Reptile Fight Club - Uv debate with special guests Zac Loughman and Ryan McVeigh.

Episode Date: July 16, 2021

In this episode, Justin and Chuck bring special guests Zac Loughman and Ryan McVeigh to tackle the topic of UV.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 MDR Network. All right, welcome to another edition of Reptile Fight Club. That's your hosts here, Justin and Chuck. How's it going, man? Good, how are you, dude? Good, good. Excited for this episode. Yeah, yeah, this should be fun. I'm also very excited for this.

So, I guess, just kind of a little introduction, if you're new to the podcast, we fight here, right? So we have two different sides of an issue or a debate that exists within herpetoculture. And we arbitrarily flip a coin and then whoever wins the coin toss gets to pick what side they defend or promote. And so you may not agree with the side you get. And so it can be a little interesting. You've got to kind of find the other side to the argument. So that's kind of the point of this, to give each argument two sides. So today's topic, well, I don't know.

You got anything going that you need to get off your chest up front? No, not really. What happened? i don't know you got anything going that you need to get off your chest up front no no not really you um what happened i i don't know i had a uh trip up into the mountains saw some birds it was good um yeah it's always good to get back into nature but uh yeah got some got some more uh amy eggs on the way some of the uh centralian nobtail geckos. I think she's laying right now. That's exciting. Always good to get eggs. The babies that hatched are fantastic. They're so awesome. They just shed again and they're just glowing. It's always fun to work with cool geckos for sure. Otherwise, the season's moving forward. I've got a bunch of Antaresia that took without even tricking them or, you know, I just threw in a pink

mouse and a bunch of pygmies eight first try. That just doesn't happen. So, you know, like five or six of them took right off the bat. So that's going to save me a lot of headaches and stomach aches over the next year or so. All right. Well, um, so today's topic, uh, UV, right. And, uh, should be an interesting, uh, discussion. Uh, we've got a couple really bright guys here to with us today. Um, Ryan McVay, um, and Zach Lofman might pronounce, I hope I'm pronouncing that right. I, I never know which way to say it, but I think that's,

yeah, thumbs up. So, all right. So, we've got these guys on today to discuss the kind of pros and cons or usage of UV in the reptile industry and in the terrarium mainly. So, we'll kind of hear from both sides of that topic. So let's see. Welcome to the podcast, you guys. Why don't you give us a little introduction of yourself? You want to go first, Ryan? Sure. So no, thanks for having me, guys. I've been dealing with reptiles for a long time, like since I can remember. I'm pretty sure I'm like birth. Birth. I just walked out, you know, crawled outside and caught a toad or something. Yeah, you've been around for a while and done a lot of great stuff.

So what's kind of the highlights of your herpetological career? You know, founding the Madison Area Herp Society, being a state representative for Wisconsin for U.S. Arc Managing and running Zilla for six years. And now starting my own company has really kind of been it. So being able to launch VivTech has been really cool. Cool. Very cool. All right, Zach, how about yourself? Yeah, so I'm Zach Lofman.

I'm a professor at West Liberty University. And here at the university, we have a zoo science major. And I'm the guy in charge of that major. And as part of the major, I kind of had the dream of being told to build a reptile collection. So, you know, I started with a water monitor because I couldn't have one of those at home. And we're currently building a 14 by 10 foot enclosure for it as we speak. And my duties with that major are I teach an undergrad class and a graduate class called Herpetology and Herpetoculture. And basically we cover reptile, classic herpetology class. For the lecture part, evolution, taxonomy, behavior, biology, natural history.

And then the lab is all herpetoculture. So one of the things we obviously have two labs on is proper lighting and UV radiation for herps in captivity. So like everybody here, lifetime herp nut. I've been keeping since I was technically my first herp was when I was seven. I'm 42 and have not there's not been a second since that time. I have not had at least one. So very cool. I think I'm in the same boat. I think I went a couple of years. Yeah. Yeah. Two years in grad school, I think, technically. But and then speaking of grad school, anybody listening to this, this is my shameful plug. Uh, I also run the evidence-based herpetoculture laboratory, which has graduate students who are

doing theses in herpetoculture. So you want to do this for your master's degree and you're listening to this, uh, hit me up. Yeah. Very cool program. I'm, I'm actually on one of the committees for one of your students. So yeah, are. Yeah. Very, very cool program. And really kind of pushing things forward. I think that's a great way to do it. And some really neat projects that can be done. If you have something you're wondering about in herpetology and want to do a master's degree, hit Zach up. That's a cool program. All right. Well, you guys ready to fight?

I'm ready. No holds barred. All right. Well, we've got the coin toss to get out of the way. Let's have Zach call it. Okay. You want to call it in the air? Yeah. Here we go. All right.

It is tails. Okay. You get to choose your topic, and then you get to choose whether you want to go first or second well i think if i made uh ryan argue against uv he would promptly leave his house and play in traffic his head might explode and i don't want to do that all right i will take the yeah i will question uv on this one but I'm going to throw out a disclaimer before we go any further. I am 100% on team UV. So I'm just going to be the devil's advocate for tonight. Yeah, I think we all are. I think that's fair to say that everybody thinks that UV is important and reptiles have evolved to use UV.

I guess it's just maybe some of the points of application and things like that that we could probably argue against. All right. Well, let's get into it. Do you want to go first or do you want to defer to your opponent there, Zach? I will defer to Ryan. Good call. That's the strategy right there. I'm always a fan of the deferment. I will defer. Okay, Ryan. The floor is yours. We'll try to, you know, have maybe a few minutes of your, you know, bringing up a topic and then Zach will have a time to counter that topic and we'll go from there. All right. What you got? The floor is yours, Ryan. Like, I don't even know how to start that.

The sun exists outside. Light comes from the sun, makes all things alive. Argue that. Okay, so I guess in your mind, what's kind of the biggest reason that we should use UV in our terrariums or, you know, the biggest benefit, I guess. I think really one of the big things that everybody, generally everybody knows UVB. A lot of people know UVB. And we talk about UVB and calcium, vitamin D synthesis and calcium absorption and the necessary necessity of all reptiles to be able to have UVB. But one thing that we don't talk about nearly as much as uva and one and

something to know is uv uvb can be supplemented like you can supplement d3 not it's not as effective and you miss a lot of stuff but you could supplement d3 for the calcium absorption but you cannot supplement the effects of of uva which in it which interacts with the serotonin in the animal's brains. So it has a lot to do with their natural instincts and behavior. It regulates their circadian rhythm, so their day-night cycle. And a lot of reptiles actually see the UVA spectrum, which we can't see. So it's a lot of how they see each other, how they see their surroundings, how they find food, things like that. So without having that in every single animal's enclosure,

