hey everyone this month for the entire month of october we're going to do a halloween themed uh
series of videos we're gonna call it uh you know jay-z's reptiles halloween reptile spooktacular
as well as it's a fact or fiction kind of thing so last year we did
just you know all the different halloween themed animals and if you can go check out
that playlist there's a lot of really cool stuff as well as we spoke to some pretty cool people
this year we're going to do a fact versus fiction myth busting kind of a thing so we're going
to talk about some of hollywood's most iconic animal horror movies and talk about what animals
really are like in the wild and some really cool interesting things about the movies themselves too
as well as we're also going to talk to quite a few people as well and we'll throw this on that
full playlist as well but starting off because it's jc's reptiles what's the most famous most
iconic monster movie there is right and i think the i think the choice is pretty obvious just you
know based on my little companion here and that's the movie anaconda where you know jlo and ice cube
are somehow nature documentarians along with owen wilson and a bunch of other cool star study cast
where they're essentially hunted by a pair of uh anacondas throughout the amazon jungle well
there's a lot of things that are pretty obviously off about that movie and we're gonna talk a little
bit about those right now so joining me today we also have my great friend troy who's one of the
primary reptile keepers at the denver zoo we'll be talking a little bit about anacondas as well
so you know obviously the first thing about that is that you know that the anacondas in
evidently there's three or four of them i guess they're like 60 80 100 feet long or some crazy
noise and there's a whole bunch of crazy stuff going on with them so we're just going to go
through and debunk a couple things about that especially in the snake world dimorphism or
sexual dimorphism is where an animal differs in a physical characteristic between sexes between
male and female and in snakes it's usually size right so uh the female anaconda being the biggest
snake in the world and i use the word biggest because they get extremely long but also
extremely heavy right um they they say that uh green anaconda has potential to get up to
30 feet uh and be like three four five hundred pounds you know that's a that is a massive snake
um one has not been found that big in the wild in a very very long time uh um but then you
know so so sexual dimorphism uh male anacondas um usually max out around 10 feet you know they have
the potential to get a little bit bigger than that they definitely could 12 15 foot mark um
but uh kind of ten foot uh is uh is a real max for them and that's still that's still a big snake um
and uh especially a heavy bodied snake so as troy put it there is a lot of sexual dimorphism
with anacondas period so as he said before melanicatus don't get very large and so i could
finally get around to introducing my boy here this is sir mix-a-lot he featured last year for
the anaconda and snake movie videos as well but he is a male green anaconda he is slow grown he's
a pain in the butt to feed he only wants to eat birds and so because of that he's not very large
and he will not get very large yes snakes have indeterminate growth and they don't get around
the same height but he's not going to achieve that 9 10 foot range that a lot of green anacondas if
we were to power feed him like you would any other large constrictor will achieve so he's about five
six years old and he's close to six feet but yeah but he's really slowing down on growing in general
and he has a pretty good attitude in general too although when he is done for the day he
is done for the day so you know with that being kept in mind you know it looks it's like a pair
of anacondas like a male and a female that are chasing them around the movies well so obviously
that can't be accurate because male 1 akanas they don't get very big yeah this is still like you
know a decent sized snake that i have here that are that's wrapped up my hand pretty well but
it's nothing like the monsters that are in that movie also in that movie you know they're just
like indiscriminately just like taking out all of these people and yeah i mean they could say like
they're defending their their nest or whatever although anacondas are they're live bearers like
all boas and i think in the movie you see that you know there's a bunch of little baby anacondas
you know moving around but they don't have nests so there's no territory or defending thing or
anything like that so they're not going to hunt and indiscriminately chase and eat people all the
time yes they're ambush predators and they're you know opportunistic predators as well but
they're not gonna sit there eat three jaguars and nine film documentarians and one poacher all in
like four days it just doesn't happen okay just absolutely period and and honestly anaconda bites
are no joke um in instinctually or behaviorally um how they constrict animals because they
usually utilize uh the water to help kill their prey um and so what they do is they kind of bite
down here bite towards the face of the animal um and then wrap upwards to allow gravity to assist
them to drag that animal down and so when they wrap around their head imagine these are their
teeth um wrap around their head they actually uh you know gravity assists and and pulling
it down so usually when you see anaconda bites they start here and if that person was wrapped
um you have lacerations going down because of that weight is just dragging the teeth downward so it's
it's it's really no joke to get bit by an anaconda and that's why we always said that the anaconda
is one of the dangerous most dangerous snakes in the building um not only because of her size but
you know if she were to grab you wrap you uh and then uh you know drag you into the water um
you're done yeah well yes they can be a dangerous animal as troy pointed out where their bites are
you know no joke and it honestly this is one of the few snakes in general that i've ever worked
with or been around that i can't get an honest read on him all the time he's given me a couple
close calls but overall i just try to respect him and usually i can tell when he's done so i
try to put him back when he's done but there are times when i have to take him out and move around
like you know if he poops his water because you know they spend a lot of time in the water if he
poops in that i gotta clean out that out and so i can't just you know say all right live in it for
a day or two till you calm down so that doesn't really work like that um but with that being said
