Reptile Fight Club - The Use of Stud Books in Herpetoculture w/ Paul Bertani

Episode Date: September 10, 2021

In this episode, Justin and Chuck welcome a special guest, Paul Bertani to the show. They are debating the topic of using stud books in herpetoculture. Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comFollow Chuck Poland @-FBIG @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

Welcome to the MGR Network. All right, welcome to another edition of Reptile Fight Club. Today we've got a special one for you. We've got our guest, Paul Bertani, and we'll be talking about some interesting things. We've got Chuck here with me. Oh, hey, hey, hey. How the hell are you all doing? Whoa, there we go. Bringing the energy.

It's going to be a good fight, so I wanted to bring high energy right off the top. All right. Sounds good, man. Well, I got anything cool to talk about up front or you know, who's going? Not at all. No, I'm excited for this. Let's, uh, let's get Paul on. Yeah. Just one thing I'm excited about. I just laid out the first chapter with images for the book for the second edition of the complete carpet. So I'm pretty excited about that. Getting excited to get this thing out the door and get it published. So I guess that's one step in the right direction. Hopefully we'll get the rest of the figures laid out fairly quickly uh although it's a tedious process it's yeah kind of mind-numbing you know but it is fun to go through all the images we have we got some really top quality images of some cool locality stuff so shout out again to all the contributors to the book and if you got any cool you know rare things that have to do with carpet pythons owen pelly's uh rough scale pythons you know shoot them over to myself or Nick, and I'm sure we can find a place for them in the book if they're, if they're cool. So nice. Getting excited to have that off my plate, but yeah, it's a process.

I bet. I bet. So yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited to, to, uh, well, so I guess the, the, the, the public at large here is not going to know until later, but, uh, well, so I guess the, the, the, the public at large here is not going to know until later, but, uh, we're planning on hooking up, uh, up at the, uh, the Anaheim, uh, super show. So I think the last time I spoke, I said it was in San Diego and I'm an idiot who doesn't pay attention. And so I went back and I was like, Oh wait, this is, this is not San Diego. This is Anaheim.

And, um, so, you know, I'm, I'm'm 45 a couple of days after that, that this coming weekend. And so I said, like, dang, dude, I'm going up there. I'm going to max it out for my birthday. And Justin, I talked to Justin and he's coming along. So, yeah, I'm really excited for that. We're going to try and do a live broadcast there. So you guys will kind of probably, you know, hear about this before you hear that. But I'm excited to get up to Anaheim with my buddy and have a good old time. So yeah, if you're at the Anaheim show, find us, fight with us. We'll have some topics we'll bring up and try to get some people on from the, you know, the attendees or

the vendors or whoever. So it should be fun. Cool. Yeah. I'm definitely looking forward to that. It's going to be a good time. So yeah. Old Steve Sharpe's going to fly or come in on Sunday and get the band back together for sure. yeah all right well you ready to get into this yeah let's bring paul on so um paul how you doing thanks for being on hi guys thanks for having me appreciate you guys bringing me on and uh looking forward to the to the fight club here yeah yeah yeah so why don't you tell us a little about yourself how you're how you got into herpetoculture and kind of what your lane is in herpetoculture. So, I mean, I guess my story is going to be not so dissimilar from the other people you've had, Juan. And I realize that, you know, there's got to be someone with a unique story, but I guess we're all kind of similar in this regard, right?

Yeah. So, like, you know, when I was a kid, you know, my first animal was a green anole that I caught at a pet shop that was like loose. And that kind of like, you know, kicked off the snowball, so to speak, that, you know, just grew over time. And then, you know, got my first snake, which was a ball python, like probably everybody else's. And then, you know, like, you know, this was back before the Internet was like a big deal. And so you had like Reptiles Magazine was like, you know, and encyclopedias were like your only outlet. And so like, I remember seeing a piebald ball Python for the first time being, well, that's so cool. And you know, now you, you know, now you can buy them for 200 bucks. So like, it's, it's just kind of weird, like how things progress, like from

when I was a kid to, you know, now being an adult, um, you know, I've been keeping reptiles for, for decades now, my professional training is in engineering so it's not really related that just kind of helps to pay the bills but it has become tangentially related now with kind of the innovations and equipment and lighting and like a lot of the mechanicals or and electrics that are electronics that like you know kind of help to you know either create an artificial environment or to control you you know, day-night cycles and stuff of that nature. So that's been kind of helpful in that regard. Cool.

But then recently, you know, everybody kind of has their choice species. I've been keeping eastern indigos, green trees, and maybe my personal favorite, the tokay gecko. I really like those, even though they're kind of mean sometimes, but they calm down after a while. And then, like everybody else, you frequent the Facebook for a little while, and then you get fed up with it. And then you kind of go back to your own collection. Then over time, you kind of build up a community of friends that you call to talk snakes or whatever's going on in the hobby or something like that. And then relevant to the episode at large, we also have started the RAPS organization, RAPS standing for the World Reptile and Amphibian

Preservation Society. And that's become a very interesting endeavor. It was put together kind of originally, you know, by a bunch of people who shared of people who shared kind of a similar outlook on the state of the hobby at large, so to speak. And if I were to kind of distill that or focus it down into like a single focal point, it kind of asks the question, like, can we as a collective work together to improve the state of reptiles and amphibians worldwide? And who's we when I say that, right? So we being the private hobby or herpetoculture, it being zoos, it being conservation organizations, it being wildlife agencies, because this has become, you know, kind of a mixture of a lot of different facets. So you have the hobby, which has, you know, aspects of, you know, breeding rare species,

you know, dealing with morphs has become one of them. You have what I'm going to call ecological messes, like down in Florida, you have invasive tegus and green iguanas. And now these are all being tackled by different organizations with different aims. But realistically, if we were to look at it, you know, logically, you would say, okay, each of these kind of, I guess we'll call them stakeholders, would be, would benefit from the collaboration of one another. So like, if you wanted to, you know, track Tegus, or if you needed, you know, money or whichever, like if you wanted to keep people from releasing those, if you wanted to educate people, you know, as to why this is such a big problem, like both of those can kind of, or all of those avenues can be,

you know, mitigated by each party, if that makes sense. And, and so the idea was, is, you know, let's take a whole bunch of people who are like-minded and we'll start out with a whole bunch of tenants and say, okay, the foundation of RAPS is going to be like basically six pillars. You know, education and outreach, you know, awareness, in-situ conservation, ex-situ conservation, you know, working with, you know, rare and dangerous species. And then working with and assisting zoos and other organizations. And, you know, in this particular case, you know, you guys are, you know, the episode is stud books. So in that case, you're looking at, you know, how are stud books relevant to the hobby and how can they be used to either keep track of animals

that might be, you know, very important from a species standpoint, or can you make, how would I put this, a conservation relevant population using the hobby, i.e. the Invisible Ark episode, which was a great episode you guys did. For anyone who's listening, I would highly recommend listening to the episode. I thought it was really good. Yeah, thank you. That's been one of the ones that we've gotten the most feedback on, and people really enjoyed that. So yeah, thank you. That one was great. And so I guess without giving away too much, I'll wait for the actual fight to start before I kind of talk about the pros and cons of kind of that approach.

Sure. Yeah. So we're kind of delving into new ground here where we've just have one guest. So we're going to have one of us be a moderator and then the other will fight you. So we're going to flip a coin to see who gets to fight you. See who gets to fight me. Yeah. Yeah. So we're, we're, uh, we'll, we'll, we'll get the coin toss here between Chuck and I,

and we'll see who gets to moderate. Well, I know it's a double coin toss. Yeah. I don't know what's going to happen. Is that what you're saying? I was saying Chuck's just going to lose. Yeah. All right. You ready to call it Chuck? toss. Yeah. I don't already know what's going to happen. Is that what you're saying, Paul? I was going to say, Chuck's just going to lose. Yeah. All right.

You ready to call it, Chuck? Yeah. No. Yeah. Go ahead. Heads. Heads. I'm sorry.