you're essentially forcing them to live in with seasonal depression and be colorblind. Okay. Zach, what do you think? So definitely agree that UVA is important. Definitely agree that UVB is important. So what I would question is the technology we have today, is it really truly adequate enough to replicate what's occurring in nature? And do we have the instruments and, some of them have, have in herpetoculture have been kind of taken from the unit of measurement, which full thing, you know, full disclosure biologist here. So units of measurement, that's kind of where I'm at, but I know that we've taken those and then kind of converted them into the Ferguson index to make it so that we have a, you know, one to 12 scale or something to that

effect. But when we convert to that, is that really measuring the UVA in a manner where we really kind of get a fundamental understanding or have we taken this really convoluted, complicated process in technology and kind of dumbed it down to a point where we may be making mistakes and we don't realize we're making mistakes because our instrument of measurement isn't what it needs to be to actually get what the reality of what's going on. With the UVA, I absolutely agree that it's critical. If you have a chameleon, for example, they literally cannot communicate without it properly. But to that effect, if you're dosing them with too much UVA, UVA penetrates muscle tissue, it goes deep into cells, and you absolutely run the risk of causing mitotic

problems, which can lead to various types of cancer. It leads to, you can fry the cells in the retina just like you can with UVB. So my argument would be, is it more important to have, you know, the technology where you can do this inside? Or can we just, you know, truly replicate nature by herpetoculturalists figuring out ways to, if they can, maintain their organisms outside. Because if you, you know, now, as a conservation biologist, I would flat out say there's a million potential problems there. If you don't put a, you know, good lid on, but for the sake of argument, which is the point of the podcast, could we not get the best result of the sun by simply employing the sun? Well, I totally agree with that i live in northern illinois i no longer keep reptiles then because i can only keep them for three months

outside yeah so i think obviously one giant setback and that is a it's a good point there really is no way to completely as far as i I can, to know, the 80 years that they've been doing studies with UVB and UVA on which wavelengths they utilize to process a lot of their bodily functions. And by knowing which wavelengths those are, then we can dial in the lights to produce that. But there is, you are right, there is a lot of, there is still a lot of unknown to an extent with uv like granted providing what we're doing in captivity right now is better than nothing and it's better it's never going to be as good as the sun but it's always going to be better than nothing

and that really is the reality and we can't put something as good as even if we could which technically we could make a bulb that would be as good it would be way too intense it would be way too incredible too much for even advanced or like intermediate keepers to even understand to not kill their animal um just like you said with being able to overdo it you know with with any kind of lighting um but the other thing too is is just understanding how all of that works is, I think, one of the bigger downfalls of what's going on with UV in herpetoculture, is there's just this really, it's been made over the years to sound so complicated, and that you just need to know it. You just need the bulb. You don't need to know why. It does calcium stuff. Like, you need it. Everybody knows UVB. But if you actually

ask them, like, what does it actually do, how does that work and what matters in the wavelengths? Almost nobody. There's very, very few people who could actually answer that question unless lighting. We are able to specify which wavelengths we want the peaks of that power to be at, but that can also be a bad thing. So in a positive way, it's awesome for us to be able to really drive the energy from that light to the wavelengths that the animal's needed in. That's a positive the negative is if something goes wrong with the way that that's designed then i can make a light that under a uv index would look great but it'll kill your animal or it'll provide no uvb whatsoever just because of how the the uv index works it's a weighted system that was created by a canadian meteorologist to tell you based on your how light your skin is if you're going to get a sunburn.

It has nothing to do with reptiles whatsoever. It was just used as a way to kind of define like a better – it's a better weight of the three types of UV lighting and it's a better way to read it. But because we're doing man-made bulbs, you can trick it. So really what everybody needs to know is you really need to have two, you know, multiple meters to be able to test the UVB plus the UV index plus, you know, a lot of stuff. But no, that is a hole that we can dig into like really deep and the measuring and the accuracy of what we're doing compared to sunlight. But I think that based on the keeper's abilities and our ability to get to get those products to people that allow them to be successful um i think we're in we're in a good spot and we're

on a good path to slowly increasing and that's one thing i do like is we're slowly creating different types of bulbs and new technologies and and and getting a little bit closer every time and without jumping too far ahead because that is the one thing you can run into with a problem with this kind of lighting is going too far too fast. Yeah. Not that any of that was really a counter argument

as much as a... Yeah, thank you for helping me. At the same time, I mean, when it comes... This is the weird part with UV, especially for us to go back and forth on this is that there are some arguments of like the quality of the UV or if we're able to measure it properly, which, again, solar meters, the number one thing everybody uses it. None of them peak exactly at where we need it to. Nothing is nothing we have reads perfectly.

Nothing. where we need it to nothing is nothing we have reads perfectly nothing all of them get us close it close enough to feel comfortable and to know if there's danger but not enough to get an accurate like if you were looking for an accurate reading on any uv bulb you have to use a photo spectrometer period like it's and i'm and i'm assuming that's if if you're going to buy a a lab quality instrument uh for measuring that's going to be an expensive piece of equipment. Yeah, VivTech just bought one. They're about four grand. Yeah.

And that's for the cheap, like little model. So it's not something everybody's going to be doing to test their light bulb. But in reality, at the same time, I don't know that we need to be that specific, especially when we're talking in the trade and talking with you know pet quality lighting the the reality is we if the bulbs are producing what's needed to be produced and we're assuming that that is the case and they're we're measuring them they look good they're in the white right wavelengths they have the right outputs in microwaves they look good then what you're really using your meters for as a hobbyist is really just tracking the degradation of the UV. Because the UV degrades over time, the light will still work even though it's not putting out enough UV for your animal,

and you're not going to know that unless you're able to test it. So I mean, really, when it comes to measuring type equipment, especially in the hobby, we're really tracking, we're tracking changes. We're not looking for exact specific outputs i would assume it's a quality control thing for you guys as well i mean you want to be testing bulb batches to make sure that you're getting relatively the same uh readings from batch to batch yeah and for us yeah exactly for us it makes a lot more sense to do that because we one we hand test every single bulb. So out of all the bulbs that we have, you can buy online, every single one of those has been handled at least three times to be tested.

And this is going to allow us to really nail that down, get our specs for our manufacturer really dialed in. And then as well as there's new technologies that come out, we can start to test them. I can do all the testing. We can do all the testing and make sure that this is going to work, that it's hitting the parameters it needs to, and that it's hopefully fulfilling that next step of technology in order to create that perfect bulb. But we need I need to have that in order to see if it's even there. And I need that kind of accuracy to make sure that those lights are producing it start producing the right wavelengths in the right lighting so that when it goes out into the hobby and you guys are using it you don't have to check to make sure you are as a consumer are able to know that

okay I can see the spectrometer reading on the website I know that it's giving the right numbers you don't have to do all the work that I had to do to make sure to get all those lines to line up and get all those diodes to work correctly. Okay. Zach, you want to touch on some of these topics that have been brought up? Yeah, I'll try. And remember, Team UVB, but not today. So my question with the light bulbs and it is like with this new technology that's coming out with the LED based UVB. When you're dealing with the sun and you've got an animal outside, essentially what they're being hit with is a full spectrum of light. That's why we say full spectrum lighting. So they're getting infrared, visible light, UVA, UVB, and hopefully never any UVC thanks to our atmosphere.

