- The last thing we wanna do is get anyone bit
by something like a girl like Ivy, or any animal.
Lit me up and that was just every time
you would open up the enclosure,
it would just bite, bite, bite, bite, bite.
It was biting him and everyone in his family constantly,
so he sent it to me like kinda like,
oh, when he opens this up, this thing is gonna be crazy.
Trust me, it's gonna fly around,
and it's gonna try and bite me.
The last one I had, had all kinds of issues with the heart,
and it was weak and was small, and all this stuff.
Well, I was offered a two-headed snapping turtle,
looks just like this.
(upbeat music)
Hey, good morning everybody, and welcome to the vlog.
Of course, I've got my girl Verde here, the green anaconda.
Now we got her when she was a baby and handled her so well,
that's why she's so tame.
But this girl on the other hand, my girl Ivy,
is already a big snake, and she was six years old
when we got her, and I'm gonna be honest with you,
she seems like she's super chill and super awesome,
but every now and then she kinda gets me
a little freaked out,
'cause she moves around a little bit weird,
and she might take a pop at us.
The point is, is we have to habituate these animals a lot
before we ever let anyone at the reptarium hold them.
The last thing we wanna do is get anyone bit
by something like a girl like Ivy, or any animal.
The thing is, is a year into our run here at the reptarium,
we've yet to get anyone bit by anything like a snake,
like Ivy, so, whoo!
There she is.
We're gonna go ahead and just let her kinda crawl around,
and again, the more we handle her,
and the more than we kinda feel comfortable,
the more the potential is, here relatively soon,
we can let other people handle this girl,
but I tell you what?
She is definitely a strong snake, and something
that you definitely have to get used to handling.
Again, she's a really beautiful, big anaconda,
and she's gonna get much larger, and as we know,
she just ate a big rabbit, so that's incredible.
But the thing about anacondas is they'll strike
in all kinds of directions.
They'll go sideways, they'll go right up and down,
you never know what's gonna happen,
but right now Ivy seems to be good.
It's gonna take some time of handling her
and habituating her to this place
before we feel comfortable of someone else handling her,
but for now, she's doing absolutely amazing,
and it's just so cool to have
a really big, cool, green anaconda.
And obviously in a place like the reptarium,
it's very important that our animals
are unbelievably, not only tame,
but habituated to being handled.
After all, a year open, and we've yet to have a bite.
Now, I don't wanna jinx myself,
but the point is, we kinda have this philosophy
about nature and nurture.
And basically what that means,
is Salt here was naturally an amazingly tame animal.
Now, if you pick 50 albino alligators,
maybe Salt is the best natural animal to be handled.
Then of course, we nurture them,
meaning that we train them to be amazing.
So really, to have a great slate to start with, like Salt,
is really pretty helpful.
And certainly, Pepper is an amazing animal too,
but as you can see, he doesn't have that natural,
unbelievable disposition that Salt had,
which just means we have to work harder on the nurture part.
It doesn't mean that he's a bad animal,
he just doesn't start out
to be that naturally unbelievable animal.
So sometimes you can't be choosy, right?
It's not like we have a ton
of melanistic alligators out there we could choose from,
we took what we could get, and I love Pepper tremendously,
and all in all, it's still an absolutely amazing animal,
but it's out job to take animals
that are a little bit tricky, and nurture them,
hopefully, into amazing animals
that people that come to visit us,
can enjoy without any danger involved.
We have a quick little tour today,
it's actually called Tutor Time,
it's a bunch of day care, it should be pretty cool.
Not sure, I think there's 15 or 17 kids,
and we're gonna be showing them around the reptarium.
(upbeat music)
Starting out with an animal as amazing as Perdita here,
helps a tremendous amount.
You remember when I got Perdita,
it was unbelievable, and she was so docile
right from the beginning, and she was just
that placid animal that was incredible.
That helped when it came to kind of molding her
to probably one of the most favorite animals here
at the reptarium, that gets handled more than anything.
And I understand that for sure,
but even though sometimes the snake can start out
a little bit cantankerous,
doesn't mean you need to give up on it.
You guys remember the cow reticulated python that I got
that literally, when I unbagged it, just lit me up
and that was just every time
you would open up the enclosure,
it would just bite, bite, bite, bite, bite.
Well look at her now.
She's about 4 1/2, five months old,
and had been handled a bunch,
and that kind of crazy nature she had
turned into a pretty amazing animal.
And like I mentioned, she's probably not the same as Perdita
when it comes to kinda handling, she's not there yet,
but she certainly has come a long way.
So my point is, is that you know,
snakes can certainly get to the point
where they're amazingly docile
and used to being handled animals,
if you just give them a little bit of care.
Like I've said so many times,
typically when snakes are biting
it's because they're either defensive
'cause they're afraid of you,
or they think that you're food.
If you can go ahead and take away the fact
that they know you're not food,
number one, by easily just when you open up the cage,
you can just tap them on the nose or something like that,
and they realize that it's not food,
and then you take away the defensive nature
by having them not be afraid of you,
then they turn into wonderful animals just like this girl.
