- Hey, good morning everybody and welcome to the Vlog.
I hope the start to your day is amazing.
As for me, I'm in Mexico right now, probably taking
a little siesta or something like that.
That's right, I told you guys yesterday that
myself and Lori actually went on a little trip to Mexico
just to decompress for a couple days.
More of a trip down memory lane to Nerd
and I'll be back tomorrow here having a great time.
But I tell you what, it's been an amazing adventure
building this place out.
I just really needed a break
before we open up on the 13th, guys.
So, I had some amazing footage over at Nerd
that I've just been sitting on.
I thought what a great way to share it with you
and get a little bit of rest so we don't skip a Vlog.
We actually looked at some crazy boas.
Kevin has such an eclectic collection,
he has all kinds of different stuff.
So, let's just into some boas that are unbelievable.
Kevin has so amazing boas as well.
This is actually a VPI sunglow blood jungle boa.
Basically, what there is is a VPI albino
that makes the sunglow because it's also hypo,
then the blood is another recessive mutation
on top of, you've got the jungle
which is a pattern mutation.
Kevin, this thing is ridiculous.
Don't they call these dragon something?
Isn't there something like that?
- So, you're talking about, those are the albino versions
- [Ryan] Albino blood--
- [Kevin] Yeah.
- [Ryan] Sunglows.
- [Kevin] Yeah, there's a distinction between the
sharp line and the call line.
One's a dragon and one's a something else.
- [Ryan] Yeah. Regardless, so this is the VPI?
- Yeah, that's a VPI.
So, VPI will be a T-positive type of albino.
So, it's like a hypo.
- [Ryan] Yeah, exactly.
- [Kevin] But it's not like hypo,
like our normal salmon boas or something like that.
It's a very soft looking animal
and it does pretty remarkable stuff.
- Yeah, no, T-Positive stuff is ridiculous.
- [Kevin] I can show you another.
So, if we take VPI, which is a T-Positive,
and this is a sunglow jungle.
- Oh, a sunglow jungle, okay.
So there's no anery in this?
- [Kevin] Yeah there is.
- [Ryan] Oh there's anery?
Okay, got it.
- Yeah, so when you start--
- I was going to say, that looks like a anery.
- Like a snowglow or...
- So, it's a VPI snowglow jungle?
- You know it's funny, I don't really think about things.
I'm like, "Oh, what is this?"
- Yeah, VPI snowglow jungle.
- So, yeah, this one would have hypo and jungle
and VPI and anerythristic.
- Wow, that is gorgeous, dude.
Wow.
So yeah, I can compare the two
and of course, this one has the anery in it
and this one doesn't have the anery in it.
- So, there's a lot of contrast.
That one has blood...
but it's pretty remarkable what you can actually do
with a lot of these boas.
- Yeah, crazy.
Again, some crazy boas over at Kevin's place.
A lot of people don't think of Kevin, and myself included
as a boa guy.
But he has some crazy stuff and when you get into such
complicated genetics like he's working,
not just with the boas but ball pythons and stuff like that.
Honestly, it's even hard to remember what their names are.
(laughs and mumbles)
- So, you got to take a photo of that snake
you got to take the photo--
- Okay, this is all pathetic.
- This is terribly pathetic.
All right, hold on.
You've got to get a little closer.
- The round robin.
Hi, Ryan.
- Hi, Kevin.
- I subscribe to your channel.
Oh, it's so wonderful.
(laughs)
- All right, so there are princess diamonds but they...
- One's an epaper of diamonds
and the male would be epaper of diamonds
and the female would be called a princess diamond.
But this is clear leucism in boas.
These come from the Central American line so,
- [Both Speakers] They're smaller.
- Yeah, and they still sometimes,
you can see some of them have the--
- Yeah, the T-Positive because they have some
Central American T-positive blood in there.
So, as these guys grow, we're going to start getting
some of this paradox stuff.
Kind of a little bit leaning on that cow.
- Yeah, a little bit cow-like.
Exactly.
Not quite as much blotching but still unbelievable.
As a matter of fact, Lori said that I can buy one of these.
She actually said that.
She told me.
- She lying to you?
- I don't know.
- [Camera Man] She did say that.
- She did say that.
- [Camera Man] It's on video and I actually do have it.
(laughs)
- I tell you what, screw that pied retic
you need to get one of these instead.
- [Ryan] Okay, you heard?
- I heard, it's on the Vlog.
- You guys heard it.
All right, my daughter even heard it.
- Will this be at the reptarium?
- You guys heard it.
Jeremy heard it.
Kevin heard it.
Jay heard it.
That's right.
Lori said I could get a princess diamond.
It's interesting because of course,
perdida is a calritic that has this beautiful patterning
and the princess diamond, those white boas,
actually sometimes have these freckling.
