dna wise they may be in taxonomical taxonomically you can say like yeah okay they're the same thing but if you throw one in the habitat of the other it's gonna die so you know that's the confusing thing is okay they should probably have the same name they should you know maybe there should be a subspecies distinction. I think there probably should, because, you know, in my opinion, if you have two animals that can't survive in the same habitat, you need to have some kind of distinction there.

But obviously, you know, genes aren't everything, you know, and we've seen a lot of things aren't everything. And we can try to fit things into cute little boxes and, you know, give for everything and say this is how it works, but that's not how nature works. And that was a little bit of a tangent. I should have taken notes or something on Phil's talk. That's all right. I rambled earlier too. But to combat that, you're proving my point, is that it doesn't matter if all carpet pythons are the exact same animal on DNA and have less than 1% divergence, which I'm not saying they do, but imagine they did. You could still categorize them differently per the rules of taxonomy, right? So if you look at certain fishes or certain birds

that are all the same species, but they look very different, like we consider them localities or races, right? But there is no definitive rule as to what percentage of divergence dictates a new species. One might say it's 1%, like in humans. One might say it's 11%, like in chondropythons, or excuse me, Morelia viridis, and whatever else they want to call them. What's that? Azuria, yeah. Azuria, right.

Or Polkera, or however it is. Oh, yeah, they got the subspecies, too. So what I'm saying is that you can have two snakes, right? One from Australia and one from Papua New Guinea. And you could DNA test them, and they come the same DNA. But one lives in the arid desert, and one lives in the lush jungle. And if you flip-flopped them, they would not survive appropriately without long-term evolution and help from something. They're different species.

And why are they different species? Because we've taken the attributes of each individual specimen or each individual animal. We've then applied the laws and rules of taxonomy. And we're describing them as such so that if someone walks up and says, this one's red, and it lives in the desert. So that's brattles. And this one is brown and black and lives in the jungle. So that's spillota. Okay, cool. And now I know the difference, right? For whatever reason. So we need taxonomy to differentiate these things.

Because if I come into I'm a a zookeeper and I'm new, and someone says, oh, here's a Python, take care of it. I don't know what kind of Python it is. We need describing on a scientific level. We need taxonomy to differentiate things, to catalog things, to understand how things work, to better progress progress no one's saying that that can't change it should change because science is always adapting and always evolving and always expanding right a great a great scientist will never speak in definitives right yep so because of that we need maybe we need classification in our world. All right.

What do you got, Casey? No, I mean, I can agree that we need classification. Things obviously are, you know, there's obviously different branches in nature where there needs to be some form of a distinction. The issue is, again, the rules are different for everything. I mean, you look at black bears in North America. They're not supposed to be different. They're supposed to be the same. It's people not following the template. But the templates seem to be different for whatever group you're in. I mean, think about it like this. Black bears in North America, right? You have a bunch of different subspecies, one of which lives in British Columbia, and it is white.

That is the only difference between it and the other bears in that area, and it's a different subspecies. It has a recessive gene that makes it white, and it is a different subspecies. You can have one subspecies and another subspecies from the same mom. You can say birds are different because they make a different sound. Birds in one valley make a different call than birds in another valley because it echoes better. Yeah, but you're focusing on one attribute. You know what I mean? But the taxonomists aren't.

I'm not. The taxonomist aren't i'm not the taxonomist are yeah but then if that is their one defining thing then i dare i say so be it because i'm on this side i have to say so but it doesn't that doesn't one thing different doesn't necessarily mean that it should be a different species that hence why it's a subspecies you know if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and flies like a duck but it has furry feet it doesn't necessarily mean it's not a duck it's just a different type of the same duck you see what i'm getting at yeah yeah i see what you're getting at i think like as you know as a scientist i i sometimes you know i'll admit that sometimes there's, you know, that bias

that, that creeps its way into science, you know? And so you, you know, like, like the bear example, um, they're excited because there's something different and there's something new and they want to make that special or maybe give it a subspecific status to, to, you know, have different protection levels on that population where if they don't have that status, then they may not be protected. But I, but I agree there that that's pretty bunk science. If it's due to a recessive gene, they should not be different subspecies from each other just because of a single recessive gene. But, you know, I can kind of see like if if if you have

something that has a distinctive call and it prevents them from interbreeding you know because they don't recognize the call is coming from their own species maybe that's enough to be a species and it's it's a tricky and complex thing you know and I think that's I think that's part of it and I think that's one of the points Casey's making there is that it's very difficult to apply a broad set of rules to such specific and different things. I think groups of animals may evolve at different rates, and so 1% in one species may not be equivalent to 1% in another group of species or animals. Insects that reproduce very rapidly may have an evolutionary, they may evolve more rapidly versus like an elephant that only has a baby every several years and when they're mature,

that kind of thing. So obviously they're going to have a different evolutionary rate than a, than a beetle or something that just, so how to make that, how to make a broad rule that applies to everything. Right. Yeah. But the problem is, is that we're the three of us right now in the, in the case of the beetle or the elephant or the white black bear we're talking about and again this someone's gonna yell at me for this i don't care we're talking about one or a couple people humans who are splitters who wanted to get their name on wikipedia or a splitter who says this animal needs to be protected so i'm going to make it its own animal king cobras excuse me and we're going to make them all protected and no one can touch them. And boom,

because now they're all different species. So there could be a thousand of those bears on this one Island. And the, the, the, uh, density of population is thriving and it's fantastic. But because there's two bears on this other island, now all of a sudden those two bears are endangered because we made them endangered. We said they're endangered. And at the same time, we're not following the checklist. We just decided because of, you know, Steve Rinella, cute and cuddly theory, right? Oh, it's cute and cuddly, so we have to save it. Well, if it wasn't cute and cuddly, you wouldn't feel the same way per se, right? Some of us would. But then at the same time, you have – they're not following the checklist, right? So is it still a duck even though it has furry feet or is it its own thing because it's furry and cute?

