Reptile Fight Club - To handle or not to handle...w/Noah Richardson

Episode Date: January 28, 2023

Justin and Chuck tackle the most controversial topics in herpetoculture. The co-hosts or guests take one side of the issue and try to hold their own in a no-holds-barred contest of intellect. Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!In this episode, Justin and Chuck tackle the topic of To handle or not to handle...w/Noah Richardson.     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

all right welcome to another edition of reptile fight Fight Club. I'm Justin, and with me is Chuck. What is going on, Chuck? Hello, man. Hello. How's life? Things good? The new year is starting off with the new year. Yeah.

Things are fine. Yeah, work is kind of ridiculous right now. I'm back in that whole, you know, work being too much, too extra. No, no, that's always fun. Yeah, you know. Yeah. What are you going to do? Right.

Pays your bills. Yeah, for sure. We've got a guest today, so that's about time we had a guest, right? It is. I guess with all the holidays and stuff, it's kind of hard to schedule. And we've got a few good folks lined up. So we're happy to have Noah Richardson on with us today. So it'll be fun to have Noah on.

I mean, he's here now. Yes. No, he's on. He's literally on right now. He's on. He's literally on. Right now. He's on. That's your cue, man. Come on. I'm going. There was panic. As soon as you guys

hit record, my headphones stopped working and I couldn't hear anything. Oh, shoot. You've got to love that. It wouldn't be a podcast without some kind of We do that. Actually, Justin has wouldn't be a podcast without some kind of technical issue. We do that. Actually, Justin has a button that he hits, and he can just disconnect people's things. Yeah, it hits. That would be helpful.

You've just got to have a little bit of fear to get your heart racing. Yeah, yeah. That's what we like. We like just a touch of blood in the water before, yeah. You got to initiate that fight or flight mechanism. That's correct. That's correct. Hey, nothing like a fight club if it wasn't for a little adrenaline.

Yeah, we like a little fright club with our fight club. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for having me on, guys. Yeah, welcome. Welcome. Yeah. Things over here are going me on, guys. Yeah, welcome. Welcome. Yeah. Things over here are going good.

It's nice and cold. It's been snowing a lot. So, you know, it's back to the frigid temperatures. I've got a bunch of snakes to ship out and a couple that need to come to me. So I'm hoping it will warm up soon. But, yeah, we'll see. Hopefully it helps the breeding as well. We're going to get a few things a little cooler this year, see if that helps. Hoping it will warm up soon, but yeah, we'll see. Hopefully it helps the breeding as well.

We're going to get a few things a little cooler this year, see if that helps stimulate things. But I don't know. I guess you see when you see. I think my blackhead is ovulated, though. I think she's got eggs or something, but we'll see if that happens. I mean, she's huge. She's like, you know, just giant. So hopefully that's a good sign of good things to come. Get another chance to do it right. Huh? I mean,

so yeah, I've seen a, seen a few other locks. Some, I tried a first time breeder, Eastern Stimpsons. That's phenomenal looking. I've seen her locked up with the male a few times. A couple other, some inlands were locked up, so that's nice. Yeah, things are about as good as they can be at this time of year. The short days and cold temperatures. Just throw the window open and let the snow in.

Yeah, I've kept the door open a few times, like kind of push through some cold air to kind of get it, you know, get some stimuli going. But we'll see how it goes. Take a cue from Terry Phillip and throw some snow in the enclosures. There you go. Yeah. It wouldn't be hard. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It wouldn't be hard. Yeah. Yeah.

So, yeah, we've been getting the snow of the liquid variety here. Yeah, you guys are inundated. Lots of rain, yeah. Is it across the state? I mean, is it clear up by you, Noah? No, it's been just down south. So I was going to ask, how was it down south in the San Diego area? So we had, you know, last week we had quite a number of days where it was just like raining every day.

We had one day where it literally rained for 24 hours. Pretty, you know, pretty hard, pretty well, normal for anywhere else, hard for San Diego. Right. And, and, um, some of it was, uh, was, was pretty, um, you know, pretty downpour ish, which gets really sketchy down here just because, you know, civil engineers didn't make highways that drain properly. And when our soils get wet, our slopes start sliding off and bad stuff starts happening. So that was, you know, definitely heard a lot of that in, you know, Central California. I know I talked to Steve and he said he had a lot of water up there and it was pretty crazy.

So, yeah, it wasn't too, too bad here. Some flooding, some traffic debauchery stuff, but we managed. So we made it. What it what's california without traffic i mean i know right like i'm gonna make it worse with something yeah just another day in the life yeah for sure it seems like you've got a pretty good schedule though you kind of go in early and come home you know so you're not hitting rush hour necessarily yeah i mean yeah so so that's good i do definitely leave like a little bit before um any type of rush hour hits which is good but yeah very weirdly it seems that whenever i go to get in my car to either go to work or leave to work that's when the rain wants

to start so i'm always seems to be driving in the rain, even if I'm not driving in peak traffic. So, um, I guess, you know, take, take, uh, take it where you can get it. Um, but yeah, still, you know, still got to watch out for those people who, uh, never check their tires. And then when it rains find out that they're well overdue for a tire change. Yeah. Yeah. They're sliding by you. Those outdoor pythons surviving the rain okay? Doing good, yeah.

Oh, they're, I mean, like when it was raining and cold and you, and I was in my house with my heater on, they're out, you know, sitting on the basking shelf like, you know, out and about. So I know we had kind of had that conversation about how out you know sitting on the basking shelf like you know out and about so i know we kind of had that conversation about how uh you know um diamond pythons like to go uh out for adventures in the rain and yeah it seems to seems to be the case man yeah that you're seeing that too yeah definitely they're i mean and both of them, not just the diamonds, but also the coastals where, you know, once that cool weather hits and the storm fronts there, they're out. They're out and about. So it's pretty interesting, pretty interesting to watch.

But, yeah, all the outdoor stuff's just doing good. Nice. Yeah, I wish I could do that here.'m kind of jealous of your your climate down there but yeah it'd be nice to keep them out year round that's why i stay here to make people jealous there's not jealous of that i'm not jealous of the traffic so many things not to be jealous about so yeah yeah i gotta stick to where i can get it. Yeah, that'd be cool to keep stuff outdoors. I probably ought to set something up so I can keep them out at least partially, you know, part of the year. And I'm really trying to make a big push to get some better caging and, you know, those kind of things.

I think that darn project herpetoculture, you know, every time I listen to it, you know, you're hearing about how the how we need to improve our herpetoculture. And I tend to agree with that. I think that's a good thing. You know, the podfather pushes that a lot, too. So, sure. I mean, and that's like I feel like that's such an endless, bottomless pit that you could sink money into improving your, you know, improving your husbandry and keeping. Yeah, well, that's the other thing Eric's been pushing kind of is that you can't turn the ship on a dime. No, no. Especially if you start out with that kind of, you know, pyramid scheme mentality, if I got to keep as many snakes in as small a space as I can and, you know, going through that whole thing. Well, and, you know. If you listen to guys like

Ron St. Pierre who will sit there and tell you like, hey, I'm always trying to improve my care and I've gone through thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars just ripping stuff apart and redoing it till I get it as good as

I think it can get. So, I mean, yeah. There's no end to it ron ron uh changing his caging up yes iterations money how that goes endless hole bettering yourself yeah your animals yeah but but kind of over time not necessarily you don't have to change it all overnight. Improve as you can and improve as you go. That's about all you can do. Yep.

Well, you guys ready to fight? Cue the fight. Let's go. Bring the heat. Let's get ready to rumble. Yes. All right. Well, thanks for coming on, Noah.

Let's have you introduce yourself a little bit. Where do you fit in in herpetoculture, that kind of thing? Well, I had a very unique background. As a kid, I grew up loving dinosaurs, and it just went downhill from there. Doesn't sound familiar at all. What a weirdo. What a weirdo. What a weirdo. That's so coincidental.

No, it was actually fun. I grew up slightly different. It wasn't dinosaurs. It was dragons for me. That was my transition into reptiles. My dad was kind of an old school timer, if you will. He used to be like a real big keeper before keeping was kind of like popular. So he used to have like he was telling me he used to have like 30 different, you know, chameleons. He used to he smuggled a iguana into his house when he wasn't supposed to.

So my grandmother still tells me stories about that one. He's had all sorts of geckos and whatnot. So I kind of grew up in the exotic trade. He built this massive enclosure for this panther chameleon that we used to have. And it was like foam background. It had like a waterfall misting system. It was super cool. That's cool.