But, the reason Lori likes them better is
they stay smaller, right?
You know you're going to have an animal that is
six, seven foot, maybe eight foot at the max.
Where as you know, a retic is going to get 14 plus foot.
So, Lori wants a smaller animal.
So hey, maybe here coming up pretty soon,
I'll be able to add a princess diamond.
And again, you guys heard it so you can back me up.
So, this is a anerythristic IMG.
And the IMG stuff, dude, holy moly.
- What does IMG stand for?
- Increasing melanin gene.
- Excellent.
- Look I passed the test, today.
The melanin obviously is just that black pigment.
And these guys, when they're born,
they're not quite as dark.
As they get older, they get more increasing melanin,
turning them black like this.
This is probably one of the most
sought after boa projects, right?
- Yeah, they're great
because whenever you have a black snake,
like a black golden child or whatever,
you get this iridescence.
So, when you get a little bit of sunlight,
sad they don't have any sunlight right now,
but, it's just lushy.
- Like rainbow.
- You'd see on a balls python.
As these get older, they're just going to get
blacker and blacker.
So, by the time they're six foot or so
they're just freaking amazing.
- IMG boas is something I hope I have in my future
because they are ridiculous.
(upbeat music)
- Dude, these are the cutest things in the world.
Dude, what the heck?
- This is one of my favorite things that we breed here.
- And you've been breeding these for a while?
- Yeah.
- That's crazy.
- I raise my adults, they're 20 something years-old.
- Really?
- So, I raise those and they're wild stock
and I did kind of my socialization
because we're going to get to a pick up,
this big gnarly, toothy thing.
But, my little babies, so I socialize these and it sticks.
So, I can show you...
You guys are ridiculous.
They're like, "No, we're not coming out."
Hi, guys.
But, they're not yelping.
- Yeah, when you think of caiman you think of...
So, how long you been taming caiman?
- Since my first...
Ones that I had from the wild.
Because they're normally super bitey and crazy
and I don't want to get bit by an adult caiman.
- No.
Gosh, those teeth are ridiculous.
But, even these guys, it's crazy how chill they are.
I mean, it's absolutely amazing.
They are literally, one of the cutest things
I've ever seen in my entire life.
Look at all these little monkeys.
Oh my gosh.
Look it how cute.
You just keep them all?
Do you ever sell them?
- Yeah, we sell them.
So, this is an animal that comes with a higher price tag
because I really want to keep them.
- Yes.
- So, they're up to $1500.
But, every single one will be sold.
They get, excuse me, they have been tamed.
So you can raise this up.
It's not biting you.
It's comfortable with you.
They'll sit in your lap.
It's kind of crazy.
Here we are.
- Unbelievable.
- One of my adult dwarf caiman.
- Dude.
- We breed here.
Look how well-behaved.
Not gaping.
- It is crazy.
And again, when you see you see these teething caiman,
the dwarf caiman are known for being pretty crazy.
And this is like a puppy dog.
- Yeah.
- And you've had this since it was a baby?
- Yeah, I so have for 20 something years.
So, this is all socialization.
This is a great example of me working
with the brain of this animal.
And just having this wonderful, magnificent captive animal.
- This is--
- This is what it's all about.
- That is crazy.
Again, if anyone has ever doubted Kevin ability to get,
like you said, in the brain of an animal
and actually habituate it, this is proof.
It's crazy to me.
I've never seen anything like it.
That is amazing.
- Good.
- You guys know that I've been working with Sal
to keep her super tame.
Now, alligators are known for being a little bit tamer,
easier to tame, quite frankly.
So, to be messing with a tame caiman or a tamin' caiman,
they are pretty unusual.
It was one of the craziest things
because those things are known to be pretty ferocious.
And even handling that one with Kevin saying,
"Hey, listen, this things is awesome."
I was like, 'This thing's going to rip my head off."
So, it's pretty awesome.
And hey, I thought it was a pretty good dad joke too.
- [Camera Man] What's this, dude?
- So, this is a highland scrub python.
- [Camera Man] Oh my gosh.
- Not something you seen very often.
You went down and checked out Stephen Verdist,
he coached down in Florida.
Yeah, he works a lot of scrubs.
So, me and him go back and forth,
talk about scrub pythons and...
- [Background Voice] Things get crazy.
- It's awesome.
- Cool.
This is one of my dream snakes, dude.
Dead serious.
When I was a kid, I used to--
- [Kevin] This is a very rare snake.
- Yeah, this is...
When I was a kid, I remember seeing
in the Living Snakes of the World,
I think it what it was called,
- Oh my god, the Bible.
It was our Bible.
- Honestly, dumeril's were awesome and stuff like that
but to see something like this, man.
Oh my gosh.