I don't know. I remember using this analogy the other night where I feel like taxonomy is a lot like a measuring system right so think about like a thousand years ago when you were going to build a house or something like that you would say okay this wall is 14 hand lengths tall and that's how you would describe it the cubits we all have three different sized hands are between the three of us all of our hands are different sizes so there is not the level of uh what word am i trying to look for right here it's not as specific precision it's not as precise right you know eventually

we start using the the imperial system which changed with every king, where we said, this is the king's foot. So every time we get a new king, we're going to use the king's foot. So you have a different foot in England and France and Denmark and all that stuff. And of course they're conflating it, which is how we got our feet. Because, I mean, I don't think the king had a 12-inch foot, but you really want your enemies to think that. So you say, this is what we use. We use the king had a 12 inch foot, but you really want your enemies to think that. So you say, this is what we use. We use the king's foot.

So, you know, I mean, hate to say it because we're all Americans here. Imperial system kind of sucks for a lot of reasons. So eventually we jumped over to the metric system, which makes a lot more sense. So I feel like as far as taxonomy goes,

we're still stuck in the days where you're using like, okay, this animal is seven hand lengths different than the other animal. And there's not the level of precision. There's not the exact rules. There's not anything like that that needs to exist. But there is. I like that analogy. That's, that's a, yeah, that's a, an interesting way to look at it. Cause now we, you know, we've refined our way of measurement

and sometimes we get, we get a little fixated on the new system of measurement. So, you know, we, we might've gotten rid of the King's foot, but now we've got, you know, our meters and centimeters and millimeters. And so we're trying to get in there with a millimeter and you know measure it and say okay it's this many millimeters long and you're like well just use meters you know so i agree right divisible of 36 makes sense i get that and casey's analogy of using the king's hand the king's foot that makes sense i get that napoleon had tiny feet i grasp it but here's my thing we use a foot right so 12 inches so now if we break that down right instead of doing you know we're just keeping it fractional so let's keep it fractional because i'm not a math guy

but if we use like minute of angle moa right so one moa is one inch at 100 yards distance. Okay. If I break that down, I say quarter MOA, that is one quarter of an inch at visible at 100 yards. So now we've incorporated fractions of a unit of measurement at distance. Is it as good as metric? No. Metric's way better. It's way more precise. But if we all know that one MOA is one inch at 100 yards, then we're all in the same boat. And no one's saying that taxonomy isn't on the same boat. It's certain individuals choosing it not to be. So if we're going to the white bears thing, right? Everyone says, oh man, this says it's a black bear. This is a black bear, man. It's got 14 things on this, you know, Linnaean chart that says, okay, this is crap. This is a black bear, but it's different. It just, you know what? It's got that white thing at the bottom, the gene, you know what? Just, just make it different. That's not, that's not good taxonomy. That's

still taxonomy because we're cataloging things, right? We're classifying things, we're describing things, it's a describing art. Doesn't mean it's always correct, which is why as scientists and as taxonomy, we evolve and we adapt and we change and we progress, right? So I think that even though I agree, metric is way better than imperial, we're still on the same boat with the imperial stuff in that regard so i think that as long as someone's keeping to the lenin checklist so to speak then there can't be any issues i guess it's the people that don't that cause the issues in my opinion but it seems like every group has their own distinct rules for their own animals i mean we've talked about it or it's been talked about on this podcast i think where it's like okay the python guys are trying to split everything apart

in a lot of cases i mean the new antoregia paper kind of disagrees with that but all monitors are in varanus they're all in the same genus like why is a why is a savannah monitor a kimberly rock monitor a komodo dragon and you know a green tree monitor from biak why are all why are they all the same genus they because we haven't got there yet well i mean there's guys there right now but they all seem to agree that's the rules for this weird group of lizards where they should all belong to the same genus even though they're completely different from each other. But if they're following the checklist, then that's it. But they invented their own checklist. And I guess, I guess, you know, if, if I can see kind of where it could go either way, where, okay, so if you see a lizard and you, you, you know what a

verandah is, you look at it, you're like, that's a verandah, you know, it has a very useful label because it fits in to some extent with the other relatives and whether you break it down into different subgen, you know, sub families or, uh, subgenera, um, where the, you know, they have a bunch of different subgenera that they use. Um, you know, it's still the same same thing same animal same you know relation you're just saying okay instead of at this broad level you're just focusing it in a little bit but it's still you know it's still a glow or tie you know you still got a kimberly rock monitor whether it's veranus or what's the um odotria you know glipopalma it's this or sorry uh glower tie it's the same thing right so i guess the question is is it different

is a glower tie from um the from arnhem land different than a glower tie from the kimberly um you know then then that's where maybe taxonomy can kind of shed some light or help us understand. I understand what you're saying. I agree with you to some extent, but at the same time, it's like, well, a label is a label, whether it's a, you know, specific label. And so I guess that's where I kind of like, if there's a difference, like just saying everything's Morelia Spoloda. Well, obviously, like you said, there's huge differences between a diamond python, a brettles, you know, a Papuan python, a carpet python. And, you know, it just goes on.

And, you know, there's some pretty deep divergences within, you know, between those different things. But yeah, so there, there was gene flow in the last 5 million years. So that means they're all the same. You know, I don't know about that either. So it's really hard to, to define where the cutoff is. And I think that's what's maybe led to all these scientists kind of saying, well, we need to define it somehow. So this is what we're doing for our group. It's frustrating, but that's kind of it. I don't know. What do you guys think?