It was like an old gutted massive like two 400-gall gallon fish tank that he turned into like a screen door with lighting. And it was really fun. We used to have a bearded dragons in our coffee table with lighting and UVB. So, I mean, I kind of just grew up in the pet trade from him. And my mom was, you know, kind of supportive in that sense, too. She was more of a fan of lizards than snakes. So for me, I was'm i definitely keep more snakes than than lizards right now so growing up i was like can i get a snake and she's like they don't have

legs so no i was like oh can i please and uh yeah we used to have stuff get out all the time uh used to being in the desert my dad used to work for AME, Aerospace Company. And so we used to be out in Victorville. And it was always super fun because every now and then when he'd be driving home, he'd find baby Cali Kings that he'd scoop up and put in like a deli cup, bring home to show us. And then the next day he'd go and release them back in the spot he found them.

It's cool. Yeah, so it was really fun. Never brought home any Venomous, unfortunately. He used to show you. No, I didn't get to go to yeah none of the venomous uh-huh did was he was he into herping at all did you go out herping with him or was it pretty much just keeping yeah just keeping um yeah i mean whenever we kind of lived in like a new like in victorville like when we kind of lived there back in like 2005 it was like an Victorville, like when we kind of lived there back in like 2005, it was like a newly developed city. Like we were like the first homeowners, like our entire resident was like the brand new homes.

So, I mean, if you traveled like a mile outside of my house, it was like all just rest of like the desert. So it was kind of easy to just go out, just play around on our BMX bikes and naturally find fence lizards or scorpions were kind of a common thing over there. Early colonialists to the Victorville. Exactly. Yeah, we were one of the first victims of Victimville. Victimville.

I like that. Yeah. Yeah, that would be maybe some good spots for herping at least yeah i i've never really herped in victorville or that area but i mean you're pretty close to some good stuff i don't know it's got cow kings it does have cow kings but i mean you could also come to san luis obispo where we're getting cow kings right now, and it's still 60 degrees. Fair.

Fair. Fair. Yeah. Yeah, it's nice. It's a lot nicer there. Yeah, it's cool. Justin just has not had as good a luck with cow kings. Sounds like this is the year, though.

This is why he's open to Victorville, because he hasn't found them anywhere else in California, really. No, come up here, man. I find more cow kings than gopher snakes. Really? When Travis Johnson used to live out here, we used to go herping together. It was funny because he always found the gopher snakes and could never find Calis. We were finally the perfect match.

That's cool. Do you do a lot of herping up there then? I try to. Yeah then? I try to. Yeah, I definitely try to. Living next to Montana de Oro, it's super easy to find, like, Norfax here. You can go and trip on a snake and find them by accident. Like, my two-year-old son kind of did the same thing. Yeah.

Well, he's fine. He didn't get bit, but he scared off a snake. And my wife was like, yeah, I'm pretty sure that was, that was an orc pack. But it's, it's, yeah, it's really easy to find like rattlesnakes up here, especially. You just go to like this one plot of like a protected land and it's literally known. Like we have a trail called Rattlesnake Trail. Yeah. They're just really easy to find.

It's kind of finding like the Cali Kings and some of the other like smaller, not as common species to find. Like we have the California Newts up here. Like the Cali Kings and some of the other smaller, not as common species to find. We have the California Newts up here. There's spots behind the lake I live to where it's super easy to find them in the dozens. The problem is just getting your vehicle to that spot. But no, they're really fun to find. They'll hang out in gopher holes, so they'll just be peeking out and just watching you from head-height level holes. Oh, that's cool.

There's a lot of cool nature out here. I've been really trying to get out and find more stuff ever since NPR have really been hitting the head with quick keeping as much and go out and find all the stuff in your backyard. I've really been trying to make it a goal to go find

a lot of the stuff in my backyard. So I've really been trying to make it a goal to go find like a lot of the stuff in my, my backyard. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. That's the way to do it. I think, yeah, hopefully. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Especially if you stick close to home. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. I've never really done much in that area. You know, I've had a couple conferences and things up in, like, San Francisco and had an uncle up in San Jose. But, yeah, I haven't done much in kind of the more central area. We need to go visit Steve as well.

Good excuse to get up and maybe hit San Luis Obispo while we're at it. Which Steve? Steve Sharp. He's the one that's in Fresno while we're at it. Which Steve? Steve Sharp. He's the one that's in Fresno. Yeah. Oh, got it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

The Chaffee Zoo. What's it? Chaffee or? Fresno Chaffee. Fresno Chaffee Zoo. Yeah. Well, cool. Well, thanks for coming on, and we're looking forward to fighting.

Yeah, thank you guys. Yeah. You recommended the topic, so we'll talk about hands-on versus hands-off keeping. Like, you know, should you handle your stuff? Should you kind of keep a distance a little more? And kind of some of the, I guess, ideas behind that. So let's go ahead and do a coin toss.

So let's see. Chuck and I will go first to see who gets to duel with you here so i could go ahead and tails okay got tails nice what do you want so so i have i have pretty strong opinions about all this. So I am going to abstain and let Justin fight this one. I thought you were going the other way with that one. No, I'm a man of misdirection. Wild misdirection. That's for sure. That's for sure.

You're the wild card. That's right. All right. Okay, well, go ahead and call the next one, card. That's right. All right. Okay, well, go ahead and call the next one, Noah. I'm going to guess heads. Heads? It's heads, man. I'm losing every flip here.

Oh, my hands. What side do you want to fight? I will key or hands off. Hands off approach. Hands off. Okay, I'll go with hands on. All righty. All right, and where you're the coin toss winner, you get to decide who goes first.

I'm going to go first. Oh, the anti-show. I'm going to make the bottom totem pole of the keeper world. I'm going to go first. There you go. All right. So I guess, you know, definitely kind of growing up and seeing species in the wild, and especially seeing exotic stuff in zoos, just kind of having up and seeing species in the wild and especially seeing exotic stuff in zoos just kind of having that mystery seeing something in like a well-done enclosure doesn't necessarily

have to be like you know bioactive and super crazy but just seeing an animal and it's you know something that you can kind of do the best you can and just kind of seeing it in its natural or quote state it was always like uh like mystic to me just watching them even though they don't like do anything like they'll just kind of not move and just kind of watching uh like mystic to me just watching them even though they don't like do anything like they'll just kind of not move and just kind of watching them like i used to watch you know at like the zoos i would just stand like 20 30 minutes just staring into that medical closure just like mystified by this animal and if it moved its head slightly i'd be like oh my gosh it just moved yeah and so i think by you know by kind of handling unless it's for somewhat like

routine maintenance like just doing like a quality check or just to check like the body composition to make sure like your animals like overall welfare and health is doing good i think by introducing unnatural um like unnatural responses or like unnatural behaviors by kind of like interacting with them more than need be can kind of create like an unnatural response or like stress from your animal. That's kind of like taking away from its ability to kind of create that natural stasis that they kind of stay in. Yeah. I, you know, I can, I'd go along with that. I'm sure that any time you interrupt an animal in its natural environment, you're creating some stress or you're altering their behavior in some way.

And like you said, when you've got something in captivity, you want to see it displaying natural behaviors, not like having just kind of hiding out or something because you mess with it too much. But, you know, i think when we're keeping things in cap well i i want to also bring up a similar experience you know sitting at the zoo i remember i was at the uh the zoo in berlin and they had this enclosure with like it seems like there were like 10 or 15 frilled lizards in this huge room and they kept like running back and forth and like climbing trees and then climbing down and you know they run on

their back legs all goofy and i just sat and stared at that they had to they had to pry me away from that exhibit you know so it was i i i agree i love i love watching things uh perform their you know kind of natural thing now you know when we get it in captivity, however, I think we do have to handle the animals to some extent. And like you said, if we need to change their cage or if we're doing those kind of things. And so I think there could be a benefit to handling regularly so they know this is not, you know, this is not the, this is not a danger to me. They get used to you. And so that stress level, it might be high at first, but over time that will decline and, and, uh, they'll be used to the handling. They'll know that, okay, when, when the big monkey comes in, you know, I'm not getting hurt. And so it's not

a big deal, you know? And so they settled down i remember uh my my cousin uh got a veiled chameleon for their kid and you know he was fairly young maybe like 12 years old or something i was thinking oh boy you know this is a terrible pet and and like he post pictures of him holding it and stuff and like you know handling handling the animal and uh i was just thinking man this thing's gonna die real quick and the thing lived for like six or seven years and it was that's it was cool like it would it would take uh yeah like a really long lifespan for us to not have a long lifespan and so like they'd feed it and would take food off their fingers and so i mean it was a male so