It's tails. Of course it is. See? Of course it is. That's the way it goes here. Well. I'm not going to make a dramatic show about it this time. It just is what it is.

Well, I'm not going to make a dramatic show about it this time. It just is what it is. Well, I, I, I like to, I like to debate. So maybe I'll give you the moderator role this time. I'll take, I'll moderate. I want to, you know, I definitely like to keep us in line. Yeah. Sometimes, you know, it's not, it shouldn't be me doing all the hard work around here. You know what I mean? You're good at cracking skulls.

That's well, I don skulls. That's, well, I don't know. It's tough cracking your skull, dude. I've got a pretty thick skull. All right. So, we're going to talk about the topic of implementing or using stud books in herpetoculture, you know, so it's done very commonly in zoos. And, you know, I guess maybe broadening the topic out a little bit, we could include, you know, care guides or SSPs, that kind of thing. But they all kind of function to a similar end, I guess. So we'll talk about kind of for that idea. And maybe the person who's the con side gets to look at different pitfalls that may be issues relative to establishing such things. And I would definitely just say, feel free to flush some of the terminology and some of the

ideology about this out for those people who may not be familiar with, you know, kind of zoological practice and stuff like that. So, yeah. Yeah. Which, I mean, I'm not that familiar with it, but I'm sure Paul has a better grasp than I do. Well, I was speaking to Paul. Yeah. Sorry. Gotta watch my rhetoric here. Yeah. I guess every, every area has that, you know, they're, they're different terms that they use that maybe the lay person doesn't understand as well or people who are not in that. I'm sure the AZA and zoological institutions will get brought up here and just, they, they really love acronyms. So like those need to be flushed out. Yeah. All right. I should probably even say what AZA means. Go ahead. I was just going to say, AZA is the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. It's,

it's the biggest zoological organization in the united states just for anybody who doesn't know and they the different zoos desire their accreditation right that's kind of they want to be a part of that group and so there's aza is the biggest and generally considered the the quote-unquote best depending on who you talk to um there are other ones like the za is another common, the zoological, I don't actually even know what it stands for, Zoological Association of Aquariums maybe. But they're kind of the second one. And depending on which state you live in, usually dictates which accreditation you either need or which one you're going to go for. Now, some institutions are dual accredited, i.e. both of them. But oftentimes, like if the state, like as an example, like Ohio willside attractions or something that have a bunch of reptiles that may not be AZA accredited.

You know, they're just kind of. Size shows. Yeah. Or, I mean, they can be fairly big, too, but maybe more of the private area where it's like somebody that wants to get state funding for their zoo probably needs to be AZA accredited, I would think. I think whenever commerce comes into the equation, like if you're going to charge guests, if you're going to have guests interacting with any sort of exhibit, especially an animal, there's normally an accreditation involved. I think the bare minimum is probably a USDA certification. So people can get a USDA, United States Department of Agriculture. I think that's right.

Like they'll have like an exhibitor's permit. And so like you get that and then you're allowed to like show animals to the public, you know, for education or display or, you know, entertainment or whichever purpose. So it's probably, if I were to tier it, I don't know if this is actually right, but you have USDA and then you'll have above that is a zoological accreditation. I suspect

that the smaller ones are probably ZAA accredited and probably USDA accredited. They may also be AZA. I'm not an expert on the prevalence of these accreditations. I just know that they exist. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, let's get into it. Well, we'll do the coin toss. You can call it and we'll see which side you want to take. So here goes. Should I just have Chuck call it and then I pick the opposite? No, don't do that. Why don't you pick heads? So I'm going to pick tails.

Okay. Tails. It's heads. I just have the luck. I don't know what the deal is. I guess you might as well have let me call it. Yeah, I'm sure that you call it, man. See, but the fact that everyone who loses up against Justin makes me suspicious now. Well, I try to show it here. We can see each other, so we can see the coin toss. I see you.

I see you. I didn't see a coin. I saw nothing. I see you. I didn't see a coin. I saw nothing. I saw just you. Failure. Failure. Chuck is around. His aura makes everybody else guess wrong.

That's my assumption. I think that's either that or Justin is a liar. That doesn't seem as probable as my own. No, I know. That's why I got to explain this away somehow. I think I'm going to, I think I'm going to take the con side. So I'm going to, you know, maybe discuss the pitfalls associated with, uh, establishing those in herpetoculture. So I'm going to be the negative Nelly this week. So I'll give you the, the pro.

I get the pro. And I'll let you the pro. I get the pro. And I'll let you start. You're deferring to me. You're so philanthropic. So I guess when we're going to start with talking stud books, maybe we'll talk about the scope of it first. So I guess we'll start maybe small and then we can kind of work our way out. And the pros and pitfalls will be dynamic as we kind of spread the circle or so to speak. So if you're talking small, right? Like let's say you have a relatively small group of people or small organization, then

the pro of the stud book obviously is that you have a lot of control. So you know a lot of the people, you have kind of like predetermined integrity, which is going to kind of determine the quality of the stud book to begin with. And you kind of know everybody, so to speak. So if you're picking, you know, we'll just pick an arbitrary species, we'll say ball pythons. If you have, you know, X number of those, let's say 50 animals, and then you give each one an ID and they're recorded by, you know, facility, you know, you know, sex, location, maybe morphological or genetic traits. And then you can say, okay, like I have, you know, one animal and, you know, if I want to breed it to someone else's animal, do I have something that's compatible with that?

Or does someone else have, you know, compatibility with that? And so like looking at it, I guess, from a zoological standpoint, so zoos run stud books and maybe this is kind of an advocacy for their use to begin with. Zoos use them, conservation organizations use them. Even the AKC or American Kennel Club, you know, has stud books, like almost any organization that's looking at commercial breeding of animals will utilize a stud book. And so usually a stud book is employed when you're trying to keep an inventory of animals, a la tracking them, and also when you're trying to preserve genetic diversity. So a lot of times stud books are

centered around the idea of coefficient of inbreeding, which is kind of the reverse of genetic diversity. So like you may be trying to keep a limitation of coefficient of inbreeding greater than, or sorry, less or minus, let's say 2% or 5% or whatever it may be. So the AZA stud books, for example, they have three different classifications. So they have red, yellow, and green. Red is any population or any stud book with a population of animals across facilities of 20 or less animals. Yellow, I should probably talk a little slower for the viewers. So yellow is 50 animals or less. And then green is the so-called highest classification. And that has greater or

equal to 95% diversity over a period of 100 years. So that's the largest spread. And so I don't know what the parameter they're looking at is, like if they're trying to keep coefficient of inbreeding below 2% or 5% or what the cutoff is. But usually there's some sort of limitation. And then that allows you to breed a genetically diverse population over time. Now, in the private area, so to speak, if you look at the way AKC's design things, that's a little bit different than how a reptile studbook might be kind of envisioned or imagined. And that's because they have such a large family tree. You can go back, you know, generation after generation, and you can say, how many common ancestors does this animal have? And it makes calculating coefficient of inbreeding much easier.

Zoos can do similar things because they probably have, you know, a stud book going back 20 to 30 years. Whereas now let's relate it to the reptile hobby as it exists today. You know, if someone has four generations, you're already kind of impressed, right? So like, and you know, most of the time you might get pictures of the parents in that or the pictures of their parents. Yeah. So if you're trying to employ that, you know, in the reptile hobby, I should be careful for that. I don't enlarge the circle prematurely here. So in a small group, I guess I'm going to distill this down to two areas. In a small group, it really serves to basically keep track of animals and to kind of have some sort of database. So, you know, where these animals kind of, you know, where they came from and any information

about them, you know, as the quote goes, you know, the faintest ink is sharper or is better than the sharpest mind. So anything that is written down is more likely to persevere than, than something that someone's just remembering. Yeah. Well, in, in regards to that. So I, I guess the, the, the pitfall orfall or the challenge I see with that is a lot of times we don't know where the animals are coming from for sure. You know, it's like they get shipped to a certain place that's easy to export from.