I think the verandah thing was a great point. I really do. Because whether you're looking at verandahs or, you know what? Look at crocodilians, okay? So you have crocodiles, caimans, gharials, tomistema, alligators, right? They're all crocodilians. They all look very, very very similar but to the trained eye they are completely different i think all of us could look at all was it 26 we're up to now 26

crocodilians something like 25 maybe someone's gonna yell at me about asking the wrong guy right so let's say we look at all 20 something crocodiles we could the all three of us combined could probably name all of them even though none of us are crocodilian guys right but they're all crocodiles they're all going to fall into one of those three or four groups right and that's the same concept as yes veranus veranus veranus should be broken up in my opinion but if it doesn't meet the criteria of the Linnaean checklist, it doesn't matter what I think. It's the rules of taxonomy. It's the law of taxonomy, right? And we have to abide by that until you get somebody who disagrees and says, I don't like that.

Screw it. Change it. So I got a question here. If there are such strong rules of taxonomy, what is the definition of a species? How do you know when something is one species and one is a different species? If you want, I will go get Carl Linan's book right now that is completely in Latin. My dumb ass bought it online, not translated. And I will put on Google Translate and I will translate what he describes as a quote unquote species.

I can't do it because I'm not a taxonomist, but it's not our. How do I phrase this? Well, I sound like an idiot. The person who decides to change it. May be wrong until proven correct. And now correct me if I'm wrong, but it wasn't his, his idea of a species that they can interbreed and, or they,

if they interbreed and have viable offspring, they're, they're the same species, but if they can't, then they're different species. Is that, isn't that right? I mean,

that's one species concept. Yeah. Wasn't that the original concept mean, that's one species concept. Wasn't that the original species concept? Which, that even falls apart for a lot of, I mean, in my opinion, the biggest reason that falls apart is now you've got to throw things together and see if they can breed and produce fertile offspring. You really know, you know, we're going to like turn all our zoos into like Frankenstein projects just to see. But, I mean, according to those rules though then most pythons are the same species i mean well they have that cavities by a blossom at i mean you can do that with floods and balls and burmese and balls and that's like it's a

little bit different when you get into the morelia and uh aspergillus stuff they get a little bit less fertile sure but it's like but they're still not being super fertile but the females can lay eggs no problem what does that mean so i mean that's one species concept there's dozens more i mean the joke i've always heard is you ask 10 taxonomists what the definition of a species is you get 15 answers. Yeah. That concept doesn't work with the way nature actually functions. Yeah. And that's, that's, I think that's a frustration of a lot of people is, you know, it's so hard because there is no, there is no measuring stick for what a species is because it can

vary based on what group you're looking at, based on whose idea you're aligning yourself with. If you're the lead of your group, you're the one that designates how everything's going to be looked at. That's why it's frustrating when somebody comes in like this Antaresia paper and says, no, all Stimpsons are now children, I and you're like, but wait a second, there's clear and distinct differences between these things. then they say oh by the way there's an extra you know spotted python uh

species and and a subspecies of spotted python so they go in and and just it's almost like has no rhyme or reason to it they're just like oh we're going to split this group and and and you know yeah there's some some dna um basis it potentially, but that's the thing is like you can kind of interpret it just about any way you want and make it fit with an outdated or outmoded species concept to be able to name something or to, you know, I don't know. I heard the same groups got their hands on the carpet python, so that should be interesting to see what they come up with here in a short short bit but i don't know you got the you got the species definition phil you got no i actually my my alarm company for my work just called so i walked away to pick that up and okay everything's good there's nobody there so yeah um, I, I caught the last bit of that. My apologies. It sounds good, but it also sounds like a bunch of people trying to make a name for themselves, you know? And that's what a lot of taxonomy is too. I know, but that's what it,

but that's not what it should be. It should be for the benefit of science, cataloging and describing species to the best of our ability, not to definitively do it, but to the best of our ability. And if it is to be changed or augmented or altered in the future, that's fine. That's science, the lifelong hypothesis, right? But guys are still going to whack it up however they want to do it or lump it all together, however they want to do it. And that's not, that's not good. That's not right. If, if it is proven, all right, let's do this. The answer is your paper, right? I have not read it. I will. They did a lot of stuff that nobody liked, right? What if they agreed with everyone's thoughts?

Yeah. I mean, they did, they did agree with some of my thoughts. I mean, obviously, some of the populations of Stimson's pythons aligned more closely with children's pythons. And I believe some of the range that was traditionally Stimson's pythons should have been combined with children's python. But then they took it and just applied it to everything because they said oh it can interbreed well if that were the case i mean we look at our genome we've got you know all these different uh hominids within our genome showing that in the past we mated with these different hominids so does that mean we're all just the same species there's no neanderthals there's no that's that's, because I was going to bring that up, is that

Cayce brought up the whole point of evolution, right? So however many millennia or tens of thousands or thousands of years it takes to evolve, there's no reason why a hybrid couldn't eventually be its own species, much like Homo sapien, right? So it's just a matter of how long do you wait or how long before you notice the checklist is different? Yeah, that's therein lies the rub, right? We're taking a snapshot of what we have right now and what we're seeing right now. And then we're trying to apply things from millions of years ago that we may or may not understand how it was then. I mean, we find a fossil and we say, oh, we figured it out. But like Casey was saying earlier, is that just like some random fossil that was from a time when these two populations interbred and then

now there's a mountain in between and they don't interbreed so obviously now today they're clear species whereas 10 million years ago they might not have been and so you know how do how do you weigh that all in and how do you know what's wrong with here's my thing i have no problem with taxonomy changing as long as it's changed following the rules of taxon. So if you've got two species that hybridize and then a volcano erupts and now the right side is isolated to the right and the left side is isolated to the left and they make their own individual species, that's fine. You can split. I have no problem with that splitting up, providing that they meet the criteria, right?