you know they didn't have the the complications of having to breed it and things like that. So, um, I mean, obviously females get egg bound pretty easily, but yeah, he, he had a pretty good life. They just kind of let him cruise around the living room, you know, on their plants and stuff. And, and, uh, I mean, I was, I was surprised and very wrong about that animal, you know? So, I mean, maybe that's the exception to the rule and that could very well be you know of course that could go the other way very easily too but you know sometimes that's how we interact with our animals we handle them you know so that could be a reasonable thing so i'd probably start out with that point no i can definitely agree kind of growing up with panther

chameleons they were they were definitely one of those animals you either chose to acknowledge that this is going to be a hands-free pet and you're just going to let them enjoy their life and try to not disturb them as much as humanly possible because their attitudes are horrific if there's not that kind of like bond or relationship with them like our rule was we either handle them two to three times a week, nothing like super stressful, but just enough because they are very active,

intelligent creatures and they're really cool to, to, to watch. And ours definitely never kind of wanted to go back into the cage. They always, even though we had plenty of room and it was like an amazing enclosure and whatnot. But,

um, yeah, as soon as we kind of started school and my dad got deployed, um, a couple of times we, we got kind of lazy with our routine handling. And, oh, man, its attitude definitely changed for not the better. Yeah. So I would definitely say it went to a more natural flight or flight response.

Wild state, yeah. Yeah. But I do definitely think there are kind of, you know, like what you were saying, there are definitely exceptions to some animals. I do think some animals, you know, it would probably be wise to kind of build that trust and relationship. That way it knows, you know, when the food monkey is coming to, you know, change the paper or change the water bowl, it's not danger. It's just something I'm not uncomfortable with. But I think there's definitely a bit of a potential, like, swinging too far the other way with handling.

You know, per se, like, taking your animal rather than just doing, like, real quick, like, maintenance, you know, or taking it even outside. Because, I mean, I handle my animals. I take them outside in, like, my backyard to get some, like, natural sunlight. I definitely think that's beneficial. Are they in a stroller? No, unfortunately, I don't have a stroller for my animals and uh now that you say that i mean i'll start cruising facebook marketplace for one yeah i would just like to point out that the podfather is really pushing um animal care and you know kind of upping your uh your husbandry so um if you can search Craigslist or maybe Facebook Market secondhand

and pick up a stroller for your reptiles, that's it. You've got to take your snakes on walks, man. I don't know why people do this more often. Yeah, you really, you know, it's the best. Oh, people know you're cool if you're not walking around the neighborhood with your snake around your neck, people know you're cool if you're not walking around the neighborhood with your snake around your neck. It's a very disarming way to present your reptile to the public, too. They come over, they're like, oh, look at the baby, and it's not a baby.

I'm the snake guy at my work. I think we're all that guy at work. Yeah. But when you're at the pond with your stroller, you're that guy, but you're surprised. Oh, yeah. People are not ready for what they – when they throw the bonnet back. Sorry. Sorry.

I couldn't resist dealing with that little joke there. I'm done. I'm done no but you know to chuck's point i i do think people kind of mistake care or uh you know general care by handling the reptile or you know handling your snake or your lizard or whatever versus doing better to improve your cage quality or or you know what's how you're even running your cage i'm i'm a big fanatic for like right now I'm working on a personal project for kind of actually automating all my stuff. I was listening to animals at home podcast,

which is something that you brought up and I didn't know he had a podcast. So I looked into that and I think he has a lot of really cool guests and when I've only listened to like an episode or two, but one of his guests was, um, oh snap. It was like her HQ. He,

he was, uh, showing off his this product that he wanted to make for his enclosures to where it had a three different led strips that were of like various kelvin it was like a 2500 a 4000 and a 6000 and he programmed it using these tiny little computers to essentially mimic a a true daylight cycle not just uh a dim on and dim off or even like what I do to my poor toe cake echo, which is I just turn the light on at six in the morning and it blinds it. But it was really cool and it got me really inspired

because I work in engineering and I have a lot of engineering nerd friends who are way smarter than me. So I told them I wanted to essentially kind of create a, a true kind of autonomous, like a reptile environmental control system. And they're really not hard to do, which is kind of, um,

which is also kind of like a bummer because like, I think sometimes in like the reptile world, we're kind of stagnant, like everything works fine now. So no need to change. But I've looked at some of the other people that keep, you know, especially some of, like, the all-time kind of herp legends that I consider. You know, even I consider you guys herp legends.

But, like, Keith and Ari and some of the other people that just have, like, phenomenal setups. And I think that's kind of where I hope we kind of start going. Not necessarily just hands-off because you shouldn't handle your snakes, but more geared towards improving your husbandry, like beyond, you know, ability. So that way when you need to handle, it's, you know, you can snap your quick Instagram photo. You can still enjoy your animal.

You know, you can still have that smile ear to ear. You know, every single herper has when they hold that dream species of theirs. Everyone has it. The first time I held a scrum Python, I was smiling ear to ear bigger than when, you know, my wedding photos. But I think, I think just, you know, kind of gearing towards handling less and, and husbandry more is, is I think where, where we need to start kind of heading towards. It doesn't necessarily mean a massive bio, you know, bioactive enclosures and stuff like that, but it's better than what we are now. Yeah.

So, yeah, I think that reminds me of, you know, I was listening to Project Herbiculture with the IPERS. They were on that show, and that's part of that network. Anyway, they were talking about automation and how it actually disconnects you from your animals. Like, you know, and I was thinking, I don't know, you know, I, I get it. You know, they, they were talking about how all the little routine things like, you know, filling the water bowls and turning the lights on and off it, it gets you more connected with what the animals are doing. Now I could see that if, if that's your full time gig, you know, if that's all you're doing is taking care of animals all day. But where you have

limited time, you know, maybe spending, you know, an hour turning on all the cage lights, probably isn't the best use of time, you know, you got to get to work or whatever. So I like I like the idea of automation. And, you that definitely can improve meeting the animal's needs in a lot of ways, like you said, when you incorporate these cool technologies and stuff. I guess the downside is if that fails, it might take a little while to realize what's going on. If your lights are coming on earlier or later or something realize, you know, what's going on. Uh, you know, if your lights are coming on earlier or later or something, you know, if you're not out there as much, but so I, I guess that's, you know, maybe more of a difference between a hobbyist and a full-time breeder or something. But, um, you know, I, I do like the idea of automation. Um,

and you know, I, I, I think there may be something to that. I remember there was a, I think it was that Viper Keeper guy that has all the venomous stuff and he's always like, it's always sketchy, you know, his videos and stuff. Um, he, he has a lot of close calls. They're like entertaining. The word is entertaining. Let us, we need to manage our terminology. We are, we are, we just had a show about this this is an animal con chuck come on yeah well you know what you know what you got to get those clicks get

those we're going to influence we need to influence the right way please manage your language yeah right positive language if we just say the right words, everything will be okay. So, you know, I think that, you know, when you do take that time to interact with the animals and you're, like, this guy would water his animals with, like, a spray bottle. So, you know, he, so every animal that wanted a drink kind of had to come to him to some, you know, to some extent. That was kind of the idea. So then that helps the animal see you as a provider of water rather than a stressor. And so, you know, I can see maybe something along those lines and like with lizards and things, you know, feeding them by hand or with the,

the forceps kind of helps them settle down and, and that's another way to interact. And I think lizards are great for that. Snakes, you know, snakes spend a lot of time not moving, not doing a lot. And so I think a lot of this depends on what kind of animals you're keeping and the level of interaction you want. Like you said, you know, if you have maybe a dangerous animal, a crop monitor or something, you don't want that thing stressed or seeing you as a threat.

You want it to understand that you're not a threat. And so I see a lot of people that are getting those lodge monitors, kind of acclimating them young so they see the keeper as friend, not foe. And so they don't get stressed and they don't get angry or dangerous. So I can see. Can we, can we, can we use the word boisterous? We're not using dangerous language matters. Words matter, Justin.

Words matter. Sorry. Yeah. We don't want to offend anybody. That's right. That's right. That's right. Hashtag boisterous.

Here we go. Boisterous. Yes. So those animals aren't dangerous. They're boisterous. But, you know, like that big croc monitor could do some damage, and then it could, you know, damage the hobby. I think I saw Skype or this up on one of the chats about somebody in Malaysia

that got bit by a puff adder that they had and actually got bit on both hands and there was no anti-venom. They didn't have anti-venom and the country didn't have any anti-venom. Kind of sketchy there. Did it bite me? I don't know. Let me see. Ow, it got my other hand. How did it get both hands?