And then so then they slap that label onto them. So, you know, there's already two labels before they even arrive in the United States, you know, where, where they may be originated from, which may or may not be recorded and then where they are exported from. And then when they get them here, you know, you have the, the different, some, some of the dealers may not be necessarily upfront. They might put a slap, another label on it based on what's more popular right now. And so already you're, you're potentially have three different labels for the same animal that, you know, may, may or may not represent actually where it came from. And so, you know, that, that's, that's probably one challenging aspect of this is, is, you know, having that, um, having that record of where the animal's from and

tracking that, um, you know, whether or not that's that critical or not. I mean, as long as you've got the species correct, maybe that's what's most important. But, you know, that's something to kind of keep in mind when we're talking about this, right? Yeah. So, and this, again, kind of, you know, coming back to the scope of it is, and maybe it's prudent to say, you know, what is the objective of the stud book? You know, maybe start with that kind of, you know, assumption and you can look at it a couple of ways. So in the hobby, you know, localities are, are, I would say a reasonably large phenomena, depending on what species you're looking at. So like carpet pythons, you know, localities are stressed. Um, scrub pythons,

um, hog nose snakes, they have localitiesities of like there are lots of locality animals, reticulated pythons, you know, etc. Yeah. Now. And down the road, those those different localities could actually become different species. If, you know, somebody does the taxonomy work, you know, it could be a lot more important than just locality. It could it could come down to future differences in species if the right work is done. That's a muddy thing, though, right? You're talking about potentially a long period of time and work that needs to be done around that before taxonomically they divide those, right?

Sure, but the point is they could be split down the row. So if you're interbreeding a lot of different localities, you're going to muddy up the waters. Point taken, point taken. Okay. So taxonomists are fickle, right? Like things are reclassified all the time, and something that may have been determined genetically distinct

from something else may be know, may be held. It may be reversed. It depends on, you know, how things are kind of play out. But going back to the focus of the scope of the stud book, it depends on the organization and it depends on the objectives of said organization. So, like you said, in an, you know, in an ideal world, it would probably be that once the stud book is kind of created or conceived, or people agree, okay, we're going to make a stud book for species X, we're going to say that only animals that are from known either GPS coordinates or locations or whatever will be included in the stud book. And in that case, you have, you know, this idea of, you know, we know where all these

things are from, so we can preserve animals from location X, Y, and Z. And in that regard, you can kind of preserve that. Of course, this requires the integrity of the members keeping the stud book so that somebody doesn't insert, let's say, commercially more valuable animal in there and say it's locality X because it fetches more money. Now, from a zoological standpoint, sometimes this is not considered meritorious in that a lot of times they're just looking at current classifications of species and how genetically diverse can we keep them. So we'll say, you know, reticulated pythons, you know, they hail from Bali, Indonesia, or sorry, not Indonesia. They hail from Bali, Malaysia, Sulawesi, Sumatra, et cetera.

So a lot of times keepers will look at these and consider those almost distinct species, i.e. Bali will be tried. You'll try to breed Bali to Bali, Malaysia to Malaysia, et cetera. So you preserve the locality. And zoos don't generally do that. They treat a reticulated python as a reticulated python. We do not care if a Bali is bred to a Malaysia or a Sulawesi or whichever, as long as genetic diversity is preserved that basically what they want is they want a robust biological speed or biological pool of animals over a long period of time. So they basically just want to say, let's breed, and this might even be a facet of it itself, is let's breed in effect for health. You know, looking at the idea that inbreeding is generally bad amongst the population, even though the reptile hobbyists kind of run the other way with that in some respects. So, so kind of to your point then, Paul, like maybe localities aren't even really a consideration when you're talking about a stud book, right?

I mean. It, it depends on the zoo purpose. Yeah. And I guess that's what I would say. I mean, I guess herpetoculture's purpose is, is, you know, at least largely has been shown to chase morphs. And so they're kind of adopting the same strategy as breed whatever has a cloaca. I know Chuck loves that. Don't do it! Don't do it!

Breed whatever you have to that morph to make more morphs, you know. And, you know, that's kind of what everything becomes is is a byproduct of morphs. breeding strategy and be a member of the stud book thing and keep things, you know, locality pure or whatever, whatever, you know, statute you want to set. And in some, in some regards, like, and this just kind of occurred to me, like, you know, morphs are basically born of, you know, humans desiring a particular aesthetic. So whatever, you know, is aesthetically pleasing or pretty, or in a lot of cases, rare, you know, that's kind of what's bred. And so, you know, looking at this from the stud book and or locality argument, you know, you could almost say like, you know, when you're looking at genetically diverse populations, you're breeding, you know,

as genetically diverse as you can versus the hobby that is saying, okay, let's preserve these localities. And that's not to say that there aren't merits of preserving locality. It's just interesting that, you know, maybe the hobby is preserving it because either that locality is aesthetically pleasing. So for example, like, you know, if you're looking at... Or something like that. Yeah. So like one locality is probably prettier than the other. So like preserve that locality, it's kind of associated with a general aesthetic or kind of, what's the word I want here? Kind of a gravitas amongst the hobby. So like one locality is cooler, so to speak. So, you know, it's preserved for that regard. So maybe that's a reason it manifested that way in the hobby, even if, you know, from a conservation

or, you know, genetic diversity standpoint, you know, it's still kind of, even if, you know, from a conservation or, you know, genetic diversity standpoint, you know, it's still kind of, I guess, meritorious because you're preserving that locality. And so, like, if you had a genetically diverse population of, you know, Bali pythons, then you'd be preserving that locality versus just intermixing them. Now, that's not to say that, you know, intermixing doesn't occur in the wild, right? Like, there's integrated zones across a variety of species. I guess it depends on the objective of the stud book itself and the people who are creating it. So, I mean, if you're looking for physiological health, genetic diversity is generally what you're aiming for. But if you're

trying to preserve a population or locality population, then you would aim for that as well. Even if the hobby may be aiming for that just because it's aesthetically pleasing, it still has kind of that. I don't know if I'm wording this well, but it has that kind of, you know holding X number of species from this locality, if those are genetically diverse, then you're both preserving the aesthetic and the genetics of the animal. But it just depends on how you want to design the stud book. And if you look across, you know, zoological organizations, other conservation organizations, each one like has something that they have set their stud book up to desire. So as we've discussed the AZA, theirs is simply genetic diversity. Locality is not an important factor, but for someone else, it may be. Yeah. I could see that being a contentious matter if you're trying to set up a stud book and you've got a bunch of different opinions of how that should be done or what's important or what's important in the hobby, that kind of thing. And a lot of times the trends in the hobby, you know, that kind of thing. And, um, what a lot of times the trends in the hobby, you know, may not be long lived. Uh, although, you know, morphs are of course showing to be a little longer lived than I'd hoped, but you know, it's, they're interesting, but it's almost like kind of a sideshow. Whereas, you know, the real deal, the, the wild type

reptiles, you know, that's kind of what should be preserved or what should be, uh, focused, I guess, in my opinion, but I could see that being a contentious issue of what, what you need to set it up for. It's interesting. And I think you said this in a previous podcast, you know, with you guys is, is if, if you take a minute to look at the, the wild locale or the wild aesthetic, like if you take a minute to look at it, you knowale or the wild aesthetic like if you take a minute to look at it you know kind of the extraordinary kind of takes care of itself like it's interesting that we've you know let me back this up a little bit so in the beginning i took kind of the stance of you know i have no problem with morphs you know with the exception

of some that have shown deleterious physiological traits, but like in principle, I was like, okay, like, you know, you know, if people want to breed more, if it makes people like more interested in snakes, if it makes people aware of kind of the world at large and kind of the state of these populations, then, you know, fine. Yeah. Over time, I think my, my outlook, and this is my personal outlook, not the organization's outlook, um, over time, I've kind of changed my stance in that I don't think morphs are probably a good thing. Not because, you know, a piebald ball python is bad, you know, per se. You know, if someone breeds a clutch of pythons and gets a few piebalds, you know, some regulars, you know, whatever. And, you know, the piebalds go to somebody who maybe has a little extra cash to burn. And I'm just, you know, picking an arbitrary morph here, you know,

and then the others go to maybe a mom who's picking a pet for their kid or somebody who wants a normal ball Python or whichever clientele, you know, no problem. Yeah. The problem is, is that over time morphs have become so prevalent is that the morphs are now kind of the norm. Yeah. And nowadays- Yeah, you can't find a normal ball python almost, right? It's kind of bizarre. And this kind of was, how would I put it, crystallized for me at a reptile show one day.