And if they turn out that they don't meet the criteria, but they're still only breeding with each other on their separate left and right planes, well, then they're still the same species if they don't meet the criteria. And if you want to add DNA to the criteria, that's cool. Do it. But that shouldn't be the scale tipping fact. If I've got a checklist of 20 things and 19 of them all say yes, and 20 says no, that doesn't mean that it's no. Right. Well, it could, it could mean it's no, I mean, that's the, that's the problem is, you know, you've, you've got like all these different patterns and things like that. But if you find out basically they're the same thing they they occupy the same niche they're just different colors or they're they're different you know sizes or whatever all all environmental factors maybe you do have you know nine yeses and

one no and the one no outweighs the nine yeses is that is that how would it how would it outweigh it though like i can tell you like size diet, niche, all these things. Does that make it – and that was – I kind of wanted to get back to that because you guys were talking about that before about if you put a diamond python in a poplar carpet python, a New Guinea carpet python's habitat, it would die and vice versa. Well, if you put an Eskimo in the middle of the Sahara desert, he'd probably die too. You know, it's like, does that mean they're different species because they're adapted to different environments over time? Yeah, but you can't, you can't, you can't specify, but you can't specify Homo sapien for two reasons. One, because people get upset by that, insinuating that one is above another, right? But at the same time, humans can adapt to their surroundings,

while some animals physically cannot. Well, over time, they can. I mean, obviously. That's what I'd say to that argument, though. Okay, if you took a baby from, I don't know, from Yemen and then gave it to, I don't know, some of the First Nations people living up at the very top of Northwest Territory in Canada. Is that the name of that territory? I'm not sure. Yeah.

I'm pretty sure it's Northwest Territory. Yeah. Yeah. Yukon if you gave it to them that kid would probably survive you know he would have to learn how to do things just like all humans do but if you took a bunch of hatchling poplin carpet pythons say you got four clutches of them

and you just threw them down into south victoria where that's all they know they're still gonna die it's gonna reach you know they're gonna get snow one of those years and they're gonna die yeah but you're just maybe yeah maybe one hangs on you know because i was saying humans have the ability to adapt no no i can agree yeah i mean obviously florida is not the best environment for burmese pythons but they've adapted to live there and they have freeze-offs but maybe they persist right right but now completely different environment than their natural habitat yeah

but myanmar is in most parts where pythons would inhabit. I've never been to Myanmar, but I imagine from what I've seen is very, very similar in terms of terrain and humidity and heat and cold as sub-peninsular Florida. So I don't feel like that's a fair – that's not exact. But are they adapting to a new species or are they the same species as the ones in Myanmar? No, I would say they're the same species. They're on their own trajectory to something. Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, that's how evolution occurs, right? As you have some split up of groups and then they evolve on their own evolutionary trajectory and then they become different over time.

So when do we draw the line? I saw a cool study about this populations of lizards in, in Russia and they took them and put them on an Island. And then there was some war and they couldn't get out to the Island. They came back 10 years later and the lizards had survived and had changed their digestive tract and became basically vegetarians. Whereas on on the mainland they're more insectivorous and their gut length had their guts had lengthened and you know all these different adaptive changes had occurred in in 10 years you know because like life finds a way you know there's they persisted somehow so i mean those kind of things um you know a lot of times I think we think of evolution in millions of years rather than 10 years.

But I mean, there's hard enough pressure. Things change pretty quick. Yeah. Either they do or they disappear. You know, like that's the thing is they can change. But most of the time, like Phil was saying, they don't and they die out and they go away. But now if you wanted to. Now, let's say you had your checklist. You had your Linnaean checklist, and you took the mainland Russian lizard, and it's,

you know, 10 points. And then you took the island Russian lizard, and it's only eight points. And you said, you know what, their stomachs elongated their diet changed from being majority protein to now it's, you know, herbivore, whatever. and you want to make it its own species and it fits the criteria rock and roll i'm with you you want to split it split it but you don't split it just because you're stuck on an island and all of a sudden now it's a lighter color because the sand is lighter and they're covered in sand and whatever else like you have to follow the checklists so to speak but you also have to look at how nature works where evolutions doesn't happen by the individual evolution happens by like it happens from

percentages in a population say you're looking at with those lizards the length of their digestive system is longer on the ones on the island on average than the ones on the mainland you could probably still find ones on the mainland with a probably a similar stomach length it's just where does the average fall is kind of what you have to look at because there's gonna be big swaths of variation in most populations it's a little bit different on islands because islands, it's not a big environment, so there's only a small range of looks and phenotypical variation that can exist. But, yeah, I mean, that's kind of how I have to look at that is, are they really that different on that island or is it just kind of, you can find ones on the mainland that look like that and it just happens to be all the ones on this island because they're on their own trajectory now are slightly different than the ones on the mainland, even though you can still find ones on the mainland that are like the ones on the island. I don't know if I did a good job explaining that. I get that.

I can agree with that. I agree with that 100%, which reminds me of Lepidophyma, Lepidophyma, the yellow spotted night lizards, Flavomachulatus, right? There's a Costa Rican pocket that are parthenogenic. There are no males. They're all female, and they produce one to five clones, identical clones of themselves every three to five years. There are other lepidophyma, lepidophyma flabomaculata in Southern, in the Southern regions of Central America that do have males. So is that, is that one parthenogenic population, a different species? No, they're the same species because they fit the criteria. They fit the checklist, but they're totally different because there's no boys, right? And they produce

parthenogenic clones of themselves. So in theory, if you took out enough of that clone line, right? Eventually it's all going to be the exact same DNA verbatim spot for spot, like, like cloned sheep. So is that its own species? Or is that just a divergent offshoot? I don't even think it classifies as subspecies. I think it's just still Phyllomachulatus. So there's a weird example of something like that in plants too, where it's kind of a common one you learn in like population genetics classes and stuff like that where,

so you have a group of flowers, right bloom may 3rd every year then you have and they only bloom for like four or five days you have a mutation in that population where all of a sudden they all bloom on june 2nd right so it's a recessive gene. It exists in the originals. So now you have a group that is isolated from the other, from one recessive gene, where there's a little bit of gene flow coming in from the May 3rd population going into the June 2nd population, but there's no backtracking. So are they different species where you have like the June 2nd population can never reproduce with the May 3rd population ever again because of one gene difference. So now they're off on their own trajectory, even though they are completely identical. And sometimes you can even have one population have a, you know, even if there's like slight changes going on in one, you can still have it carry on, but it only goes one way.

