Reptile Fight Club - Various Topics with Phil Lietz of Arids Only & Project Herpetoculture Pod

Episode Date: April 12, 2026

In this episode, Justin and Rob discussvarious topics w/ Phil Lietz of Arids Only & Project Herpetoculture PodWho will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comIG https://www.instagram.com/jgjulander/Follow Rob @ https://www.instagram.com/highplainsherp/Follow MPR Network @FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQSwag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Reptile Fight Club. I'm Justin. Nice to have you here. Thanks for listening. And, of course, with me, as always, is Rob Stone. How you doing, Rob? I'm doing great. Wave to the people, golden kisses.

All right. And we're happy to have back on the show, Phil Leeds with us tonight. Thanks for being here, Phil. Of course. Thank you guys. Yeah, welcome back. Good to have you back finally. Sorry it took us so long.

No, it's okay. It's okay. Happy to be back. Yeah. Yeah. So, well, let's see. What's what's going on lately? I got my first eggs, so that's got eggs on the first good eggs, let's say. I also realized. Just good eggs you found. Exactly. Yeah. So, man, I may have mentioned it before, but yeah, this is from a dark Eastern Stimson's line. That's kind of a cool project. Yeah. Super cool.

Nothing too dramatic or exciting, but I dig them. So keep producing them. Pretty exciting as far as I'm concerned. And then, I don't know, my wife and I went to Band of Skulls concert. That was pretty sweet. Cool. Put on a good show. Hell yeah.

That sounds great. And then took photos of my daughter and my wife. They just graduated. Well, my wife's going to graduate this semester. with her master's and then daughter got her bachelor's so it's kind of fun she's my first college grad child so kind of exciting there and i don't know uh getting ready to go out down to st george so that should be fun get some little uh warmer conditions hopefully maybe see a healer or something cool but see see what happens how's everything going for you guys

super good super good uh got another baby coming like i was mentioning uh So our daughter is going to be sometime in May. We're thinking she's technically due like June 4th. Second one we understand is usually faster. And the first one was pretty fast. So for a first timer anyway. That's good. Yeah, it's good.

It's real good. And so just kind of gearing up for that, trying to wind down on some of the jiu-jitsu and start to tune up my sleep a little bit in advance to. Thank as much as I can and be ready for a little baby. You know, every three hours can be tough. But yeah, that and then, yeah, thanks, man. Appreciate it. And then, you know, I've got a same.

I've got some eggs on the ground. Not quite as many as I might have anticipated this time of year. Like, typically in the past, my, a lot, a bulk of the animals have made it around the same time. And typically, by now, they would either. be digging or have laid some eggs. I have not a whole lot. I mean, you know, nothing to complain about for sure.

You know, some Thomas I eggs. I have some J.R.I. eggs. I have a lot of pairs that appear to need the year off. So they're just kind of kicking it, doing their thing. I have one project that I've been dying to get going. I've been working on it for years. And I think it's going to be one more year. I'm like, damn, dude, this is a tough one.

But that's okay. That's okay. I've got eggs from the albino jeri, which I'm excited about. And I was really hoping that my hard wiki eye would, the Indian Euros, I was really thinking, like, they got them in 2024. They were little juveniles, like yay big. And they're big, just like sausage, you know, like a weasel. They're like little weasels. And that's what they resemble to me is like a mere cat or a weasel.

You know, they have that kind of vibe to me. But I got six of them and I got one male. Oh, no. I guess it's better than the other way around. Yes, that's true. But I just would have killed for like 2.4 or 3.3. You know, it would have been great. But it's okay.

So anyway, maybe next year on those, but that's fine. They're not very common, right? There are very many people have any, any of the Sara genus, right? Yeah, that's right. They're so cool. They're so, so cool. Like, if you think a Euro tale is cool,

they are cool. But a Sara tale is like, it's like a, it's like you took a Euromastic's tail and had the artist who did all the tool cover, album covers, redo it. You know,

because it's so intricate and small and amazing. But, To me, and it's like everybody loves the heart, the, um, Sara, Loracotta and the Sarah as Musi, which what's not to love? They're amazing. I would love him too. They're incredible animals. But the Hardwick Eye are so weird because they're, they're, they're just gray.

Like, they're like an Egyptian, but then they have the, the big inguinal patches, the big black inguinal dot on their thighs. And then the males, well, I guess both sexes can, but they get supposed to get blue, tingees of blue pigment that comes in on. their tail and hindquarters during the briefs. But I haven't seen it yet on these. My mail has a little bit, but it's not like crazy. So they're just so unique, in my opinion.

There's just such a weird, you know, and if you think about the sort of like the natural history of like, okay, the butterfly agamas of Southeast Asia and you're a mass share common ancestor that migrated westward and made it all the way to Morocco, right? Which is super cool. And I think the Sara Harwiki eye looks visually like a perfect. It's like you took a butterfly gamma and a euro together. Yeah. Yeah.

That's cool. Do they have kind of the bumpy nodules like the lorikata? Not so much. They're a little smoother on the back and the head. They're not so finy. And the tails are a little smoother too, but they're very intricate, very beautiful. There's a lot of subtlety. It's kind of like, you know, when you get your hands on like a gray Egyptian and you

actually when they're hot, there's like tan and yellow and faded pattern and like flecking and it's real subtle. That's what it is with the hard wiki eye too. They have that same kind of elephantish look. Where are they native to? Pakistan and India. Okay. Yeah.

And just huge range, probably multiple species, you know, that's at some point we'll get described and split up. It looks like there's a big range in the size they can get, too. Like there's some populations that seem like they stay, you know, 14, 15 inches tops. There's some that look like they're 20 plus, like 20 inch, you know, 20, 21, like almost Egyptian size. Yeah. In certain parts of the range, you could see people holding them.

It's just big animals. So it's got to be more than one species out there too. Right. So, you know, I'm sure it's the same thing with Lorikata and Asmucy, because their ranges are enormous, right? The Iraq and Iran are huge countries. Yeah. You know. Oh, man, I'd love to get over to Iran. That would be cool.

That's the perfect time, Justin. It is, it is. I booked my flight and... Got it. You're good. I mean, I enlisted. That's how I'm getting over there. Yeah, no one would pay attention to a virologist going to Iran. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. I met this coolest guy. He was in the naturalist club. So we went to St. George and did some herping a few years.

ago. Cool. Guy from Iran and just a really cool guy. And he's like, I think he wasn't welcome back to Iran either. He was kind of, yeah, not living the way that they prefer over there. And so he was not welcome back, I guess, or he would be in trouble if he went back. So kind of sad to see that. But, ah, man, what a cool place.

And, yeah, I'm hitting a zoo in Chechia that's got some spider-tailed vipers. I'm excited to go see some of those. in the flesh. That's got to be one of the wildest. Craziest thing. There's the craziest thing out there. Yeah. And I was showing my dad and mom some videos of these things because I told them when I was

heading to see one. And I've never heard of that. You know, so I'm showing these videos. And I mean, the bird like swoops down to grab it and the snake kind of does a half-hearted strike. And then the bird comes back to try again because it's so convincing. And the way they move that thing, it's crazy. It's just, it reminds me of fly fishing.

It's like, it's like the reptilian version of a bird of paradise in the, it's like the weird, like, because you see the tail, you look at the tail and you're like, it doesn't look anything like a spider real. I mean, it looks kind of like a spider. Right. But it's clearly, and you're a person, so you know it, you look at it. You're like pattern recognition kind of fries. You're like, wait a minute. But then when it gets moving on the rock, no, that look, now it looks like a spider. It, in my mind, loses that it's not a spider.

Like, I get the, because I'm not a big fan of spiders. Super cool. Just, you get the creep out vibe from the tail of the snake. Yeah. Holy crap, man. It's amazing. Yeah, what an incredible adaptation to be able to use that lore like that. Take some pictures when you're there, man.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So cool. Hopefully it's, you know, you always worry when you're going to the zoo if the animal's going to be out and visible and looking cool. I mean, I doubt I'm going to see the spider dancing around, but that would be freaking cool, too. That'd be really sick. Yeah.

Yeah. Take a bird in there, hold it up to the glass. See you can get it displaying. Sure, sir, get that bird out of here. In Richmond, just yell at Richmond at them. Yeah. Yeah. That's really easy.

I mean, I know that European Zee. do some kind of crazy things. I think one zoo had a giraffe that died, and so they fed it to the lions or something like that. Yeah, something crazy. Hey. It's not that weird. Yeah. That's what they eat.

Oh, man. Yeah. That's a whole other topic of conversation. Yeah. Should zoos feed giraffes to lions? Yeah. Absolutely. Right.

Conservation through commercialization. Right. Well, uh, at least the market. Yeah. The guys that, one of the zoos that had comotos told me they had an antelope that was stillborn. And so they kind of dragged it over to the Komoto enclosure and, you know, had it off exhibit, put it, put the, the stillborn baby in the enclosure. Yeah.

And then let the dragon back in. And they said it immediately went into like hunting mode. Like they'd never seen this behavior before with rats that they were feeding. You know, like he'd charge and chase rabbit, but they're a rat or something. But this time he was like going into the. bushes, like stealthy, you know, trying to smell where this thing was coming. Yeah, pretty crazy. I don't want, I'm not going to say names or anything, but some people might figure out who I'm

talking about here. But I have a friend who has a wolf dog. And when he finds, he lives out in the sticks somewhere on the West Coast. And when he comes across roadkill deer every now and again, and he just brings him home and lets the wolf dog just go at him for a week. And he says, that's happening. that dog has ever been. And I remember the first time he told me, I was like,

aren't you worried about like a tick or parasites or something? And he goes, do you, what happens when someone asks you, when you feed a grasshopper to a lizard, if you're worried about parasites or tits or something, and I'm like, shit, good call, you know? Yeah. Really, I had to be like, touche sir, you know? Although I have seen some pretty big, like tapeworms coming out of a lover,

you know, like, ooh, I don't. Always makes me nervous, but try to get on the younger side when they come out of, you know, in the spring or something. Sure. Good call. Creepy. Yeah. Yeah. Gross.

I just immediately am thinking of that video that everybody's seen of the bear walking around with a stick in out of the butt. Yeah. Poor thing. That would be uncomfortable for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's stuff.

Oh, I forgot. to mention, I had a nice conversation with Harlan Wall, caught up with him a bit. So he mentioned Rob and, you know, what a good guy you were, some stories about swapping, you know, or getting blood pythons from Cameron's place and having expressed instructions not to communicate with each other, but ignoring that and kind of forming a little friendship there. So, yeah, it's good to talk to Harlan. He's a great guy. Yeah, it's great. Yeah. Absolutely. But he said to tell you hello. Well, I appreciate that.

Yeah. Hopefully he'll listen. That'll be good. Yeah, yeah. He's like, now, you have a podcast a while ago? I'm like, still have it. Still. Yeah.

So maybe he'll catch you up. I don't know. We'll see. There you again. Cool. Yeah, it's good to chat with him here, you know, talk, swap stories on finding Croatelus and the fun we're having with that. So, yeah.

Very good. Cool. Yeah, well, you're kind of an old hat to this, to the podcast, so you know what we do here. But we, you've got so much great wisdom and insight. We thought we do more than one topic with you tonight. So I'm not sure that we've identified all the topics. And hopefully we can kind of have some come up organically. But we've got a couple kind of off the top of our heads to discuss with you.

But yeah. Yeah. So I guess I'm trying to think of. of what the best way to do this, like if we flip a coin for each one and just Rob and I take turns or if we just both gang up on you or something. Just bring it on, dude. Multiple, multiple assailant self-defense. There you go.

Yeah, you're well versed in defensive. Yeah, combat. All right. Well, I thought, you know, something that came up to me when I was listening to your roundtable with the chameleon bros and thought, that one topic that kind of came to mind was the idea of what it takes to be an expert, you know, Bill was saying like, oh, I don't consider myself an expert. I'm like thinking, well, if you're not an expert, then who is? You know, and I see kind of a loss of expertise.

Like, people don't seem to trust experts anymore. Sure. Right. They're going to trust AI or something. But frankly, AI is not a useful tool if you're not an expert in the area that you're talking to it about. You have to know, like, where AI is failing and where it's not, you know. So there's been multiple incidences of that where you can ask AI a question. We'll give you an answer, but it may not be the right answer. And it might sound convincing. And it's soon to give you the yes. It's too, you know, that's what it is.

It has an intrinsic desire to say yes, what you ask it or yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so all battle you on this one. Let's say one side is, yes, you can be an expert. Yeah. What it takes.

The other side is not. you can never reach that level. So I'll flip the coin, go ahead and call it. Heads. Heads. It is heads. Yes, if they're experts or not, you're never going to reach expert level. Okay.

