- This happens to be a mangrove snake.
This is a rare, fanged venomous snake,
mildly venomous snake,
but it happens to be an absolute beautiful animal
from the genus Boiga,
which is what the cat-eyed snakes are.
And I tell you what,
these guys are absolutely wonderful.
But every now and then, they have
a little bit of a cantankerous attitude.
Now, this one happens to be what they call
a Boiga dendrophila melanota,
and that's just basically with those
yellow bands don't go all the way around,
and they actually stop on the top with the black.
And, oh my gosh, this curl is about ready
to light you up any minute.
So have to be a little bit careful.
Whoa, doggy!
I tell you what, once they get goin',
whoa, whoa, whoa, come on,
it's okay, it's okay, it's okay.
Alright.
I tell you, I have become obsessed with Boiga,
and it all really started with the, whoa!
The mangroves like this, the melanotas,
and we've been breedin' these guys
for the last four or five years,
so we've had really good success.
Now, the wild animals typically don't do that well,
but the captive-bred animals actually do, whoa!
Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!
Not majorly venomous, I have been bitten,
actually envenomated by these guys in the past,
but I'll be honest with you,
I really don't want to if I don't have to.
But my love really started
with this particular species of melanota,
but now I've been workin' with
all kinds of different Boiga,
and today, I'm getting the ones
that I really, really want.
I am so excited, what do you say
we show you what we're getting?
And like I mentioned,
there was one Boiga that I really wanted,
I consider the crown jewel of the entire thing.
And guess what?
Right here in this box we're about to see him,
what do you say we unbox it?
And a good friend of mine, actually,
was kind enough to let me have this pair of snakes,
because they are hard to come by,
I tell you what, not a lot of these are produced.
And the thing about all the Boiga,
to be totally honest with you,
is the wild-caught animals
typically don't do very well, right,
but the captive-bred animals do amazing.
So, these are captive-bred,
and I am so excited about it,
We're gonna see the female first,
so let's go ahead and see.
Oh my gosh, these are ridiculous, man.
Of course, these are, again,
really what most people would consider
the crown jewel of the Boiga
or the mangrove snakes.
These are what they call divergens, right,
so these are kinda the ones that get,
like, blue when they get older.
You can see the differences,
they have a lot of bands,
and then of course inside those bands,
they're not solid black,
they're like this faded color.
Well, as these get sized to 'em,
that faded color actually turns almost blue.
Now, some are more blue than others,
this one is absolutely beautiful,
but I am so stoked on this,
you can't even understand.
So that is the female right there,
let's go ahead and see the male
and see what he looks like.
I just cannot tell you how excited I am.
I've been wantin' these ones for,
I bet you, ten years,
since I saw a picture of one,
and, oh, and this one is way prettier, too.
You can already start to see the grays
and the blues that are coming through it.
This is gonna be an absolute ripper.
So, the female's beautiful,
but this male is gonna be the showstopper, right here.
And again, these guys are ridiculous,
at this size they're eating pinkies already,
which is really cool,
and again, because they're captive-bred,
they are an absolute beauty to work with.
They'll get, you know, the same size as the melanotas,
you know, they'll get a good six foot
or something on that lines,
but wow, I tell you what,
I cannot believe that I am actually
working with these guys again.
Top on my list of things to work with.
I absolutely love all of the cat-eyed snakes,
and these divergens are the bomb,
I mean they are legitimately the crown jewel
in my Boiga collection right now,
so I am over the moon happy about this right now.
Whoa doggy, I cannot believe I have divergens,
that is crazy.
But listen, these aren't the only Boiga I work with,
I work with a bunch of other cool ones, too.
Good morning Reptile Army,
welcome to the vlog.
I hope the start of your day is absolutely stunning,
go over to reptilearmy.com
and join that army, won't you?
- Dude, y'all.
I did not know this was gonna happen.
Not only just this soon, but in this way.
Can y'all believe what I'm holding right here
is a lizard's complete and total shed.
And no, it's not an Abronia.
This was the legless lizard.
I totally thought this was gonna end up
like a bearded dragon,
and guys, I was completely wrong,
this guy completely did it in one piece,
and I am so stoked to show you what he looks like,
he is absolutely gorgeous.
Get off keys, I got broken keys,
I gotta fix that.
Ooh, yo, look at that.
Holy crap, do you see the color on this thing?
Man, that is mind-blowing.
When we got this thing, I mean,
excuse my language,
but he was a brown turd,
I mean, he really didn't,
he didn't look like much at all.