He got bit and then he tried to whack the double. Don't bite me. How dare you? Let me take care of this ow i got me again what happened i just did this and he bit me oh crap there he goes again um so you know if you if you are working you know handling your animals regularly you're acclimating them to you you know there's that could reduce the potential danger that you might have from a, from a large, uh, verandah or crocodilian or, you know, uh, anything that could potentially damage it. So, I mean, that can, I was listening to NPR with, uh, um, Tom Crutchfield and, you know, hearing, you know, he's got some interesting ideas.

And, you know, I'm not sure about that. But, you know. I would love to get a pair of Jamaicans from him. Yeah. Yeah. He's got some amazing animals. And he's done some really cool, you know, things for some of those, you know, especially like the, um, Caribbean boas and stuff. But, um, anyway, you know, that the idea that these animals, you know, they, they, they can

learn, they can develop those, um, uh, I don't know if I'd call it a relationship, but at least like, you know, know who, who the keeper is. I think some of my snakes have recognition of me and they kind of hide out maybe if somebody else comes in the room and, you know, I could be misreading those behaviors, but, um, and, you know, I, I guess if you, if you are handling, like you said, that there can be that, that danger of anthropomorphizing and saying, oh, my beardy loves it when I cuddle him and hold him on my leg. My snake loves to crawl around on my lap while I'm watching the football game or something. Maybe they do, but I would probably guess they don't.

We're reading into that the wrong way. Good behavior doesn't necessarily mean good behavior. Yeah. Yeah. So I think, you know, from that aspect, handling can potentially reduce the danger of a large, you know, potentially dangerous animal. Yeah. That's my next. To your credit, I think to name drop like two people in particular, I've definitely kind of like followed from afar, like on Instagram and whatnot, who I think are kind of the, the epitome of like a great way to handle would be like,

uh, Lori Turini and, uh, even like Justin Smith with his, with his Aggies, his training with them. He's, he's like from his videos and I listened to the THP and I,

I absolutely love all their, all their podcasts too. Yeah. But how he's very, this is an NPR network. Come on, man. I'm sorry. Don't be pushing those jokers.

No. Just kidding. No, like how he approaches. Are they Aki's? Yeah, I think Justin is Aki's. Yeah, how he kind of trains his Aki's to not be afraid of him when he comes in. It's not some scary big monster, but he kind of trains them to slowly progressively go up his shoulder, and you can kind of see him think, and I think there is good in training,

and there is good in kind of knowledge for them to have that understanding. Like, yeah, the big monkey is not a danger. It's not a threat. Because I don't think that's also good for the animal's life to, for its entire lifespan to be thinking, Oh my gosh, this, you know, the food monkey is, is dangerous to kind of have that looming every single time, especially if you're, you're in your snake room or if you have them like, kind of like a display in your living room, if you, if they're always seeing movement, always seeing the larger, you know,

or people just walking by and always kind of living that constant fear. I also don't think that's a good thing. And Lori's have some really cool stuff. I listened to that NPR episode when she was on a while ago, how she was able to train that carpet python that was just absolutely terrified of her. How she was able to slowly kind of introduce smaller little

stepping stones so that it was comfortable to go out and explore. Because I do think enrichment is definitely a thing. Obviously, you can see when a snake is thinking, um, I haven't worked with a lot of lizards, so I, I only keep snakes. And then okay. Gecko. So it's kind of like the background I'm coming from. Yeah. Um, well I guess it's just, okay. They're all the same. Yeah. Um, so I definitely think those two are kind of like amazing examples of kind of,

you know, doing stuff like that. And there's, there's loads of other people too. For me, probably the most inspirational person from listening to NPR that I kind of have wanted to have my keeping dear more towards would be Lawrence Ketchington. I think he was a phenomenal keeper, and I don't know. Unfortunately, I don't know what happened to him. He kind of went AWOL from like all social media,

and I never really kind of figured out what happened he just kind of stopped existing and updating any of his like social media and I tried reaching out to him just to text because when I heard his his interviews I thought he was a phenomenal keeper and one of his big things was minimalistic handling and you know just extreme focus on husbandry and doing what he saw by being extremely attentive to his animals from afar. That he was able to have such success with all of his animals. I mean, scrubs were the first things he's bred. I love scrub pythons.

I think they're one of the most beautiful, unique, cool-looking species. And I wish the prices would go down because I want some. I want more. But I think just, like I said, it doesn't have to be some crazy. I mean, he had some amazing enclosures, but he also was attentive to all of his animals enough to know that some of them were not thriving in those natural bioactive, beautiful enclosures. What they needed were very simple hubs.

And that's when he saw a vast improvement to their health and their behavior and their stress levels. And that's when he was able to see them return to normal things. So I don't, like what you were kind of saying about autonomous keeping, I don't think autonomous keeping is necessarily the goal to not have to do anything. I think it's the goal to focus your attention more on other critical things like behavior, like kind of watching them without disturbing them, you know, going back to the zoo, you know, to be able to just kind of sit there and watch relatively natural, you know, snake-in-a-box type behavior versus, you know, unintentional stress from routine handling.

Yeah, yeah. Does that sound like a road? versus unintentional stress from routine handling. Yeah. Does that sound like a road? No. I thought of another thing in that same regard. There's a park in Ipswich that we like to go to when we're visiting Troy Kuligowski, and it's Queens Park there. And they have a huge population of Australian water dragons that, you know, basically live in the park.

And they snag food off of people and stuff, you know, like they're pretty acclimated to people. And so we were sitting there having a picnic, and there were probably like eight or ten of them just kind of near us, you know. They definitely had their comfort zone zone and you couldn't get too close to them um and and i remember chris cupper uh caught one like he did this flying dive and grabbed it you know and you know so we got to hold this water dragon and then like uh when i was there in 2016 we were walking along the edge and i i looked down in the water and

there's this australia huge male austral Australian water dragon just sitting there on the bottom of the pond, maybe two feet down. And so I just reached in and picked him up. And I'm like, that's the easy way to do it, you know, because he thought he was safe. Yeah, he could see underwater, so he wasn't trying to swim away or anything. But, you know, like reptiles, certain reptiles can get acclimated to people, but they still have their comfort zone, you know. But you can, you know, if we were feeding them, they'd come real close to get some food. You know, you could kind of lure them in closer and closer. And so, you know, they get acclimated to your presence. But I think they remember as well so if you know if somebody tries to dive on one and grab it they're going to remember okay you know i i'm not going to trust

people for a little while they probably are going to alter their behavior a little bit compared to what they had before so i don't know i i always dreamed of having like a walk-in reptile room where you know it was made up like the desert and had a bunch of different species or something and i could just sit in there and just watch. I think closures are like standing on the floor too. No, yeah, like a room. Like, I don't know, they have at Reptile Gardens in South Dakota, they have part of their desert dome that has natural, you know,

you just go in there and there's lizards running around and snakes on the wall and stuff like that it's pretty cool there's a place in europe that has something very similar to that i can't remember what it's called but i was talking to one of my friends jacob um northern reptiles and he he posted on a story of like an exhibit just like that where it's kind of like an aviary but like on the ground there were dart frogs running around everywhere. Yeah, that's cool. And there were legit snakes, or it was either snakes or lizards, just climbing about in this massive walking environment. It was a really cool thing.

I think I've seen that. Yeah, it's in Sweden or something. I don't know what it was. Yeah, I think it was in Sweden. I can't remember what it was called, but it was amazing, and I would have loved to go there. Yeah. Another really great thing is the zoo in Omaha, Nebraska, the Henry Dorley Zoo. That's got a desert dome. It's got actual sand dunes and stuff just running around. Oh, man.

