Reptile Fight Club - The Invisible Ark

Episode Date: August 13, 2021

In this episode, Justin and Chuck tackle the topic of In this episode, Justin and Chuck are joined by Casey Cannon and Bill Bradley to debate the idea of the Invisible Ark. 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 episode of Reptile Fight Club. Today we got a good one for you. We got a couple of good guests on, Bill Bradley and Casey Cannon. And they're going to be discussing the invisible art that was provided to Barker. So it should be an interesting discussion. With me as always here is my co-host, Chuck Poland. How's everybody doing? All right.

So, you know, I don't think we're going to chitchat much today. No, I want to get into this. I want to hear what these gentlemen have to say. Yeah. So, welcome to the podcast, Bill and Casey. Maybe we'll have you guys kind of give a brief introduction of yourself, what you do, what your ties to the reptile world are. And then I, I'd like to hear the story of how this, uh, podcast invitation came about because it's, it's pretty hilarious.

Because it makes me sound insane. What is insanity really though? I mean, you know, verbally accosted. It's a pretty funny story. Kind of. So I became acquainted with Casey through the Snakes and Stogies crew, and I frequent their chat, and I tune in pretty regularly, and Casey is very involved with them.

He's been on a couple times. He's also in the chat pretty routinely. So we've talked back and forth. And then I started talking to Justin about potentially coming on my podcast. And unbeknownst to me, Justin and Casey had been talking separately about other snake issues and things like that. And I brought up the idea. No, go ahead oh so here's the issue we were talking about was i uh for my entire carpet python keeping career i have been a pretty staunch purist and it's like well i saw something cool at the uh schomburg show over in uh you know illinois it was going on back in June. There was a 75% inland Darwin cross. So 75% inland carpet python, 75% Darwin carpet python.

50% posset albino. The Australians have made some albino inland crosses that I thought looked incredible. So I was like, you know what? I didn't make them. Honestly, it's probably better that I get them than anyone else does, which is, you know what i didn't make them uh honestly it's probably better that i get them than anyone else does which is you know the excuse everyone comes up with for stuff like this and i bought them and i showed them to a group chat that involved justin julander and of course

he was not happy with them i was like i didn't make them i just bought them and there's kind of this thing going off. So whatever, walking around. This guy coming down off the escalator, a very tall, bearded, bald, blue-eyed man just looks me dead in the eyes as he's coming down the escalator. And I'm about to go up it. Goes, Justin Julander told me to fight you. Just like that. Justin Julander told me to fight you just like that. Justin Julander told me to fight you.

And I was like, whoa, he's serious about these carpet crosses. I thought it was going to be like, like, like in John wick where like everybody's looking down at their phone and like gets the whole hit thing. Like first person to kill Casey can and gets a scrub Python named after them in the new book. That's awesome. In my defense, it's COVID season and the internet has messed up how people interact with one

another. There you go. Well, Casey and Billy were walking through the hotel and I, I know who they are. I have talked to them, but clearly not in real life. Right. And I had been talking to Justin and was like, oh yeah, cool.

We, I just kind of assumed we all knew what we were talking about and i look like me and so i was like oh yeah there is right there and so i did i said it exactly like that coming down the escalator in this giant hotel i didn't introduce myself i didn't i just straight up said that and casey was like uh okay and i was like oh yeah with the podcast and talking about uh the invisible arc it's gonna be cool and just kind of breezed on through we're like yeah we'll see you guys at the auction great and it was a very short interaction and we're walking out the door and my wife is like what is the matter with you like that he clearly had no idea who you were when you said that and i was like no i know who that is i was like i'd already talked to billy that day like yeah and my wife was like no man no 100 not a clue he had no idea what you're

talking about you just yelled that down the stairs of this hotel what is the matter with you i was like i don't think it was that bad and then billy messages me and was like man what what was that sorry it was i was literally looking around like we're about to fight like we did we went out to dinner later it was great but yeah like i was looking around like okay we're about to fight here like you know worst comes to worst there's a lamp over there i'll hit him in the head with that lamp like i'm literally like assessing my scenario like it's going down like i'm gonna fight dirty take that all you people who think reptile fight club isn't serious

yeah yeah bring that energy to the discussion yeah so yeah it was just perfect time because i i you know i i was just giving casey a hard time just because i knew he was more of a purist and he's buying crosses i just was giving him you know giving a little hard time about that well i wasn't serious i didn't really care if you bought crosses and honestly you know the albino inlands that you know they made the cross inlands are pretty cool looking i I can't say that out loud too much too often, but, um, yeah, so. I think the button's going to burst down your door and show us what a real fight club looks like. Yeah.

So, uh, anyway, I, I just thought that was perfect timing. Really a great story. It couldn't have, couldn't have had better timing, you know, just, it was completely separate topics, completely separate conversations that coalesce to have a, have a nice, uh, entertaining, uh, conclusion there. So anyway, yeah, we got you guys here. So, uh, we, we didn't have anybody get hurt in the process. So that's good. Yeah, that's right. No blood was actually shed in the pursuit of this endeavor. All right, Bill, why don't you give us a quick introduction to yourself? Sure. I'm Bill Bradley, and I am the host of Lizard Brain Radio. And along with my wife, I am one half of Coal Black Exotics. We do educational demonstrations with reptiles

pretty much all over Illinois, most of the Midwest. And, uh, like I said, NPR folks and her pediculture network folks I've frequented as a fan of all of those shows and in the chat and different things. So I'm a face floating around different podcasts. You haven't heard Bill's, uh, Oh yeah. If you haven't heard Bill's podcast, it's fantastic. Lizard brain radio. You had to check it out. It's, it's really fun. Yeah. All right, Casey, how about yourself? Okay. I'm Casey Cannon. I'm probably in the reptile world, best known for a Brettles pythons. Um, I have a degree in ecology and biology right now. I used to do a lot of, you know, I'd help out undergrads and graduate students with

surveying jobs in reptiles. So, you know, I kind of have a little bit of a background in population genetics, you know, ecology, stuff like that, that kind of links back to this show right here. And cool. Yeah. Kind of some of the issues, I guess I issues concerns I have with this topic. All right. Well, I'm, I'm very jealous because Casey has found a breadles in the wild and I have not accomplished that yet. I, I've,

I looked for a steady a week and a half or two weeks and it was really rainy. So I blame that and i just need to go back and look again but i yeah i really enjoyed your uh yeah that was the chap amazing justin's butt cheeks like that yeah that's awesome yeah i found it within uh within 24 hours of being there too oh see right there that snake wanted him. I guess I've had my fair share of luck, so I can't complain, but another reason to go back. I love to see a brettles in the wild. They're such amazing snakes. So very cool. I'm glad you, I'm glad you were able to find, find, find one. And I was really, uh,

enjoyed your, your telling of the story of finding it and your interactions with it and stuff like that. So I wish I could have spent a little more time looking at it, but, uh, it was just not that, not that kind of time, I guess. Yeah. It's, it's tricky. You know, you, you, you want to see as much as you can and you think, Oh, you know, if I found this within 24 hours, what am I going to find in the next, you know, 24 hours? So it keeps you going. But then sometimes you're like, man, maybe I should have stuck with that snake for a little longer and hung out with it, you know, watched what it did for a bit longer. Yeah, that was the only one we found. But it was like a seven and a half foot beautiful.