When I went to the show, and you go across the show, and there's table after table of ball python morphs, leopard gecko morphs, kind of the standard stuff. But at the end of the show, people know, people are kind of like, you know, just chatting back and forth. And I happened to cross the table and a guy had what looked like one of those plastic cake containers, like basically just a circular container with perhaps 15 baby bull pythons in it. And he was basically handing it to anybody who would take it. Like they were basically, you know, disposable. And that was that was you know kind of an alarming phenomenon to me because i was like you know we've we've eclipsed the point at which the like morphs are going to a niche market they now are the market and then relating this back to the stud book idea you know when you're breeding for morphs

you're going in the exact opposite direction of the zoo, you know, mantra, so to speak, right? So the zoo is looking towards breeding unrelated animals. And when you're trying to create a morph, you're breeding related animals. So biologically speaking, this is, you know, almost always considered bad. Now, as a caveat, and I'm kind of stealing Justin's thunder here, you know, if an inbreeding event is performed, if that animal doesn't have, you know, deleterious traits that line up. So let's say you have a simple recessive gene and you know, that gene is, I don't know, it results in a kinked spine or blindness or whatever it might be. You know, the chance of you lining up those, those genes is higher, but it's not a given. So like, you know, a single inbreeding event may not result in a,

what I'm going to call physiologically inferior animal. That's probably a bad term, but. And a good example of that is all the, you know, Australian stuff that was, you know, that has a very limited gene pool and seems to be strong and doing well, you know, as far as, as far as that goes. You've had, you've had a big, a big mixture of animals that have tolerated inbreeding well. I don't know if that's due to the species itself, if that's due to simple luck. And then you have other species that have tolerated very poorly. So one example. I think it weeds them out. If you do line up those deleterious genes, they don't last long and they disappear. And same with some of the morphs. I mean, they can kind of limp them along to some extent, but if you have a deleterious morph, they don't stick around very long. So yeah, that's, I think, you know, it would be a challenge for a lot of species if you're, if you're trying to model the zoo more, zoo mantra of, you know, getting genetic diversity because we don't have a lot of genetic diversity or we don't have access to that genetic diversity like a zoo would

because we can't import from Australia or we can't do this. So, it might limit the number of species we could actually work with in that manner? What do you think? So, I mean, and this kind of echoes, you know, the reason, you know, RAPS was kind of founded to begin with is that each of these kind of stakeholders has areas at which they're proficient and areas where they can achieve results that the other cannot. So now Australia, you know, doesn't like to export things, generally speaking, pretty much to anybody. But, you know, doesn't like to export things, generally speaking, pretty much to anybody. But, you know, if you had, let's just say a private, a private group or a private organization that had a, you know, a group of, you know, snake X, and then you had a zoological popular zoological group that had popped, you know, another population, you then have a much larger pool of genetics to kind of to pull from, so to speak. And in that same regard, like if you had, I guess, a benevolent group of people that wanted to, you know, make it I'm going to call it a redundancy population of some animal that were, you know, becoming endangered in the wild or, you know, their habitat was rapidly, you know, sorry, rapidly being, you know, encroached

upon or decreased or whichever you prefer, you know, when you're looking at an ex situ conservation standpoint, you're going to need a large number of individuals. And to acquire that, you know, population, you really kind of need the involvement of multiple organizations to get kind of the credibility. Otherwise, you know, if you're just, you know, a group of hobbyists, you know, given the wide range of quality that hobbyists kind of, I guess we'll call it the space of quality that hobbyists occupy. You know, you've got people with extremely professional setups.

You've got people that, you know, have, we'll call it the reverse of that. And since there's no kind of standard there, it's hard to qualify who is qualified to do such a thing, right? Yeah. Well, you're making points for me here. It does turn up the difficulty if you're trying to get a diverse group to line up on the same page. Well, but you know what? At the same time, like I was, I don't remember where I saw this, but, but there was some guys talking and I think it was on Facebook, but they were talking about breeding jags and how the, this one guy had not had a lot of, of neuro jags. And then he started to get more into morphs and the more morphs he put into that jag, the more

neuro those animals became. So, you you know and that's like a big you know i mean we've really kind of screwed with coastals right because of jags and and and we can't with our ability to import carpet pythons here like isn't that such a great um kind of you know exclamation point on why a stud book in the United States for carpets is super important. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we, we tried to get one going back in the Morelia pythons forum days and it didn't pan out. Nobody really showed that interest. So it's really tricky. And, you know, I guess that's the main thing is, you know, the difficulty in implementing this with people who are kind of in this for themselves, right? They want to keep the snakes they want to keep.

They want to breed for what they want to breed for. Don't tell me what to do with my snakes, you know, that kind of thing. Well, to that point is people will do lineages and they'll tell you like, oh yeah, no, trust me. I know, I know. And it's like, all right, but that's you saying like there's like an independent body verifying or having some kind of check and balance to to really ensure you know what you're saying is accurate and and i mean do we have the tools to do that i mean i i guess uh you know the akc will use different genetic tests and things do we have the means and i i know ben's working ben Morrill's working on some of those genetic tests to show,

you know, parentage and things like that. But do we have the means to say, oh, this is a, for example, a pure coastal or no, there's some diamond in there. You know, do we have even the means to demonstrate that, to verify that? So, you know, you can say whatever you want, but, you know, you have to verify it. So are we to that point? I wonder if that's even possible. So I guess to score some points back for myself, right? So looking at the stud book in principle, I mean, there are tremendous caveats to implementation and that, you know, depends on the population that is being involved, that depends on the people involved, That depends on the goal of the stud book. And so one area, you know, we kind of talked, we'll talk about carpets, for example, there are

two, one caveat, but then one obvious, you know, kind of win if this was successfully done. So the caveat is, is, is using existing animals that exist in the hobby. So a lot of times, you know, you might say, you know, you might say, you know, this was a pure animal, so to speak, and it might be, but you don't have proof of that. And so if you wanted to have an animal that you could say, this is for sure a Chaney eye or a bread lie or whichever, you know, animal you're looking at, you know, you might have, you know, enough tracing back to the wild where you can say, yes, its ancestors came from, you know, wild caught source, you know, in X. Now, in Australian species, a lot of these are probably illegally exported. So in that regard, you know, it's kind of

challenging to prove that, right? Because you're not gonna, you're not gonna go back and be like, well, yeah, you know, so and so illegally exported it in, you know, in 1965 or something like that. So proving that becomes very challenging. And, but, well, I guess we'll say a but first. So, but if this were to be implemented, one thing it solves is this, and I'm going to call it a phenomena and people will kind of maybe know what I'm talking about, hopefully. And it is that when animals come in, you know, animals that come in legally or otherwise, especially of rare species, they often kind of evaporate into the ether. So I'm going to say, and that like, you know, if 10, let's say Bolin's pythons come in, you know, maybe those go to somebody, you know, you know, maybe they go to someone, somebody knows, but a lot of times they just kind of disappear. And then, you know, 10 years down the line, people are like, oh, well, what happened to these things that got brought in? And nobody knows. And that becomes,

you know, rather salient, especially when, you know, you lose the ability to export at, you know, whatever point in time. So, you know, a good example of that is, you know, big constrictors. So those used to be brought in, you know, in fairly sizable numbers, you know, many years ago. But nowadays, you know, their import got cut off. And now, you know, people are scrambling to find anything that resembles a wild-caught individual. And the same thing occurs in other species. So, you know, that may happen with bolans someday. And that, you know, bolans are no longer available.