This is crazy.
- So, this is different than a dumeril's boa,
for some people to understand.
What's interesting about something like this is
there is no importation of any of these boas.
Mink, sanzinia, dumeril boas, Madagascar ground boas,
which is what this is, you can't get them.
So, all the stock that we have here in the country,
from a long ago, is all we get to work with.
- Yeah.
- And there's such aplite
what's going on in the ecosystem of Madagascar,
these animals are just being lost so rapidly.
Do you realize that
there's less than one percent of one percent
of their original forest.
There's like almost...
I can't even comprehend things like that.
- Yeah, it's just gone.
And all those animals.
But, yeah these guys, my understanding is that
these were more common in Madagascar than dumeril's boas.
But yet, they didn't get exported
so they're super uncommon here, right?
This is maybe the fourth malagassy ground boa
I've seen in my entire life in person.
- I have two breeding pairs.
- Oh my gosh.
- And they have some of the biggest babies.
- Huge babies.
They don't have mini.
- Yeah, exactly.
- They have huge babies.
- One of them had only one.
- Oh my gosh.
- It had one sub-adult.
- Yeah, that's what it is.
They're born like three times the size of a dumeril's boa.
But, oh my gosh...
And that collar on that.
Dude, that is crazy cool, man.
This is that book right here,
The Living Snakes of the World by John Mehrtens.
I think I might have read this a few times,
if you notice its just a little bit beat up.
And of course, these are dumeril's boas.
They also had the malagassy ground boas in this book.
Now, they're very similar.
This is an acrantophis dumerili.
The malagassies are acrantophis madagascariensis.
You don't see very many malagassy ground boas.
Dumerils are pretty rare too but, they're not as rare
as the malagassies.
So, it was an unbelievable pleasure to mess with that.
I've only seen a couple in my entire life.
So hopefully, one day Kevin can produce
and I can get some babies.
- Green phase sanzinia tree boa, so once again
- [Ryan] That is a big one, dude.
- Yeah, she's my big girl.
- [Ryan] Look at the head, man.
- So, the male is a mandarin phase
and he's just down hiding in the water.
These are a little tricky to breed.
- Yeah, I've heard.
- You really kind of got to get them, touch her body.
- Oh, she's cold.
- I got her temperature down
and she's actually full of follicles right now.
- Yeah, you can see she's starting to descend a little bit.
Wow, red babies, they come out just beautiful red.
Oh my god, my pleasure.
- Look at the face.
You want to get, definitely some B-roll
of that thing's face.
- Wow.
This is incredible, man.
I'm just going to pull her right up and over.
Here you go, baby.
Wow.
What a snake, man.
Look at that.
Looks like a viper, doesn't it?
- [Camera Man] It does, dude.
For real.
- It looks like a venomous snake.
Almost, similar to a mangshan viper or something like that.
- Yeah.
Not quite as tricked out.
(laughs)
- But I mean it's like--
- [Background Voice] The structure, the structure
And the face there, they're basically...
They're very very sweet.
So, I'm obsessed with tree boas and pythons.
- Yeah.
- The only reason why I like,
I love obviously, green tree pythons and whatnot
but I love the tree boas because the babies are larger.
They're a bit easier to work with
as far as getting the feed.
Because I've...
- Yeah, green trees are a pain.
They're a pain in the butt, yeah.
- The green tree pythons can just be a serious struggle.
- Yeah, they'll break your heart.
- They'll break your heart for sure.
- Of course, this is one of my little emerald tree boas.
These guys are optogenetic,
where they go from red and actually turn green.
Interestingly enough, sanzinia, the Madagascan tree boas
are the same thing.
They're born with this reddish color
and then turn this interesting greenish color.
Sanzinia are definitely not a common animal at all.
So, it's really cool to see some
and awesome that Kevin has added them to his collection.
(upbeat music)
And again guys, thank you for allowing me
to take a little break.
I hope I am enjoying Mexico.
But I can't wait to get back here.
I know that sounds weird, I'm here now.
But I can't wait to get back here,
get the animals in,
get opened up on the 13th,
it's going to be absolutely incredible.
I'm going to be so full of energy
after a couple days of relaxing.
Might have one Mexican adventure video coming tomorrow.
I'm not sure if I'm going to shoot it yet.
But I have a pretty good idea of what I might do.
Just tune in for that.
Thank you guys for watching.
You mean the world to me.
I appreciate everything that you do for me.
Do you know I started a podcast?
It's called Checking In.
You can subscribe to it right over here.
You can roll through an entire playlist of Vlogs
on this site, if you so choose.
Subscribe to the Vlog channel over here.
Turn those post notifications on for daily videos.
Have a wonderful day.
Remember to be kind to somebody and I promise,
I'll see you guys tomorrow.