I don't know if it was a male or female. We're going to say it's a female just because that makes a better story. Yeah. Cool. Well, welcome. It was what you say it was. Yes, absolutely. You were there. You don't know. We're glad to have you guys on here and thanks for doing this. So, um, well without further ado, let's, uh, knock some teeth, you know, let's get some fight on here. So we'll,

we'll do the coin toss and whoever wins the coin toss gets to kind of pick which side they defend either kind of pro the idea of the invisible arc. And we'll let you guys kind of, you know, explain your side and what side you're taking as, as we start out here. But we got to have the coin toss and let, let fate decide what, what side you take. So who wants to call it? Tails. All right, here we go. I feel like everyone picks heads. So let's do tails. It's it's heads. I'm sorry to say if you can see that I've,

I've had to start, I need to start showing it because Chuck doesn't believe me. Cause I keep beating him every, every week. So I'm going to start showing it to you guys, at least the. Me Casey are the losers. All right, Bill, that means you get to decide which, which side you defend and, and which side you take, I guess. I am in defense of the invisible arc concept.

Siding with the Barkers here. You're in pretty good company, I suppose. We'll see how it goes down. It's a good start. Yeah. And as the winner of the coin toss, you get to pick if you go first or if you defer to Casey to start us out. Ooh, I will defer to Casey. That's Chuck's move. Yeah.

If I have, if I have any patented move, that is my patented move. Yeah. We'll call it the Chuck from now on. You, you just chucked him. All right, Casey, let's hear kind of what your side of this is and why you kind of would say the invisible arc may not be the best idea if that's what you're purporting. All right, go ahead. Not necessarily. Well, okay, let's jump in here. Okay, so the invisible arc concept does seem to push more of a quantity over quality as far as captive gene pools and conservation in general. It's very much like, okay, well, nature's going to die. Let's just make as many of these in captivity as we possibly can. It doesn't really matter how we make them.

It's more, you know, we should be mass producing all endangered animals. Seems to be a big point in the book. The book does go as far talking about tigers saying, okay, well, there's already only about 3,000 tigers in the wild versus upwards of, you know, 5,000 to 10,000 in captivity. Some of those say the state of Texas alone, depending on what sources you look at. And which, if you actually listen to tiger conservationist, and again, like this whole concept covers all animals and plants in captivity. It's not just reptiles, but focused. It's just the barkers were reptile people. So most of it is geared towards reptiles, but they do make a lot of arguments for tigers, for giraffes, for gorillas. So you listen to why conservationists do not want to take animals that were from captivity or say that, you know, even go as far and sometimes calling them trash tigers, which is a lot of

them carry deleterious mutations or unnatural mutations like the golden tigers, the white tigers. A lot of them are intergrades between, say, Siberian tigers, Bengal tigers, Sumatran tigers, which makes them completely, it invalidates them as far as a conservation tool. Now, reptile people don't chase morphs, right? No, never. Reptile people would never do that. It's just with tiger people. Yeah, it's exactly like yeah, it's just, yeah. You know, exactly like you'd find them in the wild. Yeah. Yeah. Which is also, uh, again,

an issue would you see with some of the most popularly available, uh, reptiles in captivity, bearded dragons, leopard geckos, corn snakes, they're all multi, like multi-species, multi-sub-species hy hybrids so while they're fantastic as a domesticated population as a you know a pet captive population they're worthless they're null as far as being a captive uh population that could be part of a conservation project okay so all right. Yeah. Well, Bill, how would you respond to that? So we, we talked a little bit before we started that this is a very multifaceted issue in how we would kind of have to approach and discuss it. So I have a few points off of what Casey said. I think that most people who look at the concept of the invisible arc are looking at it in the incorrect manner. The way I took that book when I read it is that the invisible arc concept is fatalistic in that the reason the invisible arc was so important to the barkers and to the people who are proponents of it is because of the idea

that there won't be a wild to repatriate these animals to and so it seemed to be that that was the reason that they were so intent on having a large captive population is because their big fear was that there would be no wild population for us to get new genetics from and no wild area for us to put the animals back into. And so that led to. That is a great idea for some species in their very unique situations. And then how we implement it is usually terrible in that we don't follow an SSP and we don't do the things that the AZA would like and the very regimented way that it needs to be done, which is a major problem. But that doesn't invalidate our ability to do it. We just need to do it in a better way. And then to the point of something like tigers or large mammals,

giraffes and things like that, that it's a secondary issue in that most of those people, I think way back in the day, when it originally started, they care about those animals and they they are able to breed them and then their pipe dream goal was well if we could do it here and then even if our animals can't be repatriated due to their issues maybe we could help those people breed those animals where they're at. And then that the people who champion those ideas just didn't have any concept of how difficult that really would be. Right.

Is you can't just go to Sumatra and be like, you don't know what you're doing. I know how to breed tigers. You should listen to me. That's just not how that works. And it, it is a little bit of a pipe dream to think that i could i could breed golden mantellas now if i can just go down there and show you how to breed these frogs you will care and also breed the frogs and or take them from me and then we can do this great thing also please stop chopping down your rainforest and care about frogs And there's just so many layers to that in that I, I think their original idea is in the, it's in the right place and they are, had a thought of attempting to do the right

thing. But we talked about this at the start. It's the implementation that is the issue. Because we, we are, we are clearly very successful at breeding tigers and we can breed giraffes and rhinos and different things it's just we can't ever get them back there and then we run into this this hard place where we have tons of tigers they don't really look like tigers where they're from but you're probably not going where tigers are from anyway. So you would never see one in the wild. You can see one here. And if that can get you to monetarily move toward conservation, that was always the goal, right? I just want you to care about these animals so that you'll then give dollars. That was the whole thing for zoos is the SSP is wonderful. And for some species it does, you know, they repatriate animals and so on and so forth.

But the real goal was to get you to care about animals so that you would recycle and participate in conservation and do all of these things. Like there were, there were ulterior motives other than maintaining a population of animals. That was just something they also did. Does that make sense? Yeah. Casey, do you want to respond to that and maybe add something to it? So yeah, I do agree that in a lot of cases, repatriation is not necessarily possible, but I think by definition, by a lot of definitions, conservation is about preserving habitat. In fact, it's probably more so preserving habitat and biodiversity than it is preserving individual species.

