- Hey, good morning, everybody.
And welcome to the vlog.
I hope the start of your day is absolutely incredible.
I'm hanging out with my guy Al, here, the marine toad,
You know, these guys are so cute, right?
I mean, you look at them and look at that adorable face.
those eyes, absolutely amazing.
Believe it or not, these guys can be killers.
What do you say we push our problem aside,
learn a little bit about cane toads?
Not to mention, we've got a lot
of other stuff going on today.
Before we get into all our snake work,
'cause we have a lot of that type of stuff.
Babies, eggs, you know, all that type of stuff going on.
I wanted to talk about these little monkeys,
because it's kind of an interesting story,
to be honest with you.
If you think of toads as just so cute and adorable,
but the truth is cane toads,
sometimes called marine toads as well,
which are typically native to the Southwest part of America,
all the way down into Central and South America.
But the fact is is that these guys
have devastated Australia.
You think, like, how could that possibly have happened?
Well, you know, sometimes the powers that be make decisions
that aren't always the best.
Down the dungeon!
Egg time.
Egg time!
And we have a pastel female here.
That's actually bred to a calico pin yellow belly.
We're looking for those lemon blast calico yellow bellies.
We missed on the first clutch that we've cut.
I think we have a couple more clutches,
and then this is the last one for the year.
This girl looks like she's around a good clutch of eggs.
And I just gotta be careful not to get bit by her.
It's okay, baby.
It's all right.
Oh, yeah.
That's pretty good.
Do see one little slugger in there and that happens.
See if we've got a loose egg right here.
I get this little slugger out right here,
and then we'll try to unwind this girl.
Oh, she's gonna bite me, isn't she?
Oh, she sure is.
Oh.
Oh, come on girl. Come on girl.
Okay, so come on, come on.
It's okay, it's okay.
It's all right. It's all right.
It's okay. (groans)
Boy. She really did protect those eggs, like fierce!
I'll tell you what. (groans)
Trying to get these outta here real quick.
Gonna definitely need to candle a couple of eggs,
because she was definitely feisty.
It's okay, mom.
It's all right, let's go.
Just get these eggs over here.
Get these last two eggs over here, too.
Slugger out.
Mama, you did so good.
I tell her, what a good animal.
I'm going to miss collecting eggs.
I think we have about 20 clutches to go,
if I'm not mistaken.
We've got two, four, six, eight, nine, beautiful eggs.
One little slugger.
We'll feed that off to one of the monitor lizards.
And again, hopefully in 57 days,
we'll have that lemon blast calico yellow belly.
I'm telling you, when you guys see these,
they are absolutely ridiculous.
For those of you that don't know,
Australia had a huge cane sugar industry, right?
Well, the problem is,
there's a little beetle called a cane beetle
that eats the actual plants,
but more importantly eats the root of the sugar cane.
So, the powers that be thought, "Hey, guess what?
"We need something that eats the cane beetle."
What eats a cane beetle?
A cane toad.
That's right, these guys love cane beetles.
There's no doubt about it.
So in 1935, through 1936, they released about 102 animals.
That's it, 102 of these guys into Australia,
into Northern Queensland in the Cairns area.
And they basically thought like,
"Hey, this is going to take care of our problem,
"protect our crops," and all that type of stuff.
Well, guess what happened.
Number one, they didn't eat the cane beetles,
because a lot of the cane beetles
actually were at the top of the plants
and these guys obviously stay on the ground,
and they didn't eat enough of them to eradicate the problem.
But in the meantime, these guys proliferated like crazy
and kind of started devastating the wild
all across Australia!
Since 1935, they went from 102 original animals
to a couple hundred million cane toads
around all of Australia.
You know, you might think like, oh, they're so cute.
Who cares? It's a bunch of toads, right?
Well, the problem is, is number one,
these guys eat everything.
As you can see, they literally will eat anything
that they get in their mouth.
They'll eat snakes, they'll eat lizards,
but more importantly, believe it or not,
they have these huge scent glands right here
that have a poison in 'em, a toxin in 'em,
and Australian animals didn't have any way
to cope with that.
So death adders and brown snakes
and all kinds of other animals were eating these guys.
The poison from the cane toads
were actually killing off huge amounts.
So there are huge, huge, vast areas of species of animals
in Australia that were being devastated by these guys.
And it's really a pretty horrific story.
They've been kind of marching their way
across the entire continent now, and definitely a problem.
Now, interestingly enough,
there has been some bright lights.
Some of the animals actually have learned
how they could potentially live with the cane toads.
Take, for instance, the kookaburra.
They love to eat cane toads.
But what they'll do now is rather than eating them
and getting that toxin in them and dying,
they will literally get them
and they'll smash them up against a tree,
getting all the poison out before they eat 'em!
It's crazy how nature goes, though.
The truth is, this cute little face right here,
absolutely is a killer in Australia.
We've been hatching some amazing leopard geckos this year.