That's interesting compared with the spirit bear, you know, the analogous example with the spirit bear, the white, you know, black bears where it's a single gene, they become white. But are they they're interbreeding, obviously, with each other because if a female can have both spirit and normal bears or whatever, or, or it's just a recessive mutation. So they still have that recessive gene or the, and the dominant gene. So, um, but you know, in one case you'd probably say, sure, they, they've probably changed enough to be different species if they're not even interacting with each other reproductively. Whereas the other one that may not be far enough of a criteria. But I don't know how that would necessarily say that taxonomy is invalid, but what do you think? Yeah. I don't think that it should be a different species just because, now you're saying it is physically incapable of reproducing from cross pollination of the of the initial gene. Yeah. So again, this is kind of like, it's a it's a, it's a

hypothetical in a way that's kind of thrown around a lot of like population genetics classes, just it kind of is one of those things where you get people thinking, you know, how would you classify this? Okay, so, in theory, it would be that it would still be the same plant though it's still the same species of plant it's just that strain that group is incapable of breeding with the other group yeah i mean it's weird where it becomes like an island species even though they might be growing right next to each other well the same color yeah i mean again it's a hypothetical they're purple flowers

who knows it's it's a hypothetical that's kind of gone in to teach like okay this is how things can separate from each other even hasn't actually happened huh has it actually happened i think it has happened i don't know exactly what pieces of flower it is but it also kind of tells you how things can split from each other without having any kind of geographical barriers or anything like that you know i've also heard uh examples of butterflies where okay say the females are attracted to red and one day a color mutation pops in because it's linked to a digestion gene so all of a sudden the females who have this gene where they suddenly can't see red have to figure out another way to be attracted to a digestion gene so all of a sudden the females who have this gene where they suddenly

can't see red have to figure out another way to be attracted to a male so i don't know like it's it's weird ways like how things separate well isn't that kind of the idea behind species differentiation is is that they change randomly that some of those changes become significant enough to make them split off from, from the common ancestor, um, that they came from. And, and eventually, you know, they have a bigger beak. So all of a sudden they just want to breed with birds that have similar beak size. And then all of a sudden you got all these Galapagos finches with different beak sizes and different niches and different numbers. numbers so yeah it's i don't really know how it goes to the the topic at hand other than kind of showing you know nature's

kind of messy and it's hard to put it in a box but i mean you can even look at it with that finch example they may be able to interbreed with the other you know a short beak finch may be able to reproduce with a long beak beak finch i can't speak but they're you know you get a medium-sized beak uh offspring that is completely worthless i think that happens with the dart frogs too where you have some red ones and some uh blue ones and then they cross together but the purple ones have nowhere they fit in in the environment you know they may be fully capable of reproducing with each other but the hybrid they produce is invalid or dies you're saying it pushes each other apart yeah a mule is not a species

well i mean this is a little bit different yeah the offspring can still reproduce and you know the the weak build or the medium sized beak finches could still breed and make more medium sized beak finches. But they're not adapting to the environment. So that change. They have no place in the environment. So they die, even though they're completely fine genetically. Well, and just the ability to breed with a different species, that's kind of what the authors in that Antaresia paper seem to be claiming is that because there is some overlap in range between all of the Stimson's python, they've noted some that were this different genotype that were infiltrated into the other genotype that means they're all the same species because they could interbreed if if because they overlap in range and i i kind of reject that a little bit you know like like for example just because the long beak finch can breed with the

short beak finch that doesn't make them necessarily the same species because typically they don't interbreed but they they can, you know, so, you know, how, how do you draw that line? That's, I guess that's the trick. And, and should our species concepts evolve and, and should we adopt, you know, a, a kind of a level playing field, you know, a single species concept for a group like, you know, the, the lizards or snakes or whatever, you know, can we, can we apply a single species concept to all lizards or all snakes? You know, how does that, I guess maybe we're not the right people to answer that question, but it's something that I think it's kind of like, just cause I'm a, I'm a layman, right? So what you're trying to say

is if a, if the blue blue animal the blue animal can breed with blue animals and the red animal can breed with red animals and the blue and the red can breed and they produce a purple now the purple can breed to the blue it's still a blue species if the purple breeds to a red it's still a red species. But purple cannot breed to purple. And therefore, purple is not its own species. So purple can breed to each other. Let's say that you have I don't know, blue rocks

and red rocks, right? And there's birds that come in and eat stuff. So the ones that are blue live on the blue rocks, they blend in. The ones that are red live on the red rocks, they blend in. They can breed are red live on the red rocks, they blend in. They can breed with each other, at least for now. The problem is when they breed together, they make a purple, and the purple can't blend in anywhere.

So if you took that animal in captivity and just raised them without the predators, they'd be fine, and you could have as many purples as you want. But in the environment where it happens, they may be completely genetically fine and completely genetically capable of breeding they just don't have a place in the environment where they can survive well and really i think and again it's just uh yeah but there's still all the same species right and and in that example i mean you you need more than just um a color change. You know, there has to be something that separates the two groups. We're obviously making it simplistic as hell. Yeah.