Absolutely. The concept of the invisible ark is, okay, if the zoo doesn't want to protect, I don't know, the standing day gecko or something like that, there's a lot of private keepers that keep standing day geckos. And maybe one day if they're extinct and they want to bring them back, you just go to a standing day gecko breeder and say, Hey, we'll take these, but that's not going to happen. You talk to, you know, we can give the hobby is great and giving tips on how to breed, you know,

if conservationists came out and said okay we're going to go through what we've got what some of what we caught in the wild maybe a few of your animals and we're going to go through and test to see how genetically uh distinct all these animals are that would be you know they would go in and say like okay well how do you breed these things like obviously you're good at it but the animals you've made are so inbred or so morphed out or uh you know whatever other host of issues you could possibly have you know maybe we want one bloodline from you guys because at the end of the day all you have is one bloodline but preserving a captive gene pool is more important than making a lot of animals, which this book seems to push a lot is we need to make a big quantity of a

species. We need to commercialize them. You know, there is a part in the book where they talk about giraffe breeding, how maybe zoos, you know, instead of having like big giraffe habitats needs to have like smaller giraffe stalls that are for nothing, who's you know instead of having like big giraffe habitats needs to have like smaller giraffe stalls that are for nothing but like pumping out as many giraffes as possible that could one day not go to the wild but you know supply private keepers like if you have a farm you would have easy access to a giraffe and that would be conservation which that's really just not conservation you know

it's preserving a captive population but there know, it's preserving a captive population, but there's a difference between preserving a captive population and actual conservation. You know, that's a small part of it. And that actually is a little bit of a fatalistic idea is like, okay, we're going to have this like little group on backorder, basically, if we fail at preserving the habitat. But, you know, there is an issue where if you start to uh introduce supply and demand into endangered species and into breeding and

trying to pump out as many uh individuals as you can you start running into what we see in everything humans breed which is if you're pumping out a bunch of giraffes and one day you had you, you hatch out one day, a black one plops at a mom and it's a male. What's going to happen if you are more concerned with breeding for profit is you're going to take that boy and you're going to say, go to all of them because you're worth $2 million versus these other drafts have been breeding for years that are worth, I't know 50 000 we're just making up numbers here

which that's there's nothing wrong with that either i would say it's just that's not conservation that's the process of domestication which is what humans have been doing to all captive animals since we've had captive animals yeah i i wonder too like if if it's even i mean once you take something into captivity you're changing its gut microflora you're changing its its most most likely you're changing its diet and its uh you know survivalship in the wild how how well it can survive in the wild i mean you take it you know some it's not even it's not even co-evolving with its natural habitat yeah right i mean you're you're putting on a different evolutionary trajectory if you want to you know look at it that way because you're doing what you do with continent yeah you're doing what

you do with all domestic species too which is you are breeding them for ease of breeding in captivity you're breeding them so that they're less seasonal you're breeding them for ease of breeding in captivity. You're breeding them so that they're less seasonal. You're breeding them so that maybe if the giraffe can only have one baby at a time, it's more profitable if they have twins. So we're going to start selecting for twinning, you know, increased litter size, which, you know, that would take a long time, but that's the path of virtually all captive populations. And, you know, but, but if there is no habitat to go back to, I mean, you know, I think that's something Bill could speak to, right? Like if there's, you know,

Well, and that's, that's the issue, right? And I, I agree with the giraffe example in that it does read that way in that that's a little bit of a naive take right in that not from casey in the concept of the book of well we're really great at producing large mammals we because we eat them but if we wanted to produce large mammals for an ulterior purpose, conservation, because we think the giraffe's kind of a weird one because it would rely on the idea that the African grassland is going away, which is a little weird. at industrial farming of large mammals, I could see, again, it's kind of a naive take, but I could see how a person would be like, yeah, we're awesome at breeding cows.

I bet you we'd be great at breeding giraffes. And again, that goes to the idea that those people had, don't have any concept of it. It is that animal is never going back to Africa. It, it will only exist where you are at. And if you are convinced that that African biotope was gone, then you're probably okay with that.

But most people have a major issue with that. And to, to the rest of Casey's idea in resource management, right? And I, again, I think the reason that the Barkers and folks that support the concept of Barkers put forth, the reason that resonates with them is that resource management. If they have that fatalistic point of view and palm oil plantations are wiping the place out and I can breed Borneo airless monitors, regardless of how they got into this country, which was a little sketchy,

but I should because my my devotion of resources to preserving borneo has no point right me i i can breed little snot dragons that eat earthworms and cool. I can't save Borneo. So if I, what I have for resources, I need to dump all of them here. They, I, I think those people feel pigeonholed a little bit and they already maybe had that fatalistic point of view. And so they're like, look, man, I can breed cows. I can breed giraffes. I can't fix African grasslands. I'm breeding giraffes. And who doesn't want a melanistic giraffe? That'd be pretty sweet. It would be cool.

But, like, again, it's implementation, right? And there are different, like, you know, HCI and different folks that are working on different things for doing conservation. And the conservation they're trying to do is in situ. And when you talk to them, it is so difficult. Like most of those, those groups are picking a singular project. They're purchasing land or working with locals or what have you. And they're just trying to do one thing whereas i mean think of all the nerds that we know we we keep tons of species you know if if you guys could find that one endangered carpet python i know you could keep it alive you could probably breed it like it sitting here in Illinois having zero physical connection to Australia, if I'm going to dump time and money and energy into it, I'm just going to give it to you guys and let you breed it. And so that I know it will exist here just in case the next fire torches the whole continent. Because I don't have any control over that. People kind of feel like they're floundering

and a lot of things involving conservation and ecology are alarmist and they should be because we're wrecking the place. But for folks that don't feel like they can help with that and maybe lack a little bit of the education level on the scientific side. That kind of feels like their only outlet, right? Is I went to Zach Herr and got the entire Rana Tamea poster.

I've bred all those frogs. Of course I can breed golden mantellas. Like that's no big deal. And then you do. And it, that feels like a major accomplishment. Like I am preserving this species because if it's in my living room, it is not extinct. And I, you know, it, I understand the, I do feel like that's the, that's the core argument of the invisible arc though, is if it's in my living room, it's not extinct.

