hey everyone we're going to do another kind of snakes in history video although it's
not necessarily just about snakes it's about horticulture in general so i'm going to talk
a little bit about the history of herptoculture and we're going to talk probably in two or three
different parts and we're going to start with kind of the first recordings and how it kind of got
started at least as far as western culture goes eastern cultures that's a little bit harder to do
and keep track of it's more rooted in more like spiritual and mythos and things like that so
we're going to mostly stick with western culture because that's kind of the easiest to track it's
what's most prevalent to modern heritage culture and with me today is grif who if any of you guys
know me you'll know why i named him that and why it's a dumb funny inside joke so we'll just get
things started so i'm gonna be reading a little bit of information off so sorry if i pause or
look down a little bit because there's kind of a lot of information and while i can sit there
and rattle off and talk about different genuses dates are a little harder for me so what we're
going to do is we're going to start off with the first recorded at least the first known recording
of someone having a pet reptile belong to wilden william lawd in 1625 who i think was
a deacon no not a deacon like a bishop or a cardinal or somebody in urine he was gifted a pet
tortoise so there you go that's the first recorded pet which is not the best pet to really start with
a lot was a pet tortoise um and then a few years later quite a few years later uh the first book
was written uh in germany which is you're going to see a little bit of a repeating theme with germans
in herculture in 1795 that was the first time that a book was written about keeping reptiles
and then we're going to jump ahead one more time and this gets into a little bit more modern in
the late 1800s where it's kind of migrated over to america where obviously this is where i am so it's
a little bit easier to keep track of things like that um in 1897 the first book was written english
about keeping reptiles as well as they started to be a little bit of a kind of novelty animal
items so traveling circuses and things like that were all the rage and really starting to pop up
ringling brothers was popping up and then like sorry griff i know and then the traveling zoos and
stuff with elephants and stuff as well as you saw a lot of like big burmese pythons and maybe not
retakes but bull constrictors and big constrictors started to be kind of a more novelty item
as well as they popped and they were still kind of on the fringes of regular like regular society so
it was kind of seen as kind of an odd pet but still kind of a novelty so obviously it was
something you would go to see as an attraction but for some of the more exotic animals that was
still kind of a novelty or an outlier interesting thing that most people didn't think was really
that normal and there was a very famous person in history who was exceedingly famous for not
behaving in the proper or normal way and that is eleanor roosevelt eleanor roosevelt was an
absolutely splendid human being of not giving a care in the world about what other people thought
of her there's a reason why her nims her nickname was princess roosevelt she had a pet snake named
emily spinach it was a little garter snake or it was probably a garter snake it might have been a
green snake to be honest because they said it was green as spinach so that makes me think it might
have been like a rough green snake or something but everything that i could find about it was
that she was a garter snake or it was a garter snake um and the robes felt as we all know about
you know teddy bully and all that jazz he was kind of more into murdering animals than keeping
them but animals in general were interesting to the entire roosevelt family and in fact
sorry eleanor's younger brother quentin had a bunch of rep had a bunch of pets in general
including a few snakes i actually found one anecdotal story about quentin went to an exotic or
just regular pet store bought four or five snakes and then brought them home to show them to his dad
the only problem was his dad at the time was the president of the united states and was having a
meeting in the oval office and little quentin dropped a box of snakes on the table while he
was having a meeting in the oval office so i guess reptile nerds have always been a little odd
in fact they had a bunch of different animals in general like uh he had bill the lizard couldn't
find out what kind of lizard it was but build a lizard they had a blue and gold macaw they
had a bunch of other pets that absolutely make terrible pets like bears and a serval but anyhoos
will be we're gonna jump ahead a little bit more so you know it's still a novelty still kind of a
traveling circus thing carney's all that jazz and then in 1924 the amateur aquarist was published so
then we're starting to see that obviously there's a market for private individuals to start keeping
yes it was the aquarius but you know a few odds and ends animals and stuff like canolas and
lizards and probably snakes in general mostly like corn snakes and garter snakes and stuff like that
into just regular people and then in the 1960s is kind of the first big boom when it came to
importation from other countries into the united states probably because of you know the ability
