- Mangrove snakes are starting to hatch.
As you can see, we have a baby here.
Hey, hey buddy, what's wrong with you this morning?
You can see what I was talking about.
When I saw it, we were so excited.
- [Brian] You're afraid of toads.
- Not all toads.
Look at how big it is!
- I'm excited, guys, because we finally finished
Salt and Pepper's enclosure.
It's a little bit of a twist on what I've been talking about
with all the other melanistic animals.
Jay, Jay, you've got to come and check this out.
This is actually pretty cool.
This is awesome.
By the way guys, welcome to the blog.
I wanted to get started because I was super excited.
I've been really geeked to see when the mangrove snakes
are starting to hatch.
As you can see, we have a baby here.
There's still two, four, six, five more eggs
that are due to hatch.
But this is what I wanted to show you.
Yes, a baby hatched out.
It's always awesome to hatch out mangrove snakes.
But check this out, guys.
I'll tell you what, this is tripping me out.
I'm just putting him in water just so you guys can see.
I think that I actually produced a T positive
mangrove snake.
There have been T positives which are basically almost
a purplish snake that have hatched before,
that have came out in the wild.
I don't know if they've been captive hatched or not.
But the point this, these are two normal mangrove snakes
that were bred together, and they typically come out
black with either yellow or a little bit of reddish bands.
This one is almost purplish looking,
something like I've never seen before,
only with the T positives.
Now the chances of spontaneously producing a mutation
like a T positive mangrove are, I don't know,
like maybe one in a million, I don't know,
maybe ten million, I have no idea what the odds are.
The point is that it's really rare.
In all the snakes I've ever produced, I've only produced
a handful of spontaneous mutations that had never been
produced before, or at least weren't part of a
heterozygous thing.
I think we have a T positive.
The truth is, guys, we have to hatch the next five eggs
in order to really know, because if some of them
come out like this and some of them come out black,
then I am sure that is a T positive.
I can tell you this much, I've never hatched
a mangrove snake that has this kind of purplish
grayish hue to it ever before.
I've never seen babies like this before,
so I am pretty sure, guys, that we may have just
produced a T positive mangrove snake,
which is absolutely incredible.
I know what the pairing was that actually produced them,
so I can mark them and work them back,
and of course we'll probably raise these babies up.
Now, before I get too excited about it,
again we've got to hatch the other eggs
and see what they look like.
But if they all come out like this, then maybe it's
just a kind of polymorphism.
If some of them come out black, then we know
we hatched a T positive.
Hopefully within the next day or two,
the other ones will peep out.
We'll kind of start to solve the mystery
of potentially this amazing snake.
Regardless, what a great way to start the day.
I am so excited.
This snake is cute.
Any time that you're hatching any snakes
and in particular mangrove snakes
it's absolutely amazing.
But to have something that could potentially be
a mutation, oh my,
I'm freaking out guys.
I think this is a pretty good start to the day.
I hope you guys are having a good start to the day.
I'll keep you guys updated as these last ones hatch.
I'm so pumped on this.
I want you guys to really understand
what I was talking about about T positive albino.
Because you might be thinking, albino, and you're thinking
Brian, albino is usually like, white or yellow or red
or something like that.
Well, this happens to a be a T positive Nelson's milk snake.
The T actually stands for tyrosine,
which is a type of pigment in melanin, right,
the black pigment.
Basically what it is is when you strip away all the pigment,
all that black pigment, but still the tyrosine is left,
it gives a kind of brownish, purplish hue.
Much like what I think is happening
with that mangrove snake.
With a T positive Nelson's milk snake, when you breed them,
actually they're allelic to albinos.
If you breed a T positive to a normal albino,
about half the babies come out just like this
which is T positive,
which makes it really wild.
Maybe you're starting to get the idea of what I mean
when I said T positive,
but I also talked about the fact that it could
potentially even be a hypo.
Interestingly enough, this animal here looks very similar
to that T positive Nelson's milk snake.
This is actually a Pueblan milk snake.
We actually call these guys hypo Pueblan milk snakes.
There are no albino Pueblan milk snakes, so we don't know
if it's allelic to albino, but we do know
it's a recessive mutation.
The T positive Nelsons are also recessive,
so you could breed them and produce just more T positives.
Look at this little monkey trying to bite my finger
right there, what a crazy little dude.
The fact is, we don't know if you breed these to an albino,
if you would get T positive right out of the rip,
because there's no albinos.
Both the T positive and the hypo are both recessive
mutations, and the T positive in Nelsons we know
is allelic to albino.
Regardless, I'm trying not to confuse you guys.
I just want you guys to understand what I'm talking about,
the fact that we may have hatched a T positive
or maybe a hypo mangrove snake, and I am beyond excited.
Look at this little monkey!
He is so crazy, you cheeky little dude.
Oh my God, they're so cute.
I love the T positive and hypo stuff.
Oh my God, I cannot wait
til the rest of this clutch hatches!