But one of the challenges with the light bulbs is, old light bulbs, new light bulbs, is that as these things degrade, every now and then you can get a wonky bulb that decides to go the other way. And then suddenly you get these peaks. And why would you risk the health of your animal with a light bulb if we can supplement if there's the possibility of it peaking out and then basically irradiating the animal with way too much of a given radiation? Like, why risk that? That's an argument that I know the counter argument to but i hear all the time and since it's my job today to be this person you know i'm not going to necessarily want to move forward with basting my animal in in radiation that i as a keeper don't

understand uh so why why risk it if herpeticulture came up with the technology back in the day of, you know, we have rapache and various D3 powders that there's actually been a fair amount of research that's gone into. You know, you can supplement on that front. You can do the, just expose them outside to get them the calcidiol calcitriol all that kind of good stuff going uh it just could be somewhat risky and then the other thing i'd like to bring up is that when you say that you do all the work so that the keeper doesn't does that mean that essentially we just simply put this light bulb in and we never have to worry about it ever again until it burns out?

Like, is that the way of the future is you don't have to understand the science or the technology? You can just use it and your beard is going to be fine? I hope so. Yeah, I as a as a I'll put my science cap on and would say that I still think you would absolutely have to incorporate some kind of knowledge base. Like every keeper needs to have a fundamental understanding of this if they're going to use it, because if they don't have an understanding of it and they go and they buy the 12.0 UVB bulb for their leopard gecko and then they put it on for 12 hours a day sure that's going to probably make the leopard gecko run and hide because they can see that and that's no it's being irradiated with that but at the end of the day though like do we really want to be promoting this with with novice keepers is there some other angle of attack for this that we should be thinking of and lord forgive me for my sins i just i just had a quick question to interpose here um is is that a you know worrying about

kind of a shift in the in the spectrum is that um for all uv lights that we might use or is that specific to a certain kind zach yeah oh um was that for me it's for all it could be for all you know it just really it depends on your knowledge base when you're when you're going into it um okay so you know some my understanding and this will be pivoted straight to you, Ryan, is that with the LED light bulbs, they're basically, you're honing in on a very specific set of nanometers. So you don't really have like that whole spectrum of UVB, but you're hitting like right at, what is it, 290 or 280 or whatever the nanometers are. I'm sure you can. Yeah, 295. But when it comes to the actual physiology of what goes on, I know that certain wavelengths of light are responsible for more D3 synthesis

than other wavelengths of light. And the only thing I would do to, like, pose a question is, have we done the science to know yet what the actual magical wavelength is in the uvb spectrum to get the right amount of d3 synthesis because if you can actually if you irradiate with too much uvb you can get into hyper calcification and you're basically taking in too much and since you you you need that uva radiation to basically stop it. Like, you know, that's the trigger. And if you don't have that trigger, what's going on? So, like, have we done the science to know what's the brakes

and what's the right wavelength so that we're not actually, you know, killing them by loving them? Yeah. No, so thankfully there actually is. We do have all that. We have an enormous. so this is what's funny to me when it comes into like talking uva and uvb especially when you get into like hobbyists that are like nah like my animal doesn't need it and i'm like well yeah my kids don't need

vegetables or baths or to brush their teeth but like they'll live that's just not the quality of life i want for them so it's kind of the same thing like reptiles don't need it to live so there's a lot of like argument against it but there's studies that go back into the 1940s that show how the parietal eye in reptiles works how that third eye in their brain works how how they see uv how uva lighting uvb lighting affects them um so within the within the herpetocultural community u UV is this thing we talked about like some people are for it some are against it and in the scientific community 80 years ago they figured out they need it and we just didn't pay attention because it's

another bulb and if I why what I just spent $5,000 on a lace monitor I don't want to spend $40 on another bulb I do you know that just doesn't make sense but like that's where you get people from. But the problem is, is that, like, we do know. If you know, you know. There is science out there that shows the huge need for these animals to have access to that kind of lighting. For vitamin D3 and for synthesis for reptiles, 296, 295 is right that perfect. That's that magic number for them.

But they use all the way from 290 up to 335 nanometers um and when it comes to the led type lighting that is one downfall if you were to only use a single diode if it was a one diode bulb then yeah you you could be cutting out some aspects of the uv spectrum um multiple diode bulbs are going to be better. And then on top of it, the technology for those LEDs is continuously changing. So it's going to continuously change and adapt. But right now, as is, we're able to dial in and get a good range within at least 10 to 20 nanometers of range

inside of that range where the reptiles are, which is about 40 nanometers total. So we're catching a lot of the high points of those pieces of the spectrum that are, how do I put this, the peaks that need to be hit for them to synthesize the most D3 most efficiently, we're able to dial into those. But that is one downfall of using any single bulb, any single bulb at all, even the LED, fluorescent, mercury vapor, any of them, they all lack something. They all lack part of the spectrum, whether it's whether it's colored visible light that they're missing blues

or reds, or whether it's, you know, different parts of the UV spectrum or different, you know, wavelengths that they just don't peak at as high. There's always going to be problems. So the reality is in order to get a really true full spectrum and not a marketing full spectrum because every full spectrum bulb is full visible color spectrum, not full spectrum light. So to get a full spectrum, a true full spectrum, you'd have to use multiple bulbs. When it comes to the safety, I've never heard of a bulb going up after being used, only going down, just because of how they're made. So I'd be curious to see anybody seeing peaks after a burn-in, just because that would be not sure how the physics and chemistry would work to make that happen if it wasn't like

some kind of electrical pulse or increase in electrical power just because when you're talking about the reason that UV bulbs degrade and a lot of people don't kind of realize this but like let's talk fluorescent so a fluorescent bulb is a tube filled with electrons with a phosphorus coating on the inside so you have a balance that builds up a ton of energy in a coil bulb that ballast is in the base of the bulb and in a tube it's in the fixture it builds up a ton of energy in a coil bulb that ballasts is in the base of the bulb and in a tube. It's in the fixture. It builds up a ton of energy and it punches that all those electrons with a ton of energy and they all fire up. That gives you your light as electrons are shooting around inside there.