And although it certainly helps
to have a really great dispositioned animal,
like Sunrise was when she was a baby,
the truth is, is you don't have to give up on an animal.
A lot of times baby ball pythons can be a little nippy,
Burmese python, certainly are known to be nippy
as babies, for sure.
Take for instance Jeffery the hypo granite Burmese python.
My buddy Miguel over at Always Evolving Python,
sent me this little guy as kind of a joke
because as a baby it was so aggressive.
It was biting him and everyone in his family constantly,
so he sent it to me like kinda like
oh, when he opens this up, this thing is gonna be crazy.
The truth is, weirdly enough, Jeffery never bit me,
but you could definitely tell when he was a baby
he was kinda hyper, he was kinda hissing,
he was kinda like ready, locked, and loaded,
but he never really struck.
The fact was, is that with a little bit
of habituation and handling, Jeffery is absolutely amazing.
Of course, we call him Jeffery 'cause we think
he looks a little bit like a giraffe,
and guess what?
Jeffery is actually making his move
over to the reptarium later this week.
So he is gonna be a animal ambassador over at the reptarium.
What a gorgeous animal.
Once again, just kinda telling you guys
that even if an animal is a little bit cantankerous
as a baby, can still turn out to be
an amazingly beautiful animal to handle.
Certainly blood pythons can get a bad rap.
Sweetie, who came in and was naturally amazingly tame,
that's where that nature, nurture thing comes in, right?
So we didn't have as much of a problem
with the nurturing part because she was just so amazing.
Blood pythons oftentimes can be a little bit cantankerous,
but literally, Sweetie is one of the best animals
I've ever worked with, and the more we handle her,
the better she gets, which is really cool
for people to have an opportunity to really get a chance
to hold a beautiful, majestic animal like a blood python,
which oftentimes, you can't hold,
and we all know, not all blood pythons
we've got has went well.
Remember when I got this blood python here?
- [Man] Yeah, we've got her.
- [All] Oh!
- We actually thought that it was gonna be
really docile and tame, and I tell you what,
it has been nothing but a crazy animal
that wants to destroy us every time we pick them up.
- Back in--
- [All] Whoa, whoa whoa!
- It's a beautiful blood python,
but this is more typical of what the normal blood python is,
where you have to really be careful.
You can see if you handle it really gently it's fine.
Trust me, it's gonna fly around,
and it's gonna try to bite me.
Okay, boy, you're alright, you're alright.
What a beautiful snake though.
I mean it's certainly large, it's even larger than Sweetie,
and it certainly is, whoo!
It certainly is gorgeous, but again,
this is not an animal you wanna get bit by
'cause blood pythons really pack a punch, for sure,
but we've been trying to get it tamed down
as much as possible, but oftentimes
when we try to take him out, he usually takes a pop at us.
Right now he's actually acting pretty good, and who knows?
One day, maybe he will be the daddy of Sweetie
'cause Sweetie is a girl, and of course, he's a boy.
Uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh.
Okay.
You're okay, baby, okay.
Again, I've been bitted by him before.
Oh, ow, got me.
Whoo, I'm telling ya, it's not a bite I wanna take,
but regardless, nature versus nurture.
This one's nature is not very friendly.
This is actually a pinstripe bred to a pastel crystal,
so everything has to be either Mojave or special,
and then there's a whole combination of other things,
and to be honest with you, we didn't hit a whole lot.
We hit a little baby special here.
Again, you can tell that it's not a Mojave,
so it has no choice but to be a special,
and they're really kinda hard to tell,
and to be honest with you,
the only other thing we hit in this clutch
is three pinstripes that are all special.
So we kinda missed on all the pastel stuff,
we didn't hit any Mojave stuff whatsoever,
but it's pretty cool because the pastel special stuff,
now we can take back to something like a Mojave
or a super Mojave, or something like that,
and everything is gonna be pastel crystal
because that's how that gene works.
It's a special, it's a Mojave, you breed them together
and you produce crystals.
So these are all just pinstripes that are essentially,
het for crystal, they call them special ball pythons.
This clutch here was absolutely amazing,
it was actually a dual-fathered clutch.
This was a lemon blast extreme gene,
it was bred to both that Mojave calico B,
and also to a banana pinstripe enchi,
and we ended up producing here was one banana pinstripe.
It's just a normal banana pinstripe,
just a really pretty animal, but then we also produced
a banana extreme gene pinstripe.
That is again, just reduction of pattern,
more striping, more interesting pattern
because that extreme gene goes that way.
We did produce a little pinstripe extreme gene.
Again, you can see that extreme gene kinda coming through
because it's got that really cool pattern to it,
reduction of pattern, really cool.
This is actually what the extreme gene
looks like right here.
You can see they always have like kinda
a black back striping on them, really cool.
So that's the extreme gene.
Then we actually had the other one
fathered by the Mojave calico B, which is pretty cool.
Now I don't think either one of these is actually a calico,
but we definitely know that the father was the Mojave.
What it looks like we have here,
is actually, basically what they would call a spinner blast
because of course, we have the pastel
on the lemon blast side of it,
and then it looks like a pinstripe and a spider,
but then it looks like an extreme gene version.