It's really cool. Birds and everything. And then there's all sorts of stuff. dunes and like stuff just running around it's really cool birds and everything and then they uh yeah there's all sorts of stuff and then you go inside like a big rock like like a rock wall or whatever inside that there's enclosures you know with all their stuff and like you go through part you know the first part is like africa and then you go into australia and then you go into north america and it has you know the representative species from the different areas. But that's one of the coolest zoos I've been to. And they have like a jungle dome not too far away either where they have like pygmy hippopotamus swimming around

and like birds in the trees and sloths and stuff. It's really cool. I mean, it makes you feel like you're out in nature and that's kind of, you know, what we want, why we, hopefully one of the reasons why we keep these things is to enjoy seeing reptiles do naturalistic things. Now, you know, I get it when you're when you're handling too much, you know, that probably interrupts that behavior to some extent. But at the same time, if you're acclimating them to you and they see you as not a threat, then they're going to be more likely to perform their naturalistic behaviors in your presence if they're not afraid of you. Some species are really shy. I don't like to handle my spiny-tailed skinks, my agurnia. They get really stressed out or really flighty. So

even when you just walk in the room, they'll duck for cover a lot of times, but I've heard of people that have kind of acclimated theirs and they're, they're not quite so flighty as they, you know, see as a ringer of food rather than a threat. So, you know, I guess, again, it depends on the species, you know, you shouldn't be in handling your dart frogs routinely, you know, cause you're probably mess them up pretty good. So, but other things, you know, like different pythons or, um, you know, what handling them here and there is probably not gonna it'll probably be a benefit in the long run as they acclimate to you

so yeah yeah and i definitely think it's kind of species dependent because i i have a common boa and he's the easiest i can go months without handling him and you know open the cage and pull him out and it's super easy but i definitely think there's like a level of degree of like some animals that you just can't really have that kind of relationship because i don't think they have that kind of stress tolerance if you know from from visually seeing because i had a northern white lip that is currently loose in my house somewhere oh no and uh that's not good that was a story and a half so he went full houdini on me i got her last year about the same time um actually almost a year ago or exactly a year ago and uh he i got a pair of them they were both not doing very good uh they were in a they were in the care

of someone that didn't know how to how how to take care of them essentially. And I essentially got the two of them and the male was like five feet. The female was like four feet long. So they were definitely adult imports from something. And the male died within like a week. And so that was a huge bummer. Cause that was like my dream species, like owning these things were like, like I've seen, uh, my friend, Chris, uh, Christopher Engie, um, huge shout out to him. I've learned so much from him, and he's an amazing friend of mine. But he's the one that you see with the most copyrighted northern white-lit photos. It's like the one where it's like the hand-off, and it's the shiny one in front of the garage. That's his photo, and so it's the same one everyone's seen.

And he's an amazing friend of mine. And so that was so much fun to have this one. And so when the male died, I was super bummed. And so I had the female for a long time. But she was an animal to where when she was left alone, she did amazing. I was able to get, like, full sheds from her, be ate, frozen thawed. Like, she was able to adapt really quickly and was able to kind of I would kind of say display normal behaviors, if you will, because I didn't realize

that Northern White Lips were huge into digging. I walked into my room one night, all the lights were off, and no one did anything. And I just heard this noise. I was like, oh, what's going on? So I hit it with a red flashlight, and she was like dolphin diving, just cruising, like burying herself underneath the dirt. And I've never heard of anyone talking about them being that, you know, going under like dirt like that. And then she also had this EVC little stand that was mounted to the ceiling. And I remember another night I walked in, she like freshly shed. It was a complete shed.

And then she was curled up like a GTPp i was like wow that is that's so cool i've never heard of these things doing this before yeah but she was one of those animals to where if i walked into the room during daylight she was so observant instantly disappear she would she would hide she would she would instantly notice me and she would she would go underneath her her hide box and that was that like i only ever pulled her out when she shed and that was just to make sure that she didn't have any stuck on her her tail tip or whatever and to do monthly cleaning of her enclosure but she was one of those animals i couldn't do that same thing with my um my i have a southern scrub and she's uh about two years old now and she's another one I can't pull her out without her spraying and whipping from the front end.

She's very defensive. She doesn't bite or anything like that, but oh man, am I in for a treat with the fluids if I'm not fast enough to get her into a different area for her to kind of calm down so I can clean her cage. So I definitely think there's like a varying degree of, I don't want to say snake intelligence, but almost like snake stress. Snake tolerance. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I agree there because like, yes. And I think, too, understanding their natural behavior, like you said, if an animal is kept outside of its preferred parameters, you know, then that could influence its attitude towards, you know, the food monkey keeping it in a box that's not right for it, you know, that kind of thing. So, you know, and some animals just don't settle down and they're gonna tail whip and spray crap all over you no matter what you do you know so i i although you know i always heard that white lips were the worst and then i i had this uh this there's this father-son duo that would come to the reptile shows and they had like all these rare species back in like the early 90s and or mid 90s. And they, you know, he had a big old black white lip and just kind of around his neck.

And it was just hanging out, you know, no big deal, just completely tame. So, yeah, there's probably that's probably an exception. But he had a pair, you know, the male and the female, and his dad would hold one and he'd hold the other, you know, just easygoing, you know, big deal. And, hey, you want to hold a white lip? Sure, you know, that kind of

thing. So, yeah, I mean, I think there's ways to kind of help him settle down or to, you know, to, and so, again so, again, potentially handling or some kind of routine to get them used to the keeper and used to you. Yeah, I think a lot goes into temperament. I mean, age, environment. Temperature.

Yeah, I think Scrubs is a great example of, you know, they're extremely, extremely cage defensive. And, you know, once they're once they kind of clear that precipice and they unload their bowels on you and are done striking, you know, run the gamut of some that just don't stop wanting to bite you or will take the opportunity to bite you if they can to just being the most placid animal once you get them out of the cage. So and, you know, I would say carpets are a good example of, you know, things that tend to be a little nervous when they're young, but tend to not be nervous when they're older. So I think there's a lot. there's definitely a lot to that. And, you know, I think, you know, sometimes it just seems like you get those carpets that never settle down. And is that because you didn't handle it enough? Or is that because, you know, you handle it, you know, or it settles down?

Is that because you handled it all the time? And, you know, it's kind of a, you know, kind of like a, I don't know, you know. In the end, you really, you know. Yeah, I have a coastal like that that is just will light me up every single time, like no matter what and i kind of try to handle it like once a week to somewhat form that you know trust that you know there's no harm going to come to it but it is not letting up so i'm kind of now leaning towards the leave it be don't handle it when you know unless absolutely needed to and then just kind of hopefully let it mature into like a larger size because i've heard that yeah i've heard i've heard that before from travis like yeah sometimes carpets can be a pain in the butt when they're small but once they get to like a a more people size

they'll kind of fall down enough is yeah i mean my coastals that are outside uh they're very big animals they're very old they're old you know They're pushing the 20-year, and they're old. And I wouldn't consider them – what did I say? Not dangerous, but – Boisterous? Thank you. Yes. I wouldn't consider them boisterous snakes.

They're pretty passive. But, man, sometimes you go to get them out or to do something, and they just were like any time you touch them with the hook, they're trying to bite. And it's like, oh, I do not, you know. You know, it's like you want to trust them because most of the time they're fine. But I don't want to get bit by either of those two animals because their teeth are huge. There's no harm in using a snake hook. Yeah, no. It's just fine.

And I think it's beneficial for the animal, too, because if you do have an animal that's always trying to bite, a lot of times when they're biting you, they're losing a tooth or having some other issue, and it's just not the best for you or the animal. So, you know, using a, you know, using a hook is not a big deal. I also think to your presence around an animal, um, the way you handle yourself can also influence, uh, how, how the animal reacts to you. I remember we were, I think I might've told this story on here before. I don't know if I have, but we were in Australia, and my buddy brought over his big scrub python.

This is Smitty? No, no. Yeah, Smitty had the scrub. What was it, the kraken or something like that? Yeah, it's a large male king horn eye. It's quite an animal. Yeah, it's a large male king horn eye. It's quite an animal. Yeah, it was a beautiful snake. But Brian Barczyk was over there, and he was doing like the Steve Irwin

jumping around, you know, oh, it's dangerous, it's going to bite, you know, and that kind of thing. And he was trying to get a picture with it, you know. And it kept, like, moving towards him and stuff. He's like, oh, you know, jumping around. jumping around and i'm like dude what are you doing i walked over and just picked it up and put it around my neck and said you know take my picture or whatever and and like and then set it down i'm like that's how it's done it's just gonna you know messing with him but you know it didn't it didn't try to strike or bite me and you know i've seen several several uh king

horn eye in the wild and the only time i think one tried to bite was uh we were taking pictures of one on the road and it was a it was pretty big it almost you know went across the whole road and uh uh rico walder was was with me and that trip and we were he he was driving and he you know he i was i was out because i was driving i was tired he, he was driving and he, you know, he, I was, I was out cause I was driving, I was tired. And so he took over and like all of a sudden he just slams on the brakes and we come to a screeching halt, like a few inches from this giant scrub, you know? And so that woke me up and we were out taking pictures of it and stuff. And, and he, uh, was trying to stop it from going a certain way so he's using his boot kind

of putting it in front of the snake's face and after a while the snake's like had enough and it kind of bit his bit the bottom of his boot kind of thing but you know all the other ones i've seen i'd pick them up and move them off the road or you know pose them in a tree or whatever to to get pictures and they never struck they never tried to. And I think if you're calm and deliberate and you're not afraid, I really think there's something to that where they can sense that you're jittery and you're afraid, so they're going to take advantage of that and either use their, you know, because a lot of snakes will try to bluff you out and try to strike and hiss and make you leave them alone, you know.