And then, you know, they're going to come in and nobody's going to know what happened to them. If you have a stud book or some sort of organizations keeping track, then at least you know where they went. So like, you'll know, okay, we brought in 20 examples and, you know, two died of disease and, you know, one didn't make it through transport or something, you know, I'm just picking generics. And then the other 17 are still around and they're at facility X. Now, now you actually know where they are. Like there's some sort of, I'll use the word

accountability, even though I'm sure it's a can of worms. So you kind of have that, this, this system of tracking, which doesn't really exist now for animals that are everywhere, you know, crest geckos, ball pythons, et cetera, this, this starts to matter less. But when you have things that are rare, you know, you might have somebody working in, you know, crest geckos, ball pythons, et cetera, this, this starts to matter less. But when you have things that are rare, you know, you might have somebody working in, you know, some, you know, rural area of America that has a couple examples of these, but you know, everybody thinks they're, they're dead or don't exist in the hobby. So if you have a stud book, which is kind of another word for basically tracking system, then you kind of remove this phenomena, which I think would be a big deal for the reptile hobby. So what about like, so, I mean, we've talked a lot about the, you know, exotic species. What

about, you know, species closer to home where we can potentially get permits, collect from a given area and have known locality GPS coordinates for, for the animals we're working with. Um, seems like that would be an easier area to tackle. Um, you know, and you could get plenty of people that would be potentially interested in that, especially if you're talking, you know, locality corn snakes or, or, you know, indigos or something like that. Um, you can collect. And if I could jump in, I mean, do you or something like that. Texas, you can collect.

And if I could jump in, I mean, do you think that the Australian government would be amiable? Obviously, they don't like to send their animals out of the country, but would they be amiable to send genetic, you know, GPS coordinated genetic data if we could get it to a point to, you know, to put into a database. Actually, there was some funding that was done. I believe the original Taylor thesis, the primary purpose for that was to determine where the animals came from to prosecute smuggling. And so like, and that continued under Sea of Aglia, the group, that researcher and her colleagues, and they've got, you know, primers and things that I believe are targeted so

that they can show where an animal originated from in terms of, you know, uh, East coast around this area. So potentially the primers and, and genetic tests are already known to, to, to look at carpet pythons in that light to, to maybe show where some of their, uh, now I don't know what happens when you intermix the, the different species or, or, you know, subspecies or localities, whatever you want to call them. Um, so, you know, that might throw a wrench into having that work well, but, you know, but you could comparatively look at those things. You know what I mean? If you, if you had something that you knew that you knew was maybe a subspecies cross or something like that.

And you had the data of what a genetically range pure animal looks like. You could kind of you may be able to make a fingerprint of what something like that looks like. Right. I mean, yeah. I mean, yes. As long as the money and the will is there, you know, you can do just about anything. Um, I, I'm sure, sure Ben could make it happen. You know, he's, he's got the, the, let's go do it. Right. Um, but you know, that's, that's the, that's probably another aspect of that is, you know, to, you know,

trust, but verify. So you could say, yeah, sure. Let's that, that's great that you've got these animals, but let's run them through, you know, run a shed skin sample and, and isolate the DNA and look at it, you know, with these primers and see, you know, if that lines up with the story you're telling or, or the story you were told where your animal originated from, you know. All right. All right, Paul, I loaded up your howitzer. Hit them. Let's go. I mean, unfortunately, my genetics information is, or my genetic prowess is limited.

But when you're looking at something like that, you know, there's, you know, that avenues mirror is almost endless, right? So you could take, you know, genetic information if you had the, like you said, the money and the will, which is normally what it takes to kind of do that, then you could say, okay, let's take a collection of, you know, 20 specimens, you know, get whatever relevant genetics information you want from those. And then you could go across the hobby and then do a comparison, you know, maybe take, I don't know what end value would be significant enough to prove this, but you could take an N value of so many snakes and basically say, okay, here's ones we think are pure. Here's

ones we know are mixed, you know, and this is probably great fodder for a research manuscript if anybody wanted to do that. You know, what are the differences we're seeing? Now, I don't know how in-depth one would have to be, because this is about the limit of my genetics knowledge, if you would need to do like a genome sequencing to really tease that out, or if you would only need to look at like some subset of alleles to discern that. You know, would that give you the information required? Now, you know, it's obviously best if you can have, you know, animals from, you know, some location, but in, cause that then, you know, you know where those come from, but if you're trying to use the hobby,

almost like the invisible arc you guys discussed, right. Then you have to have some sort of proof, you know, both to yourself and to the world at large to basically say, look at, you know, if you say you're doing, you know, conservation work or you're keeping this population as kind of like an arc species, then you have to have some proof of that. Because when someone asks you, they're going to say, you know, how can you prove this theory? And, you know, in academia and otherwise, you're going to have to have some sort of test that shows, you know, the integrity of this animal from a genetic standpoint. And so continuing off of that to the local species, you know, as you mentioned with the local species, you could do the same experiment, right? To do, you know,

are the animals we have in the hobby, are those pure? Were they crossed? You know, you don't know. It does make it a lot easier if animals are available to be collected because then you could collect the animals, you know, at a time when they're, they're not endangered, they're not vulnerable, you know, before either an invasive species or changing climate conditions have, you know, put them under, you know, higher pressure or more substantial threat, then that's kind of the ideal because you know where they came from, you know, they're pure. And like, if you were ever to lose that population, now you have the pure population to actually test from. So at some point, you know, if you were able to lose that population, now you have the pure population to actually test from. So at some point, you know, if you look at the sequences of the human genome, so that

used to be extremely expensive. Now it can be done for like $600, I think it is, like as technology increases. So, you know, when it comes to human, you know, medicine or genetic investigation, you know, that's always going to be the primary one. But then that trickles down into other areas. Like I'm pretty sure there are research papers talking about genetically sequencing of cats and, you know, certain snake species and whatnot. So it's in the research papers, but it's not like a commercially available thing. So at some point, that will probably be available enough that we could do an experiment like that has just been described. So, but if you don't have the stud book or any record of these, then you can't,

like, you can't even take the first step. Or if you're interested in making the stud book without some way to actually track these, you have no idea. And as has been explained to me before, like, now, if you lose that species outright, then, you know, whatever you have of them in existence is what you have, right? I mean, there are animals that are captive bred, you know, that are functionally extinct in the wild. You know, example of that is the Pan's box turtle, right? So that's functionally extinct in China, but they're bred in zoos and in the hobby itself. So like, even if that were, if that were an imperfect genetic example, if they're extinct, then that's all you got.

But hopefully that's- That's the invisible arc thing, right? Yeah, that's kind of the, I can't remember who it was, but whoever put it kind of succinctly, if it's in my living room, it's not extinct, right? Which I thought was a nice way of putting it. So, but let's know, let's assume we haven't gotten to those dire straits yet.

The idea to actually track all that requires a stud book or some sort of data management system. So if you can't even take the first step towards making a stud book, then, you know, there's no way to even look at that. So that's, I guess, since I'm the pro argument, like you really have to have it, but you also have to have the integrity to manage it and the will to manage it, frankly. Yeah.

And I think that's the challenge out there. I was just going to say, Justin, do you want to respond to that? those things going. I mean, a lot of times we see a lot of ephemeral aspects to this hobby. You know, people come and go pretty quickly. People lose interest in species and want to work with something novel. And so, you know, people jump around a lot to different species. So, you know, I think there are some that are like, have a lifelong passion for one group of animals and they stick to that, you know, rain or shine, but those are, those are difficult to find. And so I guess the, you know, one of the other pitfalls or challenges I would see is, is how, you know, how you keep that going over the longterm. If, if the head of the stud

book takes off, you know, and you're passing it down every other year, you know, that, that, that falls apart pretty quick. Right. I'm going to try not to, to make anybody look bad here, but let's just say that that has happened. Right. So stud books have been made and managed in the past and somebody has left and all that information has been lost. Right. You know, it might've been 30 years worth of, worth of species management data. And obviously that's a big problem. So in this, again, it kind of comes back to the motivation of the people creating the stud book. Like I guess I'm just going to pound on that point because that's really what's required to make this happen. And so I guess like

if you're looking at someone who might theoretically be involved in this, like you need to find somebody who's interested in kind of the, I call the ecological state of the animal. So a lot of times, like, you know, maybe people just want to have a pet snake. Maybe they just want to have a pretty snake. You know, normally I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to poop on these people, so to speak, or crap on their parade, whichever inelegant phrasing you prefer. But like, if you want to look at that further, like that's also kind of the way people get involved. Right.