So this is basically a spinner blast extreme gene,
and then this one is one step further.
This looks like the spinner blast extreme gene,
but also with Mojave in it.
So this is a really cool animal.
The only thing we missed on it was the calico.
If that calico was there, whoo doggie!
I tell you what, that would be absolutely amazing.
So, I tell ya, we hatch out some killer stuff.
Let me know in the comments
who is your favorite animal that we showed so far,
and we'll just keep this crazy day going.
I certainly don't think there's an animal
that is a better example of how you can take an animal
that isn't exactly the most mellow animal,
and with some, just habituation and gaining of trust,
you can actually build a relationship.
Remember Abbatsuku?
She wanted to kill us.
She would jump out of the cage, going after us,
and now look at this little puppy dog.
You could really just pet her like nothing,
she's not afraid of us or anything,
and that's the whole idea, right?
Is about handling animals and gaining their trust.
Once she trusts you, and realizes that you're number one,
not gonna hurt her, there's no defensiveness,
and then of course, once you train her to understand
that your hand's not food,
then all the sudden, you get a relationship like this.
I never thought this was possible with Abbatsuku,
but I cannot believe how absolutely amazing she's become.
Hey, since we're talking about habituating animals,
one of the things that helps here at the reptarium
is actually when we name our animals.
To be honest with you, because when we name them,
there's a little bit more of an attachment.
Believe it or not, there's still some animals here
that I'm gonna need you guys to help me with.
I'm gonna just tell you a few things.
We've got our Boronia over here,
we've got a Jackson's chameleon
that's absolutely amazing over here,
that for some reason didn't get a name.
Our mata mata turtles.
We love these things, we've got two of them.
They've never gotten a name.
We've got an albino carpet python that has yet to be named,
an albino kunis, or island ret,
they're really weird, you don't hardly ever see them,
so it's kinda cool.
That one definitely needs a name.
We've got a Mandarin rat snake, actually from China.
Absolutely gorgeous animal.
It needs a name.
We have the savannah monitor, the one that's an axanthic,
that is absolutely incredible, it can definitely use a name.
We've got our two monkey tail skinks right over here,
that neither one have got named,
and they have so much personality,
they are absolutely incredible too.
And finally, we have a woma python
that doesn't have a name yet.
Other than that, pretty much everything has a name,
so what we're gonna do is,
I'm gonna pick one animal right now,
you guys are gonna put down in the comment,
I'm gonna take the best ones,
put them in a poll on my community page here on YouTube,
and then whoever wins, that's gonna be the name.
We'll do this every week maybe,
and name everything at the reptarium with your guys's help.
So this week we're gonna do this little monkey right here.
This is a axanthic savannah monitor, absolutely incredible.
Let's think, it's so pudgy,
I can't believe how big it's getting.
So go down to the comment, let me know what you think
my little savannah monitor's name should be.
Like I said, I'll pick three or four of the best names,
we'll put it in the community channel as a poll,
you guys can vote, and hey, whoever gets the most votes,
that's gonna be this little guy's name.
Needs to take a little break
and ask you guys your opinion on something that,
I just don't really know what to do,
and I want to find out if you can give me some advice.
You guys know what I was kinda just really driven
to get a two-headed snaked.
I got a few of them that didn't work out
because two-headed animals oftentime don't make it,
it was a bummer, but I didn't give up, I got Ben and Jerry,
and now Ben and Jerry are amazing,
and they're such a cool thing
when people come into the reptarium.
They're like oh my god, it's a two-headed snake!
And you guys know that I haven't had
such a great track record with two-headed turtles either,
although two-headed turtle typically have
a little bit better survival rate
than the two-headed snakes, they often have
a lot of congenital issues.
Obviously the last one I had,
had all kinds of issues with the heart,
and it was weak and was small and all this stuff.
Well, I was offered a two-headed snapping turtle.
Looks just like this, but I don't know if I wanna do it.
It is a baby, it's eating well, do I do it?
Do I keep pushing for it and try to get a two-headed turtle
because I know the kids come in,
they wanna see a two-headed turtle.
- I like turtles.
- Should I try to take the chance, or should I not?
I just need your advice guys.
Should I just skip it,
and maybe one day I'll find a bigger two-headed turtle,
much like I did with Ben and Jerry,
or do I take a chance again again?
Let me know in the comments.
Again, the animal is really, really cool,
I just don't know what to do.
Let me know your thoughts,
I'd love to hear your opinion on it.
As you can see in this video,
it takes a lot of work to habituate these animals
so that they're bulletproof
when they're handling to other people.
We work hard, the entire crew works hard,
and these anacondas one day, will really make a difference
in people's life's, I can't wait 'til my girl Ivy
is ready to be handled by the world
that comes into the reptarium.
If you enjoyed this, here's a video of me getting Verde,
here's an entire playlist of giant snakes,
over here you can subscribe,
and turn that bell notification on.
Have a wonderful day, be kind to someone,
and I promise I'll see you guys tomorrow.
(upbeat music)