- Remember when I produced
this amazing scaleless ball python,
and I said that this was the last one
I was ever gonna produce?
Well, I lied. (record scratching)
But before we get into that,
I wanna talk to you about how we actually produced
the very first scaleless ball python.
- Yeah, Dad, where'd the scaleless ball python come from?
- It all started about 10 years ago,
when I was bringing a shipment in from West Africa,
and my guy sent me a picture of this snake here
that was missing just a few scales on the head.
I was already bringing in the ship and so I figured,
"What the heck? Let's go ahead and bring it in
and see what happened."
- What happened next, Mr. Brian?
- I'm getting there, Mike, just relax.
To my surprise, when we bred scaleless head to normal,
we produced animals like this
that were lacking some of the scales on their head.
Saying that, there actually is an inherent gene,
potentially an incomplete dominant.
Meaning that when I bred the scaleless head to a normal,
about half the babies came out looking just like the dad,
missing some scales on his head
- We're desensitizing some of these monitors today.
Wonderful reaction.
He's not running from me.
Definitely not a fan of the holds yet.
Whoop.
- [Crew 1] Nice stance.
- Yeah. Not biting though.
Not running away from me.
These little taps.
Still not running away from me.
- [Mike] You're doing great, Jake.
- Thanks, Mike.
But just really making sure that he knows that I'm not food
this entire time.
That's all about the journey.
(punch thuds) Ooh.
Almost got a matching one with Mike.
(fart squelches)
That smells fantastic.
Connie!
- What are you doing? - Frosty left you a present.
- That's your gift. Look, it spells Jake.
Look, it spells Jake.
- And immediately my mind went to,
"If I bred scaleless head to scaleless head,
I would produce an all-scaleless ball python."
Fast forward four years, and we produced
the very first scaleless ball python.
We're absolutely blown away in how amazing they are.
And truth be told,
we thought they'd be a lot like the scaleless corn snake,
but the truth was, they really weren't.
Hey, Mike. - What?
- How much would it cost to shave your eyebrows?
- I'm not doing it.
- If I gave you $200, would you shave your eyebrows?
- No. (chuckles)
- $1,000, would you shave your eyebrow?
- No. - What?
- $1,000, you wouldn't shave your eyebrows?
- Here's a story, I don't look good with shaved eyebrows.
- You've had shaved eyebrows?
- That's an ambiguous statement there.
- How much did you get paid?
- No, it was supposed to be a joke.
- Do you think that you would look good
with a shaved head? (Mike sighs)
You think you could pick the women up with a shaved head?
- I don't know. What are we doing?
(playful music)
- (chuckles) Mike is so funny.
- Can I ask you a question real quick?
So what do you think the best coloring book is?
- Best coloring book? - Yeah.
- Oh my god.
- I got a little cousin. I wanted to pick one out for him.
- How old is he?
- He's three.
Okay, my grandson who's three actually plays with these.
- Oh, that's nice, yeah. - All the colors on the page.
- That is important. - So he really likes those.
- Appreciate it.
- [Shopper 1] No problem.
- So stupid.
I asked her, I said,
"What's your favorite coloring book?" (chuckles)
- But let's go ahead and take a look
what a scaleless snake actually is.
And I'm gonna get into why I lied to you
about the scaleless ball python in a minute.
But I wanted to talk about what is a scaleless snake.
So basically, the scales,
and you can see these guys
have ventral scales on their belly.
Those scales are made of something that's called keratin,
which is the same thing as our hair and our fingernails.
And that's basically a snake's armor.
And with a scaleless corn snake, or a scaleless rat snake,
or a scaleless ball python,
it's a mutation that is actually lacking that keratin.
It reduces the scalation.
- [Mike] My nose doesn't work right.
I got COVID a couple months ago.
What this smell like to you? - Good.
Maybe like a vanilla.
There's not much smell too it.
- (chuckles) This is so bad.
- No bueno.
(Brian and Mike laughing)
What music are you listening to?
- It's stupid.
I'm actually not listening to music.
I'm watching "House."
- Just waiting to get kicked out any minute.
- What's your favorite candy?
- Skittles. - Skittles?
That's a good choice.
Mine's Reese's.
- Cool, cool, cool. (chuckles)
- Do you pass out candy and stuff on Halloween and stuff?
- So awkward. - I do.
- What kind of like assortment bag do you go for?
- [Shopper 2] We go full-sized bars.
- Oh, nice. - Yeah.
- They're talking- - Yeah, you gotta beat-
- about candies. (chuckles) - that house (indistinct).
- That's amazing.
- We've all seen hairless cats.
Well, hairless cats are actually exact same mutation
as any scaleless snake.
Basically you're lacking the keratin.
In the cat, the keratin is hair,
and in the snake, the keratin is scales.
- So I've never personally worked with Chicken Strip.
- [Crew 1] That's okay. (tail thwacks)
- But immediately I'm not a fan.
Not bad.
He stops talking to me,
generally means that we're getting somewhere.