But now, like, holy cow.
Like, now he's even prettier than I thought he was,
like, I feel like we ripped these guys off, almost,
just how cool this guy ended up being.
Like, there's, oh man, I can't even tell you
how much of a surprise this animal's been
in every facet.
Like, holy cow.
Look at how pale the face is,
and the body gets down to this
really cool speckled red.
I'm just so blown away by this thing.
I love how it eats, I love how it acts,
I mean, like, this to me was such a good get,
I'm just, I'm blown away how cool he is.
- Now, these are what they call the gemmicincta,
and you can see they have
the really heavy banding going on,
but when they were babies,
they actually had a lot of red in 'em, as well.
Now, what happens is,
as they get a little bit of size to 'em,
believe it or not, that red kinda turns to yellow,
and then ultimately, the yellow turns to black.
So this will be a solid black mangrove snake
when it gets older.
And they come from a locale they call Sulawesi,
and they're really cool,
so it's cool see them going through
this ontogenic color change, right,
where the red is kinda completely gone away now,
and now it's just this really
heavily banded mangrove snake.
And like I said, in the next six months,
all this yellow is gonna go away
and it's gonna be a solid, jet black, shiny snake.
Absolutely impressive.
Definitely love these guys.
I had an adult female that was a wild-caught
that I had for about a year or so,
but like I mentioned,
wild-caught animals don't typically do well
when it comes to these.
Maybe you get lucky
and you have some survive for a while,
but they always seems to have some issues,
whereas the captive-bred animals do extremely well.
So we have a pair of the gemmicincta,
can't wait 'til they get up to adult size
and potentially produce these as well.
And unlike the gemmicincta,
the multicincta actually keep all of these bands.
They don't have the red
like the gemmicincta does when they're babies,
but they have all of these increased bands.
I tell you what, this has definitely become
one of my favorite morphs, too,
I just love it.
And this one's getting huge,
I mean it's probably doubled its size
in the last few months.
Absolutely a stunner.
So, again, you have a lot of kind of variety, right,
you have animals that have lots of bands,
don't have as many bands, have solid black,
I mean, all kinds of different ones,
and that's what makes Boiga so amazing
is that they're all similar as far as their body
and the way they move,
and all their care is pretty much similar,
but the fact that they all are so polygenic
just because of different subspecies and localities
make 'em amazing.
And this multicincta,
although, again, is a mangrove snake,
is super, super tame,
I mean, this one has never, ever tried to bite
which makes it really cool as well,
so, that is just one stunning snake.
And then the last of the Boiga
or the cat-eyed snakes that we work with
actually isn't a mangrove snake at all.
This is what they call a cyanea,
and this is the one that actually started out
with, like, orange pattern with a green head,
absolutely wonderful animal.
But this one goes through
another ontogenic color change, as well,
and this is basically its adult color
where it turns all green.
But just look at that head on it,
kinda reminds me a little bit
of the bush vipers like Bruce brought in,
but these guys, of course,
are slightly rear-fanged
but not too terribly bad.
I absolutely love the cyanea,
and I'm so glad that we're workin' with them.
So again, I've been obsessed with Boiga.
There's a lot of other species of Boiga
that I don't have, that I'd like to add,
because they are just absolutely incredible
genus of snakes.
So hopefully we'll add some more,
but in the meantime,
I'm just so excited to be workin' with
the ones that I already have,
and now to add divergens to that group,
holy cow, is that absolutely amazing.
- Oh yeah, I gotta clean
all them urate spots, poops,
all that good stuff in the cage.
We're opening tonight,
so you gotta make it look pretty, right?
This is the black-headed python cage,
you know, they're always,
why are you gettin' so close with the camera?
You're gettin' so close.
This is crazy.
Let's get in here and clean some cage.
Oh, God.
Come here, little puppy, puppy.
I think he might be sittin' on a couple spots,
so I gotta get him out.
I just don't know how.
Oh my goodness, another one.
Oh wow, you guys pooped a lot.
Out, buddy.
Oh man, you're not the mean one.
Well, they both are kind of crazy.
Black-headed python.
Don't free-handle at home, guys.
It's above my head.
- [Cameraman] He's comin' down.
- What, no, where?
He's trouble.
I got both of 'em awake now.
I think that might be the mean one,
'cause that one didn't try to bite me
as fast as that one did.
Oh God, dude, I thought that was,
I thought that was the black one.
Oh no, there's some in that back corner, too.
Hi, little dude.
Don't breathe.
God, there's do many urates.
Hi buddy, don't push me.