Let's go with the, oh, man, the problem is, I can, it's just, I could eat, both sides are tempting. I'll go with the, I'll go with the, you can be an expert. Okay. So maybe, and now we, is there's like an opening statement, right? Do I? You can start or I can start whatever you want. You won, so you get to say who starts. Hell yeah. Okay. I love power. It's the best. So I guess what immediately popped into my mind was framing this and won't shock anybody through the lens of Jiu-Jitsu. Right. So I'm a funny. I'm a black belt jiu-jitsu. I've been training for almost 20 years. And when I, before I got my black belt, all I cared about was getting two black belt. And it wasn't, I didn't want the belt itself. I wanted what it meant to be a black belt, right?

You've gone through all of it. You have the skills. You can prove it in various contexts, right? That was what I wanted. That's what I thought it meant. And that's what mattered to me. And then I got my black belt and I realized that I was technically the same rank as people have been,

have been a black belt for longer than I've been alive. And, you know, yeah, there's degrees to differentiate it, but it's all, at the end of the day, it's all black belt. And you could conceivably step on the mat with someone, who's been a black belt longer than you've been training and face them in competition and you could win, you know? And so there was this weird, what do they call it, imposter syndrome and sort of discomfort around finding yourself as sort of an authority on some level.

Right. And, you know, so I think that, I think that it's funny because people crave, the martial arts lens is still useful in other ways, too, in that people crave some kind of certification. So, you know, when it comes to expertise, oftentimes we want something to back that. We want a degree or, you know, something, you know, a piece of paper used to talk about it as when I graduated from art school. I finally got my artistic license and I can get a little laminated one as a joke and frame it. It's like, I did it. You know, I've earned it. And so I think that there's, in every field I've been a part of, there's a desire from the broad, general population say you have to kind of get get your chops go through your basics and then we're

going to call you competent but then there's this weird barrier with expertise where we want we want some kind of certification we want to hoop some kind of acknowledgement process right right and i think that's where people get tied up because you know maybe i don't you know about any i don't know of what Bill's particular university qualifications are. Maybe they're outstanding. I don't know. But maybe if his education has nothing to do with his chameleon work, perhaps that's where his discomfort in calling himself an expert comes from.

Because I feel that also. Like people refer to me as a Euromastic's expert. But I don't feel that way because I frankly haven't really done anything except to make them breed, you know, or let them breed even, is the better way to put. Like, I didn't really, I don't feel like I've done anything. I don't feel like I've innovated on anything or contributed anything. But it is also true that, yeah, compared to 99.9% of humans, yeah, I am an expert in Euromastics for all things for as far as their answer.

I just don't have the paper to show. And so I think that's where that's, that's, that's, maybe I'll stop there because Yeah. Well, I think that's a good point to jump in because, I mean, I feel the same way with, you know, I got a PhD. And so, you know, that. And I think, you know, once I finish my PhD, same kind of feeling, imposter syndrome. Like, okay, I have a PhD. But, you know, in the university, we have rank. So I'm, I started out as an assistant professor and then go to associate and then full professor. And, you know, I guess if, if you ask me, are you an expert compared to, yeah, again, 99% of the people. Yeah. But I think. as far as you, you know, the first, as soon as you start thinking, I know all there is to know, it means you haven't looked very hard because the more you look into a subject, the more you learn, you don't know very much, right? And so I think Bill was probably trying to be humble, you know, like, because if he doesn't know anything about chameleons, then who does, you know, that kind of thing. So, and I think it's, it's good to have that attitude, like, hey, I, you know,

You know, I know a bit, but there's still a ton I could learn, and there's a lot of people that are more knowledgeable to me. I mean, every time I go herping with somebody that's like actually dedicated and goes out all the time, I'm like, man, I'm just a novice compared to. Yeah, man. I can still find stuff, but like, you know, you go out of somebody like you've been around the block. Yeah. Well, and this is, this again, again, martial arts, right? So if you, I know lots of black belts who get their black belts and then they quit learning. They don't go to class anymore.

They don't watch competition. They don't. It was that. They don't keep up with the art. Go or getting it. And they're done. And that's fine. Like, keep practicing that way.

It's no problem. Right. But, you know, I'm interested in, I want to keep learning and keep getting better. I train with people all the time who put me in my place and in different ways, right? And so in the same way that you and I who are all three of us who maybe we've hurted a lot. And maybe we do know a lot about different reptiles. We can still go out to somewhere we've never been and someone spent their whole life herping there. Right.

What? How in the, how in God's name do you differentiate between these two species? I can't tell them apart. I don't know. Like, you mean it's just a scale. It's literally just this snake has white lips and this, the black goes all the way around. Like, be crazy? Like, that's nuts.

Like, how do you tell? Isn't it variable by the individual? Don't you have ones of this species that look like that one? I mean, it's so it can be disorienting. But if you take that same person and plug them into a Cuban crocodile breeding program, they might have no idea what they're doing, right? It's all herpeticulture, though. So it's like all of our expertise has to specialize on, you know, we may want everyone

to kind of understand the broad fundamentals of what we would call herpeticulture. But even the fundamentals are going to vary, right? Whether you're a frog, that fundamental is very different from a uromastics on some level, right? So it's just different. Yeah. When I was writing the Green Tree Python book with Terry Phillip, we sent it off to Dave Barker to write the intro or, you know, the, what's that section? What a great expert I am on books. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. So he wrote that for us. But he said, hey, you know, like, why did you put your, you know, doctor on there? You're not a doctor of herpetology. Like your doctor has nothing to do with reptiles. So I would suggest removing that. I'm like, hey, that's great.

You know, I felt uncomfortable putting on the other books, but the publisher wanted it on there. Like, oh, yeah, yeah, you got a PhD. And I will say, like, you know, just because somebody has doctor in front of their name doesn't mean, you know, they're necessarily smarter than anybody or no more than anybody. There's plenty of herpeticulturalists that have a lot of experience, you know, in certain areas. But, but, you know, like, like you were saying, there's expertise. There's, there's specialization. I mean, they can know more than anybody on a certain topic.

But yeah, like you said, put them in, put them in with another group of reptiles. And yeah, I don't know anything, you know. Yeah, they're going to have to go all the same thing over and over again. Yeah, I got that book of snakes, Mark O'Shea's book. And I was just shocked how many, like, species I'd never heard of or never even thought about, you know, existing, you know, like, okay, I am not a snake expert. I might know a little bit about carpet pythons or, you know, or Australian pythons, but that's about where my knowledge, you know. Yeah. You know, I didn't, I didn't have growing up, I did not have the, I think I had maybe a

somewhat atypical herpeticultural trajectory in the sense that I didn't grow up like checking all the field guides and like going out to everywhere I could herp and go find stuff. and like, memorize their, their Latins and stuff. Like, I didn't, that wasn't my,

I didn't hurt for the first time until I was in college, you know, and it, like properly. Like, obviously it did some in my backyard and stuff. Right,

right. All that's fine. But, you know, I didn't do it proper until I was in college. And, and,

and so when I get on Instagram, I follow all these people who take all these just breathtaking images of herps that I could not tell you what in God, what the fuck they are. I don't know what they are.

I just don't know. I'm like, I know that that is an amphibian. That's it. That's all I got. You know? And I can't keep up with it. There's no way. There's just so many.

Yeah. You could never, in just one region, it'd be difficult to remember them all, depending on the region. Yeah. Exactly. All these crazy, like, Southeast Asian coral snakes and stuff like that. I'm like, just like 50,000 of these things. I don't know.

They're crazy looking. Right. And that, that, that, that, that, that, rhyme just does not apply south of Mexico, you know. Yeah. Their patterns are all over the place as far as red touch and yellow or black, you know. See anything. Yeah, exactly. And the diversity. I mean, that's what's cool about is there is no end to learning, right? You can learn, you can learn all there is to know, and you can research and study and find out new things, and you're still going to lack some information, some, some expertise. But I mean, for all intents and purpose,

You know, if you put in the, and what do they say, 10,000 hours kind of makes you an expert in an area or something. So I think, you know, a lot of, a lot of us have reached that with our favorite herb group or something. You probably tell people things they didn't know about certain groups of profiles. But I mean, to think you know it all, that's a dangerous thing. Yeah. Maybe that's the sort of like the main linchpin, right? in that we want, even if someone, someone can have expertise in a topic, but their, their application and interpretation and use of that information is sort of also like a,

like a qualifier that you kind of have to happen on some level, you know? Because it's like, you know, I see people, we all know people who maybe have a lot less information, but are still making very, very rational informed decisions and informed thought that they're pulling from that information. And as your expertise levels up, you know, and you become a quote expert, then I think the mark of your continued expertise is your continued ability to interpolate all of that information for yourself and your audience in a way that's applicable and lines up with with with with with with with with with real information like real statistical interpretation of information in a way that is meaningful um and also uh as bill was

humble in the face of what is is left out in that information you know you used to talk in graphic design there's a there's this concept uh when you do typography when you're working with type and designing with type where they talk about how it's it's actually not the type it's itself, it's the negative space around the type that kind of makes the design work. And that's where you focus a lot on the negative space. And I feel like in some ways, you have to be able to shift it. When you're looking at information, you have to shift your field of focus where you can, I'm going to look at the positive data and the negative data.

And they both have equal valence and weight in what I'm pulling out of this. And I feel like all too often, that's where people, we see a lot of people trip up is is in their interpretation of data or or observation. That becomes the hardest one. That's the one I feel like when I talk with some of the younger guys who I've now been really learning a lot from because they hurt like crazy. And I don't like Brandon. I learn a lot from him because he hurts 10 times as much as I do.

But one of the things I talk with him a lot about is, you know, I'll send him posts and I'll just say, hey, tell me what you think of this post. And I'll get his interpretation of it. and then I'll give him mine. And it's not because he interpreted incorrectly, but because I, you know, maybe there's something else I want him to get.

And it's like, I do this a lot where I say, I want you to see this. Like I want, what do you see? And then I want to make sure you also see this thing. Right. And again,

I know this is getting a little tangential, but this comes up a lot like when people are buying animals. Like I've had, um, this last year, I've started doing this new thing as a part of the work, which is where I'm acting almost as like a consultant or, or a liaison between like buyers and sellers and both of cages and of animals.

And so I do a lot of educating some of these. It's like four people, but it's like four clients. I do a lot of sending them pictures of an animal. It's like, hey, you're looking for a Moroccan. Here's a Moroccan Euro, but I'll circle in red the mouth and I'll say,

look at this, you know, and there's like crust and you can see fungus developing or something, you know, and you wouldn't have noticed there. It's hard to, it's easy to miss those things, you know.

Right. And so it's a lot of, again, that's a way of taking expertise and giving it, not that I'm an expert in it necessarily, but like helping people be more observant in that regard is like a is also just, that's just good education for learning to see more things and in everything you get, whether it's a picture or a video or AI slop or a carousel from someone. Read it, take it at face value for what it is, but then also pay attention to who's posting it and what they're talking about, how they're talking about things, you know? Right, right. You have to see it like the whole thing, not just piecemeal. Yeah. Yeah. And I think Rob has something to say.

I'll tag him in. Well, yeah. And I think you guys are on this point. But particularly in the animal space, I think there's a difference between expertise in implementation slash effectuation and the ability to communicate it. Right. Those are two different actually, two different skill sets, right? Where your ability to interact with an animal, see it maintain in a certain way,

or even assess it, as you're saying, Phil, right? Say, okay, this is the additional thing that it needs, versus the ability to even communicate all those inputs that you're synthesizing in your mind and sort of how you would implement those things. So I do think that's an element of this, too, at least in the application to animals, is saying you can actually have folks that are, as you hit on, Phil, right, that are experts in this and could look at something, assess it, have an approach, you know, divine it even with no,

you know, and I've seen the same thing. You know, I'm sure we've all met and certainly I'm thinking of a couple of specific people that are really excellent at keeping and interacting with animals that don't have, you know, don't know the scientific name of that animal. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely, which, yeah, that's also super cool. I love that. I love that weird, intuitive nature to the way you can get good at herpet culture is just by, just by, just by, by having like a keen observational mind and spending a lot of, it's like a contemplative practice at the end. Yeah, it's more applied knowledge, you know,

where I mean, there's plenty of herpetologists that can't keep a snake happy in a box, you know, like they just fail at it. And they acknowledge that, you know. Rick Shine is probably the foremost herpetologist of Australia. And he'll be the first one to tell you that he can't keep a snake in a box, you know. Like, yeah. So different kinds of knowledge, too. Yeah.

I mean, even I, I feel like I've said this a couple of times publicly, so I don't want to be like boring. But, you know, I have these tortoises, right? I have, I now have like five species of tortoise somehow. Cool. Six maybe. It's like, it's crazy. And I'm like, okay. I'm a tortoise guy now.