There that energy is what you're seeing. Those electrons hitting the phosphor is what you're seeing is visible light. Some of that phosphor in there is what converts them from the visible spectrum into the UV spectrum. When it hits those phosphor particles, it burns them up. And in that burn up is when that changes spectrum. So over time, that's why you're slowly degrading the UV output because you're slowly burning up molecules of that, that chemical that's, or that material that's used to change the spectrum. So over time time that's where our bulbs burn out luckily that's one thing i'm really liking with the led is so far based on everything that the studies that have been done and everything that we have with our bulbs and our manufacturer and the ones that are out there the the uv won't degrade enough to need to be replaced before the led bulb burns out so we're looking at like close to a four-year lifespan of UV output.

And the bulb lifespan is about four years. So even then, I'm not sure. In our testing in-house, our accelerated speed testing, we're actually, after over a year and a quarter's worth of use, there's no drop in UV at all. Like we're getting the exact same numbers as the day I turned it on.

So that's something. Is that from intensity or is that from spectrum? Are you getting the same intensities? Same intensity. Same intensity. So potentially you could have, so like let's say I'm more familiar with phosphorescence. You know, you have a mixed gas tube that gets excited by electrons. And as those gases get used up, that spectrum will change.

I don't totally understand the LED portion of that. But, I mean, I would assume you do to change leds because they do degrade over time so from what i found that they like even the manufacturer let me know that they're they they have seen degradation but i'm not seeing it so we're watching it over multiples and we're still not seeing much for degradation so i'm curious if it's over a longer period of time maybe it's not a linear degradation um so we're watching it but um leds are different than all other bulbs all other bulbs are passed through electricity so that's where you're getting the light the electricity is passing through and coming out the other side and returning

in an led it's a single point electrical uh electric electric rate it goes electricity going into the diode comes out as light it doesn't there is no return so you don't that's why they're so efficient yeah and that's why you you you i think and and what it is is it's basically a tiny little plate with pinholes punched in it and depending on the size and the and the arrangement of the pinholes you change the wavelength so once those are set, there's nothing that's degrading or burning up or being used. So unless it's jostled or hit or physically altered, I am not sure how mechanically. And I'm not, I understand the bulbs. I'm not an LED expert.

But I don't see how, with what I know, how they would degrade rather than just burning out or failing. So I don't see them having much of a degradation. Okay. So then my question thinking biology, this is fun because we have an engineer and a biologist. Yeah. Yeah. So biologically speaking,

then if you're going to. So am I understanding correctly that the LED bulbs are going to work because you've got the individual diodes on the on the bulb? And then you've basically punched the holes and tweaked it such that you're going to create that wavelength and the nanometer output of light. And that's how you get you dial it into those specific wavelengths yeah basically it in a nutshell okay so then if those if certain wavelengths are important more important than others are you a when when when the organisms are basking and they're receiving the light you know there there is biological evidence that points towards, even though our particular wavelength may not be overly,

they might not use it a lot, they still use it, and they only need like 4% radiation of that wavelength on a given day. So if they're being hit with a constant radiation of nanometers at certain wavelengths, but they're not getting that those residuals so they're only getting the extreme all the time can't that lead potentially to the hyper calcification uh because my understanding is with the with the old school bulbs and correct me if i'm wrong you're you're kind of hitting them with multiple it's much easier to create a gradient i would think, with the coil bulb or the tube bulb just due to the way that the UV is created versus dialing it in, hitting it with electricity, and this nanometer comes out of the diode.

So biologically speaking, you would probably get a smoother gradient with the old technology than the new technology. So why would we go to this new technology that's kind of going against the biology in one sense? I'm not saying it's anti-D3. I'm just trying to make an argument here. And that's a good question. So when it comes to the fluorescence, the phosphors that are used are extremely specific. So they're able to hit very tight wavelengths and peaks and wavelengths. We're still hitting peaks with all of the old types, with all of the current other than LED types of UV. We still have peaks. The peak just

isn't as tight. So at the base of that peak, it widens out a little bit. So you'll get a little bit of other wavelengths, but there's still massive, there's still gaps in the wavelengths of all the bulbs. And again, really what it comes down to is to know, I think more research would have to be done to find out how those different wavelengths over time are going to make a difference with or without them and are we missing those with the old bulbs too are we hitting them we would have again it comes down to if you really want full coverage full wavelength full everything you need like five different bulbs to do it um and right now there just isn't anything perfect but which is why you need a

different light for your plant lights and a different light for your uv and a different light for your heat and all that stuff. But I think as we go forward, what we're finding and when we get into LED is we're looking at the big thing that LED for me really solves is less the spectrum. I think it's going to allow us to play with it a little bit more and get this to a better point. It's not right where I think it needs to be yet, but I would say it's equivalent or close to equivalent with what already exists, which also I don't think is quite where we need it to be yet. So I think there's some possibility for growth with it. But the one thing I really do love about the LED is an option, even if we say it's equivalent to what exists and it's not an

improvement in led output is the improvement in efficiency and longevity and then the other piece is that it stays it's when it's as far as i can tell if this bulb is on in the next five years if it's on it's producing enough uv for your animal and that is where a ton of other types of technologies fall short. And the other part, too, is you were talking about, like, this is something that I've had to explain a lot lately. And this is something that your whole listening, everybody needs to think about this for a second. Starting a herb society and trying to educate the public and educate new keepers on what it means, like, to keep animals and understand the husbandry and the biology behind them that you don't feed them like a dog and when people ask how often do you feed your animal and i say when it looks like it's hungry and that's not an answer they understand because i'm not feeding on a schedule so it's difficult for people to understand

just how to feed the reptile correct let alone understand the lighting and how it works and all the synthesis even just under even just getting them to know uvb is a need for animals is still hard i mean it's hard it's an it's enough of a issue that we're having a talk about it like this is something that shouldn't be it should be like a well yeah of course you keep an animal inside an enclosure can't let it run around outside or you'll lose it should be the same thing you have an enclosure you have uvb and uva you need it should just be that easy but. You have an enclosure, you have UVB and UVA. You need it. Should just be that easy.