This guy has continued to chew on me.
Hey, hey buddy, what's wrong with you this morning?
Okay, hopefully you guys understand a little more now.
As I've been thinking about this mangrove snake,
I kind of was thinking about different examples
of how tyrosine and other pigments can really change
in different types of albinos.
This happens to be an albino western hognose snake.
This would be a normal albino, what actually we call
an orange albino.
This is lacking all of the melanin.
You can see the orange with the red eyes
and stuff like that,
but interestingly enough, this is a pastel pink hognose,
which probably has a little bit more tyrosine in it,
but not quite as much as that purplish, brownish look.
But you can see the difference between these two animals.
This is the same thing, this is an albino hognose,
this is an albino hognose,
but the difference is this is a different mutation
when it comes to the orange and this is the pink,
and when you breed these two together,
you would get normal hognose.
This is not a compatible trait.
Again, nice big bright red eyes.
This guy's more like a pinkish eye.
Again, it's interesting how just even lacking
a little bit of pigment can change the overall mutation.
That's really the difference between these two animals
and the other examples I showed you earlier
like the Pueblan and the Nelson.
I've got my first tour of the day
and I've got a busy day here today.
How are you guys doing, it's awesome.
- Great.
- [Brian] You guys are from Texas but you live in Michigan,
and you're from Michigan.
- Yes.
- [Brian] All right, good, I appreciate you guys
coming over here to have a good time.
We ready to go in? Let's do it.
(dubstep music)
- I figured what I could do is actually show you
the difference between an animal that's about
six weeks old and this guy here.
Basically this one was hatched,
looked exactly like this as far as the color.
You can really see the difference in fading
that happens, it's almost hypo-ish.
Again, that's kind of that lack of tyrosinase,
whether it's a hypo or T positive,
it's kind of the same thing because you'll see that
it's kind of lacking pigment, that black pigment.
This is super cool.
I just wanted to compare so that you could see
what I was talking about when I saw it
and was so excited.
This is pretty crazy, guys.
- What's crazy?
- [Brian] You know that I have a lot of fears.
- Yes.
- Like bridges!
- Yeah, like bridges, all kinds of crazy stuff.
But I'm not going to get into that.
- Bottled water.
- I was a little surprised to hear that Andy, my friend,
which by the way has been visiting us
for the last couple days, him and Noah have been doing
some cool videos, so check Noah out, check Andy out,
link in the description.
They've been having some fun,
who knows what these knuckleheads have been up to,
but regardless, you're afraid of toads.
- Not all toads.
Giant toads.
I have toads that live in my little water thing
in my backyard.
Those toads are cool because they're that big,
they're cute.
That is not okay.
- Theirs are huge.
- [Brian] So Noah, I was thinking that
because you guys have been doing a bunch of crazy stuff,
why don't we have Andy lay on the ground,
and you put toads on him,
put giant toads on him?
- That's a great idea.
- [Brian] I think this will help you.
- [Noah] I love it.
- [Brian] It's like exposure therapy.
- [Noah] It is.
- [Brian] This is gonna be good for you.
- This will help you.
Look at his eyebrows, they're wiggling.
- [Brian] They're wiggling.
Okay, so wanna do it?
- Yes.
- [Brian] All right, let's go.
- Oh, yeah.
- [Brian] Lay down.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [Brian] You can close your eyes if you want.
- Nope, because you're gonna put something.
Nope, nope nope nope.
- [Noah] All right, let's go.
- [Brian] Okay, you ready?
- Not really.
- [Noah] Just so you know, we weighed these
like a month or two ago.
Three pounds of toad.
- Three pounds?
You're going to put six pounds of toad on me?
- [Noah] Whoa!
- What?
- [Noah] That's crazy.
- [Brian] What?
- He said whoa, he whoas a lot.
Look at how big it is!
It's bigger than your hands, both of them.
- [Brian] Oh, that's what she said.
(laughs)
- Well done.
Dude, it's like staring into my soul right now.
(gags)
Oh, oh.
This is weird because you can't move your head
any further than your head goes, you know?
- Argh!
- They keep moving, what are they doing?
Yeah, that's good, calm down.
- [Brian] Oh my God, piggyback rides.
- I could literally have to get on a plane
in an hour and a half covered in toad dirt.
- All right, I think this exposure therapy went really well.
I think that you're a better man now.
- I think maybe I'm sweaty is all I've got from this.
- I think you're gonna love toads soon.
- Yep, pretty soon.
You're gonna start a toad channel on YouTube.
Stay tuned for that.
- [Brian] Twelve seconds later.
- Well, we've got the new enclosures for
Salt and Pepper, so there is a few little details
that have to be touched up on this.
I am back with my silicon and dust
and going to get my part done.
(dubstep music)
- I'm excited, guys, because we finally finished
Salt and Pepper's enclosures.
That way, they will be in full time now.
Now we don't have to pull them off display
and put them in back anymore.
