today we're doing another species spotlight honestly one of my favorite type of videos
to do and it seems to be a pretty good favor of a lot of people i really love doing i really do love
doing that however that being said i'm actually kind of running low on a lot of different species
um either because i want them to get a bit larger because they just aren't really great
i want to have a better variety of video to actually use for these specific types of you
know species spotlight where i'm talking a lot more intensively about them than versus like the
top five list videos that i've done before so with that in mind i actually had a chance to go
and visit with my friend who has a lot more great species of snakes than i do i have more
but they have a wider variety and they have a lot of really cool oddball stuff and we spent a good
three hours or so just filming and getting a bunch of really cool shots of several species of snakes
that they have so with that out of the way let's get into talking about one of the coolest species
of pythons in the world the white lip python so white lip pythons well obviously we're going to
be jumping back and forth between me talking and then the really cool shots that we did
uh with my friends animals here when we think about the wildlife python originally they
are found on the island of papua new guinea um there is a big mountain range that stretches
that island that basically splits uh west papua part of indonesia and then pop and then papo new
guinea so it's the island of new guinea west papua popular anyway that might be inverted um
but there's a big mountain range the run considers splitting the country and there is a wide variety
of species that are found on the island and the white lips are one of the most iconic
now when it comes to the white lip pythons there's a lot of biologists and scientists
that argue about how many different subspecies and species there are anywhere between
five and six throughout but in the reptile hobby we basically have two that we really work with
those are the northerns and the southern's they're sometimes called the alberts pythons
and the actual latin for them is also a little bit uh conflated and argued about some of them
being leo python and then the other one which i'm absolutely going to butcher i'll put them both up
really really cool species of snake that being said so they obviously get their name for a pretty
pretty obvious reason and that is that white coloration that goes across the bottom of their
jaws so there are these very you know there's really contrasting stark snakes that big black
dark head with that solid white that almost kind of looks like a jawbone or something that
goes across the bottom of their lips they're really really cool but they have a lot of
very similar characteristics and a lot of other very distinguishing characteristics that are
pretty easy to discern when you actually look at them next to each other so the northern ones
obviously found in the northern part of the island and it does stretch over that mountain range it's
a little bit more closer to the coast um then they actually are also found on some of the islands
that do surround papua new guinea including the bismarck archipelago and a couple other places uh
in indonesia as well as like biak and places like that um they are the smaller of the two
subspecies or species i'm totally buffing on that right now um but they are still very cool the
females obviously being the larger with them being pythons usually sit in somewhere between the six
and seven foot range and if you look at their coloration it's pretty distinguished right so
again there's that big black head with the white jaw and then their coloration is more of like an
olive to dark chocolatey brown almost black color to that really cool golden hue and some of them
it's almost completely golden but still maintaining that black head the southerns
on the other hand are the larger on average with females often reaching lengths of over
eight to nine feet in length again males being a little bit smaller they are more unicolor they
don't have that kind of almost two-tone look and again sometimes almost all gold for the northerns
they're more of a uniform grayish black steel gunmetal gray to sometimes almost a purplish hue
um and then that's about where their differences are the similarities but i know we have i've
already talked about it at length with that jet black head they both have it they both have that
very distinctive white uh the white coloration on the bottom the names on the bottom of the jaws
as their namesake suggests but they also both have very pure very bright white underbellies
and then if you look at these if you're surprised i haven't talked about it as if yet the very very
bright beautiful jewel iridescence color that goes across their scales i've talked about this with a
couple other species of snakes specifically in the rainbow boa video where a lot of species of birds
and reptiles and other animals have this very distinct protein in their skin called an erytaphor
erytifors are the special protein that reacts with ultraviolet light giving it that really
nice beautiful pearlescent like wet oil slick coloration which is why sometimes um they've
been incorrectly labeled as like a rainbow python there are other pythons like in the new world the
mexican borrowing python that also has that really really nice iridescent sheen to them there's
they're really really cool and overall they have very similar behavioral characteristics
so if we're keeping them in the hobby a lot of them are wild caught animals and so because of
that they do get this kind of bad reputation the hobby is basically a chainsaw with a tail
and when we think about wild caught animals those are animals that have not been part of human
interactions that haven't been bred in captivity over multiple generations they're a little bit
more accustomed to it i know we've talked about their varying opinions about whether or not
there's actually like a truly tame snake or knob but there is usually a very big difference between
a wild caught or a farm hatched animal and that's a whole other subject that we can talk about later
um and then a captive bred animal so because of that a lot of the what a lot of the white
lips both northerns and southern's do come in wild caught or farm raised they usually have
a pretty bad parasite load so they need to go into quarantine like every new acquisition as
well as being definitely treated and monitored for internal and external parasites and there's
a whole lot of different things that you can do i usually suggest going to a vet and getting
um the different stuff from the vets just in case you're and also proper dosage of them
usually if you can find a really good reptile fat um that being said they are really cool they are
a kind of generalist when we think about where they're hunting so in the wilderness captivity