So, you know, at the beginning you'd ask, you know, what's my background and, you know, how did I get into reptiles and whatnot? So like, I mean, my first snake was a ball Python. You know, when I was a kid, I thought piebalds are super cool, but then as you grow up and you kind of evolve and you kind of look at the way, you know, kind of the way things are going, you kind of look at that and say, okay, like, you know, my passion for the, for reptiles and amphibians or, you know, working with those species was born of this, but maybe it doesn't need to stay there because you've looked at it. And also like back then the, the reality of morphs

was very different than it is today. But, you know, that was kind of where a lot of this started, you know, the ball Python, you a lot of this started, you know, the ball python, you know, the morphs, you know, I also like, like I said, the internet was in its infancy then. So like, I had a lot of encyclopedias. So you could and that was like the only base scene of information that you could find out about, you know, a green tree frog or red eyed tree frog, or, you know, a tuatara or, you know, whichever species you're looking at. So, I guess you kind of have to have a group of people that's going to look at this and say, you know, do I really care about the state of this animal in the wild? Like, am I invested enough in this to be in it for the long haul? And then like looking at the hobby as a whole,

because I mean, I know everybody kind of thinks of this, is what is the future of the hobby look like? Like, can we keep going on the way things have been, you know, been going? Like, can we persist in the same state? Or are we going to have to evolve and adapt like most people has if the times have changed? And, you know, can we take the hobby or some subset of the hobby, which is most likely, and can we kind of evolve it into something that has greater reach and a greater impact? That's kind of the idea. Can that be done? And then the answer to that question then hinges on whether or not a stud book is realistic or not. I would hope that was possible. I mean, I want to see that happen, you know, but I, I'm a little pessimistic because I think we're still trapped largely as a hobby in the idea of I'm getting in this to make money off reptiles. I

think we all come in like with a love of reptiles and, you know, maybe a simplistic outlook. And then it seems like the next step is for us to convince our friends and family to, to invest in reptiles, you know, and get this, this species that's worth a lot of money and this morph that's really cool looking. And, you know, if, as long as we're trapped in that multi-level marketing idea of herpetoculture, it's going to be very difficult to get into more real areas, I think. And, and I think that's, you know, one of the major impediments is again, that we're, you know, in this for ourselves to make some cash, you know, but I, I would like to see it change where we each keep a species to, um, you know, just to, to keep that species going. I, I, I've, you know, I heard this a while back. I think I can't remember who who was at this point, but they said, you know, work with something that's not commercially viable. That's, you know, imported and considered a throwaway animal and just appreciate it for what it is, not for what it can what money it can make you and things like that. get to a point where we have that attitude a little more prevalent in herpetoculture, I think that stud books will be very successful. But until that time, I think that's a major

pitfall right now. Well, all right, this is gonna be kind of a long-winded answer. So, I mean, first I'm going to give you one point to your side, so to speak, in that the morph hobby, and I've kind of, I've kind of expounded on this a little bit before, but the morph hobby is, is kind of burn born of like a, both an aesthetic preference and like, I guess what I'm gonna call savvy business people have looked at the reptile and hobby say, this is a good way to make money. Right. And they looked at kind of the, what I'll call the Bob Clark model, right? So in the very

beginning, like he was looking at Burmese pythons and then, you know, the first morph, quote unquote, was the albino, right? Was it Burmese or retix? One of the two. Burmese. Burmese. Okay. And then, so, you know, that became kind of the start and then, you know, Burmese become big and, you know, kind of incompatible with, you know, most domestic living. So he said, OK, what's another species like this? You know, thus, you know, the ball python, you know, most people can keep them. They don't have gigantic space requirements.

They're relatively tractable, you know, and they're you know, they've they've adapted to captive conditions very well. So they kind of saw this model, and I'm sure he's a multimillionaire at this point, and said, I want to be the next Bob Clark. But the problem is that, like I've described, the market is so saturated with morphs now, it's hard to dig out a niche for yourself if you haven't already done so. I know that there are big names in morphs that probably make quite a bit of cash off them. But people trying to be the next, you know, biggest and greatest thing, you know, that's an uphill battle. And also, like, if you're looking at it from the outside in, it's not a great look for the hobby. So, like, if you're an ecologist or a conservation biologist or the U.S. Fish and Wildlife or a zoo, you know, you're going to look at that and say, you know, your breeding program is the opposite of our breeding program. And it's gotten to the

point, you know, going back to my cake tub of ball pythons, that these animals are basically disposable. You know, you've basically become kind of like a chicken farm, you know, for ball pythons. You're breeding these for commercial purposes only, yet at the same time, often espousing, you know, these are my pets and, you know, I care for them and blah, blah, blah. Now that's not to say it's everybody. And I realized that if this becomes a job and this is what puts your, you know, food on the table for your kids, you know, I can't really critique that. Right. Because this is literally sustaining your existence. Um, you know, if you're going to look at the stud book, you know, concept and say, okay, how can I imagine this in the way that this is going to do the most good? And so one thing I've told people is a lot of times the way hobbies

or communities work is they're founded on social norms. And so if you get into the hobby and you look at the norm and it's keeping lots of snakes and racks, breeding the next and greatest morph, kind of the thing to aspire to is to be the next morph guy, then that's going to be the norm. That's what you're going to get. Whereas if someone were able to shift the hobby where the norm is, let's keep these animals, but how can I be a force for, I'm going to call it good, but this is my own version of good. So take that with a grain of salt. How can, how can I be a force for good here where my involvement of the hobby

either conserves a species or advances the body of research or knowledge on that species? So like, for example, you know, if you're going to work with something that has never been bred or something that there's very little information on, and there's quite a few species that fall into the scatter. You know, your opportunity for, you know, research, your opportunity to become an expert, like if the hobby could shift the kind of the pedestal or the glory to being the person who knows how to work with that species, then that would be hugely beneficial. But that would require a dynamic shift in the social norm. And if stud books were to be... So I'm trying to relate all this back to stud books. So for you to relate that back to a stud book, you're going to say, okay, I'm now working with

these species, but, you know, I'm only one person. And the amount you can accomplish with just one person is limited. I mean, even if you're Jeff Bezos, like even he with infinite basically resources, because he's able to kind of transfer those to others and kind of prop him up, you know, that's how he gets so much done. It's not just him on his own. So in the same vein, you know, if he were to have, like, let's say you're breeding, you know, rare species X and you have, you know, an act of God, a hurricane hits your house, you have a power outage of heat or malfunction, a fire, you know,

is that species now gone? You know, if you don't have a redundancy population and someone else working with those, like that might be it kind of like the loss of the stud book. You've now lost literal physical specimens. And maybe all of the, you know, all the work is now for not because maybe that species is endangered. Maybe you can no longer have access to it. You know, for whatever reason, if you don't have a stud book, and lots of people working with these, you don't have redundancy, which is generally almost required for any large-scale operation. And so if you could make the stud books a thing, that might be an initial driver to move the social norm in this direction. And if that happens, the benefits to the hobby, I mean, even from a selfish perspective of many fold, are many fold. One, the hobby gets a better face. So if you have someone who thinks you shouldn't keep snakes for

whatever reason, you can say, hey, look at these publications I've been involved in. Look at this research I've done. You know, look at how I've advanced, you know, kind of working with these species to the point that, you know, zoos are calling me for advice or reading my papers or whichever you prefer, it looks better to what I'm going to call a non-reptile person or a lay person. Look at this philanthropic work I'm doing or what's a better word? Maybe benevolent? It's like non-selfish validation. I'll go with benevolent work.