And I've hatched two, a pole two. But the, the, the one. I've said it that when I first got tortoises, I felt like I was learning Mandarin, you know? I was like, I don't, I just, there's so much about them that to me was just so foreign because they're so different from a lizard, you know? They're just like, it's obviously a different creature. It's obvious on some level, but it's, it's not, it's the contrast between knowing and setting up and looking at having confidence in a euro.

I'm like, I know this euro is going to be fine. and you don't have to, I don't even have to look. I just know it's going to be okay. And I don't have that with the tortoise where I'm like, I'm afraid to touch anything or move anything. Like I don't want to piss them off. You know, they're doing so well. I don't want to send them over the,

they're just killing it. Like, let's just keep it here. It's nerve wracking. It feels like you're learning another language. Like you're, you know, even it's a herb, man.

It's a desert herbivore, you know. Right. That's what I was going to say, right? That's the thing that jumps out to me, Phil, is someone that is then more a snake guy who appreciates the rest of this stuff.

I would say that I would approach it, or my intrinsic, you know, intuition would be to say, yeah, you're talking about desert herbivores. Those are probably pretty similar. It's only in practice that you're then saying, no, actually, I'm noticing it's on the distinction between these things. So different, man.

Like, it's not, I can't. There's, I tried a couple of times to set some of the tortoises up like some, like a lizard. And they were like pissed. They were so just not happy with the way I put them together, you know? But I feel that way too, even with, I felt that shift when I, you know, because I feel like I kind of cut my teeth with bearded dragons and iguanas, right? I didn't breed any iguanas, but those were like kind of my first love, you know? And then when I started delving into Euros, it was the same kind of thing.

It's like, yeah, this is a desert lizard, a medium-bodied desert, similar to a dragon in a lot of ways, but really different. And again, it was the same thing. It was like, all right, now it's Russian. We're learning Russian today. Europe, you know, it's, it's such a, it's such a strange thing because you'd think, I mean, some of the stuff crosses over, of course, you know, but it's not the stuff that you anticipate. You think it's going to be these things that cross over, but it's actually this or whatever. It's such, it's so interesting.

And so it makes me feel, it's a great way to get humbled all the time is to try something different. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I'd call it a, I call it research and development. It's like herpetocultural R&D. You know, I'm all right, I'm going to commit. couple of years to this project, see if it pans out. If it doesn't, I'll send it somewhere where it can get justice done. But, you know, like I got to try. And if I don't give it at least a few years, how do I really know? Right. What species are you working with? The tortoises. So I have, the Canixis spec guy, the hingeback coast. Yeah. I have Moroccan Greeks. I have

Russians. I have a golden Greek. And then I have Burmese stars now. Josh, he sent me to Burmese stars. Nice. Excuse me. And so, yeah, the spec guy are the ones that I hatched. I have the adults and then I hatch some eggs from them. They were in brutal condition when I got them. I'm not sure.

Yeah, I would say, like, arguably, those would be the hardest ones to breed or the least commonly bred anyway. I don't know why I decided to start with those, but it was like this random, it was just like a random occurrence. I ended up getting the, I'm not going to say who they were from because it was, it was a drag. They were in really bad shape. Right.

And it's like it's okay. They, you know, but it was a lot. It was like two years of trimming their beaks and trimming their nails and giving them antifungals because they had a fungus and then worming them because they were literally just shit and piles of worms. And it was they didn't want to, you know, just you name it. They had every problem that a tortoise could have.

Yeah. And it took a couple of years. But then they finally got normal and started coming out and coming around and started mating. And, you know, but I got like 15 eggs and two babies. So, you know, but anyway, we'll see next time. So yeah. Yeah. So that's positive direction, right?

You're moving in the right direction. Yeah. And having the mindset to say, I've been telling people, like, I'm getting the tortoises just so my son can inherit something cool. You know, it's like they're, they're lifelong a project, right? Obviously, everybody knows that about a tortoise, but it's like, you know, you get these little babies and they're like, it's like, I say it's like hanging out with little old men, you know, you're just, you're just hanging out with little old. at the Japanese bathhouse. You're like, hey, what's up, man? And he's like, oh, I don't know what you said, but I'm happy you're here, you know.

I love tortoises. I just, I've always had a, had a special spot for those. Yeah. Someday I'd like to do them, but I don't know if it'll ever happen. Yeah. Yeah, that was one that humbled me because I got a bunch of hatchlings and tried, you know, raising them up with my daughter. It was kind of her little project.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we failed. spectacularly. It was not, it was really a hard blow. And they were just like little Hermons or Yeah, little Greeks or Greeks. Some kind of, yeah.

So it was a bummer. Yeah. I've, you know, I've heard the babies are really pretty fragile. Yeah, really hard to, harder to get established than an adult or something.

So yeah, probably should have started with older animals, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, they're tough. Yeah. I mean, we'll learn, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, and that's part of this whole thing, you know, you think you're an expert, and then you get something that just humbles you. And you're like, okay, maybe I don't know as much as I thought I did. Like, I don't know anything. I don't know anything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a great. It's a beautiful way to keep your brain alive too. It is. Yeah. All right. Well, you got another topic for us, Rob, another good subject. Sure. Well, and I know Phil had tossed out some ideas. And I'm curious, so he'll have to explain. what they mean in the context and then we can can chat through them. Okay.

You said the wild is fake. Yeah. So this is obviously super tongue and cheek and like it's not, I'm not trying to, it's like intentionally to be provocative, right? So the wild to me sounds more like a sort of like a behavior state than a place. And and a lot of why. I feel that is because, you know, zooming out from like a very, just like a big, you know, really wide angle, there's nowhere on the planet that's not influenced by human activity. So everywhere has human influence, right? Obviously, there are parts of the world where it's almost nothing, right?

Fine. Okay. Fair enough. But whether we're talking about the Chernobyl exclusion zone or whether we're talking about the spiny. Dale iguanas that are on the hotel grounds in Costa Rica or the geckos that live in the kitchen or whether we're talking about the spider that made the jumping spider that made a house in the in the little hidebox where my Indian neuromastics lives. That's like a, it's like it's not, it's so not delineated in my view. It's, you know, where, where are we going to say this is where wild starts and this is where it ends? And the,

add on top of that, the idea, the, I am sort of diametrically opposed to the, the separation between humanity and the natural world, just in principle. It's just conceptually, it doesn't make sense to me. Because we are the natural world. We're a part of the natural world. Yes, we do bad things. All that's fine. That's just tabling that for the sake of the argument, right?

And I feel like the, the spaces where the wild becomes less clear, like the, the spiny tail iguanas on the hotel grounds of Costa Rica, that starts to get much weirder to me because it's like, this doesn't feel like a wild animal anymore. It's like liminal wildlife, right? The foxes that live in the neighborhoods of England or in the United Kingdom, right? The coyotes and raccoons that live here. These are not animals living a wild existence in the way we would classically think about a wild existence,

but they're a wild animal, right? So it's like, it's a weird thing. And so if we think about if, if I, if I, if I, if I think of wildness as a behavior instead of a place, I feel like it gives me a better lens to pay attention to and interact with all of my reptiles. It's a, you know, and I'll stop at that. Yeah. I'd throw in too, like, like if you see a, you know, a monitor lizard on a well-traveled trail,

you might be able to get closer to it. You know, you got these Mertons monitors swimming around people at these, you know, waterfall places where everybody's going. And they'll let you get, you know, within a few feet of them before they take off or run away. And so, you know, we saw some in northern territory and you could get fairly close to them. Now, if you saw one, you know, in some remote spot that, you know, hadn't seen a person before, you know, they might be curious, but chances are they're going to keep a much bigger distance between you and them. So same with the iguanas on the lawn of the thing.

So I guess which one are you comparing with and which would you say is a wild behavior in which, you know. So I do think there is like some modified behavior that's, you know, human anthropogenic behavior differences. Sure. Sure. So I guess it's this is where it turns into like the wildest fake is just a, again, it's meant to be provocative. but I really, I just, I don't necessarily want to make like a hard delineation. I guess it's, it's mainly meant to be like a thought exercise to, because it doesn't, I would be just as interested in seeing a very gigantic, totally naturalistic, beautiful tens of thousands of dollars setup or enclosure,

zoo style enclosure maybe that is like a pile of railroad ties and a bunch of flip tires and old farming equipment you know what I mean like that because you know we're going to find horned lizards and bull snakes and desert iguanas and leopard lizards and we're going to find fence lizards and side blotch lizards and we're going to find other snakes we're going to find box turtles we might find tortoises right wherever we are and that scene's there. And the reason I think that is so interesting is because those, the shift in perspective that comes from seeing a wild animal living in a place like that can is, is such a great way of like informing your herpeticulture because all of a sudden you,

everything is very recognizable. And the system, it clarifies the system in some way. If you just look at like a beautiful sagebrush hillside and you're setting up for like a Masu Saga or something, you're like, well, I don't, I don't know. I like, I know some of this stuff, but I'm not going to be able to put it all together. I don't, it's, it's not my, I don't spend every day out there. It's harder to be. But if I, if I can see an animal that, or a similar kind of animal that's living this really liminal, wild existence, okay, well, now this is probably informative and educational. And I'm more interested in those animals anyway, on some level, because I feel

like that's like the first step towards making a conscious choice to be a part of this world in some way. This is the equivalent. It's like the very first step to where you have crows that drop nuts on the crosswalk and they learn how to read the lights so that way the cars run over the nut they can't normally crack. Like something has to happen before that. And it seems like that is a reasonable evolutionary step that some animals, some Egyptian Euromastics figured out how to make a home in the rubble next to the,

grocery store, well, okay, well, now I'm going to have a relate. There's that, that lizard has a relationship with a little kid who brings it a flower every day or something because they figured it out. You know, like those beautiful little moments of like, that's the early signs of domestication. And that to me feels like a wild interaction. That's like, that's the wild. That's not, that's totally a wild.

There's two wild creatures interacting with each other. And I love thinking about it that way. I just, again, the wild isn't fake in, in a, in a, in a, in a, literal sense, but in a poetic sense, I like to break the barrier down. Right. And I thought of this, too, the Galapagos is an interesting example of how, you know, set apart from people and not being, you know, co-evolving with hominids. You're not going to have fear of them. And so like you can go up and shove a Galapagos hawk with your gun and it's not going to sense any danger or, you know, that kind of So I guess, you know, in that that aspect, I guess the wild, you know, what, what is the wild, you know?

Yeah, yeah. And how do we fit in it? And this, this, this, this, it is like, fits into this broader conception I have about, like, invasive and native, like, as a constant, right? Right. Right. Like, it would be weird. Like, you know, everybody talks about, like, the dingo, how it's a naturalized, you know, animal in Australia. Or, like, or the, you know, then the counter comparison, like, cat.

here or, you know, feral cats in Australia, the cane toad or like, you know, things that are wreaking havoc. Like everybody, that's the thing that everybody will talk about. Right. It's like, well, okay. But, you know, is it, is it really different if like some Spanish ship happened to drop off a bunch of goats somewhere? How different is that from like the Polynesians bringing with them dogs, chickens and pigs when they, when they left Southeast Asia and went to the Polynesian Islands. It's like it's not that. It's the same thing really on some level, you know, and it's obviously it has a different

connotation, you know, and understandably, I get it. Like, it's fair. I'm just saying that even that stuff to me feels like a little bit weird, a little, there's something so informative about an invasive animal on, you know, on some level. It's like, right, right. They kind of cut through and not, both invasive and those liminal species, they kind of cut through some of our conceptions about what we think animals need, right? I was just reading that book by by Jeff Lamb on the cyclera.

And they were talking about how there was one group of iguanas on some key somewhere. I forget the specifics. But they eat like seven plants. There's like seven plants, period. Just seven. Yeah. That's notches, nothing, right? It's like, it's like, imagine eating seven things for the rest of your life.

Yeah. It's a drag. And it's so, it's so tiny compared to so many because others have like 57, right? And you're like, holy shit. So it's like, it's also. weird because it's like we have we find it so hard to extirpate invasives but so easy to eliminate the ones we're trying to protect right right weird and out of balance you know yeah but it's like um i think i mean i feel like an invasive also would be really informative for what we do because on

some level that's what i have here i have a couple of chuck wallas that there's just not they're not from colorado they don't eat produce right but here they are so it's like i'm I sort of have this invasive thing. And so I have to say, all right, well, if I look at invasive herbivores elsewhere, like, what are they, or not even just invasive, but just herbivores living adjacent to human settlement. Like, what are they eating? Because it's not the same as their wild stuff.

It was inspired by those. That's why I started making this food, you know, like, I'm not trying to make an ad for that or anything, but I, you know, like, I started making it. There's the Eurogrit, but I started making this dry plant matter stuff that's called, I call Euro spice and it's got, you know, a whole mess of plants in it. But the plants I'm picking because it's like, Well, this stuff seems like the stuff that you would want them to eat if they live next to a farm. And there's examples of animals in their native ranges eating sorghum.

