- [Brian] Holy cow. Good morning, Reptile Army.
Welcome to the vlog.
I hope the start of your day is amazing.
I know my day is going to be amazing
because I am getting a couple, or I should say,
I've got in my hand right now, a couple dream animals.
And I know I say that
and I mean it every time I say it's a dream animal
but I never thought I would get these, to be honest.
They are kind of those animals that are incredible
but hardly anyone works with so when they are available
they usually get snatched up right away.
And I never thought I was going to get an opportunity
because I didn't have any close friends
that were actually breeding them.
But my buddy over at Golden Coast Exotics
actually reached out to me
and they had some babies
and he said, "Hey, would you be interested?"
I was like, are you kidding me right now?
Yeah, I would be interested.
So what do you say we just go ahead and unbox these things.
(exhales)
Deep breath, deep breath.
I'm telling you guys,
not only am I excited
but you guys can't see
but the rest of the guys are over here
they're looking too because they're excited, too.
Now these won't go directly here
at the reptarium.
Potentially. I don't know, maybe they will,
but they definitely are going to be over here soon.
And they are really-
Oh my gosh.
I just opened it.
Oh my gosh.
They are so amazing.
Ah, first off, they're bigger than I expected
and they are more spectacular.
Oh, I mean you guys don't even understand.
You guys don't even understand the feeling
that I have right now because I am -
I'm like starting to tear up with emotion.
That's-
Wow!
So these are what they call -
Like, I gotta collect myself here. Wow.
I mean, there's not many animals that have done this to me
where I get this emotional, like, overwhelmed feeling.
But these are what they call Madagascan tree boas
or Sanzinia madagascariensis.
Now these are like the pinnacle when it comes
to a lot of snakes.
You got to remember that in Madagascar
most of the animals are Appendix I endangered.
This particular animal or this species of animal
is what they call vulnerable status
which is Appendix I endangered,
so these guys are unbelievably rare.
You obviously can't import, export,
and do anything like that.
So only the animals that are being produced
in America we can actually get.
Because you cannot cross the country lines with them.
And thankfully they were born here and are unbelievable.
I mean, this is absolutely mind blowing.
And the male and female are actually
from unrelated bloodlines,
which makes it even more incredible.
I mean, these guys are born kind of a reddish color.
You can see it's kind of a tan, reddish color right now.
It's going to eventually turn into a green animal.
Again, we call that an ontogenetic color change.
Now these are from the east part of Madagascar.
And again, they're relatively rare in Madagascar
but they are exceedingly rare in collections here.
And for me to have these right now is blowing my mind.
This is the little girl right now and she is spectacular.
Let's look at the male.
I'm finally starting to get my wits about me.
I swear to gosh.
I don't even remember what happened
once I saw her the first time.
I think I blacked out.
I'm going to have to watch back the video to remember
because I cannot believe how incredible they are.
Like I said, going back to, again, my early ages
when I first was like looking at all these books
like "Living Snakes of the World" from John Mehrtens
and I saw the Sanzinia Madagascariensis.
I was blown away and here, all these years later,
literally 35 - 40 years later,
it's the first time that I've actually owned these guys.
And oh! The male is a ripper, too.
He's just a little bit smaller
and a little bit less red but an absolute ripper.
And again, I've never even handled baby Sanzinia.
Now I've been to collections that have had adult Sanzinia
and I've been able to actually interact with them
but these are the first little Sanzinia
I've ever actually handled.
And to think that they're ours
going to be here at the reptarium.
And again, a tree boa, but a very calm tree boa.
We know that the emerald tree boas
and the green tree pythons really aren't handling snakes.
You know, we certainly know Lucky, the Amazon tree boa,
but when it comes to the Sanzinia
they're typically very docile animals, right?
And again, in the wild they're going to spend most
of the time up in the trees, especially with that
ontogenetic color change, turning green.
They're gonna stay up in the trees
and they're going to eat mammals and birds.
These guys will occasionally climb to the ground
and actually eat mammals off the ground, too, in the wild.
But they're mainly tree-dwelling animals.
They have live young. These are live born babies.
They'll have anywhere from like 6 to up to 12
as a big litter. Unbelievable.
