- (snake strikes) Whoa!
Good morning everybody and welcome to the vlog.
I hope the start of your day is absolutely incredible.
As you know, we have been building the reptarium expansion.
I'm pretty sure if you've been watching the vlog
you know all about that.
Things have been goin' good but I'm not gonna lie
to you guys, we have been working unbelievable hours.
Crazy day to night.
Just insane amount of just work, work, work.
Don't get me wrong, it's been rewarding,
it's been amazing, I've had a great time.
But we do need a little bit of a break, people.
So, with that being said, myself and Lori
are actually heading to Mexico.
As a matter of fact, while you're watching this
right now, we're probably in Mexico.
So, you may have noticed that our vlog
has been a few days out because we tried
to film some extra stuff so that we could get
a little bit of a break just because,
listen, we need the break.
But I didn't wanna take a break from the vlog,
so I decided to kinda film a few extra episodes.
Well as it turns out, we actually have
some cool footage that we never used
from a visit to NERD over at
New England Reptile Distributor and my buddy Kevin.
So he has some amazing mangrove snakes.
I wanna go ahead and just share that
with you guys right now as I'm sitting in the sun,
hopefully in the sun, having a little relax time.
Mangrove snakes, unbelievable, woo.
C'mon! - Ride the wave!
- Yep, Kevin just kind of pops around over there.
He's good. (chuckles)
This guy's a little bit angry, for sure.
And again, you can see the technique of spinning around
just gets it to move in a certain direction is fine,
but this one is definitely a little bit angry,
much like ours and stuff like that.
Obviously you've seen us play with these guys.
Absolutely amazing animals, but Kevin has some stuff
that is way different than normals for sure.
But they're beautiful in their own right,
there's no doubt about that.
- If you wanna take on the nightmare,
it's gotta be able to move,
so I try to work around the animal.
(screams and laughs)
- As you guys remember, we actually
got nine eggs from a mangrove.
This egg's looking a little bit rough, but not too bad.
I think it's gonna be okay, but it's pretty exciting.
We kinda dialed it in over the last few years
and figured out how to breed
these guys relatively consistently.
These are some of the babies that we hatched
just a few months back, right here.
Absolutely doing really well and growing like weeds.
And not a lot of people are breeding mangroves
to be totally honest with ya,
so we're pretty happy that we've been really able
to breed 'em now for the last few years.
And this year looks like it's gonna be
a pretty amazing year.
We've got two more females that are due
to lay eggs any day, which is gonna be super exciting.
I tell ya these are amazing.
And it's so cool that Kevin
is not just working with mangroves,
but he's working with morphs of mangroves
and different subspecies of mangroves.
So it's pretty awesome to just see his collection
and what he could potentially be doing
over the next several years.
All right, so I'm here with Jacob.
This is your job to take care of these guys?
- That's correct.
- Oh my gosh.
Of course we have a caramel albino,
which is basically almost like a hypo.
Very similar to the one that we produced this year.
How long have you guys been working with this project?
- We've had these guys for about three years.
They gave us a little bit of trouble in the beginning,
but luckily we've got them all feeding regularly now
and we're trying to breed 'em for the first time this year.
- Oh, I hope you get some babies
because these things are absolutely ridiculous.
Again you guys saw that baby we hatched out,
this is basically what I was talking about,
when they get older they have that kinda almost
like grayish-brown look, something like that.
Ooh, come on little monkey.
He got me, but that's okay 'cause these are rear-fanged,
so it's very rare for you to get envenomated
with a little bite like that, that's not a big deal.
It's only when they start chewing on you
that you actually have to worry
so I'm not worried about that at all.
But these guys are working with several different mutations.
What's this next one, Jacob?
- So this right here is an axanthic,
or just more basic black and white mangrove.
- [Brian] I love this animal.
Oh, my god!
The black and yellows are ridiculous,
but look at the black and white one.
Holy moly!
(light rhythmic music plays)
- That is so, it's almost like a Cal King,
but in a mangrove snake.
(laughs) It's unbelievable.
And these are relatively naturally occurring,
again, so it's basically a mutation
that occurs in the wild relatively commonly.
Not super common, but nevertheless,
when you start to build out the ability
to have different types of mutations
like the caramel albino, the axanthic
and then this next one I'm gonna show you is ridiculous.
I'm not even gonna kid you.
This animal is another big reason
why I came out to NERD in the first place.
'Cause I really wanted to see it.
But this little monkey here, whoo, it's angry.
(snake strikes)
In case you didn't know,
mangrove snakes are rear-fanged venomous.
They don't have a real potent venom
and I've been bit by these guys a couple times,
to be honest with you, but I've never been envenomated.
But I'm gonna be honest, when I was at Kevin's place,
sure enough, I ended up getting tagged.