So yeah, no, keep going. I was just saying like, that's the, essentially that's the whole book boiled down into like one sentence. And I 100, and again, we talked about this before is it's hard to argue when we agree on a lot of stuff. And I agree with you that our implementation is very poor. And especially when you, at the hobbyist level, you know, we don't

have SSPs. And there are very few Nick muttons in the world that have crazy lineages for all of their things. And there aren't enough of us that do that. And if that's something we're serious about, we really should, that should be a great deal of our efforts is in that. And we should make, we really should work to make strides with copying SSPs or, or adopting those methodologies. If that's something that we seriously believe the issue is that the vast majority of people that probably bought and read that book knew who the Barkers were because they're snake nerds and they're, they're just hobbyists, which is not to denigrate them. That's not a bad thing, but their interest level and

education level and involvement in either herpeticulture or the science of ecology and conservation is just a hobbyist. And so they give a couple bucks to HCI or RPI or any of those folks and they keep some of these animals. And then when they had the opportunity, they were able to get a really rare thing. And that feels like you are accomplishing something. We likely know that in the grand scheme of things, you aren't. But it'd be really hard to convince that person they weren't. Because if that white rhino just died, that just happened, and there's one at my farm in Texas, they're not extinct. That's math.

Like, zero or one. I have one. And it's really hard to argue with those people. They get very set in that fatalistic point of view, and that's why I don't necessarily think that they're wrong. I just, I wish that they weren't so right about there not being any place to put the animals back into. Right. And that, I think that we get kind of stuck in that, right? Is like, oh, it's just, you know, conservation through commercialization.

And it's just a bunch of guys with dart frogs or a bunch of guys with earless monitors. And they're not actually conserving borneo or any of these places and it's like well no they're not but you kind of feel helpless with borneo with the amazon with these things feel pretty awesome when i breed dart frogs you know that's that's a hard argument to make with people i i wondered too like you know taking maybe rhinos as an example, if you, if you transported all the rhinos into, you know, into Texas and had them breeding there and a stable population kind of out in the semi wild, you know, and, and breeding with who they wanted to and, you know, fighting and that kind of thing.

So you, you maybe have a more realistic or, or natural group of them, but if you're, fighting and that kind of thing. Um, so you, you maybe have a more realistic or, or natural, uh, group of them, but if you're, if you're sending them, you know, sending offspring back to Africa or Asia or wherever they, they're, you know, came from, um, are you just kind of providing a continuous market for poachers, you know, to, to just lop their horns off and leave them to rot that kind of thing. So, you know if those efforts would even have a good result in the end or if you just have to say, well, they live in Texas now. Africa is kind of – And to Casey's point about giraffes, he is correct because he is correct about human nature,

which is unfortunate. My idea is correct. My, my concept with the conservation through commercialization and the fact that we have an infrastructure for farming, we could keep large mammals and so on and so forth is correct. It's accurate. It relies on people doing the right thing. If, if, if Ted

Turner gave us one of his ranches and we did the Jew lander, Rhino, Mad Max Thunderdome, and we got the good ones. And then we went back and we took calves and released them and repatriated and so on and so forth awesome which relies on turner giving us a ranch jew lander doing a thunderdome for rhinos nobody killing them where they live which would have to change an entire culture that thinks that fingernail material is great for male enhancement. And it just, it relies on so many factors that we don't have any control of. And so that, I think that's where that fatalistic viewpoint is to where you're like, you know what? It's Justin's herd of rhinos in Texas done. And the people just get stuck, you know? Go ahead, Caseyy let's see yeah so i got a couple

points here um okay we're uh about the rhinos and like okay well what if we bred them and you know and maybe in some cases shaved off their horns and shit them off to asia that i think is actually a pretty valid uh conservation strategy i know there's some people in South Africa trying to push for that right now. So conservation through commercialization is something that I think the reptile hobby really, really misuses that term. You know, the idea of, okay, a Borneo Eoless monitor costs $5,000. A Bolin's python costs $10,000. Now there's so much incentive to try

to buy those. I don't really think that's how that works. I think on a lot of times you end up making an animal that looks really, really good on Instagram because it looks cool. And you get clout for saying I spent five grand on one animal, which, you know, you see that with Bolin quite a bit. There's a lot of keepers in the United States only have one Bolin's because let's be real here. If you get a really good video of a Bolans python, it's going to go viral and you can make money off that video from just having one Bolan python. But conservation through commercialization has saved a few species, most notably crocodilians. Okay. Most crocodilian populations that are in, uh, you know, going up, uh, are in a large part

because of crocodile farms, but the farms don't necessarily breed them. What they do is they will, uh, at least in South Florida, they'll go through and they'll ride a helicopter and look at nests. They'll take the nest, uh, get the eggs, incubate the babies in captivity, raise them up until they're about three years old, and slaughter all but maybe like five or 10% of them for meat and for skins. But that five or 10% that were taken at random are now put back into their habitat. And that has actually saved crocodilian species. Now you can argue, hey, it's not a good thing that we're killing these animals and using them for leather. But I mean, the American alligator is not an endangered species anymore. They're working on doing that for ones in Southeast Asia as well.

I believe the only reason that most of the Northern Territory has crocodiles, saltwater crocodiles, is because of these farms. Yeah, it's almost been too effective in Northern Territory. Now they're having more issues with problem crocs and having to cull and stuff. So that is conservation through commercialization. But on the other side, that's also not captive breeding. You're relying on a wild population to supply you and then resupplying them with head-started animals that go on to breed. And it's a very effective strategy for crocodilians whether or not that

would be for rhinos which breed you know uh they're more of a a k what is r versus k you know a k species versus where they only have one baby every three years versus crocodilians which lay a hundred eggs every other year yeah how you put your eggs all in one basket or not. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, man, this is such a great, a great discussion. And I, you know, my undergraduate degrees in environmental science and I don't work in environmental don't I mean, you know, I feel like climate science is pretty clear. We understand that anthropogenic climate change and we're altering the face of this planet because for a planet that every other human being is benefiting from abusing. And maybe that'll turn, but that's going to turn before when it's so far gone that we're not going to be able to bring it back. And we're outpacing, you know, animals' abilities to adapt. And I honestly have a very fatalistic view of where we're going. So this is such an interesting topic. You know, one that hits kind of close to home for

me, because because I'm not out there doing what I probably should be doing. But but at the same time, does it matter? I mean, if we have nowhere to put these animals you know that they stay with us they stay they stay in our care and it's the best we can do and we ride this shit out until the end and that's it you know i mean you guys have any thoughts on that sorry that was my no no no you're good i like listening to it. But no, I think a fatalistic view is needed in a lot of cases. I mean, you can look at maps of the island of Borneo from the 70s to now, and it's like the forest is getting smaller, the towns are getting bigger, and that doesn't look like it's ever going to stop.

So, you know, again, I feel like true conservation should always be about preserving habitat, but there is the entire thing of like, what are the people there don't care. And the biggest issue with conservation, in my opinion, is it's, it is a democracy at the wrong times. And it is not a democracy at the wrong times as well, where you may have 50,000 people that say, Hey, I want the Indian rhino to survive 000 people that say hey i want the indian rhino to survive one guy with a gun the near next to a indian rhino is going to outvote those 50 000 people yeah yeah you know but so going back to the uh invisible ark discussion yeah sorry okay no no no no it's good it's good that was of it. But I, sometimes I have a hard time arguing that our hobby, having some of the animals we do is actually a net positive for those animals as far as a conservation perspective. Okay. Chuck, you bred Halmahera pythons.