the mobility of transportation and the globe essentially opening up in and of itself so for the
longest time up until you know after post-world war ii era there wasn't a whole lot of plane
travel back and forth between different country between different countries but after world war ii
everything kind of opened up the world economy started to take this huge boom and i'm not going
to get into that by any means but there's started to be a lot of importance and exportation of a lot
of other countries which includes a lot of exotic animals and so in the 60s that's when we started
to see a big increase in well unfortunately like lions and tigers and stuff as pets but also we got
to see a lot of you know the indo-chinese animals and the pacific animals and a lot of the african
animals and and and south american reptiles and things like that those started to be kind of
just be imported kind of like crazy and to be completely honest not very well regulated which
isn't great i'm aware that you know freedoms are good and everything like that but there needs
to be some sort of line and there really wasn't one because it had never happened before and so
that's when things got a little out of control that's why the lacy act was put into place and
all these things and all the government election in all of the government regulations which
there needs to be some sort of governing body out there but you know there's
we're not getting into that made a whole thing about that with animal rights and welfare video
you can check that out if you want to um so and then in 1970 tom huff who was the chairman and i
think president of the reptile breeding foundation essentially he's the one who coined the term hurt
to culture and so in 1970 that's where that term really first get kind of got coined in first
started to get thrown around because up until that point and even kind of leading into the 80s
the only people that you really saw with reptiles outside of you know the odd kind of odd reptile
freak or keeping like a garter snake in the box when people would bring them in um just for like
a little while and you keep them in a box or an aquarium for a couple weeks and eventually let it
go not necessarily the best practice um were the real social outliers so you know like the bikers
and the weird people like that and the the social outliers in general as well as unfortunately they
a lot of them specifically like with the south american and central american animals like with
beau constrictors specifically a lot of them you saw in essentially tandem with the drug
community it was a big thing that unfortunately happened more often than i would like to admit
where they would literally put bags of illegal drugs inside of boa constrictors ship them across
state lines and then the importer or the smuggler would just open up the ball constrictor cut it
open pull it out sew it up and then they would sell the boa constrictor for like 20 bucks which
happened quite often which is absolutely horrible to think about but because of that in addition to
just the regular things there was also this thing with venomous reptiles where that was also kind
of in consumption in conjunction with the drug trade so it was like this power move you know like
the big scary dog the big gun or whatever it is it was also like if you had a cobra or a rattlesnake
that was also this thing that became synonymous with these socially unacceptable and usually
illegal things which i think ended up helping add to the kind of negative view that a lot of people
had of reptiles but then in 1970 you know modern hocta culture that's where the phrase got coined
it started to kind of make its way into modern society and start having regular average joes
start keeping them in their houses and starting to see them as alternative pets and i think
that's about where i'll leave it with this video and i'll get into kind of more modern culture in
another one where we kind of get to the point where we all kind of recognize it today where
we start to see more modern keeping techniques where we start to see more of a care of the
actual individual animal's health and behaviors and things like that and even then we've taken
quite a few dramatic strides in the last few years uh last decade for sure but even in the
last like four or five years we've seen a dramatic change and swing and how we keep exotic animals
specifically reptiles so you know we'll get into that a little bit with some of the pioneers and
the next one with like bill love and people like that so hopefully you enjoyed this video i put
out that other one about snakesgiving in earlier american history you can check it out right here
if you and i i asked if you guys liked or wanted to know more about that a couple people did say
yes also thank you guys for watching videos i really appreciate it thank you
um but they did say that it'd be really interesting to learn more about you know
herpetoculture history snakes and reptiles in general which i think is absolutely really cool
i love history and it's really cool to sit there and combine my two passions history as well as
reptiles so we'll move forward with this hopefully you enjoyed this video please like and subscribe
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hope you're having a great day and we you are the weirdest little dude we will check you next time