And what happened was I got tagged right
in the vein right there, and I tell you what guys,
it actually happened where I got
a little bit of an envenomation.
Not a whole lot, but just a little tiny bit.
And immediately I ended up having,
whoa, immediately,
whoa, whoa, whoa!
Immediately I got a pretty bad headache,
I mean within like 30 seconds my head was pounding.
I felt really light-headed and a little bit nauseous.
And it lasted for a good amount of time.
I mean probably a good half hour, 40-minutes,
I had a pretty severe headache.
And the actual nausea and light-headedness
went away relatively quick.
But that first little bit was a little bit scary
'cause I thought what could happen.
You never know when you might have
an anaphylactic shock or get
an allergic reaction to venom.
But regardless, thank gosh
I was okay and the snake was fine.
So now I know how I react to the mangrove venom.
Again, nothing too serious.
At least I know I'm not going
to the hospital or anything like that.
But these guys are truly amazing and again,
really a pleasure to be able to handle
some of those animals that Kevin has,
that was an amazing experience.
And the first time I can honestly say
I had some envenomation from a venomous snake.
This is the animal I was talking about on,
Kevin, what the heck dude.
- So, this is actually an albino melanota.
So, it's a T-negative, so if you really look at this
and you can get your camera in there,
the yellow looks like it's painted on,
so the white would be where it would normally be black,
and then the yellow you just get this bright yellow.
But this is probably one of the most fantastic
albinos I've seen in any colubrid.
- Yeah, I agree with you 100%.
I mean just the white, the yellow,
that translucence, that is crazy.
- You can also see, I don't know
if the camera's picking up
the blood vessels that are running,
and you can see the heart of the animal.
- [Brian] Yep.
(light rhythmic music)
- So this animal has big eyes,
so this is a nocturnal species,
so this is indeed rear-fanged.
And the venom of a mangrove snake is no joke,
but they don't have the delivery,
which is a pressurized venom delivery system,
so they kinda have to chew on you.
And these guys eat a varied diet,
so their prey will include birds, lizards,
other snakes, probably fish.
Pretty much anything they can pretty much
get into their mouths.
But this is a very exciting project
- Wow - for us.
- It's crazy, dude.
That thing is gorgeous man.
I cannot wait to see
- Put out your hand, you gotta play.
- Oh, gosh. This is crazy.
- [Kevin] Just don't let him zero in on you and you're good.
- You're fine, I got it.
Wow! This thing is like, it's like power.
I mean it is ridiculous, wow.
Loving it. It's crazy.
I hope, I can not wait until Kevin
actually produces this animal
because this is the other animal
that I was excited to see when I came here.
I'm excited to see everything,
but this, this was it man.
Wow! What an amazing snake.
- [Kevin] I've been waiting for this snake for years.
- Yeah, this is, yeah. - Been trying to get this.
Not this particular animal,
but I always was like, albino mangrove,
albino mangrove really just keyed in there.
I also like Gonyosoma oxycephalum,
which is - Oh my gosh, yeah.
- a red-tailed rat snake. - We just got some.
But these are just normals.
- [Kevin] I used to breed them
and I mean years ago I was making these blue ones
and when I first opened up...
- I've obviously been working with colubrids
for gosh, 30-something years, obviously.
And it's pretty awesome to see
mutations now of the mangrove snakes.
I've loved mangroves, I remember
a friend of mine kept 'em when I was a teenager
and I was like, "oh, my gosh!"
But the truth is, they didn't do well
'cause they were all wild-caught.
Now that people are actually
breeding 'em, it's pretty amazing.
And the mutations are ridiculous.
That axanthic looked literally like a Cal King.
Of course it's a lavender Cal King,
but it was crazy, and then that albino,
hands down was probably one of the prettiest albino snakes
I've ever seen of all times.
I mean, I truly hope Kevin is successful
breeding the axanthic , the albino,
potentially getting snows.
Y'know, obviously he's working with those
blue divergens, I mean my gosh, can you imagine
how cool it's gonna be to see those babies
when he starts producing them?
It's a long project, I mean he's gotta get heads,
then he's gotta raise those heads up,
and then breed 'em back.
Probably looking five to seven years before we really start
to see albinos, axanthics, and maybe eight to 10 years
before we see snows, but nevertheless,
it's really cool that Kevin stepped up
and has taken the challenge
of producing those amazing animals.
- This is another Mangrove snake.
It's a different species.
All the Mangrove snakes belong to the genus boiga.
In total like I think it's about
32 different species, something like that.
- There's a lot of different cat eye snakes yeah.
- So mangrove snake is a common term that we use,
so this right here is boiga dendrophila melanota, excuse me.
So it's one of the largest species
of mangroves that we have out there.
These guys max out six, seven feet.
You can find an eight footer.
They're a little bit different than the dendro dendros,
which is what we was just showing off.