I did. A couple of times, right? Twice. Yeah. How many eggs of Halmahera pythons have been laid at this point of hatch? 14. 14. Okay. I'm going to ask a mean question.

How many Halmahera pythons do you think have been taken out of the wild and died in captivity to make those 14 babies? Hundreds upon hundreds, probably. Yeah. Yeah. So while it's amazing, like, yeah, we're starting to build up our captive population of halmahera pythons and you know captive-born and bred females are the best thing you can possibly have to do that because they're easier to breed than anything coming out of the wild but if you're looking at it from a conservation perspective you know was was that a good price was the the price of maybe a thousand

helma hera pythons coming out of the wild to make 14 babies in the last what since the 90s let's say they've been coming in you know maybe even longer than that yeah the 80s 90s yeah yeah but i mean you know the juice versus the squeeze i mean know, you can look to someone like Daniel Nat at least, it goes back to their intact habitat. If their habitat is intact, then they are never going to be threatened by humans. Now, if it takes thousands of a thousand animals to figure out how we need to do that, and that's the only option for them, is that worth it? I don't know. I don't know i don't know but i mean well and two i mean if if how my hair all of a sudden starts turning into a you know plantation yeah for

whatever and and they start reducing the habitat you know it doesn't matter how many we're taking out of the wild because that's gonna really effectively kill off as many as possible and and chuck's 14 maybe they go on to produce, you know, 10,000 offspring down the road. If, you know, they're captive bred, they adapt better to captivity, you know, they're, they're not wild caught in stress. So, and, and now Chuck's figured out, you know, how to breed them. And so maybe that, that goes on to have, you know, dividends that way. That's, you know, it's, it's kind of a little bit of a trade-off, but, you know, I guess the question is if, if Halmahera gets turned into a parking lot, then,

you know, we've kind of lost it anyway. So at least, at least we have something we can look at and say, remember Halmahera? That's the, that's a Python that came from there. You know, I don't know. I mean, I can see why that's why that appeals to some people because even if it's extinct in the wild we like to say oh i have one in my living room or you know that kind of thing and and honestly like things like uh the rough scale python they could get wiped out with a really bad tropical storm in their habitat potentially you know you never know but so and and where there's probably more in captivity than there are in the wild, that's, you know, saying something to say. And I didn't really mean that in like an anti-hobby kind of way.

Like, I think it's all about how many pythons. Yeah. It's just if you're looking at this from if we're doing this for conservation, should we be selling, you know, going back to the Bowling's thing? Should we be selling imports to the first person with $10,000 or should we be having a plan put in place of like, okay, if we're going to breed these, you need to be able to write us up a plan on how you're going to try. And then you get the animals,

you know, should we really be? And if you look at like imports too, you know, I love Emerald tree boas. I've owned seven Emerald tree boas. I've had to kill four of them because they start regurgitating and die. But those animals that came out of the wild, who do you think got them?

It's a side business for the loggers. You know, it's not some like little conservation group is like, Oh, let's go off and get these animals. We're going to, you know, try to save them from the trees. It's like, Hey, I just cut down this tree and I found this green snake. This guy over here says they'll give me 20 bucks for it. So, you know, by buying those animals, you're not preventing the rainforest being cut down. If anything, you're giving that guy a side hustle to further incentivize it or however you say that word.

Is that a problem, though, Bill? I mean, I don't you know, like, honestly, if that's a way to get animals that we can work with, is that really a problem? I don't know. I wish they'd implement that in St. George, Utah, because they pave over Gila monster habitat, but I can't keep my my hair broom. It's frustrating. So, again, multifaceted it for Halmahera, right? You have to have people in Halmahera who care about that for any of that to matter to start. And yeah, I understand what you're saying in that it sucks that a thousand snakes died so we could figure it out and get two clutches. The only way for those thousand snakes not to die is for somebody in Halmahera to breed them first and then tell us what to do. And then we'll do it.

And then we won't have to suffer through all of those consequences. The problem is they don't want to, but they'll definitely sell it to us. We're stuck, right? When you start to talk about things like that, and that's always the conservation through commercialization, right? Zoos only do big mammals and they can only do flashy things because that's what people donate to. Everybody loves pandas. Nobody cares about brown frogs or what have you.

And that's terrible and also true. And so we're left to struggle with that. Right. Like I, I, I do my podcast is centered on lizards and I talk all the time about how I want other agamas to replace bearded dragons because there's a jillion different species. I think it'd be super cool and whatever. I would have to jump on an Egypt shipment and get 50 of them to figure out what to do because I'm 30 years behind a bunch of people that knew how to breed Australian agamids and built their own industry ahead of me and their own market. And if I think we should diversify and change that, I get stuck in the, the wilds of capitalism, right? And it, but that's also plays into Casey's other point. When you talk about Bolins, I a hundred percent agree that it's terrible for Bolins and for her pediculture and for conservation that the first person in line with 10 grand gets that snake. That sucks.

See, I told you, Chuck, we debated that topic previous, but we're not the AZA. We're four dudes hanging out, talking on laptops, Right? So we don't actually have a structure in place for that, because we aren't an accredited institution and organization. And we don't participate in that way. We participate in herpeticulture, which is just the capitalism of playing with reptiles. And so there's always going to be positives and negatives to that. That particular example is one awful negative,

but if they weren't 10 grand, there'd be like five of you that even knew what it was. And the three of you are probably on the screen right now. Like, because Ari is some goofy guy who disappears into the jungle for months at a time and comes back with stories of big black snakes. Like how many people care? You know, a ton of people care on Instagram because they're really expensive and his pictures

are amazing. But they don't give him, they don't give him any money and they definitely don't go to Indo and help those people or help those snakes or you know and so you're kind of stuck in that terrible place where I totally agree with Casey that you know the capitalism part of that

is killing some of those things but the flip is if some dude in Halmahera will only sell me Halma Hera's, he won't breed them or care about his own place. Then all I can do is buy Helma Hera's and try to figure it out or not buy them. And then that will devalue them even more for him. He'll just eat them.