you know it's they can't be dangerous animals in the wild and certainly in captivity you're going
to be exposed to them much more than you ever would in the wild but even then they're kind of
few and far between and realistically a lot of people shouldn't be keeping large snakes like a
green anaconda based on just the enclosures and habitat that they need because you need a huge
aquatic area plus an area for basking and laying out as well but with that being said even in the
if you were to go down to like the pantanals in brazil and paraguay and places like that
finding a large snake is just absolutely almost impossible you know the the the chance you have
or the probability you have of running into one in the wild uh is very low you know
unless you're going and like waiting around in the pants and all um they're probably not gonna
run into one you know i spent almost a month in the proven amazon on the amazon river and i saw
one and not even not even habitat where i was expecting to see one and i wasn't even looking
for one you know you know as troy said that you know he's been down there and you know he's
only ever seen one because my friend ian uh ian brala who we interviewed for the podcast last uh
yeah it was this year so it's been a long year sorry everybody um earlier he was down there and
he actually found a large uh female green anaconda too but again it was like way way deep in there
and so finding a large snake especially a large female just doesn't really happen so you know we
you know we've talked about like all the crazy things that the anacondas like doing there like
obviously they don't move like that in real life they're very sluggish on land they can't move like
that large constrictors in general can't move like that especially you know really heavy body
animals like the anaconda um but as well when it comes to that you know they just there's a whole
lot about them that just is entirely inaccurate and obviously the length is the major one and
i'll get into the rest of it in just a second but so this actually took quite a bit of digging and
fact checking because there's numbers all over the place the largest recorded like actually recorded
and documented green anaconda female was back in the early mid 1900s i think it was the 1960s
1960s and that was just over 28 feet long and that's it that's the longest documented recorded
anaconda period the rest if you find anything over 18 feet that's a monster of a snake i think
average sizes that he would find in the wild to be around that you know 15 20 foot mark for females
so actually finding a 30 foot one is is extremely rare uh and so finding a you know hundred foot one
like you see in the movie anaconda or whatever how big that thing is um you know it's very you
know it's it's impossible it's it's i could say it's improbable but it's impossible just because
of poaching and human encroachment and you know like a lot of wild animals they want to avoid you
um just in general you know even the other apex predators that would view us as prey like jaguars
or black haman unless they find an opportunity they usually try to avoid us and then they look
for that opportunity to you know view us as prey but even if you were stomping around in you know
the pantanals of south america the odds of finding one of these let alone be snacked on by one
when compared to a black caiman or to a jaguar any of the other animals in the amazon is
very very unlikely and there's actually you know very few records of people getting eaten by snakes
um you know it's it's very difficult for a big snake to eat a human because of our shoulders
they can definitely kill us you know we've seen examples of that we've read about examples of
that but to actually be eaten by a big constrictor is dang near impossible i mean you they literally
have to like squish us so we have this nice tapered body form in order to be swallowed
uh and it's just not gonna happen so um as long as you you know are respectful of
respectable respect a big constrictor's distance and space there's nothing they're gonna do to you
yeah um you know some of the other things about them like as i mentioned before them moving very
sluggishly the reason why they're so aquatic is because the water helps support their weight
they're such heavy-bodied animals where they can't like shoot across a warehouse floor like
they do in the movie it's you know they're very sluggish and he's very quick to strike
like anything that's mentioned before i mean obviously not compared to like a smaller snake
you know when they're on land they they're they're slugs you know they could strike somewhat fast
but definitely not as fast as you know a small calibrated small rattlesnake things like that
i don't know if you've had a big massive constrictor strike at you but it's pretty slow
um you can usually react quick enough to move out of the way um and especially that a snake of that
size they're not you know they're not chasing you down um you know they're not coming after
you because they're there there's just so much body mass there that it's pretty difficult to for
them to move on land basically all i really want to get across is that thank you buddy
that anacondas are definitely a misunderstood amazing animal that play a very intricate role
in nature and it's really cool to see that you know to be able to work with such an amazing cool
animal like sir mixed lot here even though you know there's a reason why i never won a female
anaconda i am fully aware of the fact that you know even if i had my own facility i'm going to
want a couple people helping me out with that just because of the needs and the size of the animals
that the large females can become so i just like sir mcslug here he's a great ambassador great to
show off and great to you know demonstrate to show the differences of sexual dimorphism
and just the species in general even it's not such an impressive female or anything like that
hopefully you enjoyed today's video if you have any questions please let me know down
in the comments hit me up on facebook instagram and all of that stay tuned for the rest of this
month for more spooky reptile content and i have over 200 other videos to go take a look at
if you want some other regular scheduled reptile content or as well on the facebook instagram and
tick tock for other just regular reptile content but hopefully you enjoyed today's video hopefully
you will enjoy the rest of what i have in store for you because we have some really cool stuff
coming down the roads so again thank you very much hope you're having a great day
have a hope have a safe and happy halloween and we'll check you next time