You notice the bands aren't as complete
or as pronounced on them.
More of a darker coloration with incomplete bands,
but pretty similar snakes, similar habits, similar diet,
and just all around fascinating animals.
- Unbelievable.
That's gorgeous and that's the majority
of the ones we work are these species here,
so wow, absolutely cool.
And again guys, thank you so much
for understanding that Lori and myself
needed a little bit of a break.
I'm imagining we're having a great time right now,
at least I'm hoping we are recharging,
'cause you gotta remember, we're just a handful of days
away from the open here, March 13th weekend.
I'm sorry to say the VIP tickets
are sold out but I've got some news for you guys.
We're gonna actually give away 2 tickets
for Friday and 2 tickets for Saturday's VIP,
over at the Reptarium's Instagram page.
Over the next week or so, we'll make announcements,
but two tickets for free for both VIP events,
so make sure to follow the Reptarium on Instagram.
You'll find out more information
and I'll explain it here on the vlog as well.
So anyways, thank you again for kind of bearing with me.
I needed this break.
I'm gonna come back full of energy,
full of ideas, and it's gonna be absolutely amazing.
And then there's another subspecies of the dendrophila,
which is the divergens, absolutely one
of my dream snakes for sure.
Kevin's been working with these for a while.
You guys produced?
- That's correct, this year we produced them
for the first time in captivity
successfully in the United States.
- Oh, my gosh, I mean, instead
of having that jet black, they have almost
that bluish steel look to 'em, frickin' crazy.
I mean, I remember the first time I saw a picture
of these guys, I didn't even think it was real,
and then now to actually be able
to be holding one and messing with it,
is absolutely incredible.
And again, they actually have some little babies
over here too, that we can take a look at as well.
This guy's getting a little bit feisty on me here.
Again you know, you don't to really wanna get bit
if you could avoid it, but they have
a pretty tough delivery system
where they have to really chew on ya
to have any really major effect,
but nevertheless, gorgeous snake.
- They're actually quite tractable,
so what they do is, I think probably 'cause you
are a stranger, so if I let her calm down for a sec.
These guys, you know, I've raised them
since they were little babies.
So, they're less inclined to do anything.
I think it literally is just, it's like
a new person handling it. - Yeah.
- But she's pretty good, but you can see.
- [Brian] So incredible.
- My bluest one right now is in shed.
- [Brian] Wow.
And then, these are those babies
that they were able to reproduce.
Oh my gosh, it's crazy.
Now, do you know these have the same kind
of incubation time, like 100 days type,
or is it longer incubation?
- [Jacob] I think it was slightly longer.
- [Kevin] Yeah, it's just over 100 days.
- [Brian] Just over 100 days.
So it's wild to have a colubrid
that goes so long of incubation but
wow, these babies are ridiculous.
Absolutely stunning.
I mean, one of the most beautiful natural occurring animals
for sure, absolutely incredible.
So this is the big vine snake, y'know from
- From central. - From central South America.
- Oh yeah. - Oh my gosh.
- Oh yeah, she's, that's why I wanted to bring her out.
She's like so on point.
Wiggle your hands around Jay.
- Whoa! (laughs)
Whoa, whoo!
(laughing) Wow.
(light rhythmic music)
Wow, that snake is crazy.
So you guys know that you see a lot
of Asian vine snakes, they're really
a lot smaller, number one.
Number two, they're definitely not so crazy,
and this is amazing, yo.
And these guys are, these are rodent
eaters I'm assuming, huh?
- [Kevin] Yeah, yeah.
- Oh my gosh, that is a crazy snake,
and interestingly enough, they have round pupils huh?
Unlike the horizontal?
- Yeah, if you can get close enough to see it.
- Whoa!
- So this is an egg layer
and we've bred this once, and we'll do it again,
but this is like one of my, actually probably one
of my all time favorite snakes.
I just love the way they behave.
They're not all necessarily like this
but I figured she's very dramatic
and she makes great video.
So this is rear fanged, once again it doesn't
have the pressurized delivery system, so the venom
is good enough to kill a rodent,
but their eyesight is unbelievable.
- So you can see how they're - They got this really strange
tongue, they have a lot of weird behaviorisms.
Their body is also incredibly arboreal
so they're prehensile, the tail.
- I tell you what man, that is ridiculous guys.
I mean, I guess we kinda wrapped up
a lot of really eclectic, amazing animals
here at NERD.
As always, I'm gonna put a link in the description
to all of their content.
Definitely go give 'em a follow, show 'em some love.
Great content over there.
Good guys, it's crazy man, so if you like
this video, here's another NERD video
that I did right over here. - Wooo.
- There's an entire playlist that's pretty awesome.
On this side, you can actually hit
that subscribe button and while you're at it,
have a beautiful day and be kind to someone.
You too rat snake.
We'll see you guys tomorrow.