And so maybe, you know, if you did have a purple and they fit better, like, you know, down in this environment. And so they moved and separated from the reds and the blues and made a third species that was a hybrid of the two. But then they went off on their own evolutionary trajectory, found their own niche in the environment. And then they, you know, over time, do they, you know, how long do they need to become a different species? They don't interbreed because if the purples go into the blues, then they get eaten by a bird, you know? So there's kind of that physical separation. Does that mean they're new species? And do we characterize them as such, even though dna hasn't changed all that much other than

the the you know red and blue shift to purple but sure that that could be a valid subspecies good yeah we've never even we really didn't even touch on the concept of subspecies because there are some people that are legitimate splitters who don't agree with the concept of a subspecies or even sub-order, sub-family. They don't agree with it. And if you're just looking at DNA and they're all pickled, so they're all kind of gray colored and there's no blue or purple or red, then you're saying, ah, all the DNA is the same. They're the same species. But the guy who's out in the environment looking at the blue and purple and, you know, red species all split off in their different environments and not interbreeding with each other's populations, although they could, they're not, you know, because they don't venture into each other's

territory very often. Maybe it happens once in a while but are they different species even though they're genetically very similar and maybe that economist is a gene jockey so he says no no they don't meet the criteria and i think we see a lot of that herpers know you know the the behavior or the where they're where they're, where they're located. And they're saying, look, these things don't overlap at all in the environment. Yeah. They have like, you can find them in the same region, but they're in completely different habitats. And, you know, I think, I think it goes to people in the new millennia are fixated with the, the, the DNA aspect of it. And there's so, it's's so new to us it's so fascinating to us that we fixate on it we dwell on it and we assume that's the end all be all so again going back

to the whole duck with the fuzzy feet if the duck with the fuzzy feet has different dna it may be a different species because it's got fuzzy feet but it's still a duck it just not may not be the same species of duck or better yet someone says hey they have the same dna but they still make it separate because it's got fuzzy feet well i don't agree with that so it really comes down to the individuals and not upholding i'm going to circle back to it because i'm that guy it those people not upholding the linnaean rules or whatever we want to call them okay so talking about that again uh we'll look at pythons depending on which species opinion you use species concept you could say ball pythons and

blood pythons are the same species or i mean there's even people in the reptile world right now and i mean who knows they say like look bloods and short tails should be their own genus they should be their own thing right now because they're different than anything else they live in these isolated environments they do the same uh they do the same thing niche wise you know but if you, if you breed a blood Python and a Burmese Python, you can produce F3, F4, F5 generation hybrids by breeding those back to each other. So are they different?

I, I don't know. It literally depends on whose taxonomic taxonomic opinion is going to be said. I think it maybe just comes down to like, so if, if they were different genus, would it matter? Would it make them different? You know, the same thing, if they're in the same genus, you know, obviously that, you know, that kind of gives credence to the fact that they're more, you know, split up or, or diverged to some extent. So, you know, you can use that and say, look, this, this shows how divergent they are. We're giving them their own genus or, you know, or we're resolving paraphily where, you know,

you've got a different genus in the middle of, you know, the same genus. So you've got to resolve that. And, and there's been a lot of that too, with the gene stuff, you know the same genus so you've got to resolve that and and there's been a lot of that too with the gene stuff you know they can they can see maybe cryptic diversity that you can't really see with physical characteristics but I don't know it's it's a really difficult line to draw to say this is a species but or or this is a biologically significant entity regardless of whether it has its own genus name or has its you know if i guess it does it even matter you know that's yeah and i think it i'm maybe i'm shooting myself in the foot with this one but us as humans us as herbers and animal people we love love unique and independent stuff, right? So all these

people that that, you know, the conjure people, they're up in arms about this whole reclassification thing. But I bet you if somebody said officially on record that, you know, there's four different types of bloods and five different types of quote unquote short tails or borneos or black bloods from, cause I'm old and I can say that it would they be happy about it or they not be happy about it because some people wouldn't have it. Right. Exactly. Right. Yeah. Half don't like taxonomy. Half might love taxonomy. I don't know but but i think we that you guys have talked about this on npr before we're like people love new names people love oh i've i don't have brongersmy anymore i don't or i do you know my brongersmy right so people like that stuff but it depends on do the is it being done because we like it or is it being done because it's

correct yeah and and i guess that goes back to like, you know, if you're, if you're learning about the animal and its natural environment and you're understanding kind of, okay, there are some subtle differences that maybe the taxonomists aren't getting, this is a biologically significant trade or whatever. I mean, I look at the green tree pythons and they're just bred every which way from, you know, there's no, and now, and now we know there are two different species and several different subspecies, but it doesn't matter. They're interbred. So they're just a mishmash of everything. But if you keep things, you know, like locality specific, you're, you're probably going to run into less issues than if you're just breeding it, you know, to things that look similar, you know, from the top and bottom of New Guinea, like, ah, who cares?

Just breed them together. You know, when it turns out they're different species down the road, then you just have a jumbled mass. Whereas if you're kind of looking at localities, I don't know, maybe just kind of a way to bring this topic back to practicality and herpetoculture, you know. So let me ask you this. So you keep Western blackheads, right? Mm-hmm. So forgive me for my ignorance, but our Westerns are different species than the rest. Not currently. No, they're locality. Do you believe they should be?

They're, they're very different. I mean, there could be an argument to say they are different enough to warrant either subs, you know, race or subspecific status. I'm not going to breed my Westerns with an Eastern that's for sure you know but and the best thing has anyone done the homework and done the dna and done the the the in-depth study of the individual specimens at hand yeah not not even close you know and that's the trick is like there's so many things that need to be resolved but there's limited funding and limited you know yeah because the rest of the world doesn't even know it's a python. Yeah. And the only ones who like it.

And for some things, maybe there's not a lot in, you know, they discovered those Underwoodosaurus seorsis that were out in the middle of Western Australia. And they look different. And I remember seeing them, you know, many, many years ago going, oh, that's different. That's something that's something new. That's a different species. And it took, you know, another 10, 15 years 15 years to say yes it's officially a different species but if you're just like ah it's it's underwood asaurus milli you know it's a it's a barking i'm just going to breed it to my underwood asaurus milli because i only have one you know well who cares then it's like now you've just got a hybrid so well that goes to like the husbandy right yeah so i don't there's only it's only referenced from what i gather and you wrote the book so you please

correct me if i'm wrong there's no paper on husbandy it's just that one gecko book that no one can no one has because they can't afford it well i i think husband yeah that husband i came from from herpetoculturists in Europe. Oh, really? Yeah. Just based on like, oh, it comes from a different area of Australia. And again, it could just be a locality. And calling it husband I, is that a bad thing?