But one thing that, so this is, but what I wanted to get to was when, when we're looking at running a rescue with Erica running a rescue in the house, we see a lot of the things that go wrong in the hobby. And it's not, it's not a lack of care. It's not a lack of wanting to learn. And that's what people don't understand. We all talk about how we need to get to those keepers. We need to educate them better. We need to get them to understand that they need to know more than they do for a dog or a cat when

they walk into the store. But there's a huge fundamental problem in us thinking that we can ever fix that. And the problem is the people that are going into like a Petco or PetSmart or a local pet store to get their first gecko, they don't know anything. They maybe may. And I'm assuming for a general per average person, let's say they're more than likely the kid got excited, saw it at a friend's house. They learned about it in school. They saw one. They wanted one. Maybe they did some research. Maybe they didn't. Maybe it was online. So it was all worthless anyway. But who knows? You know, so it could have been a Facebook group, and they are going to put their bearded dragon on tile now, so like, they don't know where to get good information from, and then if they didn't do any research in the beginning, I don't blame them, because if you go to, when I go to Petco to get dog food, I'm not expected to be an animal nutritionist to know which dog food and

to go through the labels and understand. Now, a lot of people go, okay, I know I want grain-free. I know my dog's allergic to salmon. This bag will work. But they're not, no one in that building knows like dog food down to the point of being able to explain it on the level we're explaining UV. You just assume that the manufacturer has done that and that you have a quality product. You can feed your dog. Same thing happens on the small animal and exotic side. So people come in and they see a kit. It says leopard gecko kit. This was designed by a company who makes its money selling products for reptiles. They are the authority on reptile care. So you assume as a consumer that you're going in and buying this box

and it has everything in there that you need. Same thing happens if I get a puppy, they give me a kennel and they give me a leash and they give me a collar and they give me a bag of dog food. And I take care of a puppy because you just, you walk it, you clean its poop. And with reptiles, they don't even realize that it's not all the same thing. They don't all come from the same place. Every animal has different care. It's not like dog or cat. So the majority of what people see as pets, when they go into a pet store, they go in with this, this guise almost of like, everything I need to know is here for me to be successful. And that's where the problem lies in husbandry. And I find in the hobby. And that's why I'm excited about something like the LED bulbs is because we can take that knowledge out. They don't need to know it. They, we just need to be able to create

an enclosure and products for them that will help them be successful without them needing to know why it'll, they'll be accessible, successful with it. Because to think that we're going to get people to 10 years of herpetocultural knowledge to understand on the level that we do uv how are you going to do that to somebody who just walked into petco and is picking up their first bearded dragon and they're just buying a kit that says bearded dragon and assuming everything they need is in it and they don't there's not even this idea that oh i need to know more because when you get a if you go get a puppy you don't go home and go i need to know everything about this puppy you kind of already if you go get a puppy, you don't go home and go, I need to know everything about this puppy. You kind of already know, you kind of, you feel like you already know, even when you leave the store, if you don't, they'll help you enough to feel like

you got it. So the same thing happens with kits and with reptile. They make you feel like you've got it. Here's a box kit. And then you leave. And then there's no follow-up or anything. You're kind of left to swim out there alone. And then those people don't know what's in the kit why it's in the kit why it's there the years of knowledge and stuff that went in to build that kit in the way that that manufacturer did or even how somebody at a pet store would tell you set the cage up like this now we know why we tell them to because we've been doing it for decades and we know why those components need to be like that but that person doesn't and I think it's really hard for a lot of us a lot of times to take ourselves not even just back to being a kid,

but try to remember the day you didn't like reptiles, what you'd think about them. I can't. I don't have that day. I don't know what that day is. So I can't. It's hard to relate. You got a response to that. I want to I want to Me? Yeah. I do. But I'm going to go to the middle, though. I'm trying to do my anti-UV, but I can't do it on this one. I've got to go to the middle. That's fine.

Go ahead. Because it has to do with education, and that's something that I'm really big on. I think that this is where herpetoculture just shoots itself right in the foot, historically. Because here we are debating you know, debating this. And the science clearly demonstrates that these organisms need this to a certain degree or needed a lot. And so when that person that goes to Petco is all excited and then they go on to social media and then they join the bearded dragon group or the leopard gecko group, whatever group it is. And then they bring up UVB and then they are immediately flamed by someone that then sends this message of oh whoa whoa whoa i don't need the uvb or what i what i think it does you know i've seen my students do this in

the herpetoculture class is it makes people overcompensate if you then are on the opposite side of it and say oh no they need uvb they've got to have UVB. And you're not teaching about UVB. Then that person goes out. They're standing at Petco. They don't know anything. And they buy the highest wavelength of UVB they can get. And then they irradiate their leopard gecko that's in an exo that's only eight inches tall.

So there's a flip side to that, which is the main point of this is just education. That's the piece that's missing the most. And the tribalism of herpetoculture sets up a dynamic where if we were just as a, as a culture, be open-minded and stop saying, well, I've done this forever. So this is the way I'm going to do it. Like that is the absolute worst flipping phrase anybody can say. And if you say that, I don't care if you've bred whatever, 35 years, you can do it better if you look, like everybody can. And so if that ego would get out of there and we were to just simply look at the science,

you know, talk about things, not yell at each other and just think uh we could get to that common point where we could have a light bulb and and someone buys the light bulb at petco and then they go home and they bring up a question and it's not they're not entering this giant fray it's just oh yeah they need it and here's why like that's all we have to get to uh and that doesn't matter if you're that could be uvb uvb uva that could be naturalistic versus sterile literally there's a million that this whole podcast around these hot button topics and trying to get to that middle ground and show that we should be discussing those so and so back to my side of the argument then is is that how do we educate the public in a manner?

Because I will say that I do think that the intention of just making a light bulb that you put into a socket and you're done. I like that. I think that's good. But at the same time, I still am going to come back to something I already said, which is if you're going to have the animal, you need to have a basic understanding of how this thing works and why it's working. Because that way, you know, when the light bulb goes bad, you can do it. Like not everybody can go out and buy a solarometer. They're not exactly cheap, though I hear Diptech has one that's cheaper. I've heard that too. But on that same token, I just think that the way we approach things and UVB is a great topic as a as as a I hate saying the word hobby.

Sorry. As a culture or passion. I just think that we really need to kind of reevaluate how we do this as a whole um and it's both sides it's the hardcore bio naturalistic people and it's the hardcore tub keepers like we all just need to kind of respect and get to the middle and just try to evaluate and that's where being a scientist is pretty awesome because in science we're supposed to take emotion out of things and just look at the data so uh but with with UV, that's one of the main issues is I feel that we still are in a, the intentions of UV are absolutely wonderful. And I, you know, I feel that it's definitely a necessity for many organisms. But just to get back to the point of debate, like, what about nocturnal animals? So we have these organisms that basically have evolved where the bulk of their activity is occurring when the sun is down. And there's definitely behavioral modalities that they do that we know as ecologists that they are performing these behaviors that we don't realize are behaviors to get irradiated by uvb and i can list a litany of those but for the nocturnal world what do they

need uvb do they not you need uvb what's what's the deal on that front well uh if you can list one reptile that is truly nocturnal and doesn't see daylight ever then you're good and then then we have an argument but but there aren't any because they there's no there you can't like so reptiles this is the thing like nocturnal has become like the new n-word for me i hate it i hate nocturnal they're crepuscular at best and like so reptiles amphibians like reptiles amphibians don't aren't out there so if bats are nocturnal the sun has gone below the horizon it does not exist they come out and then they're back in before it peaks out again they don't see sunlight almost ever if they do they're sick and dying and we know that like they're nocturnal they don't do light reptiles though need like they spend

their time out at night because it's maybe not 130 degrees there at night. Or that's when their food is out. But at the same time during the day, there was a study in 2000 that showed that desert banded geckos in Texas will stick just the tip of their head at the end of their, just to absorb UV for 15 to 20 minutes a day. So they won't even come out. They'll just get the light that's penetrating the hole of their den and they'll get it to just hit part of their body. And because their skin is thinner and they're able to absorb more of that easier than the skin of like a bearded dragon, they don't need it nearly as long. So all reptiles at some point are out during the day and get hit with some sort of UV, even for a short period of time.