So I'm going to put sorghum in here. Like even though the sorghum doesn't exist there naturally, but they're eating it. Well, that's, that's a signal. That's something to take into account, you know. Right. And I just, you know, I read these books by, I forget the guy's name off the top of my head. But it was like plagues, plows, and petroleum. And I listened to his, it was kind of a riff on guns, germs, and steel.

right and I listened to a podcast several podcasts by the same guy and he was talking about how the fauna in the San Francisco Bay is like 75% on native it's just like introduced from the ballasts of ships and the waterhole you know right one part of the world to the other and dump their hole yeah yeah like invasive and yeah I could see how it would be a threat to the native species like I'm not arguing that that's not the case but not not natural I mean the globe oscillates the changes all the time. I'm not trying to say it's a good thing. I'm just saying that that's an it's interesting. Right, right. And I think historically, humans have been kind of placed as an aside like we're different. You know, we don't fit into the natural world at all. But

the way we influence and the way we change and, you know, bring things. I mean, how many species are over here because the Europeans wanted to have their favorite bird or their favorite, you know, funny or whatever, you know, and then they, they just become naturalized and we don't think twice about it with a lot of these things, you know. Yeah. Yeah. For sure, man. And it's, so I just think, I think there's probably a lot of, like, hidden value in, in those things that, you know, like reverse engineering stuff, right? Like, that's right. Art of why people study invasive stuff. What's it doing to the natural, natural world here, you know? And that's really cool. Like, you wouldn't have expected that a Burmese python could make it in the Everglades. Like, what,

What is it doing differently? Like, what are they eating that's different? You know, how are they, what choices are they making to survive? And just a completely backwards place that they wouldn't, they're none of their biology necessarily anticipated on some level, you know, totally different pathogens, totally a different microbiota. Like what the, that's crazy. I mean, they're just as capable as we are.

You're like, we did it. We colonize the globe. Right. How dare we keep these other animals from colonizing it? Let them go, dude. Just kidding. Don't do it. Yeah.

It's a really interesting idea that you have there. The idea that species that are invasive or those that are just in those liminal spaces really do speak to the most basal requirements of those animals, right? It's like what dealing. Yeah, they illustrate that, you know, core functionality, those core requirements. And that is sort of the, you know, even as you were talking through it, right, the, if we're going out field herp in somewhere, right? Often those additional, you know, those additional systemic inputs that are not natural within that space are frequently the home of concentrations of the animals that we're looking for. Part of that is just creating that extra structure, maybe that's more manipulatable for us, right? That's part of it.

But, yeah, it's a really interesting idea. Man, again, it was all those damn spiny tail iguanas in Costa Rica. There was one just unit of a male that would have just. just hang out by the pool all day. And, you know, he had his girls around. You could see him and he would head, Bob at him all the time. And he was terrifying to approach, honestly. Intiminating lizards.

Very intimidating animal. They're big heads. And he was eating the grass on the grounds. That's not native. He was eating the plants on the grounds, most of which non-native, right? He was getting fed by the hotel guests. Everything from chicken to strawberries to, to just bullshit, you know, candy probably.

And that animal looked as good as anything I've ever seen. I mean, he looked so fit and set for exactly what he needed. And clearly an advantage to be there. How many predators were scared off because we're there? You know, what a brilliant decision to attach yourself to something like that. It's a good help, you know? Yeah. And I think, well, as an example of the opposite,

type of thing is, you know, people in the islands wanting to have interactions with these, you know, island iguana, some of the cyclores species. And they actually, the, the guides would give the tourists grapes on the end of it, like a skewer, and then feed the iguanas these grapes. And research at Utah State has discovered that they're getting a form of diabetes because they're just eating these sugary snacks day in and day out. They're acclimated to run to the tourists to get these, know, takes these snacks, you know, that are not part of their native diet and that they're giving them a diseased condition, you know, so it's like, yikes, that's not great. And they probably should put a stop to that. But they probably won't because it's a limited population. And yeah, there's money

because the tourists want to play with the same same thing like swimming with the dolphins or, you know, any other, you know, rays or whatever. They're feeding them, getting them become there so people can, you know, swim with them or be near them, which, you know, it's, it's hard to say if that's a bad thing, because then, you know, people are, they'll care more about those things. They'll see they're not like bloodthirsty, you know, nature's not out to kill them and they need to defend themselves against nature all the time. They can go, I had a great experience swimming with a dolphin or or having this race swim, you know, next to me or whatever, you know, pet it on it. It's a, you know, feeding it a some kind of shell or something. But I mean, that's, that's kind of cool.

stuff to some extent. Like, I don't know that I would contribute to that, but I don't necessarily fault people for that because we do kind of crave that interaction with nature, you know? Yeah, we do. I mean, we talk a lot about, you know, tin stacks and placing artificial cover in natural habitat. And you're like, well, that's kind of an eyesore, you know, I don't want to see that necessarily when I'm going to hike. But if it's on private land and it gives the reptiles we like more of a, you know, an opportunity to thermal regulate and a useful, environment and it makes it easier for the people to find and enjoy the animals, what's the harm? You know, why not?

Exactly. You say you don't want to see it. I would say that, yes, from a feeling of wildness, right? I don't want to see it in that space. Yeah. But it does get my blood pumping over it in the context. Yeah. You're kind of excited.

So I'm excited for it. But yeah, it does kind of ruin that experience of feeling like you're in a wild place. I mean, Phil, my biggest thing is sort of the interconnectivity of systems. and certainly, you know, anthropogenic influence on all things, right? And we're, it feels like we're living that right now, pretty plain. But, you know, I would say that the thing that has always stood out to me, kind of my positivist, I guess, mission out of that whole thing, is the idea that we still wind up in some pretty wild places. And I've always been amazed at the resilience of the earth to all the known harms, right?

There's a place in the New Jersey Pine Barrens where we'll go and have been looking for pine snakes and a variety of, the eastern hog nose, variety of different things, box turtles, all this stuff. It feels very wild. Well, that's a super fun, super fun site, you know, like that's where we're going. You know, that was from in the 40s, 50s, 60s, there's just pouring chemicals straight into the earth to the point where even come to the mid-1960s, they were like, oh, this is a problem. You know, it was bad if by, you know, 19603, they were like, oh, boy, you know, we've really messed this one up. But we got to not only stop what we're doing, but back away, you know, leave it alone. And we're there, you know, 62 years on.

And it's, you know, a wild space. And we're seeing baby box turtles wandering around. Right. Man, totally. So I had a great gentleman named Andes Arieta on my podcast. He is a, I believe he's at Yale. Sorry, honest, if you're, if I'm wrong there. But I'm pretty sure it's Yale.

He has a pretty big, uh, swathe of things that he does and is good at. and does research on. Primarily, his focus was on wood frogs and studying how their vernal pools were polluted by road salt and how it affected their biology and their evolution. Brilliant guy. It was a really fun show. We talked about AI and herpeticulture and how they might overlap and all this. Really cool.

But he introduced me to a gentleman who studied the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, and he specifically studied the frogs, the tree frogs out there. And how as they get closer to the exclusion zone, they turn black. and it's because the melanin helps deal with some of the effects of radiation, right? And, you know, like, I feel like the Chernobyl exclusion zone is, so he's going to be on my show soon where we've got a podcast scheduled, but I want to talk with him about it because the big thrust is that when people went into that place,

the first time after the meltdown, they were like, we're going to find a bunch of crazy hybrid weird chimera animals, you know? Mutants. Yeah, just a bunch of mutants. And instead what they found was a bunch of thriving. just rich populations with yeah not not not necessarily a bunch of weird crap but with unique changes you know like they were unique and they're different and there's some things about the things that live there that are a little different but it's none of them are necessarily negative they're

just changes and i and i and that's and like nuclear radiation is like the most toxic thing we can imagine right so it's it's on some level it's like you know i said this on another show and again it being a little bit hyperbolic here so bear with me but like, you know, plankton changed the entire state of the planet at some point many billions of years ago. Like that's why we have oxygen, right? It's because of plankton, you know. And so it's like, yes, of course, this was a natural process and it was slow and it was gradual and things had time to work on it and figure it out and whatever. I'm not saying that all change is totally fine and no problem.

But I do think that the idea that we're just that everything is just fucked is maybe not the whole. picture on some level, you know? Right. But he's probably probably more complicated. Well, and I mean, I've mentioned this on previous shows, but like how many extinction events is this Earth experienced? You know, there's there's more, there's more species that have come and gone than that there are on the Earth right now. And so, you know, I mean, how much worse is, you know, a meteor hitting the earth that's the size of New Jersey, you know, that takes out 99% of the animals on the planet. And then the ones that were underground or whatever find away and they kind of evolve and change and adapt to the new reality or the new normal or whatever new environment there is and and they thrive and they

diversify and now we have this you know very complex diversification and yeah I mean nature finds a way yeah unless it doesn't unless there's some you know planet that was speciated now it's just some rock floating out in space with nothing on it, you know, who knows? Yeah, maybe. And I feel like, you know, I feel like what you're saying there is like after the next extinction event, we're going to have to be ready for the platypus lords of the world, you know? Right. You know, who knows what's going to happen? Like, what, what's the next series, I guess, for this earth? And I mean, we won't be around to find out, but, you know, it's interesting to think about. And I mean, just the, the grand scale, I mean, to think about a billion years, you know, like, what does that even know?

mean, you know, like even a thousand years or, I mean, our country's only, what, a couple hundred years old. It's like crazy. I don't know. I don't even think we live a billion minutes. Right. Right. Exactly. Pretty sure we don't. Yeah. Add that up. Think of all that's come and gone in the last billion years. You know, it's insane. Yeah, man. It's just too bad that we can't see the sort of Parenti equivalent of 10 million years from now. What's it going to be some weird, some weird, like, desert ray that, you know, like, walks on its face and eats glass. Right.

Yeah. I mean, I love the diversity of terrosaurs. I think that would be so cool to see, like, go back in time and see all the diverse terasors that flew around on this planet. I mean, cuts of coattalus, I mean, the size of a free. can giraffe. That is crazy. And that head on it, I mean, goodness, that would be crazy to see. Yeah, I definitely, I've stayed awake more than once contemplating all the creatures I'll never get to see. Right, right. I mean, I think that's what, that was the big thing of Jurassic Park was just seeing that, you know, almost a reality of a dinosaur, you know, just to think, I, I think a lot of us are, you know, dinosaur geeks as children that kind of turned into reptile nerds from that.

And I mean, it's exciting to think about, you know. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Definitely. And I mean, the same feeling applies for me for the current state of nature. Like, I'm always totally geeked out when there's something new to discover. Like, I mean, tell me that, you know, planet Earth two or whatever with the scene with the Galapagos iguanas getting chased by the snake, the racers. Tell me that wasn't the coolest nature footage you've ever. seen in your life. My jaw was on the floor while I watched that. I was just like in a trance. It was so

cool. That's what that's what TV is made for. Yeah. There's no better use. Oh my goodness. So, you know, there's there's things like that that I think are still out there. And you know, I want to, I want to go see that stuff in the wild, you know, like I don't know, you know, driving my car and coming across to King Brown that's trying to peel off a death adder off the road, you know, to eat it. I mean, that's so cool. I love that kind of stuff. Me too. I get it. There's nothing too small or too big that it's not. Exactly. Totally mind-blowing, you know. Or discover there's a new kind of bug that lives in your neighborhood that you never noticed, you know? I saw some weird, like red and green beetle on a milkweed. And I'm like,

is that, you know, normal? Or like this bright yellow beetle that Rob and I found in St. George area, the other words like I looked it up. This is native. These live here. Like, what the heck? I didn't know there was a bright yellow beetle that was native to Utah. It's just exciting and cool. Yeah, yeah, man.

So many cool things. Couldn't agree more. Couldn't agree more, really. So I know, Rob, I think another one was the hybrid thing, right? Didn't I say hybrids too? So the hybrids are a cool topic because I feel like that fits into this too, right? So I feel like hybrids are probably going to be an outsized proportion of future herpeticulture, whether we like it or not. And I've been thinking about this, partially because I think what we're doing is a kind of domestication.

And it's obviously very, very early, right? But everything that stays in our houses for more than a few generations starts to take on all of those domesticated phenotype traits, right? You know, whether it's changes in body structure, higher fecundity, younger reproductive rate. No seasonality. No seasonality. All those things, right? So all that stuff starts to happen. And I think that if you look at any, there is no domestic species, I think,

at least none that are really clear that have been around for any length of time that are not some amalgam something more of a just a human creation right they're not the same thing that they were anymore they're a mix of lots of different things um you know whether it's cows chickens pigs they're all like goats they're all like leopard geckos right period of deer dragons um they're all something that's not quite a pure whatever what we would call a pure species And, you know, of course, this is changing a little bit. I know with like genetic, the way people sequence do genetic, phylogenetic stuff. But really, when we call something a species, really what we're doing is like kind of

drawing a line in the sand somewhere. We're saying, okay, I'm going to call this like sufficient differentiation. I mean, you're, I know you're a, I know you're a, I know you're a biologist and a biologist by trade. So you know how nobody, nobody knows what a species is. Like, what do you define the thing? Right. You can't define the thing.

that I question whether it exists in the first place, right? It doesn't mean. I mean, you can define it. There's just many different definitions and what fits. You know, that's debatable. That's hard to say. That's a more accurate way of putting it. Yeah, that's fair.