And if it works, if you back up when they hiss or they strike, then that enforces that that works, you know. And so, you know, I've had a few people kind of, you know, do that, say, hey, you just got to take a bite sometimes to show them that you're not afraid of them. And if they do bite you, just kind of hold still and let them let go. And then, you know, continue on with what you were doing. Cause if every time they bite you, you put them back in the cage, they're going to know, okay, if I don't want to be messed with, I'm just going to bite and then they'll leave me alone, you know? So. Yeah. So all of my Tracy, I do the babies. I never used a snake hook for any of them. I just

reach right in there and pick them up. And normally they're like, oh, what? And by the time, you know, they figure out they're getting picked up, they're already up. And then they're like, oh, okay, yeah, no problem. But it's like when you reach in there and then they turn their head and look and you reach back and then you try to reach in there again, that's when they're like, oh, this guy wants to get tagged. You flinched. two for flinching and man that's really been my experience with carpets with scrubs with a lot of

you know a lot of stuff is if you just reach right in there and grab it up yeah um i'm not gonna say a hundred percent of the time you won't get bit yeah you'll take a bite once in a while but a predominance of the time um you know i i don't know i don't know if i would do that i know i probably would do that with with uh any of the animals that i got from from carrie and todd those animals are psychopaths but if you just reach right in there and grab them they don't they don't even have time to get all to get all wild on you yeah unless unless they're looking for a meal like yeah and i think that's you know one of the risks of because i you know honestly i don't handle my snakes all that often and most of the interactions i have are during feeding time so when i open the

cage i'm usually putting a rat or a mouse in or you know water for them or whatever so they're usually like oh doors open time to eat you know so that you know a water for them or whatever. So they're usually like, Oh, doors open time to eat, you know, so that, you know, a lot of people say, Oh, you need to feed them outside their enclosure or whatever, but you know, they're, they're just, they're just doing what their routine is and they get used to that. Then they're going to behave that way. So it's my fault, you know, and I understand that. That's why I use a snake hook when I pull them out of the cage. Once they realize, okay, he's not feeding me, he's pulling me out of the enclosure, then they don't try to bite. They don't try to freak out unless they're a woma or something.

Then they think everything's food. But just know your animal and know kind of the natural history. Like womas, they're always looking for a meal. Same with green tree pythons, you know, and if you fed them every time they were hungry, you'd probably kill them, you know, by overfeeding them. You definitely would. And so you just got to keep that in mind and know that they're probably looking for something to eat. Even after you're handling, make sure when they start nosing you, realize they might think they can take you on, you know. So if you understand the snake you're keeping, then you're going to

have a much easier time, I think in that regard with, with bites or with, uh, you know, those, those responses that, that you can expect, you know? Yeah. No, my white lip was very much the same thing. It was, it was a very quick methodical and if i messed anything up it was just gonna be downhill from there but it was like a very quick she she hid under uh like this container that was like flipped upside down uh lisa showed me this trick it was super cool if she just got like a plastic container like a normal kind of bowl and cut out the the top of it and instead of flipping it over like what you normally do you just leave it like that and you put a cork flat on top of it, and then you fill it with the

moss for like a human hide. And I was like, oh my gosh, that's genius. That way, whenever they're in there, you can just pull the whole thing out, not disturb the snake, clean it, and put it back. Unfortunately, that never worked for me. You just hid under it. So yeah, it was super convenient. So it was this very quick, I had to pull the water bowl out because

she had this massive like one gallon water bowl so that way she would never die of water and um i had to quickly scoop her out and then not move that would give her like as soon as she was out of the cage and she realized like she's on the hook and then she would just kind of freeze and then slowly look around and then she would be able to like kind of slowly open up at her you know uncomfortable pace but if if i missed she would take off and it would just be downhill just she would be like they're fast they are such fast animals i i don't think they get the credit for that i also don't understand why they're so popular they're terrible creatures but they're beautiful yeah that's the trick i guess and you know like i mean fish are, but I don't handle my fish.

You know, some reptiles are just not meant for handling. I would see that, you know, that iconic Pinterest snake for a solid five minutes a day, max. And that was at night. And I had to do it with a red flashlight. And my son's in this room and all of our snakes. So I had to, like, I could only have, like, five minutes room and all of our snakes. So I had like, I can only have like five minutes of like flashlight time. Otherwise like my son would wake up and uh, yeah, that was it. I was only going for that animal. Yeah.

Hopefully she pops up soon so I can put it. Justin, I'll see, I'll see your fish and raise you a water Buffalo. Yeah. You don't want to have a water Buffalo. Mooses hippopotamuses, you know. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You know. I like that, the red light trick.

I remember hearing that from Rob. He told me to install, like, a red light in my room. So, you know, when I went in there at night, just flick on the red light, and then you can kind of see what you're doing. Somehow my wiring got messed up. And so every time i tried to turn on that red light it would trip you know flip the the the fuse and so i you know i like i can't use that central uh light bank but anyway um i i bought i just bought a headlamp that has

red and green in addition to the white light and so i just put on a headlamp when i go in the reptile room at night it's also great for collecting roaches like the dubias you know because when you open the dubia tub in in the light they all scatter but with the red light they kind of hang out and you can get your sizes and a lot easier that way so i've bothered a lot about that trick too just don't ever record yourself doing that to like because i was using the red light to watch her because she was using the red light to watch her because she was doing the digging thing i was like oh my god this is so cool i'm gonna post this on facebook because that's always a good thing to do and oh my gosh first comment after five minutes

was wow super cool interaction um just remove the red light like you know take the picture to take the red light out of the enclosure and i was was like, all right, that was my fault. Shouldn't have done that one. Can't post anything on Facebook. Totally did it. Yeah. Yeah. You invited the experts. I know.

That was entirely my fault. As soon as I saw that comment, I was like, yeah, that was my fault. Shouldn't have done that one. Couldn't do that. And, you know, I guess there, who knows? I think, you know, as far as I know, it's, it's a safe thing. And, you know, if, if you got the headlamp, you're not really, it's not a constant thing. It's just, you know, here and there. So I didn't even say peak call, but, uh, but you know, I, I think,

uh, using the red light lets you witness behaviors like that, you and i think rob was talking about that on the last podcast where you know you people think of certain snakes as calm and easygoing you know he's like try handling them at night you know with the red light on you know yeah they're gonna they're gonna light you up you know so you gotta know yeah uh-huh yeah yeah he's like yeah everyone thinks they're super awesome but let's think about a night yep i mean i would say green trees are a great example they're they're very chill snakes during the day i you're i mean just just opening the cage at night you're liable to get your your your face taken off yeah yep again that goes back to understanding the animal's natural history you know if you you know what you're know what you're dealing with you can uh respond appropriately and and i think you know i do think there's ways to to interact or to to kind of

handle in certain ways you know pretty much everything uh that we work certain ways, you know, pretty much everything, uh, that we work with. Uh, but you know, some are probably less, it's, it's better probably not to interact with those things, but I don't know. I,

I wish I could interact with the Komodo dragon, those things, you know, that'd be really cool. Yeah. Watching the, the interactions that zookeepers have with the Komodos and stuff. I did get a pet one once in a zoo, which was pretty sweet.

But, yeah, they say that those animals are very intelligent. They're very responsive. I've read some stories about different keepers and their interactions with Komodo dragons. And I think there just are some animals that, you know, that lends itself to, um, there I was, my cousin told me a story. They went down to Costa Rica and they took this little boat tour. This guy took them up the river, uh, by the Tarkolis bridge. And there's like this huge population of crocodiles.

And we got to check that out when we were there in October. But, um, i guess this guy takes takes people up the river on tours but so my cousin he takes my cousin and his family up the river and all of a sudden he jumps out of the boat and there's this massive crocodile and he's in there just playing with it and swimming around with it he's like and he's like i know there's no other crocodiles because this is the biggest one in the river and stuff. And I'm just like, man, the amount of trust you have in that animal. And you hear stories like the grizzly.

No, I was wrong. Exactly. Yeah. It just takes once to be wrong or that animal to be really hungry and desperate or something when you become meal rather than. Yeah, that's. Yeah, that can be sketchy. I mean, we need to keep that in mind. These are still wild animals.