Come here, buddy ol' pal.
Let's be friends.
Don't bite yourself, it's gonna feel, hurt,
then you're gonna get mad at me.
Whoa, God, don't grab my hand.
Don't grab my hand, don't grab my hand.
See, there's not even poop up here.
Glad I didn't stick my hand in that crack.
Hey!
- [Cameraman] Bye, Mike!
- Wait!
- [Cameraman] Bye!
- Now that Verdi is crushing food,
look at her out come out like this.
Oh, come on girl.
Oh my gosh, look at that.
Absolutely wonderful.
Now she's crushin' food, just so crazy,
I mean she has just got that
food response turned on.
She's definitely gonna be getting big, right,
and I cannot wait for the expansion,
'cause she's gonna get a big water enclosure,
certainly not as big as Ivy's,
because she's not that big of a girl,
but something maybe the size of Salt and Pepper's,
you know, with a nice water feature,
so she can swim in, she can be part of it,
it's gonna be absolutely amazing.
You know, I still love Verdi,
I mean, she's still my baby,
she's my first green anaconda,
and she's absolutely wonderful,
so it's so good to see her growing like she is.
(upbeat music)
Since we're talkin' about mangroves,
we might as well try to feed Khalife,
the one mangrove that is actually
here on display at the Reptarium.
Come on, you wanna eat?
Come on, come on, come on,
you wanna eat?
Right here, come on.
Oh, there it goes, look at that.
Oh, that grabbed it like nothin',
I tell you what, that is absolutely incredible.
We have only the one mangrove here
that is actually the melanota,
and then of course the multicincta here,
but Khalife is actually amazing,
and it's so cool that it
took a rodent right out of my hands.
We have our last clutch of Antaresia,
the Children's pythons that are actually
hatched out right now.
All these beautiful little babies.
It's actually interesting,
'cause we hatched all the other
spotted and Children's about two months ago,
and this was kind of a mystery clutch.
We didn't even know the female was gravid,
we got a surprise clutch,
and now that surprise clutch actually has hatched out,
and they are absolutely wonderful.
So, it's kind of a cool surprise,
and it looks like every single baby hatched,
every egg hatched,
which is really, really awesome.
A bunch of little babies,
I mean, just look at how cute these are.
Again, these are a little pygmy python from Australia,
there's Children's, there's spotted pythons.
There used to be Stimson's pythons,
but now they've reclassified them
as the Children's python,
so really, there's just the two.
And then, of course, there's the anthill python
that we don't work with,
which is the smallest species, actually,
of the Antaresia.
Nevertheless, always cool to see a bunch
of little baby pythons hatch out.
And speaking of beautiful snakes,
we actually have a pretty cool clutch here,
it was a Woma Lesser Pinstripe
bred to a Pastel Crystal.
Now, the Pastel Crystal,
of course, it's Pastel, it's Special,
and it's Mojave, but it's an allelic,
so everything has to be either
Special or Mojave, right?
So basically, we have a few white snakes here,
which means that it's the lesser
from the Woma Lesser Pin bred to the Mojave,
basically what it is.
Now, these could be Pastels, these could be Womas,
don't really know, they're just sold white snakes.
Sometimes when you take a blacklight,
you can see the pattern,
so these might be blue-eyed leucistics
that actually have other genes in 'em.
We'll have to see what's goin' on.
We have a little Pastave,
which is a Pastel and a Mojave mix,
because, again, it's gotta be Mojave,
it's gotta be Special.
And then we actually have
a couple other things that are pretty cool.
This is the Woma Lesser Pin,
but it would have to be a Special
'cause it's not a Mojave,
so this is a Woma Lesser Pin Special.
This is another Woma Lesser Pin Special,
but you can see how they can
sometimes look a little bit different,
so it's just polymorphism, basically, with them.
And then we have a Lemon Blast Special, here,
which is a Pastel, a Pinstripe,
and a Special Ball python,
so a bunch of really cool babies.
And when you breed those allelic animals,
it's kinda cool, 'cause you always know
what the genetics are,
you're not guessing, you know what I mean?
So, a bunch of really cool babies hatching.
Everyday babies are hatching here.
Hope you guys enjoyed today's video.
If you did, do me a favor,
right here is a playlist of a bunch of egg cutting,
if you so choose, you wanna watch it.
Could you do me another favor,
right over here, hit that subscription button,
it would mean the world to me.
Have an absolutely wonderful day, Reptile Army.
Remember, be kind to somebody,
and I promise, I'll see you in the next one.