You know, it's that and I feel like it doesn't mean, again, I'm not suggesting that I don't want to see Fiji Crested iguanas in a thousand years. That's not what I'm saying at all. Right. Of course I do. But, you know, I think excluding programs that are specifically designed, to produce a very specific thing, like a very particular tortoise

or a very particular large lizard or something. Like, we were talking about cyclera, right? Like, I want all of those iguanas to be as pure as they're going to be until some hurricane takes them out or something like that in 2,000 years or whatever. But, you know, with regard to when things come into the house, when they come indoors, I just feel like all bets are off because you can't fight it anyway, you know, that you can,

you can select for the most specific Arizona Mountain Kingsnake from the same two, two, two mile stretch of road. But at the end of the day, you haven't seen all of the Kingsnakes there. You don't know what Mother Nature prefers. You're going to make selection choices that are outside your awareness, right? And you're going to have, and we all know from the Russian Fox thing that really when you, even when you're not making selections for anything that you think is meaningful, you have downstream effect from those choices that just how it works, right? It's all those tag alongs that you just didn't know where there. They're invisible to you. And so insofar as you can keep anything looking even reminiscent of its ancestor population, I don't know that there's necessarily like inherent value there outside of preference.

and at that point, if it's just preference, then other people have different preferences. And at the end of the day, there are going to be kids that are born right now that in 20 years, the thing they want more than anything is a six-way species hybrid, colubrid of some kind.

And they're going to get it, and it's going to have biology, and we're going to have to know about it, and it's going to be this totally, fully unique thing in the world. And now I have the, Calico Chucks, right? They're a hybrid. I think hybrids help us. I mean, obviously, there's the legal implications of hybrids, right? All of a sudden, I can send trucks to Arizona somehow, right? But it's like, you know, but, but the reality is like, I think that the,

if we concede that herpeticulture is going to grow and we're going to get a lot more people involved, I think the only thing that can can result in sufficient amount of time, because nobody's kept a project alive that long for anything, really, except maybe the institution of education and writing have lasted millennia. Right. But, like, no, I don't know of any domesticate that's survived intact over millennia of human involvement. I don't know anything, and not one. So I'm, there was a really cool story about, I think his name was Borgland.

He was a scientist that was, food scientist that was developing different wheat strains. He actually went did a lot of research down in Mexico because the growing season was longer so he could do more studies. And he was crossing different strains of wheat to develop some that would be shorter, that would be less prone to be blown down by a big windstorm or whatever and ruin the crop by having it on the ground. He did all these cross-breeding and things to try to come up with the strongest, you know, rust resistant, which is a fungus of wheat. I mean, it was a really fascinating story, and he basically dedicated his life and re- reimagine the world of wheat and developed all these different strains that then he gave

to different countries so they could have, you know, more productive food growing and things. And, I mean, just fantastic work. But thinking about all the different crosses, you know, he'd select different phenotypes of different wheat strains and breed them all together to try to figure out what would make the best most hearty, you know, disease-resistant strain. So, you know, nothing like the original wheat that, you know, people would have seen in the beginning. But, you know, that's part of this. And I think our appreciation or our enjoyment of some of these reptile pets, you know, I think that totally goes along. I mean, I see these carpet pythons coming in from Canada from Don Patterson.

And they're just all sorts of crosses all, all, you know, across the different species and subspecies. And they're beautiful. There are some of those gorgeous carpet pythons I've seen, you know. And, you know, you might say, well, that's just a dirty mix or whatever. But there's some fantastic looking mixes that I've seen. I just had a guy, I just had a random customer or not even a customer, just a follower on Instagram who sent me pictures of a Euromastics that I am about as certain as I can be. is a hybrid between a molly and a jai and it's pretty god damn cool looking you know like it's a sick looking lizard and i had another instance with jirai and molly where someone hybridized

without realizing it they weren't familiar with the distinction between the species and they bred a molly to a jirai and then uh the first generation of babies just looked jirai and then the second generation was where the molly popped out and looked weird and it was like whoa that looks what is that Like, that's a weird, and they look black and white. Whereas the one that I saw from the guy had red. It was crazy looking, you know? Yeah. And I feel like the, okay, if there's two levers we can pull to make the lives for our animals better, it's going to be one, making sure that the person behind them is committed and interested.

Mm-hmm. Right. And two, making sure that the animal is set up both by the care, but also by breeding and selection. Right. be to be a good candidate to be something that benefits from being here right so in my view the the ethical decision is is one to let it rip on some on some level just let it rip like go for what you want because and if that means that what you want is a galapaguana hey breed your galapagos land iguana is in china that's fine you know like no one's going to

notice like or Uganda right but like But, but, you know, the thrust of it is, even if that's what you want, you're making something different. Right. So we should be, you know, very open-minded to what the herbert culture biology looks like in a thousand years. Yeah. I said this before, but Ben, Ben Morrill always reminded me, once you take it out of the wild, it stops being that species. Because you've taken it on a different evolutionary trajectory. You've removed it from its, you know, historical place. You've taken away even like the biota that it's experiencing in the wild, like the bacteria and the viruses and the other pathogens in the environment.

Like the gut microbiome is a huge factor on, you know, human, all sorts of human things from weight to, you know, all sorts of things. Your hormone status. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, we're more bad. bacteria than we are human in regards to cell count. You know, there's there's a lot more bacterial cells. So, you know, if you're taking it away from that, you know, that's an aspect of it being a species in its environment. And, you know, the animal in this part of the state versus, you know, the 200 miles away,

it might be classified as the same species, you know, that line was drawn, but they could have different biota in different corners of the state, different habitats, you know, all sorts of different things. They could capitalize on different prey or, you know, so, yeah. The biology of that spiny tailed iguana on the grounds of the hotel in Costa Rica had a totally different physiology. Exactly. And another symbolist's a thousand yards away. Right. Like, it's a different animal. Okay. Yeah. And I just think and besides, listen, some hybrids, yeah, they're a bummer. Okay. Some of them don't turn out the way we wanted them to. And so you should do things just like you do anything. You should do it with care and, and, and, and, at fourth,

thought and consideration and good choices, right? Right. But, dude, some of the coolest looking animals I've ever seen are hybrids. Like some of the coolest animals alive are like a weird. Yeah, that you wouldn't predict. And I've heard a lot of naysayers go, well, you know, they don't look as good as either parent or, you know, and a lot of times that's true. Maybe you don't see the bright colors or the pattern or whatever.

Maybe it kind of goes to more of an earth tone as you mix these two different things. But sometimes you get some pretty. dramatic and crazy looking animals. You know, I still remember the, I think it's the angry balls. Isn't that like the blood python, ball python hybrid? And yeah, some of them are kind of ugly and plain and some are like crazy, like different patterns. And it was usually the F2s, you know, you'd breed the ball with the blood and then you'd

breed the offspring to each other. And you have these crazy, like, so cool. Unpredictable, you know. And, you know, I'm not necessarily a proponent of that. I don't, you know, I kind of. I kind of like to see what I would see in the wild to some extent. But at the same time, like, you look at the majority of like Breddles, pythons in captivity.

And man, that one we saw in nature looks like the, the best, you know, hypo that's available out there, you know. And this is just a random wild animal. Yeah. Yeah. And, well, and additionally, we are cool with hybrids in certain contexts, right? Right. And usually it's like for people say, oh, it's only what we don't have any other choice.

So, sure, okay. Like, you know, we all know about the Galabs that have been reintroduced on various islands, but they're hybrids, you know, because the original ones just aren't there. Right. We're all cool with the Cyclora Lewasai hybrids because it's the only way we have Louisi present in the country. Right. Right.

So we'll be like, well, we'll make the trade-off. We can have the hybrid and we'll just select for ones that look more amenesis, right? The-old John Egan's story on that was interesting. The what? Sorry? John Egan's story about that was interesting. I don't know that I know that, yeah. Yeah.

It was a local guy. Anyway, so, no, he reached South Fish and Wildlife, and it was on the front end of that genetic testing stuff. And his Louis-Sy hybrids weren't, and he wound up losing him because he went to the feds and gave him the blood sample. He's a local guy, or at least he used to be. I don't know, maybe he probably ran into him, Phil. He had pure lewisai? Yeah.

But that he had purchased his hybrids, but then, you know, he was heading for the. the blood down. These chucks, man, they're hard to, they're hard to tell from, from regular various, you know, they,

they look like various. If they didn't have, like, raised scales and super dark, dark black blotches, you'd be like, I don't know, you know,

I don't know, that's because they look like a, dude, and those things, bro, whoa, like, it's kind of blowing my mind.

But, uh, more, more to the point, though, it's, it's like, there's lots of,

and I feel like, there's there's so many animals where it's like okay we there's they're candidates for hybridization right like the uromastic yemenensis okay they're the yemeni euro they're amazing they're beautiful they're incredible never really got off the ground as like project you know like some mix of mixed demand and difficulty breeding and i you know i i hatched a lot but i only had like three i only have like three pairs, you know. That's not enough to go forward. Okay, well, I mean, maybe we throw some more Nata in there.

And then, you know, I'm not doing it. I'm just saying, like, do you want to not have Yemen's at all? Or do you want to have them represented somehow? And who knows, man, you could put them together and make something crazy looking, you know? Right, but are they Yemen, you know? That's right. Right, right. Of course.

The interesting thing there, this comes actually to the thing that's kind of, I've been bouncing around in my mind as you've been going, is that, you know, my predisposition would be to be a splitter completist, right? And one, I want to have every different thing. But my career through herpeticulture has shown me, and you just talked about it. And that may not be exactly the reason with the eminences, right? Some of it is the quantity that we started with, what was the quantity condition, infrastructure that supported all those different things, right? But, like, some of, you know, I've come to really fully appreciate it. I used to kind of have the Frank greatest perspective that goanna is a goanna and that they're all sort of, you know, more or less a goanna as a goanna.

Sure. And the more that I've seen them in the wild and understand fully where they are in things, the less I think that's true, right? I've come to more firmly appreciate how they are different. And in the same way, I think there are reasons. And they can be anthropogenic. They can be, you know, willing to, you know, genuinely reflect an animal's adaptability to captivity, you know, ability. it's, you know, ability to thrive, its ability to produce. But a lot of the things that are uncommon, rare, never took off.

There's a reason. Yeah. You know, it's one of those things, you know, it's almost like, whereas my mindset is I want to have the whole set, you know, or they used to be. You know, this was my own idea. How cool would it be to have all the odatria? How cool would it, all the, you know, all the Python, every Python, whatever it would be. Right. And the answer is that they, if they were all strictly speaking,

to all conditions equally likely to do well. We would see them in equal distribution, and we don't, right? And you probably can't keep them all in the same space, right? So it could be, it could represent, okay, what's just the easiest thing? We're going to have a preference towards that within the community. Yeah. But to some extent, there's a, you know, and we used to just jokingly say like, oh, it turns out that Saboo Python's kind of suck. You know, like to keep or whatever.

You know, it's like everyone wants it, and then they become rare. and this or dense pythons you know there's been a lot of that conversation going around and stuff and it's right okay well even sort of the and a big advocate for them now is like well they're you know fundamentally basically in all of python with a slightly different or a maclitz python with a little different skull and slightly different patterning and you know but people just let them fade out and it's like yeah because they there wasn't sort of the push to do it the impetus to do it was just that little bit harder or a little bit different than a maclitz python

that was that much more willing, you know, compliant, shall we say. And they were gone. And it's like, yeah, I understand why we want to have them here, why that would be a goal species, why people would be interested in it. But will we become complacent in some point? And then they'll disappear again. Yeah. Probably, to be honest, probably.