There's still light taps on the tail.
I have not broke contact with him at all,
and he's not talking to me anymore.
So now I'm actually touching his body.
So we made it from tail to body.
He has not attempted to go for my hand.
Tail whips have basically stopped entirely.
This might be all that we get out of him,
but, like, even this is better than him trying to attack me.
(tail thwacks) That tail's wicked.
- But unlike the scaleless corn snakes
and the scaleless rat snake,
I found out that the scaleless ball python
actually are a little bit different animal.
First, they don't have ventral scales on their belly.
That could be the issue, we're not 100% sure.
But they went into what we call rapid shed cycles.
So every, like, 14 days they would shed
where a normal ball python shed every four to six weeks.
So they kind of went into rapid shed cycles
and during that shed cycle,
sometimes the skin would actually get stuck a little bit.
But although we were facing some problems
keeping scaleless ball python,
and kinda decided not to breed them,
other people were actually having
decent success raising them
basically by keeping them dry
when they're not in the shed cycle.
And then when they're in the shed cycle,
moisten them up so that they can shed out
to where they don't get stuck shed.
So they definitely require more work
and we just thought that
maybe we would stop breeding them for the future.
- I don't...
I'm so confused.
Our biggest barrier with Hiccup is the psyche.
What I have to do every time he's touched,
he's not sure if it's us, if it's an animal,
if he's in danger.
There's a lot of touch and we immediately move
'cause he just wants to turn around and defend himself.
A little bit of a turn just trying to figure out
what's touching him, what's going on.
Yeah, let him just get some licks on me,
figure out that I am not food.
Get him not to go behind the tree, that's step one.
This is kind of a goal that I wanna get to
with all the monitors.
He now trust me enough
to know that I'm not going to hurt him.
Get back here.
All seriousness, we're just letting him run a little bit.
Anytime that he is comfortable on me, is a win for us.
So he is being calm right now.
What we're gonna do,
we're gonna place him back inside here nice and calm.
That way, he knows that running away
doesn't reward him
with going back inside. (record scratches)
- Excuse me, I got a real quick question.
Where's the, like, the hair supply stuff?
- (scoffs) Hair supply stuff is gonna be straight up front.
- Okay, cool.
Appreciate it. Thank you.
Next to the pharmacy.
Go get some shampoo.
- [Crew 2] But you had a good conversation
with the candy guy.
- He was trying to leave so hard. (chuckles)
Oh, we got some brush stuff here.
Maybe get some curls going.
- [Crew 2] That's a fancy one.
That's a triple banger.
- And just some hair ties for Jake of course.
Ooh, shampoo.
- [Crew 2] Oh, Aussie.
- Does that mean Peter uses this one?
Coconut.
(hands scratches)
- So why did I lie to you guys?
Well, we actually had a surprise clutch
from another scaleless to scaleless
that we weren't really expecting.
And guess what just hatched out?
That's right, two more baby scaleless ball python.
So not only do we have the original female,
but now we have two more babies
that just came out the eggs.
This project holds a soft spot in my heart
because we produced the very first one,
and it was one of the most exciting things
that we ever had produced.
The anticipation of that clutch was absolutely ridiculous.
And I was so excited when we actually produced
the first one.
And now here all these years later,
we have three more baby scaleless ball python.
We're probably not gonna sell these guys
and see if we could figure out
the best way to actually keep these guys.
I don't know that I'll ever do it again in the future,
but I'm sure happy it worked out this year.
- What do you think?
- Oh, what's different?
- I'm done.
(all laughing)
- Good, right? - Gonna wear that all day?
- I hope not.
- Yep, till close.
- [Crew 2] When we're open at the Reptarium.
- Oh wow. - Fix your hair.
- That'll be fun.
(Brian laughs) - Yeah, I do.
- I think he looks dreamy.
(both laughing)
- This is kinda the goal that we want here.
So Toothless gets worked with all the time.
He's one of our favorites here at the Reptarium.
And what he's already doing,
is he's curious about me.
He's coming up to me.
He trusts all of us here.
No reaction to the pets,
not trying to go after me.
And then if we go in for a grab,
no tail whips, no wiggles, no runs.
He'll hang out just like this.
And this is 100% what we wanna do
with all of our other ones.
Just to where we're not limited on,
"Oh, you come to Reptarium,
you only get to see Toothless."
We don't want that.
We want you to hang out with Frosty.
We want you to see Chicken Strip, maybe feed Hiccup,
all those types of good things.
- [Crew 1] He's so good.
- (laughs) He just kissed me in the mouth.
That was kind of weird.
- Now if you wanna get a scaleless ball python,
I'm not discouraging you to do it.
You just have to understand the work
to keep these guys healthy.
They're not like a normal ball python,
but they can thrive with the right types of conditions.
And we're gonna continue on working out,
figuring out what exactly that means.
But I can confidently say now
that we probably will never be hatching out
any more scaleless ball python.
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Have a wonderful day, reptile army.
Remember...
- To train hard, go fast.
(all laughing)