Maybe not. And maybe down the road it will be a different species and they'll recognize that. And that's fine, too. But from what I could tell, there was no concrete scientific evidence to show that it was a different species. Right. Just because you have just because you have a darker colored, more cold tolerant Millie does not necessarily mean that it's its own species. Yeah. But but the keepers in Europe,ers in Europe kept this New South Wales line going and somebody came up with the name. Now, from what I gathered, the one book, the Unobtainium Gecko book

that's $1,000 on Amazon, Eric Burke has one. He thinks he paid $100 for it, that jerk. That's the only reference that I know that has any kind of scientific description of the husband your husband die so yeah are people really using it is it is it real well again i think it's mainly used in europe just by herpetoculturalists it's not really a scientifically used concept as far as

i know it from you know my research into the book. But, you know, I could have some, you know, a bunch of Europeans screaming at the computer or their phone saying, you idiot, there's clear evidence, you know, and there could be. I feel like this episode is going to be a rough one for that too. We're going to have, we're making somebody mad when they listen. Yeah. And Hey hey you know come on come come correct us come put us in our place because it would be nice i mean you know obviously we want we we should have you know people like dr loafman and you know a bunch of the the true

taxonomists that know what they're talking about and you know i talked to him about the anteresia paper and he's like oh yeah if that wasfish, they'd be all sorts of different species. But since it's a Python, you know, they're going to lump them all into one because of those taxonomists feel that that's the species concept they want to follow, even though it's kind of an outdated, outmoded species concept in other circles, you know, even probably within Python classifications, but that's what they used. And so that's what we were going by, or at least some people are going by. I kind of reject it and I'm not going to call my Stimson's pythons children. I, but that's just my, my preference, I suppose.

So hold on, going back to the blood Python comment you made where that's okay. If bloods and short tails were classified as a new genus or classified as a new species of python would that really change anything i mean the answer is completely no where they're still going to fit in the same spot on the tree of life that they have always sat on which i mean honestly that's kind of why i like phylogenetic trees way more than I like taxonomy uses them. But that's why I like phylogenetic trees way more than I like, you know, well,

this species scale counts here, this species scale counts here, all that kind of stuff. The problem with the phylogenetic trees is they fail the blue Fred, the blue frog, red frog, purple frog test. You know, that's kind of where

even in a way more refined version of classifying life like phylogenic trees are there's still major problems in the actual application of them yeah yeah blood pythons fit where they are going to fit no matter what when you actually yeah who knows sequence their whole dna and all that kind of stuff but i don't know where they fit in taxonomically it's up to where you feel like your species concept needs to be yeah that's i mean that's the the trick and it's really difficult difficult to draw those lines sometimes. It's more of a web sometimes than it is like a tree. You know, it's like these might come back and converge and diverge at different times in evolutionary history.

It's how we pull lobs of watercolor paint together and try to decide like where certain colors happen. Yep. And just because two species may meet and, and occasionally interbreed, does that mean they're the same species? You know, that's, that's a tricky thing to say. And, and maybe back in time they came from the same, you know, the same progenitor, but you know, they've, they've diverged and they become somewhat different in that time i i heard an interesting um uh podcast i think is the aussie wildlife guys and they were

talking about the inland carpets and some of the offshoots or you know different species that are that kind of come in contact or near contact with those and they look very similar and have a similar habitat and things but um genetically look have a similar habitat and things, but, um, genetically look maybe a little different and there's some different ideas and concepts about that. But he was talking about, forgive me, I'm not calling his name. I'm terrible with names, but, um, talked about how those, uh, you know, you, you need to look at what's biologic. No, this was a different one. This was a chameleon podcast podcast talking about chameleon diversity in madagascar and stuff but anyway he was talking about you need to look at what's biologically significant and you know if if that's that's something that's uh more important than you know dna or whatever then then so be it. But that's really hard to define sometimes and to make a clear division.

But I don't know. That was probably a bunch of nonsense there. No, no, no, no. That was good because it brings you back to the Natusha's thing where, for all intents and purposes, it's a green semi-arboreal python. And it was the DNA and the locality separation spacing that really made them different species well i mean herpers knew that they were different there was all sorts of traits you know the head the head length you know on the biox was much longer

than the ones down in the south and so there were all sorts of those things that like when when herpers read the paper they're like like, yeah, no, duh. You know, anybody who knew green tree pythons well enough. And I was not one of those guys. So but like I remember Ryan Young and Nick, like, of course, you know, that's and it's interesting that it fits the same distribution pattern and split up as a lot of other things in New Guinea. Obviously, they're, you know, geological events that that split things up on the island the way they did. There's crocodiles on each side of the island that key out maybe differently now and should be different species potentially.

There's a lot of things that kind of follow that same thing. You have northern and southern cassowaries. You have northern and southern cassowary types and all sorts of gliders yeah i'm saying on that island yep and and you find the same kind of thing like the stuff that's in the southern part of new guinea is also the same as the stuff that's in the northern part of queensland they're very genetically close they've only been separated by about 5 000 years you know 10 000 years at the most and And so they're, they're very, very similar and they probably should not be different genetically or taxonomically, you know,

but they're also separated by water right now. So maybe, you know, they're not interbreeding right now. So are they on their own evolutionary trajectory and how long does that trajectory need to be there because eventually they're going to come back into contact there's going to be land between australia and new guinea again and they'll have a chance to you know so where do you draw the line when is it long enough that they've been separated long enough to be different species but why does it why does it have to be long enough you know what i mean because we're always talking about how science evolves and adapts and changes and you know i mean like i feel like maybe this is the wrong thing to say for this kind of fight

but i feel like casey and i are almost both right you know i mean that's the beauty of it both sides have a lot of validity right i feel like i feel like my whole concept of having you know the the checklist is valid. But Casey's rebuttal of nobody's following the checklist. They're just doing what they want is also valid. So, I mean, what do you what do you say? Yeah. And that's the beauty of most of these topics is you can, you know, both sides are probably right in a lot of what they're saying. So taxonomy is quite ridiculous in many aspects, but it's also quite important in many aspects. I love it.