Every, every animal is only around because a sufficient number of people are producing it, you know. So again, we were talking earlier about Don's horses and stuff like this. I've been trying to get into this. the weeds on, like, how certain dog breeds have sustained. And, like, what, what are some of the oldest breeds, you know? And, like, how, how is it that they have made it to now, you know? And there's obviously no guarantee for the future. And maybe if they can send a piece of themselves off into the future,

then there's sort of sufficient on a genetic level. But it's like to take the other side of it, when you say, oh, species that don't make it here, yeah, much of the time there's a reason. And I know, I know you, I know you. meant a reason as in any any possible reason like any conceivable reason but if it's worth denoting that and I know this was implicit what you were saying but I think it's worth spelling out which is that you know the reason might not be a good reason you know it might just be nobody did it like there you know it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't have anything higher slightly

different slightly whatever yeah just just just speak to someone at the right time even just timing, right? So it's like even if the species would have been a good call, like a good candidate. It just the person wasn't there to catch them on some level. And neuromastics is so niche and had there have been so many small windows on particular groups, Rainbow Bentee, right? You know, it's there's one shipment, two shipments, whatever. And if it weren't the people at that point in time, then it doesn't happen. We're talking about the hard wiki idea, the Indian heroes, right? But the, this group that was imported in 2024 was the first.

group that was imported in the United States in 20 years. Right. And the last time they were brought in was for a university, not for the trade. Yeah. So it was even further back when they were here last for it imported anyway. And now there were hundreds brought in. And I'm telling you, I can name five people who have them still. Mm-hmm.

Like some of them are out there, surely floating around. Yeah. But how many of them are going to make it into breeding homes with consistency? How many people who buy the babies are going to continue that work forward? I mean, it's so precarious, you know, immediately and like immediately precarious. Not like, oh, there's a glut of them and everyone takes it for granted because there's 12 ads on Morph Market for our Wikii. Right. And everybody says, nobody, it's fine.

They're here. No problem. But J. Rye, they're exactly the same thing. J. Rye are now, you cannot, CITES recommended that they no longer get exported from Mali. And so the only way to get J.Rai out is through Ghana and Togo, where the ball pythons go out. And I would be willing to bet that they're not going to risk their ball python trade for a few dirty Euromastics.

You know, they're just going to be like, no, it's fine. We don't need to do it. And because they're not fetching high dollars, right? They're a cheap, cheap species, you can say. And so it's like, I'm just going to bide my time in 10 years. there's going to be no j-ri in you know because they're not going to have been brought in people won't have bred them because they were a throwaway species to some people and whatever and everyone will be clamoring for the bright red or the bright yellow or the albino or whatever because they're

they're crazy-looking creatures they're crazy you know and there's so many examples of this and it's like I don't like the idea that the reasons were insufficient to keep them in herpeticulture and so that the few remaining animals left we have to make hard decisions about I get it but I don't see hybridization as an invalid path. And I don't think you guys are saying that either. I'm just saying that it's like, better some than none. I don't know, you know.

Right. That's so hard to say. I don't know. And I think a lot of that, you know, the hybridization is, could be a function of just ignorance or, you know, maybe ignorance is too harsh a term. But like you just, they look similar.

So you throw them together, like you said, yeah. There were a species. There were a single species. Right. And some of the, right, you could, it naturally brings up the counter python thing where it's like some of the, sure, the pushback of saying, yeah, they were a single species. But if you had interacted with them, you wouldn't, you would appreciate how they were different, you know, from different places, physiologically different from different places and things. But there are things, right. Phil, I think he hit on either before or during this, right, where we're talking about differentiation that's only available under the microscope.

Or, you know, if you hear the call or whatever. And it's like, okay, if someone, not that there are that many things that would fit within that truth that are being produced in captivity, but certainly any sort of hybrid that would come hybrid based on a subsequent, you know, split, that's certainly not fair. Yeah. I mean, the leopard gecko is a great example of that where there are multiple species kind of intermixed because we didn't know any better, but, you know, but they're great pets. They're beautiful. I think of that too, where you get through forms and you're on, like, these are pretty different. But here's the thing is I never saw anything that really came in that way is beyond the true macularis, right? They were being exported in the early 90s.

Right. And, you know, it's funny because even now, it's like people take, there were species that I got out of of Euros because I was like, well, I really, if I'm going to, if I'm going to do this and like take it forward, I kind of have to focus. I can't do all of them. I can't carry all of them forward. So it's like, well, there's some people breeding Asalata and there's some people breeding Philbi I and there's, there's some people breeding Moroccans and whatever. So I'm like, okay, I can just, I'll pass my projects to them and they'll carry it and it'll go. It's not enough people, you know. So now the only two, the only three species that I'm confident will be present in herberticulture in the next 50 years is J.R.I. Ornata and Thomasa.

And that's, that's because there's enough of them between myself and a few other people where I know that, it would be hard to take them out. There's a lot. They're not established in a proper sense because there's still not a lot of them. And it's going to be a lot of work and a lot of planning to ensure the healthy future for them. But there's species that five, six years ago, I would have said are just fine. You can get, you'll be able to find them. And now I count Asalata, Maliancis, Yemenensis, preinps, Moroccans even.

they're just not they're just not picking up in in the way and and and because of that the number of animals that can participate and contribute genetically speaking just dwindles it goes down so quickly you know it disappears so fast and um you know so i i have osolata again i got more i got a big group of them a bunch a couple unrelated clutches and so i'm going to pull because i'm like all right i'm going to at least keep a few pairs it's going to be like a five six year project but they've got to have more of them there's there's not a enough, you know, and they're a great candidate. They're wonderful, beautiful, you know, worth it, small, you know, they're easy to give a very high standard of care, you know.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I think all those things are that much, you know, in terms of losing them to captivity, right? That's that much more likely when we're talking about things where the production is really consolidated. So, and you're, you know, you're a great example, right, of amongst the ear of mastics that like okay and i'm sure every time you sell them your hope is that it's going to forever home and that that's going to be with them for 25 years and whatever but you know you can go on to morph market and i bet they're animals that were sold into that context they're then present there and the language will still say captive bread and maybe maybe maybe it's actually good news that they're trying there's a positive credibility or um you know

sales pitch associated with saying that it came from you so there's transparency around that but a a lot of the time there isn't, right? And so I'm just thinking of Gloward Island, the Kimberly Rock monitors, that, oh, we're going back to the late 90s, early 2000s, and the idea, what, you'd see them all over the place. It's like, oh, they're almost ubiquitous, particularly at big shows and whatever. And in reality, those were coming from, like,

three or four different places. And it doesn't take long for three places to stop producing a species. Yeah. A divorce, fire, you know, like those kind of things can take out a whole or a death, you know. I'm doing it. Right. It doesn't need to be as dramatically. certainly any of those things make it a big problem.

Yeah. And sometimes success kind of is the negative for a species in captivity because, I mean, you look at Australian Water Dragons and, you know, Bert's producing plenty of those. Nobody really needs to work with those. That will have them forever. And then Burt passes away. And then all of a sudden, they're a rarity. And, you know, where were the thousands that Burt produced? Where are they now? And why are they not, you know, being productive? Well, I can't compete with Bert, so, you know, I'll just have one as a pet or whatever. Yeah. You know, they're slowly coming back.

But, you know, that's, that's kind of a, I think, or if they're imported and they're inexpensive, like, oh, we'll have these forever. And then all of a sudden they stop the import. Now they're, the, the $10 animal is now a thousand dollar animal. And everybody's trying to clamber. Exactly. Yeah. They don't see.

Right. Right. And I think it's a really big push to. work with what you love, work with what you're interested in, regardless of the amount of money you're going to make on it. You know, everybody should have a kind of a project that they don't benefit from, you know, Rob is a great example of that. Most of the stuff he has can only be gifted. It can't be sold unless it's, you know, just in Colorado. And I don't think he wants to sell them in Colorado and give him away everywhere else. Yeah. So it's like, no, totally. And, and, you know,

it's funny. I think a lot of this is really, um, just like an expression of the lack of maturity that in a in a market sense maturity that exists in herpeticulture right because it's like that we're only just now excuse me whoa um all right we're only we're only just now i i feel like there's there's a sufficient number of younger her perpers who kind of see that they've seen a lot of that they kind of grew up watching stuff kind of come and go in a different way. And so

I feel like now there's just a lot more people who are thinking about well, how do we change? How do you do? What do you need to do to make that not be the case? And so I think this is one of the big factors that's driving the whole artisanal

reptile production concept, right? In the sense that yeah, like maybe I could get a euro from PetSmart or something, the wild caught one. But like if I go get one from this guy in Colorado, I'm not just, I not just know more about what I'm getting with that animal. But like I'm getting lifetime consulting and support and help from the guy who did it, who knows how to breed this, who bred this thing. And it's like it's not just the kind of support that it's not just like a term. Right.

Like it's 40 hours of my week are contributed to talking with people and helping them through the hardships that they have. euros, helping them through challenges, helping them with ideas, you know, like them getting, bouncing questions off from me, all of that. Like it's a, it is such a massive amount of the way I spend my time that it's like that to me, I think is the thing is going to, that sort of behavior, more, more personalized herpetocultural interactions coupled with, with the, the evils of social media. Well, hopefully, I think, is going to be one of the things that sort of matures herpeticulture as a market and allows more people to recognize that you can do, as you said, Justin, you can literally do anything. You could literally breathe anything and it would be freaking awesome.

If you just show, just show it, just take good pictures and show how cool the animals are because there's no way to do it well without getting to know them. And if you get to know them and they're interesting and they're fun to be around. Other people are going to think the same thing. It could be any animal, even the ones that everyone would think of as like, what a boring thing to keep? I bet not.

Right. I bet not, man. There's an account I just started following on Instagram. It's a guy who does ants. Yeah. It's like the ant. I have to look it up. It's like the Ant Man or something,

but that's the comic book guy, right? But he's got like all these fornicariums and ant setups in this room. And he does all these crazy. experiments where he'll, like, put stuff in water and see how they get it out and, like, all this, dude, you would never see it. It's a plant. Yeah. Fucking ant, you know? So if that, uh, look at the rise of millipedes.

Like, I have, I have millipes now, bro. I have two. She's milipede. Yeah. Because my kid found some of the backyard and I was like, this is the time. I'm going to go get some millipedes, you know? And so it's like that, all of that stuff, like this stuff that's a lot young. even than herpeticulture.

Right. It's like, whoa, this is going to be really interesting. Like the whole, this whole world is getting so much bigger all the time. I'm sure you guys all follow unique channels on YouTube or Instagram that have something that you're like, like the mudskipper account, right? There's at least one really famous account with a guy who has mud skippers in a tank and he tong feeds him and stuff. Right. You tell me that's not cool. Right.

Crazy, dude. That's awesome. That is awesome. You know. And I think, I mean, you and you know frank pain and you know some of the other guests uh on your show were we're great examples of that where they've kind of taken a species and said this is what i want to popularize or this is something i feel excited about and i want other people to see how cool these are and just

their passion and their excitement for them does the job you know they they make a business out of it or whatever and any i don't think that's as long as you're you're yeah i don't think you're you know conveying that or showing how cool the species you work with are, I think other, there's enough people in the country that you're going to find your people and, you know, your group or whatever, you know. Yeah. I love your amastics. I don't know that I'll ever keep any, but man, I could, I could talk or listen to you talk about

your amastics all day, you know, like just be as geeked out as if somebody was talking about Australian pythons, you know, just because there's so many cool species, you know. Yeah, tell me about it, man. I know what you mean. I feel the same way about any of the things that you all specialize in. I listen to the show all the time. You guys have great. It's such a cool podcast.

I love this stuff that you and you guys and your guests all talk about. But it's like, you know, the one, the project that I have that kind of, you know, the euros obviously are like my main thrust, right? The one that I think actually, it's kind of funny. We started this conversation where I was talking about how emotional I've been feeling because of my daughter that's coming up. And, dude, I'm in a place right now with my herpet culture where, stuff isn't like breeding the way I was hoping it would this year, which is,

which is fine. It's not really that big of a deal. I still have good results. It's okay. But I'm so in a state of just pure bliss. I just love all the stuff that I have right now and the way things are moving and the, the work that I'm doing feels like it's paying off in really good ways for me. And I get to see my family every day.

I honestly, I like, I really couldn't be happier. And so, like, have these other little projects other than the, euros like the xenagama that i've been i've been talking about for a long time but i've been trying to get for people to be like dude you he's the weirdest little toads like it's so strange yeah and i'm just like just i'm just stacking them i'm just hoarding them all i've got like 50 of them right now because they're that's cool breeding a lot and i'm keep you know i got a lot of cool babies coming out and it's like that's a great example of like i don't profit on i don't make profit on at all you know because i'm like i'm just trying to put it

the legwork and build the market because it's like, I'm telling you, this is one of the weirdest lizards you'll ever keep. They're so cool, you know. I still remember when those things came into herpeticulture. I was just like, what are those? Yeah, they're awesome. They're so cool. And so I just, yeah, it's one of those, that's one of those projects where it's like, in 10 years, I think it'll be, they'll be more ubiquitous and people will be like, oh, yeah. Like, in 10 years, they'll be like what euros are, like, now or 10 years ago. Yeah. People have seen them and heard about them and know about them.

And I think that's the big goal because, like, not everybody likes everything, you know. Like, I know so many people love corn snakes. I couldn't care, you know, at all about corn snake. Like, I'll never keep a corn. Like, I was excited to see one in the wild or a couple in the wild. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But keep one in a cage.