Can I break in for just a second on that? On that study, did they measure any kind of readout that would suggest that it's for UV rather than, say, heat to get their blood flowing and their brain working properly? We know reptiles need heat to function properly. I would have to actually pull it back up. I haven't read that study in a while but to give you the exact details but it is specifically on UVB so it is about UV absorption but yeah it was for the it was it was done with banded geckos and collared lizards I want to say the other one they're looking at you know one

that's obviously a high needneed diurnal animal versus a less-need, more crepuscular, more, quote, nocturnal species. But, yeah, I mean, so... If you could point us to the papers, we can make them available. If we can get a copy, we can make them available on the Facebook page, and people can look into this. I think it's really fascinating. So, yeah, sorry.

No, and that's something that like and you're talking about like getting information to people. And again, it's shameless plug, but whatever. Like this is what we're doing with me and Erica are doing are changing some stuff we're doing with VivTech from how I've done it my whole life. Because I think it's all I think everything not everything there's a lot of that we do with keeping reptiles even the best keepers in the world that I think are wrong like like for example if you tell somebody to set up a 20 gallon long for their leopard gecko and not not talking about uv but let's say you say tell them set it up you're 20 long you have a hide on one corner water on the other corner maybe you build the middle of it to look like the rocky hillside

in iraq like it's perfect and then there's a little hide and then there's a water bowl 90 percent of the footprint of that enclosure is open space the animal only uses 10 of its life of the day and then the 90 of the time it's spent is in its hide which we make this big like we make tiny and then it's not easy to control because it's some small container or deli cup or something so like there's a lot of things i think we need to tweak and when it comes to uv and stuff too and explaining it that's another thing we need to tweak so the vivtech bulbs are probably some of the only ones that aren't called desert or tropical and the word desert and tropical aren't on them at all and i did that on purpose because the desert tropical like differentiation in the hobby kills me because when you talk desert animals every single desert

package shows you the dunes of the sahara and every tropical package is the rainforest floor but there's this thing where the earth has other habitats in between the forest floor of the rainforest and the sayara dunes like there's tons of other things and if we classify i think that's a big part of what has become a problem in herpetoculture is is all of this will tie into the fact that we've tried to make it so people see reptiles as an inviting and easy to care for easy to deal with pet they're easy for a family to have, but we keep saying easy, low maintenance, easy, and we keep dumbing it down till it's,

we've made it so easy that now they don't think they need to know anything, and now they're not learning anything. And then they're not given the products and the things that they need to be successful because they're given a kit that is the basic entry level where the manufacturer assumes as they get into the hobby, they'll start reading and learning. And as someone who has a rescue in my house, I can tell you that's not true. They don't.

Some people do. It's great. But a lot of people don't. Zach, do you want to respond? Yeah. Zach, do you want to say something there? Well, I actually want to go all the way back to there's no such thing as a nocturnal reptile. Because that I can debate.

I respectfully disagree because evolutionarily, the concept of nocturnality doesn't necessarily mean that you are only active at night and then you do not move during the day what that means from an ecological perspective is that you are active 80 of the time or more normally in a given 12 hour not 12 hour but basically a certain photon level you know between civil twilight and swivel daylight all that kind of good stuff um and there's plenty of adaptations that that herps have that are specific to having the majority of your activity be at night. Like we have vertical pupils in nocturnal animals so they can open their iris up all the way. And then like the tapetum lucidum in crocodiles and certain species of lizards, which reflects the light around in there. So, you know, in those organisms, there's also direct correlations to UVB. So like there are several species of geckos, hemidectylic geckos come to mind that have a very thin stratum corneum, that outer layer of skin.

And, you know, it has been shown that when they are exposed to sunlight, they can irradiate a little bit faster. And if you were to douse that thing with UVB and not view it as a nocturnal animal, you're running into some potential problems. When animals bounce between, we call that cathermal. So basically that's where they are sometimes diurnal, sometimes nocturnal, but they are fundamentally, you know, there are plenty of adaptations associated with nocturnality and plenty of adaptations with being diurnal. And that's one of the ideas behind snakes not needing UVB is the fact that that all started way back when in herpetology because they don't have the parietal eye um and when you look

and that is theorized one of the origins for snakes is that they basically you know during the age of dinosaurs there were a million lizard things for lack of a better word and this group of squamates was like hell no i'm not gonna live up here on the surface i'm gonna go underground and when you go underground you got a whole bunch of holes in your head. You got a problem. So the ear went away and that parietal eye went away. And when they came back up, you know, a function of that was they went from having three rods and cones to two rods and cones. And as a part of that, their circadian rhythm wasn't, or their way of interpreting their environment was not reliant on sunshine. Hence the reason why we say they don't need UVB or UVA. That's the actual science, you know, behind all of that.

And even with those animals that supposedly don't have this cue or this ability to tell what time of day it is, which is kind of nonsense. If you put them on a 12 hour, 12, 12 hour light cycle, 12 hour dark cycle, and then you put them in a dark room for 24 hours, if they're a nocturnal species, they will be active during the 12-hour period that was dark. And if it's a diurnal species, they're slithering around in the darkness during the 12-hour period that was day. So they have that. And same thing, if you take a nocturnal snake and make it all light, they have that evolutionary response that tells them them it should be dark. Now this is when I should be active. Uh, but when they're exposing themselves to the sun, sure, they're getting UVB. Uh, but they're also like what Justin alluded to. There's an awful lot of thermal regulation because they've got to get their body temperature up to have enzymes work and neurons fire and all that kind of kind of good stuff. And that's one of the interesting aspects of UVA and UVB that I don't

think people realize is that when you don't provide UVA or UVB, you're basically providing permanent evening or permanent, you know, sunup. so they never really get that cue that tells them it's the middle of the day i need to go bask and that's something i don't think people realize happens when you deny these animals you know that radiation uh but no i don't know if we want to go down that path because that's actually something i'm gonna be like an asshole that brings up a good point is if they're crepuscular, you know, how much irradiation is occurring at that time versus, you know, later in the day and all that kind of thing. But yeah, it'd be interesting. And another kind of scientific, you know, rattling in my head is,