Okay. Benevolent's fine. I'm sure there's a better thesaurus word for me there, but I think the idea is there. And so if you don't have the stud book, that's kind of the underlying pinning for all of this. So maybe I'm conflating the stud book as this end-all be-all, which it's not, but it kind of speaks to a larger theme, which is maybe the crux of the argument.

If you can get someone to buy into the stud book, maybe they also buy into this mantra or line of thinking. But you do got to start somewhere. I mean, I think that's kind of your point a little bit, right? So, I mean, this goes back to the discussion of sourcing animals. So one of the big deals, if you're going to do this in a professional capacity is you want to prove that the origin of the animal is legal, i.e. legit. And number two, you want to prove that it's a pure example of that species. And in order for those things to happen, you know, practices have to shift. You know, obviously, lots of things are imported legally and kept alongside a stud book would be required for third parties to kind of acknowledge this is legit. And so that to me is a big deal if the hobby were able to walk that direction because it kind of lends that aura of legitimacy in the same manner that AZA accreditations or other organizations exist to give some base level of quality.

I was going to say competency, but that sounds kind of arrogant. The same way that universities are accredited, right? You've got ABET accredited universities, and that accreditation means something because it's a minimum level of quality. So if you're going to kind of aspire to have that same level of quality, you're going to have to follow the same practices of people who've kind of been going down this direction. And one of the ways zoos kind of mitigate this is that zoos operate in a purely gratis fashion. So that's... Actually, I'm not going to give you that caveat there, Justin,

since I know it's basically a point to your team. But the counter to that is, like I said, if you can get the population to operate in a capacity that is aimed towards genetic diversity, population sustaining, there's a better word for that, but sustaining a population, um, and kind of these kind of assumptions that I think it's only a good thing, but there are just so many caveats to get there. Yeah. And, and I guess that's kind of what, what that the next point was going to be was, you know, I knew it was coming. Yeah. Is, is the, the, uh, seeking of money in exchange for reptiles, is it compatible with this ideal? And, you know, I mean, zoos get funding through different things. They get grants, they get, you know, state funding, all sorts of stuff. And they get ticket sales and things like that.

So we don't have that resource. So I think a lot of people, myself included, keep stuff and we breed and sell the offspring so we can continue keeping the stuff we have. Now, I do think there is a world where we can keep a certain percentage of our collection philanthropically or benevolently. What's the word you used? You know, we can, we can do that with, with a subset, I guess. So maybe decide in your own mind, what is my philanthropic, that's not the right word, is it? More like what's my benevolent contribution? Your ecological, your, your ecological kind of, yeah, why are we not finding work today? It is tough to define, right? Obligation, your ecological obligation. Yeah, or contribution. Yeah, ideal. I think

that's possible, but you know, that's going to be tricky to sell people on. Well, and I also think we have multiple niches in this market, right? So just because morphs exist doesn't mean that, you know, animals that come from a stud book and that can, that can ultimately potentially help AZAs and help keepers and help biodiversity can exist also. Right. So we always like to talk about things as an all or nothing, like, oh, we're, we're either going to completely screw up the genetic diversity of everything because of morphs, or we're going to create this, this, you know, um, stud book and, and this organization or, or this structure that is going to completely ensure the, you know, the, the, the, the captive viability and, and genetic diversity across all

species, right? Like we're, we're very, you know, rigid in kind of the, the polarizing way we talk about things. Yeah. And, and, you know, that's, I mean, not me, but you know, some people and I think never, never Chuck. No, never me. We talked about this in the context of context of working with zoos in the past when we talked with Ryan and Steve about, you know, we need to maybe potentially adopt more practices that, that AZA institutions utilize and definitely stud books are one of those things, but I think hand in hand with those, you know, biosecurity, you know, that's a can of worms. Yeah. Keeping things, you know, keeping things as genetically diverse as we can, you know, things like that where we consider the, you know, quality or health or well-being of the food items like a zoomite. that most keepers don't even give a second thought to that was kind of a new phenomenon or idea for me is, you know, the welfare of food species is pretty big with zoos. Even like, you know, if you

got a thing of earthworms, they need to be checked on periodically to make sure that their welfare is being kept in mind. So something that we don't necessarily think about, but, you know, would be a thing. I mean, life is life. And if we value the life of a snake, why don't necessarily think about, but, you know, would be a thing. I mean, life is life. And if we value the life of a snake, why don't we value the life of a worm or a, you know, a cricket or a spider? I don't know how that's, that's feasible to check on, you know, a colony of cockroaches and make sure all of them are happy and healthy, but, you know, to make sure that your colony has food and water on a regular basis is, is kind of a no brainer, I think. But, you know, to make sure that your colony has food and water on a regular basis is, is kind of a no brainer, I think, but, you know, some definite challenges to, to implementing

these things. But I, I, I do see an avenue for everybody to kind of contribute, uh, you know, not necessarily converting their whole system, you know, wholesale over into, you know, maintaining a stud book, but a part of their collection could be dedicated to maintaining a stud book and, you know, not to necessarily gain monetarily from it, but to, you know, do better with that species. Hey, and listen, I don't want to go all Kevin Costner on you guys, but if you build it, they will come. You know what I mean? It has to, there has to be, you know, we have, something has to be there. And, and I believe that, you know, I've talked about this in the evolution of the keeper, right? You know, people get in for whatever reason that gets them in the door, but as they grow and as they learn, they become, you know, they become

a better, stronger keeper. And I think in the end, when they're starting to learn about natural history and species and evolution and ecology and all these things that are kind of up higher in the once you get in the door, that people are ready for something like a stud book, something like, you know uh creating diversity and maintaining diversity in a species just to do that right so i i think you kind of have to target you have to create it but you have to have to target it as well right i mean can we agree so yeah i mean i i guess the the other thing i you know i look at the akc. The AKC gave people who bought AKC registered animals that confidence or whatever that they were getting something that was as close to what they wanted as possible. Or they were getting the real deal rather than some fly-by-night puppy mill that was just pumping out stuff that may or may not be what

they said it was. I mean, we bought a dog kind of from one of those breeders back in the early days when we were poor and desperate, you know, we wanted, Heidi wanted a guard dog. So we bought a, what we thought was a pit bull that started growing long furry hair, you know, it's like, this is not a pure pit bull. This is something, you know, we didn't go the AKC route, let's just put it that way. But there was some kind of economic benefit for those people to have that AKC stamp on their animals. Now, you know, could we do that with herpetoculture? I don't know if, you know, it's almost going the opposite direction where people want morphs. They don't necessarily want the AKC stamp. They want the morph stamp, you know, that right now. And so until those ideas kind of change more large scale,

we're going to have a hard time keeping this going for the long term. Paul, you want to respond to that? I'm like, I'm waiting till you guys are done because it's going to be a long-winded answer version too. So I'm'm gonna hit a couple points that you guys have crossed there uh but going back to kind of this this this line of discussion kind of started with the does it have to be an all or nothing conservation effort or stud book effort or however you prefer so i've done a lot of like almost like virtue signaling or a little bit of implying that you know it's

it's benevolent if you kind of change to this you know way of keeping and that this is kind of the way everybody should go now kind of as chuck had said you know i'm going to try and delineate this and target it towards different audiences so talking about there are two different audiences at play here one is is, you know, somebody who just wants a snake or a pet or whichever. And another audience is people who are kind of invested in the herpetoculture community. You know, people who are invested in its future, people who, you know, kind of go to shows, who are kind of like almost integrated into it as a system. And so, you know, going back to the commercialization, you know, one of the

other discussion, in practice, it's certainly possible to go both ways. And in one regard, herpetoculture actually has a unique advantage here, because you're not restrained by, you know, the practices of an overarching organization. In that regard, if you're going off of just, you know, the goodwill of the keeper, the keeper or the owner, then you can say, okay, I'm going to keep, you know, I'm picking arbitrary numbers here. 50% of these animals are going to go towards conservation efforts or preserving the species. I've been saying, you know, I've been kind of throwing the conservation effort or conservation word around a little bit. So I'm going to, we're going to call it, you know, something that might be suitable for an ex situ conservation situation, assuming that it had, you know, appropriate

genetics and background. So, but in the same vein, you know, you might say, okay, I'm going to, you know, move these gratis, you know, to people who are kind of involved in my project or effort. And then I'm going to take the other half and I'm going to sell those back into the hobby, you know, as pets or somebody, you know, something that somebody just wants to work with. And because you don't have somebody with the same principles as the AZA, and this is not a critique against the AZA, they have these principles for good reason. But you can use those funds to either, you know, pay for snake food or, you know, upgrade caging or sustain your practice as a whole. So that's a really nice benefit that you may not have in a professional zoological setup.