No, thank. you know, I pass, you know. Some people love corn snakes. They're the coolest snakes ever to them and they'll never not have a corn snake, you know, to each their own, you know, I think that's fine. As it should be. Right. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, man. But I don't think that means we can't learn about them or be excited about them or hurt for them or whatever, you know, that's all part of this, I think, too. It's not just, you know, what you keep in a box. But, you know, what you're excited about, you know. Like I said, those iguan. is on Galapagos and the Galapagos deracers. I'm never going to keep either of those,

but I could watch that footage for, you know, for forever. The best. The best. Yeah. So were there, what was, did we have, did it, were there other topics that I suggested, Rob? I can't, I don't remember. Yeah, well, so one quick thing,

while we're kind of in the space of the ancillary projects that you have going, do you still have the Peters Bandit's kinks? And have you gotten into Ph. The, like the Mastatius. Staceous. Okay. So I still have, it's the, not the Peters, it's the Schneiders. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yes, I do still, I do still have those. I had my male who produced the one clutch that I got. He got some kind of internal parasite load. So I'm nursing him back from, from that right now. But they're doing, they're doing fine. I hatched two babies like last year,

year before and they're great. The one is in a pet home and is doing awesome. The other is still here, just kicking around doing its thing. I thought I was going to have more success with those. I did get, or not, not Schneiders. I'm thinking sandfish. I'm so sorry. I don't know why I, because I did the, I did the Schneiders too. You're talking about the sandfish, right? Yeah, I think so. Also still have those still have no eggs. I've pulled four clutches out of the sand, but I just haven't caught them in time. Every time I find them, they're too dry. They're, they're so cryptic. It's really hard for me to catch them when they're, I see when they're grab it. I see when they mate, but I don't see when they are getting

ready to lay. They're very, very, because they go under. They don't dig on the surface. They go under big. So you, yeah, you're like, I remember those as being a, you know, from 30 years ago, right? That was a commonly exported wild. So a friend of mine, you know, I remember seeing him at his place and watch, you know, yeah, mostly watching an empty tank. But yeah, when, you know, you would get interactivity out of the, yeah, those are skinkets, skinkas, right? Yeah, that's right. Same, in the same vein of visualization as a Peters. And that's what we're doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, totally. Them, the Peters, the Schneiders, they look, they have a very similar body shape. Yeah. And the banding too. Yeah, no, I'm with you. I get it. It's, it's, I still mix up stuff all the time,

even when I'm talking about the ornates or something. That's funny. But, but yeah, as far as the Mastatious goes, I had some in 2020, and they're super cool. And I see Frank doing really good work with those things. I got eggs, but I never hatched them. And then I, frankly, they didn't, as great as they are, they didn't really fit my references for interaction. You know, nothing against them, of course. It's just they just didn't. The insectivores are really hard for me to keep.

You know, the skinks eat a little bit, but they don't eat much. And the xenogama, they eat a lot of bugs, but I can, it's pretty easy to do it with like mealworms and bean beetles. You don't, I don't have to keep any roaches. I don't have to keep crickets. I can catch stuff outside for them. I can get grasshoppers for them. It's pretty easy.

And it's not a lot. They don't eat like a beard of dragon, you know? So they'll eat like a few a day. day, a few worms a day or something in the hot season. So they're very low, uh, bug cost. But anything that's that eats bugs is a hard one for me to take on just because it's a whole different. And I have a terrible kite allergy. Like it's really bad. Like I get like my throat starts to close up. It's gross. Um, so I, anytime it's like if it eats a lot of kiteness bugs, I have to be very careful about what bugs I get and how I feed them. So I feed a lot of like those little,

the little fuzzy larva, beetle larva that, I don't know, come in with the crickets. Yeah, that you can buy them, you can buy them specifically now from like rainbow meal worms and they'll send you like 10,000 in a little jar. And I, the xenogama love those things. And they don't really spit off all the kite and make me sneeze and stuff and beautiful my life. But I would, the only thing I would change that for now probably is the, the Namaqua chameleon. Yeah, right. I'd be like, that's fine. And get some duty, yeah, no problem. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, man.

But, yeah, so I hope, again, this year, I didn't really, again, some of the breeding doesn't seem to be going the same way. This year we had that super warm winter. I don't want to point the finger at anything else other than me, you know? So it's like, I don't know. They just did, I've just had a high percentage of animals that seem like you want to take the year off. So it's like, okay, that's fine. Take the year.

That's fine. Yeah. Not going to push them. Not a big deal. There's definitely a project or two where I'm like, another year but it would have been nice yeah it'd be nice but that's fine 2027 it is our eyes on the prize for another 400 days right yeah I hear you yeah it's not a fun thing tough one tough one yeah but yeah that's that's all I got the side project stuff is the xenegama

the main one right the hard wiki eye they're a good one I've got these sanestabon island iguanas which I've been letting live in the egress from my basement outside. It's like a perfect little, you know, modular outdoor cage. They love it. The males went out there bobbing his head and pushing his crest out and doing his thing. So hopefully he'll maybe it'd be cool if he breeds with one of the feet. I have two young females that one of them is big enough. So hopefully be cool to get some eggs.

But maybe, again, maybe 2027 or something, you know. Not sure. Yeah. Never bred an iguana before. So I don't know. I don't know what's going to come of these guys, you know. But I'm happy to, they're not, I don't care if they breed, you know. If they do, it's great.

But those ones as long as well as the chucks, they're not, they're just here, you know. They're not, they're not really a factor on the business or anything like that. They're just because what's cooler than a San Esteban Island iguana, man, not much. That's a, that's a cool iguana. So, yeah. This is good. yeah um i don't i i i think maybe uh maybe your thoughts on uh you know starting a new a new project or a new morph uh right oh yeah yeah okay sure sure sure so um talked about that yeah let me let me i'll differentiate

between the two because uh they could be different right if it's if it's a new new project i think that it's an important thing right call it the reptilian research and development part of things. I think the primary thing is you just have to chill. You have to just wait, right? I think, I think if you don't give them a good two or three years, you probably not do it, doing them much, if not longer, depending on what the project is, right? Right. You know, whatever experience you have or don't have, you know, you still need that kind of yeah. Yeah. Right. Totally. And so, I think, I think being open-minded to how your initial goals and thoughts about what you're doing with them can change over time and not letting those things be like a deal breaker for you. I feel like it's

anytime you take on any, it's just like when you take on anything new, you really have to, you have to be willing to stick it out for a while to really get a sense for, because how well do you know it? How well can you really judge whether or not it works for you if you don't do your due diligence and give them the time of day and the, and the, the, the, and your time, basically, just sitting there hanging out with and doing nothing, right? Now if it's a, if it's like, a mutation or a cult like a mutant, then it's different. So I have the albino jeri as like the primary example that I'll go to all the time. And people are horrified when they find out how much I paid to buy the project. It's a shits on a money. But I didn't buy it. I didn't do it because I want to

flip the first babies for the same price as fast as I can because before the price drops. Because I bought the project as I think we were talking about this before we started recording, right um yeah i was saying that the idea is that i won't i'm buying the project so i can have it in my my facility for the rest of my life i want to be able to produce them forever and that's a tiny tiny uh cost compared to the cost of buy in like it's it's just it's not much when you think when it's a 50 year time horizon it's not that much buy in right um but additionally um i have pretty you know of course like things change and i'm you know, never going to necessarily say no to certain offers and whatnot. But generally speaking,

my general goal is basically just to stack them, hang on to them for as long as I have to. And then I want them when I sell them, I want them to be accessible to any, any of the people who buy my lizards. The long and the short of that is to say they're going to be sold for a very reasonable entry price. Right. And very, like one 20th of what I paid. Okay. So, you know, and you know but it's the kind of thing that it's really really hard to do this you have to track it for a long time because if it's if it's a recessive trait well at first everything well they're related right it's related period okay and so one of the things that i want to do is i'm going to be documenting uh so all of the albinos that i produce from visual to head which is half sibling um i'm i'm going to then take everything that i produce and breed it out to wild caught j-rii And so that way, anytime someone buys for me, I can tell of them, I'm going to say, yours came from this wild caught animal and a visual. That gives you information about anything you pair with that animal. Right.

And that enemy would be super transparent about all of this and have documentation in a way that I've never documented my herbs in the sense that not for anyone else anyway. I document for myself. But I'm going to have a, I'm going to make it a thing to where I'm going to give you, you're not just going to get the animal. you're also going to get every piece of media that I have of that animal's ancestors for a while, for a long time, for as long as I can do that. Maybe, yeah, 10 generations deep, it might be harder. Right. You know, it might be different. But at least at first, because I want people to be very, my goal is to engender a sense of responsibility when you take on the project.

And, you know, because everything we do, let's take Thomas I, is not a, not a, not a, morph, but it's a smaller population of animals. We were just talking about how animals that I sell might pop up on morph market. There's nothing stopping someone from saying these are totally unrelated to anything Phil has. There's no, I can't dispute that for all I don't, I don't, you know, unless I have the picture of the animal in my facility and then the picture of your animal you're trying to sell, I can't verify that.

And that's hard because that's an area where the trust will break down over time. So I want to try to do things to set up trust from the start so you can know that what you're getting is not just another. You know, because if you want to buy it to pair it with something, I don't want to just sell you two het siblings. You know, I want to be able to sell you stuff that's as distant as we can get it for the sake of your ongoing project in the future. You know? So I'm not just doing all of the work of buying from the guy who proved out the trade, raising up those babies to breed myself. I'm not just stopping there. I'm going to take it more generations deep.

And it's going to take years. Like I'm going to put so much more front-loaded work into this part of it that by the time someone buys it, it's like a whole package you're going to get. It's not actually be a box with a lizard in it. You're going to get a pamphlet too. And the pamphlet's going to have media, has had information for you, just stuff that might be pertinent. You know.

And so I feel like it's the more seriousness and forethought we give to a project that we're to take on like that, the more quickly we can change some of the bad imagery around morph stuff, right, like thousands of animals and racks just to make some bills, right? And I think it's just a good start for that. Yeah. Yeah, I, that's kind of been my philosophy a little bit where if I start new projects or whatever, I oftentimes will, you know, if I'm doing the research anyway, I'll just put it into book form. You know, like just can expand from there. And, And, you know, it's been a nice thing. And, you know, if you get too bothered by somebody asking a lot of questions, you just go,

oh, I'll refer you to this book that's available to have all the answers in it, you know. And so I do like, you know, the idea of, you know, you hear from a lot of people, oh, print media is dead or whatever. But I don't think print media will ever be dead. I think people love to have a book, you know. Yeah. And I think there's even a kind of an increase in people buying reptile books and wanting to have those on hand and stuff. So, you know, as soon as similar with projects, as soon as a book's out of print, that's when it becomes, you know, popular and expensive and everybody wants it.

And, you know, nobody can get it kind of thing. It's like a little. Yeah, exactly. You can get them before they go out of print, I guess is the answer. Yeah, yeah, man. Sometimes you don't come on the scene until they're already out of print. And that's kind of a, but, you know, there's ways. But so, you know, I think that's, I don't know, a.

part of my philosophy of, you know, make, make the information available. So people have the best chance of success and, you know, they can learn about the things that, you know, you can pass on that information. And most of the stuff I'm, you know, that are in the books is, you know, other people's research or, you know, things that other people have observed or, and you're just compiling things. You're not really coming up with anything too novel, you know, so. Yeah, but I mean, that's just it, though. I mean, you did the work on some level.

Right. Right. You know, obviously people want that, right? And so it's, I know that's what you're saying, too. It's like you want to, I feel like in a world where we all have stories of getting less than what we wanted out of a transaction or interaction with someone. Insofar as you can do it without driving yourself insane and neglecting your family, the idea I think should be to give people more and more and more for what they're buying from you. Right. Because you're putting more into it. Yeah, maybe, yeah, of course, like sometimes your price has to adjust to. to compensate for that, you know, it doesn't mean you give it all the way for free all the time. But delivering more based on what someone thinks they're going to get from you, like, if you can overdeliver on that expectation, I mean, it just seems like the right thing to do for the animal and for the person on some level. Yeah, it's hard. There's a hard, hard mix there because I think there does need to be some personal responsibility. There are some regional differences in how you might keep something in Florida versus Utah, you know, those kind of things. Sure. So I think there does need to be a little bit on the keeper that's buying these animals to do the work, to do the research, to figure out what kind of cage they need, to talk to local herpers or breeders or whatever to figure out what might be more successful in their area.

You know, I don't, the idea of a care sheet, you know, like, okay, this is the way you do it. You know, that can work to some extent. And I think it's a good starting place for sure, especially if you've never kept a species. But, you know, you need to. recognize that, hey, things might change based on where you're located or the conditions in your house or, you know. Dude, this is like the most famous. Yeah, like this is the thing. What wattage do I get? Right. Right.