you know, has, has, have any of these bulbs been compared directly with animals in the sun to see if they have comparable physiologies or, or, you know, processes occurring, I think that would be the best, you know, control. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like I was, we've been, we talked like, oh yeah, we're going to talk more. I got, I got some, I got some projects for you. No, but I think, and I agree, like, I i know that i know that that's not totally true with the nocturnal crepuscular thing it's just to try and explain that to people people hear nocturnal and that's what they hear so that's been my explanations from then on because if you say nocturnal they're like well they never see light like they're not they don't live in a cave underground like they're

just they hunt at night because that's when their food's out or they're out at night because it's cooler like a lot of times they've evolved that way whatever but the other like the other piece of it too is with uh with snakes is um oh lost my thought never mind this is gone okay Okay. Old age. There you go. Counter that. I had a question if, you know, maybe the biologist in you wanted to speak to. Do you think animals that bask in the sun monitor stuff that will be out there? Do you think that that visible spectrum, that solar insulation, that heat is a regulatory function for UV. So I guess my question would be, if you're an animal who's not receiving that high heat insulation that you're used to getting with the sun and you're in an enclosure where you're getting a lot of UV,

there's no cue for you to say, man, I'm hot I'm hot. I'm done. I'm good. Uh, because you're receiving your UV along with your, with your thermal insulation. Is that something that you think could possibly be a regulatory mechanism for UV within reptiles? Yeah, I, I, I do. Um, if you actually look at thermoregulatory studies from the field. And there's back in the thirties through the seventies, there's so much research that went on just studying how reptiles are reptiles that is directly applicable to a herpetococcus in 2021. And there were, there were lots of studies done with things like crotophytis, which are collared lizards, where they would show that they actually would bat. There's a direct correlation with as soon as they start to get warm, they go out and they bask.

And then by the time the midday sun hits, they're cooked to the point where they're running around and they're seeking out microhabitats where they can get out of the sun. And it just so happens that as they're getting up to temperature,'re also being irradiated with uvb but they're being irradiated with the the the the i don't want to say better but i don't know a more appropriate word the safer there we go amount of uvb and so once they get to temperature you're right they they move and i could totally see where if you have the highest UVB bulb and your lizard gets directly underneath it, but it never gets to temperature, it doesn't get that cue that tells it, okay, run and go explore. And when they're running and interpreting with their environment, what many people don't realize

is that, you know, they're out there basking in the sun, they get to temperature. Now they're hunting, they're foraging, and they're actually running through a natural UV gradient in nature because they run into the shade and then the UV radiation drops down to nothing and then they run back out into the open and it goes back up and then they're kind of in that dappled sunshine and gets to the middle. And in human care, that's I think the part that people don't realize is we talk about heat gradients all the time, but these animals without question absolutely must have a uv gradient as well um and so if you don't that's getting back to the education piece if keeper doesn't understand that and they're just told light bulb here you know and there's no gradient then and then they're

not getting the fear to drag into temperature you could be running into some problems um so that middle ground you know teach teach teach i think that that needs to be ever present in herpetoculture i think that that's that's um dude it's too late my brain is shutting off no but um the the there's two things one um again another study i gotta find it but erica was reading something the other day where a uv article um there was a paper that was talking about um reptiles using the their their their vision of uva to find basking spots instead of heat signatures

which i thought was really interesting so So there could be some correlation there. And then another thing to realize, too, is the UV that the sun gives off, we would never want to recreate in a bulb. If I go outside and click UVB, my UVB meter, I don't want that in my house at all. And what you said is incredibly important. Every single parameter of a terrarium or an animal's habitat everything should be a gradient we need to stop talking indefinites like we need to stop talking that the basking spot should be 92 degrees no matter what

it is whatever where in the world is it always 92 degrees and how do you think that like people think that these animals i like you watch the board like the herb society group you know oh my i can only get my my ball python up to 86 degrees to bask it can't get any higher like okay that sounds good 86 is like where they want to be if they warm up like just watch their body temp see how they do or it's or it's it's 98 not 92 they didn't evolve for millions of years to not be able to handle one degree of fluctuation so you need to be able to create a heat gradient but you also need a uv gradient you also need a humidity gradient that's where micro right microclimates come into

play where you've got different spots and have different humidity you have to provide all that the reality i think comes to it is when when we're talking about caring for these animals, instead of trying to dial in like their exact basking temp and it needs to be 70 percent humidity, it should be everything should be a range, everything. Their humidity should be from like 50 to 90. Like that's a giant range, but that's the range of most places in the world. I mean, granted, again, like the bottom of the rainforest, probably not that big of a swing, but you're still going to see 20 to 30% swing in humidity, especially a lot of these island countries where, you know, like just, yeah, there's a gradient is needed for everything. Um, and, and I think if we looked at our husbandry and more broad and create,

okay, what is the, the, the peak that we need and the lowest you can go and just make a gradient in between. And that's one thing too, when it comes to UV that why I've completely shied away from telling anybody to use tubes. I don't, I don't like tube UV just because of that fact that if you have it on an enclo- like most tanks are thin and long. So if you take a thin, long tube and put it across that four foot by 12 inch footprint, the UV gradient is vertical from the floor up to the bulb, but front to back and side to side, it's almost the same unless they can climb on things. So you're really, for people who do a really minimalistic setup, that animal is stuck getting hammered all the time and it can't get

away. Versus if you're able to do a spotlight, you can hit them with actually a more intense UV because they can get there and then they can easily get away from it. So I think you're able with a spotlight to create a more natural UV for them as well by hitting them with a higher output that they would seek out because they're able to move away from it. So because of that, you can create a better gradient. And then on top of it with spots, I usually do two spotlights, one that hits right where the heat is. So they associate that UV and that heat together.

But I also do one on the other side of the tank, and I hit it at somewhere that has no heat. It's either mid-range temperature in the tank, and they'll bask directly under that UV light without the heat attached to it. And there was another study that came out, I want to say it was like eight or nine years ago that showed, it was a study on chameleons. I want to say it was panther chameleons actually actively seeking out UV independent of the heat source. So that's been a big thing that I've tried to implement

and do a lot of caging too. But yeah, that's, I mean, I think that's, it's all about the gradients. How do you create multiple gradients and multiple spaces? Like they know what they need better than we do. We just need to provide them with the opportunities to find what they need. And that's where we fail as keepers is when we're not providing them the bandwidth that they need to find where they're comfortable.