This is a good opportunity to continue to go back
to the whole melanistic T positive thing.
Of course, Pepper is a melanistic alligator,
American alligator.
That melanin is that black pigment,
it's a bunch of proteins that are made up
to make the black pigment, including tyrosine.
Obviously, he's a melanistic alligator.
Of course, this is an albino alligator that's lacking
all of that melanin pigment.
Let's just go ahead, release these guys
into their new enclosures,
and see what they're going to look like.
There you go buddy.
There he is.
Now again, we had similar enclosures to this,
not exactly like this, that they came out here
but they weren't front loading so we couldn't get to them
and stuff like that.
Now that they're like this,
look at Pepper, he seems to love it out here,
completely different, obviously because now
we can go in this side.
We can start training them to actually come up to the glass.
Let's go ahead and let Salt go in here.
Come on little baby.
There you go, sweetheart.
There you go, oh, yeah.
Loving it.
They can get up right onto this level right here,
where there's a nice basking area that they can go,
so now they have the basking area,
they've got UV light in here,
this is going to be perfect for them.
Now we can take them out a lot easier,
because we don't have to go in the back and grab them.
They look absolutely amazing in here,
and I'm so excited to start the new training
that we're going to do with them.
Might take us a couple months to really get it,
but the hopes are to get it like we go
"Salt, come here!" And she comes right up to the glass.
We can either feed her or take her out
or something like that.
That'll get them trained so that when we build
a huge enclosure, we don't have to go in
and actually go swimming to go get them.
We can call them up, they'll come right up to us
and we can take them out.
Super exciting, it's been a big project.
Glad it's finally done and they're in their new habitats.
Got another tour in the house, this is actually
pretty exciting because you were here, like
three years ago visiting with me.
- I know!
- Way before the Reptarium, so she's actually
been in the vlog before, hanging out with my animals.
It's so good to have you back,
and now you're meeting Bella,
what do you think?
- She's cool.
- [Brian] That's awesome, well,
we're going to have a good time.
Let's see a whole bunch of stuff, all right?
- Yep.
(dubstep music)
- Somehow this vlog, a lot of this vlog,
turned into talking about melanistic animals.
I figured, you know, just go with it.
Sometimes things happen that way.
Let's talk about Night Fury.
Obviously he is a jet black snake,
I always say he's my living oil slick
because he is so black, but the truth is
he's not really melanistic.
This is the result of breeding two mutations together,
Golden Child which is kind of a dark brown animal,
and then Motley which is really more of a pattern mutation.
For whatever reason, when you mix those two together,
oftentimes you get a jet black snake.
Sometimes you can get a greenish snake, a brownish snake,
and then the best results, in my opinion, is when you get
the jet black snake.
Now, there's not a lot of them
that are as good as Night Fury out there.
There is a few for sure, but there's not as many.
But this wouldn't really be considered melanistic,
which is a little bit interesting.
What I mean by that is that it's not a recessive mutation
or a codominant mutation that I can breed
and produce more of them.
Unless I have the Motley and the Golden Child mutation
in the same thing.
So it's a little bit of a twist
on what I've been talking about with all the other
melanistic animals and T positive animals
and all the albinos and stuff like that.
Nevertheless, I thought it was worth at least
bringing up because a lot of you guys might be thinking
Night Fury was melanistic.
In truth, he really isn't.
This is a cool little python species from Indonesia
that you don't see very often.
These are called Savu pythons.
This is pretty much as big as they get,
which makes them really cool.
They're actually from just a little locality
called Sawu Island.
It's the only place they've actually ever been found.
It's a really small island, only ten miles by six miles long
making this python species the smallest location
of any python species in the world
when it comes to territory.
Of course, because they're such a small territory,
they obviously don't have a large population.
Back in the 90s,
they were actually exporting a lot of these guys,
and I don't even know what the population is now.
It could be pretty much non-existent
on that particular island.
Thankfully, there's a handful of people,
myself included, that have been breeding these guys.
They are just a cool little freckled python
with those crazy white eyes.
As a matter of fact, when they were first imported,
they were called white-eyed pythons.
Now, of course, they're called Savu pythons.
It's a project that I absolutely love,
and when they're babies they actually hatch out
almost a red color, and then ultimately turn into this
gray and brown with cool white and yellow pigment on them.
I just think they're really cool,
I wanted to show you guys because I know a lot of people
don't even know what a Savu python is.
I absolutely love them.
Hopefully we'll have some more babies this next coming year.
Regardless, I hope you enjoyed this video
and really got excited about that mangrove snake,
can't wait for the rest of the eggs to hatch.
If you enjoyed this video, here's another video
where some mangroves actually hatch.
Over here is a playlist of me, I don't know,
playing with some crazy stuff.
Over here you can hit that subscribe button.
While you're over there, can you do me a favor
and turn those post notifications on?
Have an absolutely wonderful day.
You better be kind to someone today.
I promise I'll see you guys tomorrow.