I love where your head's at. But that is, I'm so sorry, but I cannot answer that question. Right. I can buy a temp gun. Yeah. And then start with a temp gun. It has four different wattages. You have to do that during the year.

You know, like don't just set it and forget it. it because I was out in my herb room the other day and I'm like, why are all my snakes, you know, piled up on the head side of the cage? And then I measure, I'm like, oh, because that basking lamp is great during the winter when it's cold, but it's too much during the, you know, hot time of the year, you know, and these like asking that I've set up. It's like if you buy a mattress for me and I say, and someone says, what blanket do I get? Yeah. You're right. No, man. Get a blanket. Like, figure it out. Like, you know, but of course. You like a weighted blanket? Do you like a Fluffy, but yeah.

Yeah. But that's exactly the thing is to have that conversation with them and say, here's all the reasons why you need to do it. You need to get a temp gun and have maybe four wattages, right? Because it's going to change based on season anyway, right? So you're going to adjust in the winter and the summer, just like you were saying. So have these three, four. I can tell you a brandable. I can tell you where to buy it even, you know, but it's, but the wattage thing that's, you know,

not unfortunately, but that's where your participation comes in. You know, it's again, just like in jujitsu, I can show someone how to do a triangle. I can give you the, here's how, here's how it works, the setup, here's, here's how you finish the choke. But like if you, if you don't just go try it on some people,

you're never going to, you don't know what you're doing with it. You've never going to use it on a lot of level. So really it's like, I feel like on some level when someone buys an animal from you, they buy that and then they, they buy like a cognitive toolbox on some level. And your job is to continue to help them refine that toolbox so that way they can start making those decisions themselves. Right.

And yeah, you don't want to just hand them answers. You want to teach them how to think about keeping this animal and what this animal requires and how they can match that with their, you know, now that it's in their care kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There does need to be some, some responsibility on their head because, you know, you can't, you can't see everything from their eyes. You know, once it leaves your house, it's gone. So they have to be able to learn how to do that and think about it and be a student of the serpent, as we like to say.

Yeah, student of the serpent. You got to have them teach, tell them to go look at some bull snakes living on railroad pilots. Just go look at some liminal wildlife. You'll figure it out. Just throw some tin in your cage. They'll be fine. Go to Costa Rica. Look at the, look at the spiny tails on the lawn.

You'll be fine. Exactly. Yeah. Don't worry. I mean, definitely some species lend themselves better. to that, you know, you talk about some of the more, I think euromastics fit into that where they're not like as adaptive or as intuitive as, you know, some other species like a bearded dragon or, you know, things like that. And even bearded dragons, we mess up, you know, there's plenty of

overweight and poor health, bearded dragons in captivity. What's, what's surprising a lot of times is when you see one that's not, you know, it looks good and it's healthy and happy and you're like, man, they're a little more intuitive or something. things of their needs of their animal. But, you know, like, chameleons might be a little more specialized to some extent, certain species, of course. The ones where the, the, the margin for error is so narrow. Right. Right. You know, you just sort of filters out if you, you know, for the folks who don't, you can't find their way to the, to the end point with exactly. You know what I mean? On some level. Yeah. Yeah. Some of this is inspired by the, by the academies that I train at too,

because that, you know, some of the, you know, when I, when I first started training, it was like, you just let people rip. You just, they come in for their first class. You give them an intro, let them do class. And then when it comes time to train, you kind of throw them with the wolves at some level. But, you know, I've seen those videos of people just get, like, punched in the face. The best. You know, get in the groin.

And you're like, man, that's like baptism by fire. Right. Right. And you, but, you know, like, what we, what a lot of academies do now is they, they don't have guys train right away. When someone comes in to try it, they have to go through, you know, a certain number of classes and, and practice rounds, basically, where you're not doing any real live training at all. Just to get them familiar, you've got to give them a vocabulary.

Because then if you can give them enough vocabulary, well, then you might lose, you're still going to lose a lot of people, but you're going to, you're still going to filter through for more people who got to the point where they would keep going, you know? And I feel like that's, that's the mission, kind of like the mission that I've got in herpeticulture now is like, okay, how do I get the most number of people from getting their first euro or xenagama or chukwala, how do I take them from, I got my first one to I've given you enough information and enough coaching and enough guidance where you can, you now have the tools to decide how you progress with this and you don't really need me anymore. You know, you don't,

you don't need my information. You might refer back to it. You might use it as like a guide, but it's not going to you're not going to do it identically to the way I do it and you develop the relationship with the animal. It's a lot more like having a dog, you know, it's probably not going to be the exact same food that I feed, but you're still going to do just fine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's it is a tricky thing when you're selling animals. You know, I think it's hard. It is to, you know, know, know, how much is enough or how much, you know, when you're doing a disservice by continuing, you know, to kind of facilitate this nearness or something.

I don't know. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I think it varies with each person and in each, each situation. Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more, man. But I agree. We need to put, you know, that effort into educating, you know, people, especially if

they're buying animals from us, like, come on, you know, we want to, we want to give the animals the best chance of being happy and healthy and in a captive environment. Yeah, it's like your service to them doesn't end when you ship them out and they're on their destination, right? Right, right. They're still kind of in your care on something. Yeah. At least insofar as they can be. Yep.

Yeah. And there's definitely responsibilities on the keeper side to let you know of something, you know, some issues happening. You know, you don't want to check back and go, oh, yeah, that animal died, you know, I had this thing. And you're thinking, well, I could have helped you with that. Why didn't you reach out? You know, I think there's some embarrassment like, well, you don't. Oh, I failed, you know, that kind of. Yeah.

I mean, who hasn't failed in this hobby? And, you know, there's definitely, you know, oh, it hasn't eaten for four weeks. And why didn't you tell me two weeks ago or that kind of thing, you know, like that was a problem for two weeks ago, you guy. Right. Right. Yeah. There's a funny, there's a funny writer that I follow. And he calls himself a shame exorcist, you know?

Right. Which I really appreciate. I love that as a concept. And I feel like there's a lot. of shame exorcism needed in her pitiful. Sure. For sure. Yeah. You know, but, but of course, a lot of that comes from people who get pissed off at you posting a question online or something like that. So people are afraid to post and whatever. So we need to, we got, we got to kill that. We got to be like,

listen, man, just ask. We've all been there. We've all been there. We've all done it. I did it too. I've done stupid shit. And we're like, I should have done that. Yeah. No, we've all done it. It's okay. It's not. The sun will rise tomorrow. We'll be all right. We'll get it together, guys. We'll get it together, guys. got it. We're doing it. We're doing it right now. For sure. Well, I think that's a good kind of note to yeah. I think we've been going a couple hours here, but yeah, great information. Always fun to have you on. You're just so, you know, enthusiastic and your, your passion really shows through. And I appreciate that. And thanks, man. Rob. And yeah, this is great to have you back again. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you both.

Likewise. It's, it's great to this, this whole, this exact exchange is, is the whole reason I, I, I, I, even want to do this. You know, it's like, this is so much fun. This is like, yeah, right.

It makes the, the animals just as cool. Yeah. It's like just as cool as having the animals and being able to talk with friends and like-minded people. So thank you guys for, for the time. And thanks for the doing the podcast in the first place.

It's filled many of my work hours. Likewise. I mean, yeah, tell the listener, if they don't know, you know, where your podcast is where they can find it.

Yeah, yeah. So it's the Project Herpeticulture podcast. And I'm on the Animals at Home Network. And so it'll pop up there among Dylan's show, The Animals at Home Podcast, and it'll pop up next to reptiles and research as well. And so all three of those shows are on the network. You can find them. And then I'm the same on YouTube and Instagram.

And then Erids Only, which is the reptile business itself, is also on all the socials. So you can find anything I do in any of those places. Yeah. Awesome. All right, man. Well, at the end of the show, we kind of like to see if there's anything cool or new in herpeticulture or herpetology that you've seen that's you that's kind of got you excited i think you're you're talking about the sarah species and yes like that they're available now that that's that gets me really excited to see yeah you know

that that's a species i might be able to see you know at a show or something like that or yeah in your collection that's i think yeah i agree i think i think that the two things right now are going to be the sarah and then the san estabans you know like um the sarah feel great because it's just another it's a euro that i've never bred never read never ever worked with. So, you know, and I, they were basically gone from herpeticulture almost when I started, you know, they were around, but not, not much. So having them is, is really great. They're very different than all the other euros I have in some interesting ways. So that's super cool. But the San Esteban's, they've like rekindled, like, I have such a iguanas in particular,

just have a place in my heart that I don't know if it's if always been there when I was a kid. those are the that I, that's the animal that I, of any kind, any iguana, really. Like they've always just captivated me. They're as they captivate so many others, right? Chuck walls are so cool. The chucks, yeah. I'm hoping to see one this weekend if they're out. See them.

Definitely take pictures to send them my way. But yeah, so those things have me excited because they're just, you know, they're another one. Those iguanas, there's guys breed them, guys who breed them for sure. But they're just not, they're not as predominant. You know, they kind of take. people like the pectanata a lot, which is, which is fair. Pectinata are great. I got to have known.

They're awesome lizards. But the San Esteban iguana is like a spiny tail that had made a baby with a granite chuck walla. You know, they just, I'm a sucker for that really harsh black and white contrast. Yeah. It's just so beautiful. Their back legs and hindquarters, it's just so articulate, amazing, amazing creatures. And their ability to get you so much faster than you get them at all.

They're like, I know, I've got you pinned, guy. Right. Everything about you, you're quick. You know, they're so cool. I love what you in your trust, man. I was doing a trip in Mexico with a buddy and one of my daughters, and we went out to this Nalasco Island, just this island off the coast of Mexico. And I'm kind of, you know, we're coming in, we're going to swim with sea lions or whatever, you know.

And I look on the island and all of a sudden I see all these big old lizards moving around. And they're spiny tailed the one is I'm like, like, oh, that's cool. I didn't know they'd be out here. So I'm taking pictures with my Zoom lens and stuff. Then I get back and, you know, get back home and I do doing a little research. And I found out that's a new, that's a different species like the Nalasco Island, Spineytale they want to. I'm like, whoa, no lasc ensis or whatever, you know, the scientific name is. So I'm like, oh, sweet. I just added another, you know, new species to the list. I didn't even realize they were there, you know. Cool. That is this. It's pretty sweet.

But they're cool. I think it's from my childhood when we went to the Tucson Desert Museum, you know, and they have that population run around. Yeah, the same on. Their crosses, yeah. Yeah, I don't remember the name of the other species. Was Frank the one that he might have been responsible for those? Like, he might have released those on the zoo grounds or whatever.

That's what people say. That's the rumor about the calico chucks, too, is that they ended up in somebody, it was like, you know, some of the two of the Pure Island species ended up. in somebody's yard basically. Yeah. That's the lore anyway. I don't have any documentation. Yeah, I just have always had a soft spot and thought those were just really cool lizards.

Yeah. Me too, man. Me too. Awesome. Well, thanks again so much for coming on. I don't know if Rob had anything else to add or if we're... I'm good right now. I did get Craig Trumbauer's book shipped to me.

Oh, nice. You got it. Lions, Bulls and Gelfres. Yeah. So that was good. Excellent. Yeah, you're on the. pre-order list and finally got it.

That's good. I know Eric's came today. I think I won got one as well, so that was good. Actually, yeah, I guess timely or whatever. We did earlier this afternoon evening talk to Brian Taylor, who was the original co-host of Reptile Radio. Unfortunately, we streamed me right. I think just because Brian was on there and, you know, he's bringing the 2007

blog tech radio energy, somehow both. Eric are both Owen and I we could hear and talk to Eric but Brian couldn't hear us. So we were having like Eric communicate questions. So it'll be, A, he has many hours of editing. Yeah, right. And, uh, but it was good. It was cool, cool to see him, cool to talk through that, you know, kind of his vision. He was definitely the Owen of the proceedings.

But, uh, yeah, you know, no, it was great and he's back into reptiles. Oh, cool. Great. I'll be interested to hear that. That's going to be cool. Very cool. Awesome. You guys think it would it be okay if we, would I be able to get the file from you from this? We can co-release it. If I can do it on my show too? Or if not, that's okay. I think so. Yeah, work. I'm kind of. Yeah. The short answer is yes, but we'll work with you on it. Yeah, yeah. See if it's okay. If it's okay, it'd be cool. But if not, that's also fine. I totally understand. No. I mean, that's that's the beauty of, you know, and I'll shout out. Eric and, you know, his efforts. He just said, record material, send it, and I'll do the rest.

And he does the rest. That man is, he's amazing. So, thanks again. Yeah. And yeah, I guess with that, we'll say good night and we'll see you next time for Riptov Fight Club. See.