Yeah. I'm a total nerd for this stuff, man. I love it. I want to chat about it. Again, like, you know, I'm playing the part of a belligerent anti-taxonomist, but like it's super fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. anti-taxonomist but like it it's super fascinating yeah yeah yeah and and some of those examples you

brought up are really fun to think about too you know how um the the flowers and the different colored frogs and stuff that's that's fun to think about and you know those are those are those those are those lessons for a reason you know that's why they're teaching that in and genetics classes or whatever so you can kind of see how complex things can be and how, um, a single change might be very biologically significant, whereas another may not be so biologically significant. So, well, have we, uh, worn ourself out with this discussion? You guys had a good place. You want to have a final statement or do you think we're there?

I'm good. If Casey's good, I'm good. If Casey's good, I'm good. I wouldn't even know what to say. So, yeah, I, I,

I love these, you know, discussions, these academic discussions. They're, they're fun to do. And, you know,

hopefully we aren't ignorant enough to just have everybody screaming at us going, you don't have any clue about what's going on in Texas. That's fine. That's fine too. Yeah. They got two, they got two choices.

They can either, they can either bitch and moan or they can offer to send us to an academic institution for a lecture or multiple lectures on taxonomy, in which case we will graciously accept. Or come on reptile fight club and tell them. Exactly. I'll fly on the wall for that one yeah exactly well thank you guys i really appreciate you coming on this is a fun topic i it drives me nuts sometimes to to think about it but i also see the importance

of taxonomy and we we do it does help to have you know that binomial nomenclature to have the little label that we can affix that is is consistent from one country to the next and we don't get bogged down with all these weird common names that are regional at best sometimes so thanks again for coming on it's great to have you guys back on and i always enjoy your discussions so thank you thank you um we'll thank morelli python radio network um for their support of the show and check them out on their website, morellipythonradio.com. Follow them on all their social meds and check out what they've got coming up. They just put out a video of the trip we had down to Arizona. So that was fun to relive some of those moments and see some of the footage

that Owen got on the trip. So check that out on YouTube. That was a fun thing. Any, uh, great podcasts lately that you guys have tuned into that have kind of been impressive for you. Venom exchange radio. Oh yeah. I'm, I'm enjoying those. When's your next one out? Sunday comes out this Sunday. Looking forward to it. Yeah. I really liked the discussion with, was it Kyle Vargas?

Yeah. Yeah. He's great, man. Yeah. You can't get enough of him in one show. You got to do a bunch of shows. Yeah. Yeah.

He had a lot of knowledge. That was fun to listen to. Yeah. Cool stuff. Way to go. You got anything, Casey? Anything? Nothing for me. I will say that Dominique's new episode where she – on the Modern Medusa podcast where she interviews Shannon Wilde is a pretty good one.

I've been listening to it a lot today. I'm really fascinated with wildlife photography. So if you need to hear something from someone of that caliber, it's really awesome. Oh, yeah. She does a good job. Casey's got a crush. Casey's got a crush. She's married. She's also like cooler

than me. Like it, it'd be just a step down. So her husband's a wildlife videographer, right? Doesn't he do a lot of video stuff? I remember seeing them. They were on a YouTube, I guess. They had a YouTube video out for promotional for the red line cameras, video cameras and stuff. It looked really cool. They're like modular units, and they're really high-tech, high-end stuff, and they look pretty sweet. But the footage they were getting with those was ridiculous. But they had a bunch of footage that they'd taken in Komodo and in Africa and stuff that they'd put up on YouTube. So check that out. Yeah. Shannon wild is awesome. Like she's talking a lot about those, those like trips and stuff like that. How, you know, there's different trips to Komodo where

first one they went is basically tourists. The next one they had like an actual film crew following them around and like making a documentary about them making a documentary. Yeah. Pretty cool. I'll have to listen that I haven't heard that yet Dominique's doing some great work though she's yeah yeah well cool guys you want to throw out your contact info or well my name's Phil and you can find me at knob tails dot IG and on the herpetoculture network snakes and stogies is a live podcast every Monday night on the Herpetoculture Network, Snakes and Stogies is a live podcast every Monday night on the Herpetoculture Network. So check it out.

Fun stuff for sure. How about you, Casey? Yeah, I'm Casey Cannon. You can find me on Facebook or go to Cannon Fire Reptiles on Instagram. Awesome. Yeah, that's about it. I don't have a podcast, nothing like that. I commandeer different people's podcasts

you're you're yeah you're on podcasts enough that you you might as well have your own yeah well i guess you kind of yeah you're involved with a lot of good good stuff so thanks thanks for coming on here again um check out australian addiction reptiles that's my website i actually updated it recently so nice is the shirts and swag available i i don't have that up and i've got a bunch of shirts in my office at work just tell me what you want and i'll see if i've got it yeah i've got kind of limited i've sold out on a lot of the sizes but i've still got a few shirts left yeah yeah i was watching the npr video from arizona you uh holding that one snake one snake with your logo on the shirt.

And I was like, how do I get that shirt? Yeah. All right. Well, let me know. I'll send you over one if I've got the right size. Cool. All right. Thanks again, guys.

And thanks again for listening to Reptile Fight Club. Peace out. Peace out. I'm going to go ahead and cover you with my chest hair. Thank you. Bye.