You know, they're not necessarily domesticated, even though they've been bred in captivity, potentially, you know, several generations. We still need to understand, especially with large ones that are potentially harmful. Boisterous. Boisterous or venomous. What do you want me to call a venomous? Spicy. Spicy. Spicy.

I like that. I like that. Yeah. If they're a little spicy. The worst you'll get is diarrhea in the morning. That's it. That's it. Yeah. morning that's it yeah that's it yeah and i mean listening to that one listening to um tom

crutchfield talk about handling you know free handling cobras i'm like is that the best thing to be putting out there i don't know but anyway i i think you know when i was from out before they can react man it's super simple right exactly well and and and I remember as a kid, I was reading about Grace Wiley. She was that she was she had a bunch of venomous snakes back in like the 30s or 40s. I mean, it's a while ago, you know, and she had like king cobras and stuff. And she tells a story like she's holding her king cobra and a crocodile comes over and bites the cobra on the tail. And the cobra's like tapping her to alert her to the crocodile biting its tail or something. So she had some pretty crazy stories. And she just free-handled all these venomous reptiles all the time,

just handled them like a normal snake. But she also died of a cobra bite. What? She was holding one for a picture, you know, for a photograph. She took off her glasses. She couldn't see well, and the cobra bit her, and she died. And then they had antivenom, but she'd never used it, so the syringe was all rusty, and, you know, it was.

Coincidentally, that was the same cobra that the crocodile bit, and it was just trying to get revenge because obviously she did not have the protect him from the that's correct yes that's correct from the boisterous crocodile but uh but you know i i think when we let our guard down or we become complacent you know of course that can that can be one things and things. And I mean, yeah, people are skilled and they can handle reptiles. I mean, one of the best, you know, venomous handlers out there is Terry Phillip. And, you know, he's had how many, you know, thousands of handling hours with venomous snakes. And, you know, he got bit by a prairie rattlesnake out in the hills or something.

And so, you know, it just takes one bite to mess you up. And he spent some fun time in the hospital, you know. And that's the only bite he's had, you know. So it's like, you know, the more you interact with those animals, your chances just go up. It's almost not a matter of if but when, you know, I mean, I think, I think it's an, you know, if you, if you think that your skill, um, is, is such that, that, you know, through the statistical odds of numbers and, you know, you have all these high numbers, you're increasing the likelihood. And, and, and if you don't think so, that's your ego talking, that's purely your ego talking and and you know like that terry terry will

terry doesn't take unnecessary risks no terry is is probably one of the and that's why i really like terry is is that he is one of the you know safest most reasonable venomous snake handlers and oh by the way he has thousands of interactions you know a month or a week or i don't know yeah yeah it's i mean they have a ton of venomous a ton yeah yeah so and you know you know like uh with the story with the um puff adder in malaysia now they're looking at trying to ban you know keeping any non-native venomous snakes or something, you know, anytime you have a bite like that, then you risk ruining it for the rest of us kind of thing, you know? Well, I mean, it's, you know, and this goes back to the NPR podcast where they were talking about, you know, legislation and all that kind of stuff.

I mean, to the average person, to the average lawmaker, the question just is like, wait, why are we allowing this? And it's a good question in some cases. Like, why do they allow that? Like, what's the, oh, there are no rules around this? Or we have incredibly lax rules or well this doesn't sound very good i mean you know to us it doesn't sound like a big deal because we're educated in it to people who may not understand it seems unreasonable and if the rest of the world looks at us and thinks we're unreasonable guess what you know you, perception is reality. So, you know.

I think that's definitely a point for Noah that, you know, in certain circumstances, you probably shouldn't interact with certain reptiles. Yeah. At my work, we made a joke about how the biggest YouTube or like snake YouTube channels are the ones that are, you know, pre-handling the venomous. For the most part, they're the biggest channels. Yeah. Well, and, and what was it? It was, I think it was that same hyper episode where they're talking about a guy free handling a green Mamba and like all these comments where people that like didn't even realize it was venomous, like, Oh, what a beautiful green snake. You know, they like may not even really, and all the reptile keepers are like you idiot what are you doing you know you're and

and nobody really realized what that was or that it was potentially dangerous you know it's only when something bad happens and i mean i guess if you're gonna keep venomous you better know how to handle them properly you know and and if and so I guess I could probably take that point back and say, you know, if you do keep venomous, you should learn how to handle venomous because that's going to be a bad thing. If you do not know how to handle venomous and your snake gets out and you need to, you know, do something, handle it. I know, uh, uh, Phil Wolf is, you know, those, those cages that, like, say, oh, you'll never have to interact with your venomous snake.

You know, you can, there's like little doors for the box. Yeah, those kind of things. And he says, I will never use those because if you can't maintain a venomous reptile, you know, without that, then you shouldn't be keeping a venomous reptile. That's kind of the bottom line. And I see a very valid point to that. I think there's a slight difference between knowing how to handle your venomous but still not doing it routinely.

Oh, sure, sure. I mean, well, I guess, I mean, you still have to feed them and you still have to clean their cage and things like that. So you need to know how to safely move that animal from the cage to the can or whatever where you're putting it while you clean the cage and things like that. You need to know

I'm not going to scoop out the substrate with my hand because there could be a shed fang in there that could inject something. Just things like that where you wouldn't think about that. There's all sorts of different permutations to keeping venomous. And I think that's why having those permit systems or the training systems where you have to get a certain number of

hours with somebody that knows what they're doing. And we talked about this with Phil Wolf. You know, those kind of things can be beneficial. But assuming you get the right kind of keeper, I guess, the guy who's like Terry Phillips, you know, that's doing it right, that knows what they're doing, is not taking unnecessary risks to, you know, have that machismo or whatever, or to be boisterous themselves. You know, you gotta, you gotta keep that in mind, you know, there's, there's a fine line between, between being a confident keeper and a cocky keeper, you know, that kind of thing.

Yeah. All right. Well, Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. No. I was going to say, I just think that some of the more reputable venomous keepers are definitely more on the more nipper side of things. That's well said. Well said. I like the callback. I like the callback. So I feel like we've kind of covered.

Do you guys have any more points to put out, or do you kind of want to summarize? Probably the transfer, like the Rob Stone method of using the dividers between the cages is kind of like my last little hoorah for just not handling, just using the PVC or the linked cages. Like the Bobby Pebble pass-throughs? Is that what we're talking about? Yeah, the Bobby Pebble pass-throughs. I didn't realize that was the patented name. Yes, yes.

It is now. It is now. Trademark, trademark. If we could please forever refer to them as the Bobby Pebble pass-throughs. Or just the Bobby Pebble pass pass i'm good with that as well we might have trouble trademarking that because that's a justin smith creation bobby pebbles i'm pretty sure he came up with yeah but but but the pastor putting those together you know yeah yeah you've created something new here so

i think you might have a case for your trademark. And, you know, we can... Nah, we're not going to give him his due. We're going to steal it. Sorry, Justin. We're going to get some Schmitty tears. There's some Schmitty tears coming down the line. Aren't we used to it by now? Well, definitely a good topic to consider, handling versus keeping a distance,

letting them behave the way they might in the wild, and seeing things you might not if you're handling them all the time. Thanks for bringing this topic to Reptile Fight Club and coming on. I don't think it's disastrous at all. You did a great job. I definitely did better than I thought I was going to do, and I was definitely shaking for a solid 40 minutes during this. It was a great discussion.

Nothing to worry about. Nothing to worry about. Yep. So anybody considering bringing on a topic, it's fun, right? Yeah. We're not too antagonistic. You guys again. Yeah, yeah. So thanks for coming on.

So I guess we're kind of doing a new thing where we talk about maybe stuff that we've seen that's great in great in the in the hobby or in in herpetoculture or herpetology or or whatever um i'll lead off with with something i saw i was i think it was uh noah fields nfk herping on on youtube and he was talking about um this project where they're trying to find this Indagus-type monitor on an island. I think it's Halmahera where they're looking for this monitor. And I guess it's known from, I think, one or two specimens or photos of specimens. And, you know, they've only seen a couple individuals, but it's a different species. And so they're going to go explore the island and use eDNA, which is kind of an interesting way to find stuff in the wild.

So eDNA stands for environmental DNA. So they basically sample waterways or soil, and they can pick up traces of this monitor lizard or something like that. If it's been through the area and its DNA is in the soil or in the water. I'd really like to see the – I guess I'm interested in how that works. Obviously, it's been used kind of more recently for detecting uh covid or this you know sarge okay virus yeah i i they they monitor uh they monitor sewage right yeah basically wastewater and they can tell if somebody has somebody in in that they do it wastewater district has yeah like population

projections of covid outbreak based on sewage sampling? Yeah. Okay, okay. It's similar to that where they go out in the environment and sample. So they're taking a known DNA sample? I mean, obviously, like they have to be able to get a signal, right? Like they have to know what signal they're looking for. Oh, sure. So they get the signal and then they go out and they sample.