Again, the male and female are unrelated so we actually have
an unrelated pair that we can breed in years to come.
But listen, I'm not even worried about breeding these guys.
I'm just enjoy keeping them, so I don't know guys.
What do you think?
I am freaking out.
These things are so absolutely amazing.
Let me know in the comments what you guys think of them.
Obviously, they need names, right?
Madagascan names.
We got the beautiful boy
and this unbelievably, ripping female right here.
She is a stunner.
So there you have it guys.
Some more dream animals that I honestly,
never in a million years, thought that I would own.
I mentioned that there were a couple other boas
in Madagascar.
Well, this happens to be Gerald, the male Dumeril's Boa.
These are actually ground boas.
Now the other two species are actually both ground boas.
And this is actually, believe it or not,
the more common one here in America.
But what I've heard, in Madagascar these are less common
but all three of them are what they would call vulnerable
for Appendix I, like I had mentioned.
This is an Acrantophis dumerili.
Absolutely wonderful snakes.
They'll get about maybe seven, eight foot.
A big, big female might get up to 10 foot.
They're absolutely amazing.
All three of the boas in Madagascar are live bearers,
but Dumeril's actually can have a pretty large litter.
I actually used to breed these when I was younger
and I had litters that were in the mid-twenties.
So they come out absolutely beautiful
and they're really an incredible pet snake.
There's no doubt about it.
If they were more common, like the common Colombian boas,
they would probably be more popular
because their placid disposition
is just absolutely incredible.
This is actually another Dumeril's boa here.
This is named Breadloaf and he's a bigger version
of, of course, Gerald.
and the other ground boa, I don't work with unfortunately,
but they actually look pretty similar to the Dumeril's boa.
Those are actually Acrantophis madagascariensis
but what they would sometimes call Malagasy ground boa.
Now they'll have a little bit less pattern
and they are a little bit more pink and stuff like that
and they can get really large as well.
They can get up to 10 foot with really large specimens.
But the thing that's interesting
about the Malagasy ground boas
is the fact that they actually only have
usually, like, maybe five or six babies,
but they're like two to three times the size
as a baby Dumeril's boa, which is pretty darn awesome.
Now they are a much less common here in the states.
I mean, hardly anyone is working with them.
I wish I could get some, trust me.
They are on my wishlist.
Just like the Sanzinia,
I want to get some Malagasy ground boas
It is a dream snake for sure.
So hopefully we'll be on the lookout
for those guys as well.
But they are really interesting snake.
But I love the ground boas and Madagascar, as a whole,
is just a very unusual country.
It's actually a couple hours off the coast of South Africa
and I've got to get there one day
because all of their animals are so absolutely incredible.
- I just finished up Lucky.
Now, Lucky had just shed out
and I have to show you guys him.
He looks ready. Ready to light me up.
I am going to try to keep the bites to a minimum because
although it's not the worst thing in the world -
Jesus. Ow.
Ow. There, too.
Not the fingers or the face. Ow.
Ow, ow, ow. (laughs)
He woke up and chose violence today.
I know. I know. I know.
One more for the road.
All right. Get your tooth out. Get your tooth out.
There you go. So the good thing is, like,
obviously, I don't want to pull my hands away from him
or anything like that. I know. I know. I know.
I'm just trying to get you back in there, bud.
Keeping her all to a minimum as is.
- What are you doing?
- I'm counting how many times he gets bitten.
(all laughing) - I didn't even know. Yeah
Honestly, you could probably count them on my hands.
It looks like a whole lot of, like, craziness,
but believe it or not guys,
snake bites really aren't that bad.
I say "ow" and stuff like like that,
but its mainly I'm just being funny.
It's not the worst thing in the world.
In, like, five minutes these are going to be all gone.
You're never going see them again.
- Of course, Karma 2.0 is from Madagascar as well.
It's interesting, with the Panther chameleons, they actually
all look different depending on their locality.
This is what they would call a Nosy Be,
which is really cool.
Of course, they're always this kind of bluish-color.
They can be a little lighter blue,
darker blue, stuff like that,
but they are always blue from Nosy Be,
Panther chameleons are really cool.
I think, personally, they're the best chameleon pet
because they're just really cool.