Of course, Jessica has done an amazing job, as always.
This thing is super cool.
It's just a really cool, bold, kind of weird pattern.
Jungle-y axanthic mack snow.
I mean, the thing is just awesome.
So I figured I'd take a little time
and just show you guys some of the highlights.
Again, there's hundreds of them.
Hundreds of them that hatched out so far,
that are all amazing, but I'll show you guys a few of them,
cause I know you guys love leopard geckos.
This first one is super cool.
It's actually a mack snow eclipse.
That mack snow, of course is awesome,
when it comes to the color.
It's kinda that white and black,
but then that eclipse really changes up the pattern,
making it beautiful.
This is a super raptor white and yellow.
Now the raptor of course, is that eclipse pattern,
this albino, and then, of course,
it's a super raptor, on top of it,
and a white and yellow.
Ooh, doggy, that thing is gorgeous.
And speaking of gorgeous,
this is a sun glow het eclipse white and yellow.
Man, that is a beauty!
That thing is on fire.
I love the Murphy patternless stuff.
Then you mix the mack snow into it,
it turns out really cool,
and then the white and yellow on top of it!
I tell you what, that gecko rocks!
Look at the pattern on this one right here.
It's actually a tangerine stripe het eclipse,
that het eclipse really changes up the pattern
and the color on there.
Of course, the eclipse is in the eye pigment,
but it also changes kinda all the makeup of the animal,
making a beautiful animal, just like this.
I love this project.
It's a hyper-melanistic mack snow eclipse.
That's that dark gene that we're working on,
to produce some really beautiful, dark animals.
I love this.
It's going to turn out so cool when it gets bigger.
This is another one of the hyper-melanistic projects,
but it's a mack snow het eclipse.
So again, we're working on a lot of stuff
and the results have turned out amazing.
Look at this one!
This is a white and yellow tangerine reverse stripe.
Oh my gosh, that thing is on fire!
You guys know that I'm not going to show a bunch of geckos
without showing you a super snow.
This is just a super snow and it's ridiculous.
It's one of my favorite mutations of geckos!
And then we're working on this particular line
that I think is ridiculous.
This is actually a mack snow white and yellow
possible tremper het eclipse.
But the fact is,
we're working on this reduction of pattern with it.
So, you have this predominantly white animal
with black dotting on it.
Oh my gosh, I hope this project takes it a long way.
They are incredible.
And check out the pattern on this!
It's actually a reverse stripe pastel IMG.
We're working on a project
that is an increasing melanin gene.
This could be the key right here.
So hopefully, as this gets older,
it's gonna be ridiculous.
This thing is ridiculous, too.
This is a mack snow radar.
Now the radar is basically the bell version of the raptor,
which of course is the tremper version.
And look at the glowing Stripe
on this little monkey right here.
This is a hypo mack snow
white and yellow bell stripe animal.
Oh, my God, that thing is cool.
And then the last couple animals are hyper-melanistic again,
that same project, but this one is a Murphy's patternless.
So the Murphy's patternless is a recessive mutation,
and that hyper-melanistic just makes it super dark.
And then lastly, of course,
is a hyper-melanistic super snow.
Super snow is one of my favorite mutations of all time.
If you put that hyper-melanistic into it,
turning it really dark like this, that thing is ridiculous.
So as you can see,
we're just really starting to pack on the geckos.
And that's just a handful of geckos out of the hundreds
we've already got hatched
and a thousand more eggs or so that we have on the ground.
So, it's gonna be a really cool year.
We're trying to refine our production now.
Rather than just producing a lot of geckos,
we're trying to produce like really amazing geckos.
I couldn't be more happy.
Let me know down in the comments
if you guys want me to do some more updates
on our baby geckos, as they hatch.
It's been awhile since I've fed the dart frogs on the vlog.
You guys know that it's a daily routine
that I used to love to do.
And since we're talking about frogs today,
why don't we go ahead and feed these silly monkeys?
Everyone knows that poison dart frogs have poison in them.
Of course, they don't have the poison
that they have in the wild in captivity,
'cause they're just eating fruit flies,
like you're seeing right now.
In the wild, they're going to eat stuff with high folic acid
like bullet ants, creating a higher toxin.
But did you know that all frogs and toads
actually do excrete some sort of poison?
That's right, some are more toxic than others.
Obviously, poison dart frogs can be a higher toxicity
in the wild, whereas some of the most common things
you might find in your backyard aren't that toxic.
Believe it or not, there's a couple of species of frogs
in Brazil that are both poisonous and venomous.
So, they excrete a poison, just like other frogs,
but then they have these little barbs on them
that can actually inject a venom.
How crazy is that?
Guess what time it is?
♪ Egg time ♪ ♪ Egg time ♪
- And we only have one clutch really quick today.
And this is actually a Nelson's that's het for albino,
that's bred to an albino.
So, let's go ahead and see what she's got going on.