And they may be using, you know, I'm not sure on the specifics, they may be using a similar or similar species, you know, using primers for a region that's common to all indicus-type monitors to say, okay, we detected an indicus-type monitor in the right place, that kind of thing. You know, maybe there's still more out there and that kind of thing you know maybe there's still more out there and that kind of interesting you know encourages your searches or something so kind of a new thing i guess a neat interesting thing i guess it's not as exciting as maybe finding the animal and hopefully they're able to find the the monitor itself you know and maybe get some

information on you know populations in that area but mean, it's a less traveled area. There's, you know, it's pretty dense forest and stuff from where, from what I gather, where these things are from. But I thought that was kind of cool. And I think they're, they're, they're taking donations to, to fund the project. And so, you know, if you want to contribute to that and this is a privately funded thing, this is a, I believe so. I'm not sure.

There might be more to it. And I should have wrote down more information so you can go find this. But I'm pretty sure it was NKF Herping on YouTube that announced this. If I'm wrong, we can talk about it next week, I guess. Yes, I will lambast you. There you go. I will, I will lambast you. There you go. I will boisterously lambast you. Yeah, I'm sure you'll take that opportunity with the relic.

Yeah. I don't know. Anything else you guys have seen recently that deserves some shout-outs or kudos or interest? Checking out Herb HQ, his projects for his daylight cycle with the LED, because he's trying to do a full autonomous with humidity, temperature, and light.

Full day, almost like a true replicated day swing with heated peak lights turning on during noon or whatever it is, even with winter cycles. lights turning on with the hottest, like, during, you know, noon or whatever it is, even with, like, winter cycles. It's a really cool project, and I hope to create something similar eventually. That's cool.

Yeah, that's really cool. I guess kind of related to that, I've been thinking a lot about humidity. You know, maybe it's talking to Ron St. Pierre recently, but, you know, where these desert species that we think of as needing a dry environment or whatever, but they have these micro habitats where they have a certain nipper where they're getting very high humidity. You know, like, say, a snake in a burrow or, you know, these lizards coming out at night after the dew point hits, you know they're they're not just out doing their thing but they're out when there's that stimulus in the environment i think i think that was the big thing that ron kind of keyed me into was what he went when he was out hunting what night anoles or giant anoles or whatever in florida um or or chameleons or whatever they wouldn't they weren't really

coming out and they weren't finding anything and all of a sudden the dew point hit and then all of a sudden they're finding all these lizards. We've got a data set and I won't spill too many beans but we've got a data set that kind of suggests that certain desert snake may spend most of their time at very high humidity and that was something novel to me so I think i'm going to revamp my keeping and try to develop a uh maybe a more humid hide for for this species so that that that's information that's forthcoming i'm i apologize for the the mystery behind it but

there is now a half a can of beans on the floor there you. There you go. There you go. But, you know, I did see, it was somebody keeping Kleinmanei, the Egyptian tortoise, right? The small tortoise. And they had this, like, humid hide. And basically it was like an upside-down Rubbermaid container with a hole in the side so they could go inside. And then it had, like, a nebulizer attached to the top, and it was fogging the inside of this hide. And so they could go out and go around and get the light and the heat and everything, but then they could go back into this humid hide area and have, you know,

just like they maybe would in a burrow. And some of these burrow systems have, you know, 80, 90, 100% humidity in them. So even though they're out in the middle of the desert, they're very humid in these burrows. So kind of a cool thought that's come through my brain here. So I guess I'm just continuing to rethink, you know, how we keep desert species. Nice. Well. Good podcast you've been listening to me.

I'm a little behind in my listening, but I'm pretty sure there's a few. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I caught the, uh, the NPR where they kind of kind of talked about, you know, uh, you know, had Mike and Mike Curtin. Oh, my gosh, I feel so bad right now. Say it. Say it. I can't.

The more you say it, the more. It was Mike Curtin and my 46-year-old brain is pulling a Joolander right now. Hey, I got to relish this one. Oh, my gosh. What's that? Do you want me to say the name? Yes, please. No, no.

Don't do it. Oh, my God. Barms of Scott. Scott. Thank you. Jesus. don't do it all right um Scott thank you Jesus sorry Scott Borden is that the one yes okay my god is that what it feels like Justin it does and I you know I'm sorry dude I you know I have given now you know the other side right I felt like you know what i felt like i felt like an old man who didn't know where he was but he was walking down the street that's what i it's fun huh it's fun yeah yeah yeah mike and scott did it had a great

discussion about the the current state of the hobby and things like that and they brought up some really good points um yeah i think yeah maybe we ought to have those guys on to fight because it seemed like they were kind of encroaching into reptile fight club area with that that whole discussion it's really cool listening to that episode yeah yeah yeah and i i think i i mean you know not to not to bag on the podfather and the mack and wookie but had that had that been done right on repttile Fight Club, I think we could have teased out a little bit more of, you know, I think there's room for some, you know, maybe more, how do I want to say, spicy. Additional discussion. Yeah, yeah, spicy discussion that comes out of that.

I think, you know. They did issue that challenge at the end of the podcast. Yeah, and I... They said, we want to come on all the podcasts, so we better have those guys. I think that we need to be very honest about this and not shy away from some uncomfortable conversation. And, you know, if people get their feelings heard about, well, I don't like that that snake people are saying this about the hobby. Like, well, maybe you need to examine why you feel that way. And maybe you need to stare yourself in the mirror and stop, you know, kind of self aggrandizing the hobby.

So, yeah, I think I think that's that's definitely a show we should have and see if we can continue that conversation. I enjoyed listening to those guys. I am so sorry, Scott. My apologies for my senility Joolinder moment. Hey, now. I know. I know. I said I wouldn't do it, and I just did it again.

There's just so much room in our brains. We can only retain so much. And I guess what makes me mad is you actually have shit in your brain and I have shit for brains. That didn't sound good either way. Well, you know stuff. You're a doctor. Okay. That sounds a doctor. Okay. That sounds a little better. You're working with tropical viruses. All right.

Well, yeah, that's been a fun show. Thanks for listening and tuning in and hope to catch you next next week again um let's uh shout out to the npr network uh npr.com check out all their stuff all their their great uh interviews and man they're they're really making a push for some impressive episodes this this new year so check them out um thanks again to the podfather and your stuff out and wookie yeah where can we find you, Noah? You can find me on Facebook at Noah Richardson. Just look for the

goof with messy hair and a boa constrictor on his neck. That's my account. And we do have a reptile account. My dad and I, we have some of our snakes. We need to update it because one went missing and unfortunately one of them passed away. But it's at Pappy and the Dipsticks.

Nice. All right. Nice. Approved. That's a good one, yeah. Approved. A lot of musicians in our family, so we all said if we were ever to form a band, it would be Pappy and the Dipsticks.

That's awesome. Hey. That is a killer band name, actually. The Reptile Crew, I think that constitutes a good, you know, it's also good for a good reptile crew. Yeah, yeah. Good band name. Cool.

All right. Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much for having me on and listening to me battle them. Yeah, of course. We'll have you again. Yep, yep. It's been a lot of fun. I mean, that's one of my favorite parts of doing this is meeting new people

and, you know, kind of getting some face time and having a discussion. Because, you know, that's what this is about, you know, connecting with fellow enthusiasts and people who share that same passion and excitement. So, yeah, thanks for doing this. Yeah, I hope to hear more from other people that aren't as well-known, I guess. Yeah, yeah. And, I mean, that's the thing that we've found, too, with this, is people think maybe their ideas or their thoughts don't matter as much because they haven't been around as long or they haven't worked with as many species or whatever excuse.

But I think I've gained a lot of insights from just those people, you know, it seems like, you know, the guys that have been around a long time, you've heard from them a lot, you know, kind of how they think and what they're going to say and what the, how they're going to act. So, you know, I think we, we, uh, limit ourselves in our own learning when we assume that we don't have anything to learn from some of the newer, you know, new people. And, but I, I do think a lot of, you know, new guys look for different ways to keep or, you know, have different thoughts on issues and different mindsets. So, yeah, it's been really good. All right, well, thanks for listening,

and we'll catch you again next week for another episode of Reptile Fight Club. If you touch your snake or you don't touch your snake, remember, Reptile Fight Club. If you touch your snake or you don't touch your snake, remember, Reptile Fight Club is here for you. Bye.