Of course, veiled chameleons,
there's tons of those out there
and they're really cool as well
but there's something just better about the Panthers to me.
They've got softer pads, so they're not as hard to handle
and they're usually super docile.
Absolutely love, love, love, Karma the chameleon.
It's super cool but we actually work
with a few different types of Panther chameleons.
And by types, I actually mean localities
because, again, every locality is a little bit different.
This is Fruit Loop here, which is an ambilobe
and it's just amazing.
Again, these guys can sometimes have more yellow in them,
sometimes they'll have a little bit more blue,
but they always have, kind of, that same, similar thing.
And that's what makes Panther chameleons
so interesting, right?
It's that you can get whatever color you kind of want.
If you want one that's blue, you can get a Nosy Be.
If you want one that is colored like a Fruit Loop,
you can get an ambilobe.
There's yellow ones. There's green ones.
I mean, they are just such a dimorphic animal
when it comes to locality and it's so interesting, right?
And Fruit Loop is definitely an absolute ripper.
Then the last locality of Panthers
that we actually work with is actually called a Nosi Fali,
which is still kind of a combination, almost,
of the ambilobe and Nosy Be a little bit.
They have kind of a bluish color to them
but they also have a lot of red on them.
And this guy is actually fired down right now,
which means that you don't see a lot of the blue.
That's the thing that's interesting about chameleons, right?
They can kind of change color in a way
but they don't change color like most people think.
They won't go from this color to purple
to yellow and stuff like that.
They just basically change the hues of color.
They actually have what they call
a guanine crystal interlace that basically
can tighten and loosen, which basically
refracts light and changes the actual color of the animals.
So, no. Your chameleon is not going to be polka-dotted
just because you're wearing a polka-dotted shirt,
but they definitely are very diverse when it comes to color.
But interestingly enough, female Panther chameleons
actually typically look like this
no matter what locality they are.
It's the males that actually look absolutely beautiful.
This is a Nosy Be, just like Karma 2.0.
And instead of being blue,
she's kind of a peachy, kind of, tan color
and pretty much all localities
are going to look that way when it comes to females.
And this girl, hopefully, maybe next year
will be large enough to breed to Karma 2.0
and maybe we'll get some baby Nosy Bes.
These that would be actually incredible.
But chameleons are amazing
and Madagascar continues to impress.
- Okay guys.
So today we're going to see if Vlad the Legless Lizard
won't try to go through a little paper towel tube
to get some super worms.
Geez, dude. He is nuts.
(taps stick)
Oh. Oh, it was so close.
Looky looky, I got tube-y.
That was almost not so nice.
Through the tube.
- We're going to get it, dude.
- See the bug in the tube?
God, this thing is nuts.
Look he's just playing with it now.
Now I can roll him.
- He said, "I'm lot quicker with this wheel."
(both laughing)
- Whoa.
- Another super impressive genus
from Madagascar are the Uroplatus.
That's right.
That's all the leaf-tailed geckos.
This happens to be a Uroplatus fimbriatus
and it's one of the larger species of Uroplatus
or leaf tail geckos in Madagascar.
But there are dozens and dozens, I don't even know,
maybe more than that, species of Uroplatus
that are all endemic to Madagascar.
They're such incredible animals.
Look at those eyes on that thing.
I've said it before, these guys can see 300 times better
than humans, especially in dark.
It's one of the only animals that can actually see
in full color in pitch black.
That's right, full color in pitch black.
That is absolutely incredible.
And you can see that beautiful, leafy tail.
Hence the name leaf-tailed gecko.
I tell you what Madagascar-
I've never been there yet.
I've been to South Africa a bunch of times.
I've got to get over to Madagascar
because, hey, with the deforestation
and all these animals becoming more and more threatened,
we need to get there before it's gone, right?
And we need to do a better job at protecting as well.
Madagascar is truly incredible.
Hope you enjoy today's video.
I tell you what, that unboxing was absolutely incredible.
Can't wait to get these guys over to reptarium.
It's going to be amazing.
And if you enjoyed the video, here's a whole playlist
of unboxing a ton of stuff.
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Have an absolutely wonderful day, Reptile Army.
Remember, be kind to someone
and I promise I'll see you guys in the next one.