You know, you talk to Owen and Eric and they went and found an Owen Pelly. And then when they were talking to the folks in Australia who study him, and that was their funny story was the guy said, Oh yeah, I found one of my research animals. These two dudes were eating it on their lunch break because they're hungry, man. Like what? You know, it,

that's a hard place to be in where I wish we had the morals and ethics to participate in an AZA-style SSP willingly. And we don't. So my option is to participate in her pediculture and buy some agamids and do my very best to not let them die for no reason. You know, I, I don't want them to die at all, except of old age, but I need to learn about them and keep them correctly. And hopefully I can breed them and so on and so forth. So it's not a wasted effort because it's the only effort I can put forth, right? Because I could give to funding for conservation in Egypt where painted agamas are from or what have you,

but I definitely can't go there and help because they don't want my help and they don't really care about painted agamas. So I I'm stuck, right? I that's what I can do is that that sucks and it's very difficult, but it is my option, right? As just a regular old her pediculture person. You want to respond to that, Casey? I do want to go back to the whole zoos want to protect large mammals. They want to protect the pandas, the elephants, the, the zebra,

stuff like that. That is an issue with all conservation where even in her herpetoculture, we like the charismatic stuff. Let's look at the William's eye geckos, the electric blue day geckos, right? Okay, they're endangered in the wild. At least they were last I checked. They're a CITES 1 animal now. We breed them by the hundreds in captivity. Now, you know, you got to ask if they weren't electric blue,

you know, if it was the, the dirt Brown night gecko versus the electric blue day gecko, would they still be produced by the thousands in captivity? And that's just, but that's an issue with anything. Yes, exactly. So,

but that's, that's an issue with everything in humanity and conservation is we like the things that are charismatic but when we talk about conservation aren't humans driving the bus you know what i mean so we're we're always going to do the things that we like that matter to us. And, you know, fuzzy mammals. Ooh, I like that. You know, uh, scaly animals. Oh, I'm not so sure. You know, there's, there's a, a subsection of the population that's, that's okay with that. And, and, and, and in that there is, there is better looking and less better looking animals. And, you know, even, even when you're a staunch purist, when you see that right looking cross, you're like, damn, that's bad ass. I got to own that. Right.

So it is a human centric problem that because we don't live in homeostasis with our planet anymore, our population's out of whack, our resource consumption, you know, our land use, all of that. It's a giant feedback loop and we won't win with it. Right. Like, I mean, I just, I don't know. I, this is great. And, and you're, you guys are right. And there is, there's no right answer to this, in my opinion. No, I don't think so either. I would throw in the question um if how many uh you know dirt brown geckos inhabit the same habitat as the electric blue gecko so if you're focusing on electric blue geckos you're still if you're if you if that results in protection of habitat or setting aside habitat for those things because they're endangered, you're also protecting the other things that are found in their environment.

So sometimes, you know, the flashy species, you know, a panda needs a big swath of, you know, forest. So any smaller animals within that forest are benefiting from us preserving pandas, even though pandas want to be extinct or something you know they don't they don't like to survive you know well that i mean on the aza side of things that that's always been the idea right is that that's marketing is yeah big charismatic animals get you to peace on species by a membership and pay or get a stuffed animal or donate or what have you. And then you don't really need to know that we're preserving worms and beetles and stuff. You just need to know that you gave money for savannas because elephants are cool.

And that's a marketing thing. And I think that we suck at that as reptile people um so like in my other portion of the hobby where i do education with my wife that's a that's a huge thing for us is and and i've heard the herpetoculture network folks and npr folks talk about it too as as folks you know natural history type information and keeping is becoming more prevalent in her pediculture, which is really cool. And the reason it's taken so long is because it's a bunch of nerds. Like if that means you have to know more about the animal, right. And you have to consume more information. That's not something that people want to do, especially in our current culture. And so it's a constant uphill battle of, you know, why are those little brown lizards important and

ecology and teaching about you know the web of life and all that crazy stuff that we have to go through and educate people on and then also this snake is ugly like okay so i have to learn stuff and it's not even cute like that sucks okay well then me and these five guys will just keep it alive forever because they're probably going to pave over that thing and make a Walmart. Like you, you feel stuck, right? And my wife gives me a hard time whenever I want to add things to my collection for doing shows. And because she, cause I of course want things that cost more money because I, I like weird things because I know a lot about reptiles and that's pointless for what I do. It doesn't make any sense.

I can take a normal ball, a garter snake and a bull snake and captivate children just as much as I can with a carpet Python and a condor, like, cause they don't know, you know, and it, that's a really hard thing to do. And so it, for me, if I, if I care about those things and the little tiny geckos that aren't the electric blue ones, then I feel like I have to take it upon myself. Right. And that's, that's why that invisible art concept resonates with people like that, in that you already feel under attack because you're a reptile nerd. And then not only are you a reptile nerd, but you're a

nerd for mud turtles, which even for turtles is lame, you know? And so then now you're like, you're not even cool in your own not cool thing. So you just, I'm sorry. I like brown. I like brown scrubs. I get it. I'm so on your page. I see how the idea resonates with people.

And I also see how should they be correct in that, that habitat is going to disappear and it's a little brown turtle and no one cares, then they're it. Right. Because if the habitat's gone and you guys only like turtles that have yellow spots or whatever. Well, I'm it. And now we're back to it's not extinct if it's in my living room. Just because you don't care. And just because it's an ugly little turtle, it's still here.

And so I have accomplished the only thing I felt like I could accomplish. Right. Final thoughts, Casey. what do you got? Can we talk axolotls for a little bit? Sure. Because I feel like as far as the art concept, this is something that I don't know if it's brought up a lot in that circle. It probably is one of the, it's one, it's, it's one of the, one of the better arguments for it.

And it's also one of the better arguments against it where axolotls, they're from a small Lake right outside of Mexico city, uh, almost completely extinct in their natural habitat. They are so calm. They're the most commonly available amphibian on earth though. They're so common that they use them as a laboratory testing animals. They use them as food and parts of Japan. Uh uh they're available in every pet store every aquarium shop the petco down your road probably has two of them that are uh you know leucistic or melanistic or whatever other color mutation they have yeah but you talk to the people that are actually trying to conserve the animals and trying to keep a large population even the people that are uh breeding

the most of them for the laboratory animals let's say hey this captive population is not useful to us at all you know you guys have gone as far as to even inserting genes from other species into them like you have uh gmo ones that are able to glow in the dark because we took genes from, uh, what were they? Fireflies or jellyfish or whatever it was. So that's what they say is like, while these things are phenomenal for research and it's amazing that they are available at pet stores. If we were doing this for conservation to conserve the wild type animal,

we don't want them because we can't guarantee you. They don't carry one of like three strains of albino that's super common we can't guarantee that they don't have uh tiger salamander dna at the best case at the worst case they may have genes from you know a jellyfish so it's like yes while there are millions of them in captivity right now and you could argue through the invisible arc that the axolotl is saved the people who are actually trying to conserve the wild ones say like we don't want these animals for what we're trying to do and which is trying to save the species so which goes back to a lot of endangered stuff in captivity in the wild which is just because they're mass produced, just because they're commonly bred does not mean that it's useful for trying to preserve anything.