they're both fairly crepuscular meaning that they come out usually right before night
or right at this night and so at dawn and dusk that's what that term means so what that means
with as far as reptiles go when a lot of species reptiles in general they'll come out right at dusk
right before it gets dark to get a little bit some of that sunshine that ultraviolet light
from the sun and get some residual warmth from surrounding rocks and things like that
and then they start hunting these guys are fairly active night predators and foragers where they're
actively found in trees and underground hunting for a wide variety of prey items as adults both
of them they're usually eating a lot of a lot of birds and a lot of mammals both in the ground
both in the trees and on the ground in fact the southern white lips sometimes then parts of
bandicoots have been found uh in their stomachs as well as younger ones it seems like that they will
somewhat favor a little bit uh different species of lizard and things but as they get older it's
still a lot of birds and rodents um in captivity they do pretty well on uh they do pretty well on
rodents although there's this very interesting thing that does happen with them that they're
also well known for which i think is really funny and that is the white lip python is very notorious
for hacking up hair balls and yeah you heard me right just like a cat they hack up hair balls
every so often it's not with every feeding they and as far as i'm aware i couldn't find
any documentation of it in the wild or even on the farms or the the snake farms in west papa
or any of the places that they come from but it seems to be like there's something with the hair
of the rats that we use in in captivity that may not be able to be completely digested in them
and so they actually regurgitate a hair ball very similar to like an owl pellet or a cat
where they digest a whole lot and then it kind of concentrates and then in one article that i
read the keeper described it as uh it would come out earlier than usual completely non-reactive to
them and it like kind of halfway up it's halfway down its back it kind of like arched up a little
bit and then kind of like muscle conjured and then its head and neck shook really rapidly the whole
thing took about five ten seconds and then it went back into its hide but in that time where it shook
its head the little hairball was left and so it looks really weird and evidently they're not quite
as gross as like a hairball because there's not as much like stomach pile that comes up with them
but with that really gross part of the video but i still think it's really interesting and kind
of weird uh out of the way if we want to start talking about keeping these things in captivity
we have to remember that they are they get thrown into this kind of really generalist
term semi arboreal where it's really kind of wide varying and it's open to interpretation
but basically what that means is that like i said before they are found and forage in the
trees and on the ground so a little bit of height so if we're going to get them as little hatchings
obviously you're going to need larger and larger enclosures as they get older you get them in they
do like to feel secure so give them plenty of height give me a give them plenty of play to play
give them plenty of places to perch and to climb give them lots of hides they do like
to feel very secure which makes them kind of defensive attitude that they're very famous for
they're not really aggressive there's not a whole lot of aggressive snakes although i will argue
that a male a male retake in breeding season might be considered aggressive but with that being said
so even if it's a little one and you have them on like a little arboreal um like exoterra make sure
that you do give them heights around i've seen a lot of people start to do like vertical hides
where they'll either silicon it or use like magnetic plates and stuff to keep them raised
up so it's like a little perch in a tree like a hollowed out tree where they can come up and get
into or like cork tubes those work really well give them plenty of humidity you don't need to
get them crazy crazy hot you know the mid 80s that kind of like indo-pacific range of a lot of the
different snakes that are there um you know mid mid to high 80s is really probably good for them
and i'll probably get a little flak for that but that's how i've
spoken to other people who actually keep them how they keep them so that's the information i'm
giving out as well um really cool just give them plenty of clutter they don't really like handling
a whole lot so they make a really nice display species that being said if you can work with
uh you know if you work with these animals long enough just like with most species
they end up being sometimes they can be fairly handleable and my friend who has these
um i describe i sometimes describe myself as like a black steve irwin where i'm the weirdo
and i like to go out and i like to catch stuff and wrestle with alligators and stuff like that
uh she's more like a doctor do little where almost all of her snakes come in wild caught
she's had a lot of experience working with that and systems in place of treating their parasite
loads getting them on feed really easily and really successfully but almost all of her animals
are super well handleable including ones that i've been told that they can be really grumpy and stuff
um they've brought out a couple of them to the different presentations we've done with show me
snakes and it's always really great we've never had any issues and again most of our animals are
wild caught adults and so it's really great to be able to actually work with this amazing species
with all of with all of their animals it's really great to actually have video and put hands on
these really cool species of snakes hope again you enjoyed this video i unfortunately didn't
have it right in front of me but i got hopefully you guys really enjoyed some of the shots i took
of these really cool species snakes you get to learn a little bit about the two different types
the northern and southern live lips if you want to check out the playlist of all of the other species
spotlights it's here at the end helps my click through rate lets youtube know that i exist and
pushes my stuff if you have any questions comments concerns let me know down in the comments below um
i do keep note of all the suggestions that you give me i do work through a lot of them but as
i said before i don't have all these species of snake and sometimes i get busy with all my other
stuff so please if you have suggestions comments concerns questions about merch or anything like
that i have all that with the down below in the links in the bottom of this description check
out all my other social media stuff hope you're having a great day and we'll check you next time