But that requires the keeper or the owner to kind of be, I guess I'm going to use the words, honest with themselves, so to speak, and say, okay, I'm going to devote this much effort towards this project. And I'm going to like sell these back, you know, to pay for, you know, insert expense, which I, which I think is perfectly fine. Um, because, but with the caveat that it also depends on the species you're working with. If you have an animal that has a clutch of one or two babies every five years, it's going to be pretty challenging to have surplus. But if you have something that breeds every other year and has 30 babies, you know, you probably have quite a few extra at that point. Like once you have those bloodlines established, especially in, you know, reptiles

that are generally long lived, you're not likely going to need a whole lot to keep that population afloat. You know, especially, you know, with, you know, Python or Boyd species, you know, that have a 20 to 30 year lifespan. Well, they should have a 20 to 30 year lifespan. You know, you don't, that doesn't need to be, that doesn't need to be turned over that often. And then kind of looking at the AKC kind of comparison, a lot of times the AKC is used because that breed has a standard and that breed, that standard may be an aesthetic standard or a personality standard. And basically, if you buy an AKC animal, when you look at the background of that animal, you might be looking for, okay, I'm expecting we'll use a Labrador Retriever, because that's an easy example. They're generally calm. They have good temperament. They're good

family dogs. You may be looking at a bloodline that has tested OFA hips. So, i.e., it has a low chance of hip dysplasia. Or SURF is the organization that certifies eyes. So, they might be certified in these, you know, various areas that kind of, they stack the deck in your favor towards getting an animal that's unlikely to have physiological problems or health issues down the road. And a lot of people look at that and say, I'm willing to pay more for this level of quality. And in particular, like if you're a family, you want something that's unlikely to bite or be a danger to your children. And lots of times these bloodlines have kind of temperaments that are, they're not guaranteed, but they're more probable're more probable than if you went, you know, and picked up some arbitrary dog. And so relating this back to the hobby, you know, obviously, you know, you're not usually breeding for, for tameness often, but you might be breeding for size, you know, or some other parameter. Now, this doesn't really happen very often in the hobby, but I know that, you know, people do do it. You know, you might be doing, you know, blood work or something like that, you know, some way to assess the health of an animal. Maybe you have a line that lays large clutches. Maybe you have a line that, you know, is more long, long lived. You could breed for parameters of health in that same regard. Obviously, the looking at morphs is generally bred for an

aesthetic. And I haven't proven this, nor I don't think anyone's proven this via legitimate scientific research, but I seem to be getting the impression that the more generations of morphs that have been bred and the more genes that an animal accrues that are what I'm going to call mutations or atypical, generally those animals have the most problems. When you have animals that are like, let's say F1 or F2 or animals that have been outcrossed, normally those do a lot better. They're less prone to respiratory infection. They're less likely to get, you know, some sort of deformity. So in that regard, you know, using the stud book to kind of not ensure health, but to breed for it. And this is the whole, you know, lower coefficient of inbreeding genetic diversity argument is that you could breed for health effectively instead of, you know, some aesthetic.

And, you know, from a zoo standpoint, that's what you're going for. Like you're going for like you're trying to show a healthy example of a wild animal because the whole idea is can you take the wild and bring it you know into human hands which is the premise of a zoo right whereas in the hobby that that motivation has changed for better or for worse so So real quick, and I just want to make this distinction and just, just say this is, is, you know, the AKCs, we keep bringing it up because they, they are a good example of a stud book, but what we're talking about is domesticated dogs, which are 100%, you know, completely a human domesticated and, uh, created and, you know, quantified thing. Like we create

the standards for those dogs because we bred, you know, uh, multiple lines of dogs to create those things. So there, there, there's definitely, you know, some, some, some little differences there. I just think it's an, it's an, it's a really interesting concept because if we can do it with something that we took from wolves and created all of the kinds of dogs that are registered in the AKC, the argument that we cannot do it in reptiles to me is fairly ridiculous. It's a will, it's a will issue. I mean, that's, that's been the point I've kind of harped on throughout most of this. I probably repeated myself too many times on that regard.

Just kind of wrapping that back into it, you know, the stud book, I think it's not a cure-all. It's not going to solve every problem, but it is a bare necessity for most captive breeding programs. It is a bare necessity for zoos and it helps track systems, but it's fundamentally intertwined with the will of the keepers and the integrity of the people involved because, you know, we didn't really get into this as much, but like, if you make it available to anybody, like, you know, people could fib or people could lie, you know, this, and this is part of the reason that you want to remove kind of the monetary, you know, element of this, because if you have that, you know, you have incentive to lie or incentive to misconstrue.

Whereas, you know, if you're a zoo, you know, curator or keeper, then, you know, that's probably your job, you know, there are safeguards. And, you know, the people kind of as the, who are the arbiters of what goes in and out of the stud book are basically conserving this integrity. So if to kind of, if I'm kind of to distill this, like, I think it is something that would encourage better practices in the hobby. And I think it's something that is required if we're ever to kind of like pool, you know, the known specimens of a species. And, you know, it's something that I think would be a good step, but there are many

pitfalls and caveats to reaching kind of the optimal incarnation of what a stud book is. Yeah. But I, you know, I, you know, I, I agree, you know, that this would be a nice path forward and could have multiple benefits on, you know, different levels. And, you know, despite the challenges, I think it's, it's doable as long as you have somebody who's willing to see it through, you know, you gotta have somebody that will have the drive and the, the, uh, stick-to-itiveness to, to see it through. So, um, you know, I, I, I'd like to see it happen. And stick-to-itiveness, I'm gonna have to remember that. Yeah, we, we can. We're not above making words up. That's actually

a combination. That's a whole phrase almost. Yeah. Yeah. That's what we, we don't mind doing that either. But, uh, you know, we, we, uh, I think identifying those pitfalls can help make it more successful, you know, to go through the, the potential issues that we, we can expect to have and to have a plan for those when they, when they arise, you know, that's kind of the, the idea here. And hopefully, you know, we've gotten some good, uh, ideas and, and, and definitely some good discussion, uh, has, has come from this, uh, debate or, or fight or whatever you want to call it. We'll call it academic discourse. Exactly.

Academic discourse club doesn't have quite the... Doesn't knock quite the ring. You know, it's still, it is what we're doing. So, but yeah, I think this has been a great discussion and I appreciate you coming on and chatting with us, Paul. Um, how do we, uh, how do we get in touch with you or how do people find out about wraps a little more? So, uh, there's, there's a website that's in its, uh, I'll call it somewhat prototypical stage, but it's, um, it's the world reptile society.org, all one word.

I don't know if you guys have like a little like paragraph or blurb that like this information we put into. And then like, if you ever want to contact me via the, via raps or in that capacity, info at world reptile society.org. We'll, we'll get you there. Awesome. And then, oh, sorry. I was just going to say that, you know, just looking at the website, you know, you can see the people, some of the people involved, you can see some of the aims and, you know, I'm working on getting some of the projects we're already involved on up there. So people can kind of get a taste involved with RAPS and looking forward to potentially being involved with some of these stud book driven projects and look forward to working

with you, Paul. And thanks again for coming on and best of luck. And hopefully you have a lot of success with RAPS. Thanks for having me on man i appreciate it chuck excellent moderating as usual i do my best i do my best all right well uh this has been another uh great episode of reptile fight thanks for listening keep kicking ass so Thank you.