Well now, um, so I, I, you know, I've been thinking about, uh, kind of this idea of, well, if you can breed it to such an extent and have so many available, um, wouldn't the researchers in the natural habitat, once that habitat is secure, wouldn't they be able to take some specimens from the wild that would be genetically, you know, viable and things like that, the characteristics they want for preserving the species and then apply the techniques that have been used in, in the reptile trade. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Which is what they're doing right now on these farms where they're like, oh, well they're easy to breed.

Like we can, we can probably send you a 10 year old that can teach you how to breed axolotls because they breed in captivity like, like nothing else. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I guess, you know, it may be as a, as a plug for a way that reptile keepers can, can contribute to this kind of thing is if you figure out something, Chuck, um, uh, you know, something difficult and, and breed it, you know, think about publishing those things, because if you're publishing that, that, uh, method or whatever you did to, to breed those animals or, or the secrets, you know, that you have for,

for breeding that species, um, then there, there,'re, you know, there's a record of that. There's a public record. So down the road, if Hal Meharry goes, man, we sure are losing a lot of trees. Maybe we don't want to pave over the whole, you know, place. And maybe we do like those pythons. They're kind of cool. I remember catching those and selling them to the pet trade. And now I can't find one anymore. I would like those to be there because I've got good memories of them when I was a poor logger and now I'm, you know, okay and stable and I can, you know, contribute to conservation. So, oh, look, there's an article by Chuck Poland who's bred them repeatedly in captivity and published his

methods. And now I can try to follow that in my own country and repopulate some of these things. I found a couple, you know, and there's still, let me get it, let me get it done more than twice. And we'll work on that. I, I, I'm, I'm, I'm not so sure that I have quite the, uh, quite the credibility yet enough to, uh, publish anything that I've done. Yeah. But you know, I, and, and like, like was said, um, you know, there's, there's nothing stopping us from being like an AZA institution. We can adopt some of their principles and practices and I, and I'm sure they would probably, um, champion that, you know, if, if we're being more like a zoo and taking more of those things into consideration.

There's, I mean i i wish i i wish i wish i could get as somebody who's bred something that's hard to breed i wish i could get my hands on bull and i and class tulpus and and stuff to show like no no it's not different it's all the same we're just not doing it right and and but it's hard for me to get my hands on that stuff because you know class tulpus is you know a couple grand an animal now when it used to be i bought my tracy i for 500 bucks for for the trio so i mean it was cheap back then and now now things are getting harder things are getting expensive and i'm not look there's a whole argument for that too and we've had that conversation but it makes it hard when

you're you know just an average person and you can't spend 10 Gs on a bowl. I'd love to, but I'm just not doing that, man. That's Ferrari money. You know what I mean? No way. And I think we should say there are keepers that are taking this too. Ty Park is opening up his own zoo right now and he's actually partnering up with aza facilities to the point where aza facilities say hey we have

surplus uh cycler iguana will help you become part of our project where we can actually introduce these things in the wild this is something that's possible it's just a lot of times I think the AZA and maybe rightfully so kind of, you know, reptile, you know, it's, you have herpetologist, AZA, zookeepers and herpetoculturist. And we're kind of like, Hey, why don't you guys like let us in here? We're like the eight year old cousin trying to hang out with the teenagers. You know, they kind of look down on us like, no, no, you know, you're not okay. Get out of here. You don't know what you're doing. Some cases they're right. But you have guys like, again,

like Ty Park who's getting animals that are surplus from the zoos because they're saying, Hey, you're clearly the best guy for this job. You need to partner up with us. Like we'll tell you which ones to breed together. We'll take off a percentage of them or all of them in this case. And we will actually put them towards a true conservation you know repatriation project and i do think you know in the original uh podcast where this whole thing started off i was kind of rough on the

abronia people i actually do think the abronia alliance while maybe has a few issues is doing a very good job trying to promote conservation in situ. You know, they're trying to say, OK, these animals aren't venomous and going to Guatemala and telling them, you know, these little green lizards off the trees like they're not dangerous. They're actually really cool. Don't kill them. Don't sell them to the people over there that are trying to send them off to herpetoculture but i feel like a lot of people who have animals like this equate themselves to conservationists like there are quite a few people that i feel like have bought like some gramia off of flippers table and said i'm a conservationist now because i own three abronia that were clearly like just off the boat yeah when in reality they're kind of contributing to

the problem rather than people call themselves a rescue when they buy a half-dead bearded dragon from pet smart you know but i do feel like you know the abronia alliance thai park uh cody and pia are doing some good stuff right now where they're actually trying to raise money for animals not just in captivity but in the wild you know i feel like that's true conservation that's being done through private keepers which is kind of what we're talking about here but your average breeder who's working with crested geckos is not even though quite a few crested geckos breeders will tell you like hey i'm doing conservation work because we we breed crested geckos breeders will tell you like, Hey, I'm doing conservation work because we're, we breed crested geckos here and crested geckos are endangered or extinct in the wild.

Yeah. Well, I would say, you know, one of my good friends started out breeding leopard geckos when he was a kid, you know, and was selling, but now he's, he's involved in conservation of endangered species and he's breeding those species, you know, and, and, and doing it with, with as much skill as he used with the leopard geckos. And he built that skill through leopard geckos and other, you know, uh, common herpetoculture species. So I think, you know, some, sometimes the, the zoo and the, maybe the, um, research institutions kind of, you know, Oh, you're just a herpetoculturalist. But I think there's a lot of things that you gain through coming up through herpetoculture that they may lack.

And I think there's a good case for that and we can contribute. But we have to be willing to kind of play by their rules, if that makes sense. And we need to adopt some of their strategies to do it correctly if we're going to be looking at real conservation. I think if you look at somebody like Steve Sharp, who's been breeding since he was how old? What was that? He was selling animals when he was like 10 or something like that? Yeah, that's who I'm talking about. Yeah. So, I mean, if you're talking about somebody like that, think about how much stronger of a force you put into the AZA world when they come out of herpetoculture from a young age. So, I mean, yeah, you know, not all perfect, but, you know, and the message is important, right? The message that we're putting out. And I think it's tough because we're talking about, um, uh, a very kind of mixed, you know, a mixed message with, with,

uh, all of the push pull forces that, that sit in the hobby in AZA sits in, in, in even in, uh, conservation, you know? And, you know, don't get me wrong. I have nothing against herpticulture as far as we're breeding common species or even more advanced or rare species. There's nothing wrong with that as long as it's sourced ethically, you know, which sometimes it is, sometimes it's not.