We'll get her cage all cleaned up,
get her ready to go and take a look
and see what we got here.
Looks like we've got two, four, five eggs,
but you can see the glossiness on these eggs right here.
This girl obviously tried to eat their eggs.
You can see there's a little piercing here
and it looks like there's a little piercing there
where this female decided
that she was gonna try to eat her eggs,
which is never good.
Now, the good news is, is that they might actually seal up.
So, I'm gonna be very gentle
and I'm just gonna put them in here like that.
And sometimes, the actual albumin itself can act like glue,
believe it or not, and it will glue that and heal it up,
and they should still hatch out okay.
We'll keep an eye on these on the next few days
and see what happens, but nevertheless,
five eggs from a Nelson's bred to a albino.
Half those should be albinos, obviously.
So running down a couple more clutches,
and we are done for the year with colubrids.
(laughing) Holy moly, guys.
I tell you what, we have had a heck
of a mosaic California kingsnake here.
We haven't produced mosaic Cals
in probably three or four years,
and now it seems like every other clutch
that we hatch out is a mosaic Cal.
Ooh, look at this one right here!
Ooh, this is cool.
This is sometimes what we call
the dot dash black and white Cal kings,
because they just have like dots and dashes down the back.
That is a cool lookin' snake there.
And then we've got a bunch of the really thick,
almost like tire track ones.
I mean, this is a really nice clutch of mosaics,
probably the prettiest clutch of mosaics
that we've hatched out this year.
I don't think we have
that many more first clutches of mosaics,
but we do still have some second clutches coming.
So, wow.
It's been a cool mosaic Cal king year.
Of course, this is the infamous Snoop Frog,
the Argentine horned frog.
Love these guys.
And you know, again, you think of frog,
you think of cute and cuddly and they are,
they're absolutely adorable.
But the truth is they're pretty savage animals.
I mean, even Snoop Frog once ate a stillborn snake.
I mean, these guys will eat pretty much anything
in their path and when they eat, they just thrash it around.
They crush it. I mean,
these guys will literally devour anything that they can fit
in their mouth.
I mentioned in the past that I won't cut every single clutch
and sometimes it's just because they hatch a little earlier.
I cut at 57 days, this clutch was at 56 days.
It was actually just a normal ball python
that was bred to a banana spider,
and all the heads kind of pipped out.
So I just thought I would show you the clutch as is
and not actually cut it.
You can see there's a banana here.
There's a banana here. This banana hatched out.
This one right here looks like a little banana.
This looks like a banana.
This is definitely a banana.
That looks like, just trying to look really quick.
That looks like maybe a normal.
So there's a whole bunch, there was two,
four, six, eight, nine eggs.
It looks like we have seven bananas.
Don't know if they're banana spiders yet or normal banana,
because they're still in the egg.
But I thought I would just show you the process of what a
clutch looks like when I'm not cutting it.
You see all these little slits,
these little babies have an egg tooth, right?
Right at the tip of their nose,
there'll be a little bit of an egg tooth
that actually slices up all these eggs.
Just like we do with the razorblade, right?
Well, this is what it looks like.
Look, how many slices are in this egg right here?
We've got some bubbles coming out over here.
Bubbles coming out over there.
Those are their first press.
So I just think it's really cool to see the process.
We don't have to cut every clutch
to still enjoy babies hatching.
Have a pretty cool enchi clutch that just hatched out.
This is actually a stinger bee
to a pastel enchi yellow belly
and a bunch of really cool stuff.
Got a little baby still in the egg right there.
But this is actually a bumblebee super enchi.
We actually hatched one of these just a couple of days ago.
That was unbelievable as well.
But this one might even be more reduced.
I mean, wow, that thing is incredible.
Then we have a little super enchi spider right here,
a little enchi spider over here,
looks like just a spider and a pastel over here
and then a normal, of all things.
So the creme de la creme is this little monkey right here,
this bumblebee, which is a pastel and a spider,
and then, of course, the super enchi.
Hoo, doggy, I mean,
look at the lack of pattern on the head,
the reduction of pattern all over its body.
That thing is unbelievable.
I love hatching baby snakes.
So I know you don't think of frogs as killers,
but the truth is they can kinda be killers.
I just had to tell that story,
'cause I thought it was amazing.
In my time down in Australia,
it was wild to see how many of these cane toads
are all over the place.
It's really a tragedy and it just shows us
that invasive animals can be a problem.
Obviously, Burmese pythons in the Everglades
and all of that type of stuff.
Regardless, if you enjoyed this video,
let's change topics here.
And go ahead and check out this playlist
that has a bunch of baby snakes.
I think that you'll enjoy that.
Could you also do me a favor?
Right up here, you can subscribe to my podcast channel
called Checking In, we do it every Wednesday.
On this side, you can subscribe to this vlog channel,
turn your post notifications on.
Please have an absolutely wonderful day guys.
Remember be kind to someone,
and I promise I'll see you tomorrow.