All right. Any last points maybe we can have a summary uh you know kind of sum it up and and well we're getting we're past our hour so you know we can wrap it up i mean there's a ton of good uh discussion topics here and i really appreciate you guys and your insights this is fantastic really a great discussion i'm just impressed it's it's been so smooth because like good job zach trying to argue against uv like yeah our conversations i was like the only way i can do that is if i just intentionally sound like an idiot that doesn't care about animals yeah so like i appreciate you bringing like a more you know sophisticated person to that side no thank you yeah well some

people call me an idiot so there's that hey the more you learn the more you learn you don't know much yeah i've come to the conclusion that i'm a complete idiot you know there's so much to learn and and as soon as you think i've got it all figured out or you start saying things like that yeah then you can know they don't know much yeah that's that's that's what i love with this hot with herpetoculture though you know every species we are that's the other thing about herpetoculture that people need to realize this is an insanely young hobby insanely young like the first uvb bulb hit the market in 1993 so what third not even 30 years ago the first uv bulb hit the market people were

actively keeping these animals in the late 80s so like in my lifetime this is what the hobby truly existed as a hobby or as an industry was in the 90s and past and like so we do have a lot to learn and we do have a lot of i think a long a long way to go. But I think the biggest thing that people can do is just start to really understand that the hobby is substantially behind the scientific community and the knowledge that they have on how these animals exist in their habitats. And if we would take some of that and learn from that, we could jump ahead 30 or 40 years instead of puddling through the crap and the sludge that we're dealing with now. And that's one thing, too, that, again, shameless plug for VipTech. We have some veterinarians and herpetological academics that will be writing summaries for us for the website to break down things like this. Like a friend of mine is finishing up his doctorate in California on herpetology. He just did a huge study on all the sidewinder species and their distribution and

genetics throughout the U.S. It was really cool. And so he's going to take three papers on the parietal eye and UVA, and then he's going to break those papers down into two paragraphs that an eighth grader can understand. And then we're going to post those with the articles below them if people want to read them. But at the same time, we're gonna post those with the articles below them if people wanna read them. But at the same time, we're gonna pull all that knowledge out and just stick it here in a snippet. So you can take that and know it. And those guys are just gonna keep doing that.

They're gonna take two or three articles about a topic and they're gonna condense it down to one easy to digest paragraph. And a whole section of our website is just gonna be papers written by professionals looking at those papers and writing a synopsis that allows anybody like my nine-year-old daughter to go read it and give me an explanation of how does that actually relate to how you keep your animal. And I think that's good. I'm hoping that that'll break that bridge. I think that we, with all talking about all the papers and the data that's out there, I think we scare away first time people from being able to feel like they

can understand it because reading a scientific paper to somebody who's not in any kind of science, that is, that's a, it's a scary thing. That's a big hill to look up. Like just even, even just understanding how that a study was done and how a hypothesis what that means compared to just the results it's so difficult for someone to understand that and i think that if as we take more opportunities as ourselves everybody right here as well as all the other advanced level herbivore culturists and and herpetologists and biologists and all that we continue to take that information and put it out there in easily digestible snippets, I think will continue to improve the hobby.

That would be great. That's perfect. That was exactly what I was just going to recommend you do as you're doing this research, you know, dumb it down and simplify it and make people so they can understand. One could almost say that the scientific community writes it that way so that the lay person doesn't't you know isn't isn't necessarily in that group so that i agree with that but they could absolutely read it and go the opposite way and take it wrong like every news station ever does when they talk about

any study that ever came out right yeah yeah but on that that token i can say that oftentimes the tribalism of herpetoculture, when the paper comes out that says what your argument is, then you latch on to it. Because there was a paper that came out, I don't know when, in the past decade. I'll just throw it out. I don't know the exact time because it's late for me over here. And it basically said that when they were investigating whether D3 concentration went up in ball pythons that were exposed to UVB, and their results were, no, it doesn't. And immediately that was latched

onto, and that's been actually, people have messaged that to me after they've heard me on podcasts saying we need to use UVB. And that same person that's sending me that obviously didn't read the other nine papers that clearly show that when you expose snakes to UVB. And that same person that's sending me that obviously didn't read the other nine papers that clearly show that when you expose snakes to UVB, the calcium deposition in their ribs goes up and you end up getting a healthier animal, even though they don't have the parietal eye and they don't have as direct a pathway. So, you know, my request of herpetocultures, if VivTech's going to put that stuff out and it challenges the way that you do something, don't say, well, this is the way I've always done it.

You know, actually look at that and then be like, huh, well, maybe I should change a little bit. And if we do that, that's going to help herpetoculture because whether we want to say it or not, you know, herpetoculture is under attack and the people that are coming after this, they have science, they have academics. And if they're going against a hobby that doesn't want to hear this coming from me, that always is saying, oh, that science is against us. And it was made to be against us. It's not. If we were to look at that science and be like, huh, well, maybe we should change something. And then we were to change something for the better. You just shut down their argument.

And then you're showing them that we actually care and blah, blah, blah. And then that might actually help us all in the end. Yeah. One of the biggest things that we have hopefully coming out within the next year is taking the LED UVA, UVB, and putting it into thin strips that can be mounted inside, routered into the pvc inside racks so we can get uva uvb plant lights inside a rack and at that point you could actually you could do

dart frog enclosures in a rack i mean that would totally change everything you know i mean like you totally change how you did everything and i think but like that came to me because of that study the couple studies that came out on racks and whether they're ethical or not for animals. And you get a lot of people who jump up and freaked out about it. But at the same time, like, read it, look at it. And the big thing for me is as soon as we think we're done and we're doing good enough, that's when we lose. And, like, even my own collection. I've created some amazing enclosures.

I have a 55-gallon rainforest next to me that's filled with tadpoles and animals. It's awesome. But at the same time, it's still not good enough. Like I still know I can do better. And the technology might not be there yet. And the science might not be there yet. But I still know that I could do better. And I think that that stretch to always do better is what will keep the hobby moving forward.

The second that you think you know everything and you've got it down and you don't need to learn anymore. That's when you die. That's when that's when everything that's when you stop being able to ever do anything better. All right. Well, I think that's a good way to finish up this discussion. And yeah, I really appreciate your time and thanks for coming on. Maybe we'll have to have you back and you can take the other side, you know, and as you do more research and figure out, you know, holes in your logic or whatnot. But yeah, I really, really appreciate you guys coming on. This has been a great discussion. And I think a lot of people are going to benefit from this. Fun, yeah. Yeah. We'll have to have round two or, you know, maybe a different topic. You guys are well-versed in a lot of different topics. And, you know, your contributions to herpetoculture and herpetology is great.

And, you know, I applaud you for that. So thanks again for being on, both Zach and Ryan. Thank you, guys. Thank you. It was fun. Well, another great episode. Thanks for listening. And check out all the podcasts under the Morelia Pythons Network.

And, you know, we'll catch you next week. Have a good one. Later. Later. Bye, Todd. Thank you.