But, you know, it's more along the lines of, okay, you're not a conservationist because you breed axolotls or crested geckos. Now, don't get me wrong, it's more along the lines of, okay, you're not a conservationist because you breed axolotls or crested geckos. Now don't get me wrong. That's a fantastic base, especially if you're going to go to the zoo world. Cause I've even heard, uh, complaints from, uh, so there's the, uh, the, the university in Alabama that breeds, um, indigo snakes. I don't remember which one it is. There's, they're doing a big work with that. I watched a documentary and they

explained the problems they're having with breeding them as a herpticulturist. I don't remember which one it is. They're doing a big work with that. I watched a documentary and they explained the problems they're having with breeding them. And as a herpticulturist, I'm like, yeah, it's because you're feeding them fat rats. Like I could call you up right now and tell you exactly what you're doing wrong because I have experience with this. You're not going to listen to me, but I can tell you that if you switch them over to something low fat, you would not be having these issues. So, you know, as a base, like we do have something we could, you know, a good keeper would definitely have something that they could jump over to the zoo world. Cause I've seen issues in zoo collections as far as obesity and, you know, not being kept well. Yeah. Well, we're, we're, uh, over the hour mark. Let's give you each a

few minutes to kind of give your final thoughts. Let me burn a few points off of what you guys said. Yeah, sure. You were 100% correct in what you said about publishing. So everything that you guys just said in relation to the AZA is marketing. Her pediculture is marketing itself in the wrong way. You stop thinking about your animals and start thinking about your skillset and what it is you did and then present that. So Casey,

he can't call the AZA and say, stop feeding indigos rats. They're fat. They don't breed. What he can do is publish something that says the exact same thing that that group when done use to alter their protocols, because that is how they work. Right. And so we're just presenting ourselves in the wrong manner. Right? You, you can't come up and say, I have these scrubs.

I want to get into your SSP. Not happening. What you can do is present them a paper that you wrote for here is the cake baking recipe for how to make scrubs that worked for me twice. I have two cakes to show for that. And you have zero cakes. So listen, and if it's presented in the method that they are accustomed to, they will utilize it. And if it isn't, they won't. And we also get out of trying to present our animals. We just can't what it's our skill set and the things that we do with them. It's not the

physical animals themselves. Now, very well said. And I think there's opportunities that are, that are, you know, increasing opportunities that we have. I would maybe give Zach Lofman as a, and as an example of that, where he's starting a herpetoculture, you know, degree, you can get your degree in herpetoculture and I'm sure he would be happy to, you know, co-publish with somebody that's writing an article and get it to the right journals. In interviews. Yeah. Right. So, um, yeah. And then, so my other part was about axolotls and everything you said was accurate and for the the average person who listens to this

and and doesn't have a whole lot of exposure to amphibians and things like that what they will probably take from that or if they choose to google it they'll find is that heartwarming story about the nuns who are down there helping with the conservation work in trying to preserve axolotls and trying to preserve the body of water where they're found. Which goes to my point in that the only people down there who care about those things are a group of ladies that care about them because their religion tells them to do a charitable act. And that's what they chose to defend that defenseless salamander. If those people down there don't choose to preserve that body of water or care about that body of water, and they definitely don't care about the weird little alien salamanders that live in it that they never see that those six ladies at the church keep yelling about. They are on the money, though.

That's kind of cool. They're physically on certain dollars. Yeah, that's cool. But keep going. Then the million of them at Petco are what you have, right? And because, especially with axolotls, that is a small space. One dump truck of concrete and we won't have that conversation anymore. It, it is a very precarious situation. And, and several of the ones we've discussed here are in regards to their habitat. Um,

but that, that particular example, I mean, it, their, their heartstring story to encourage donation and to get attention and things was literally people who are doing it because their religion is about charity and these things are defenseless. And so they wanted to help them. They're not her nerds. They're just doing what they feel is the right thing. And there's

like eight of them. I mean, it's, it's not a lot of people, you know, and so when you look at that invisible art concept, that's a wonderful story. And I hope and sort of think it probably will work out. Are you really going to gamble all of axolotls on these eight ladies who are doing the right thing because they feel that they should do the right thing? There's 10 year olds that can breathe in their bathtub. Like let's bank on those kids and hope the ladies do the right thing. You know, like it, you're kind of gambling there, you know? And we talked about human nature before of those ladies are wonderful and they're doing wonderful work and it doesn't feel like something that you can rely on.

And so that whole invisible art concept of, I can definitely rely on little kids who breed creepy salamanders because they're cool and they glow in the dark. They'll be here forever. It just feels like a safer bet. And that's kind of the argument of a domesticated version of them will exist which we have multiple species like that like we don't actually know uh where chinchillas actually came from like we have animals that we think that they may have been domesticated from

but you know as far as those very commonly bred animals we don't actually know what species they came from because they probably went extinct so the only thing left of chinchillas are these very very derived domesticated animals which is kind of where axolotls would head you know probably where they where they are going to head yeah where it might not look you know it might bear somewhat of a resemblance to the animals that were in the wild, but there's, they're the domesticated version of an extinct animal. Right. Well, I think this has been a really interesting and productive discussion, and I appreciate both your viewpoints. It seems like at one point in the discussion, you flip-flopped and we're doing the other side, which is how this goes. And it demonstrates the complexity of the issue. It's not a simple matter. So I appreciate you both kind of sharing one side of the coin and appreciate

your insights. Thanks. Yeah, this has been an outstanding conversation. Both of you, uh, really brought some great stuff to this that I really appreciate you guys coming on. Yeah. You, you drug us into, I mean, we got so excited. Yeah, no shit. I felt like, man, I need to get out of this. I'm way in this, but I, I am just, I'm, I love it. I'm loving it. You know, stealing a couple of points from our guests here. Yeah yeah i wasn't trying to do that but but but thank you guys thank you yeah well if our uh listener wants to hear more from uh you guys where can they find you i'm on facebook as uh casey cannon you can also find me on instagram as cannon fire reptiles i'm on both pretty pretty often cool. Cool. All right, Bill, I guess we, we talked about your

podcast a little bit, but yeah, give us, yeah, it's Bill Bradley on Facebook, coal, black exotics, lizard brain radio, all that good stuff. Uh, the podcast goes out every other Sunday at 8 PM central and I do it live on Facebook, Twitch and YouTube. Uh, I don't think there are any reptile nerds on Twitch, but I can stream there, so I do. I do occasionally get one or two people and one time someone did bring up an axolotl. I don't think they knew what it was, but it happened. I feel really bad for whoever's going to listen to this and try to figure out how to spell axolotl based on how it's pronounced.

It's one of those spelling words I'm going to ask for whoever's going to listen to this and try to figure out how to spell axolotl based on how it's pronounced. Yeah. It's one of those spelling words that would stump kids at the spelling bee. Cool stuff. All right, guys. Well, this concludes another episode of Reptile Fight Club. Thanks for listening. Check out all the podcasts on the Morelia pythons radio network. Um, there's some good stuff to listen to out there and appreciate them for, for hosting us and enjoy, uh,

the, the stuff that they put out. So, um, we'll say thanks for listening and we'll catch you next week. Later. Thank you. Thank you.