- Hey good morning everybody and welcome to the vlog.
I'm at my buddy Mark from Texas Chondros
and we're take a little break from Universal Rock
and building today to look at some amazing
green tree pythons,
later on we're going over to my buddy Bill's
at Phoenix Reptiles that has amazing ball pythons
and green tree pythons so I need a break from building,
and we're going to go ahead and
just look at some amazing snakes.
And I'm with Mark, of course,
this is cool dude, I like it.
You guys may remember he came to visit me,
wakeboard guy, cool dude for sure.
Green tree pythons are your passion though, right?
- Absolutely.
I really only keep that one species.
I have a little other things here and there,
but my main focus is the green tree python.
I love them, they're such good display animals,
they are so interesting,
they come in so many colors,
you can't not love a chondro.
- Exactly. And I'm going to put a link in the description,
Texas Chondros, show them some love on Instagram,
some cool pictures all the time,
show me some of your stuff dude,
just what's your pride and joy?
This yellow one over here is ridiculous.
What is this one? - Yeah.
So this is Sundance,
we're gonna see if we can get him out without
getting rowdy. - [Brian] Yeah,
he looks like he's ready to eat.
- But he is a green tree python even though
he's all yellow for the most part.
Just a super unique snake,
he came from two completely green parents
but has yellow in the lineage.
And so it's just an amazing snake,
eye-candy, - [Brian] Oh my gosh.
- Like you can't get any better than that.
- [Brian] And how old is it?
I mean, this is not gonna,
I don't think he'll go through any more change.
- [Mark] No, he's a fully-grown adult,
probably about eight years old,
and has been bred before by his previous owner,
he is completely done changing,
there is nothing else that he's gonna do.
- [Brian] That is so cool,
and that's one of the things that's so cool
about green tree pythons.
You can have the yellow ones a lot of times
so like Kofiau Island,
so this isn't Kofiau Island.
- [Mark] Correct.
Yeah, he's a designer animal. - [Brian] Wow, that is crazy.
- Parents had yellow lineage in them,
and he is one of the most fantastic babies
out of that clutch.
And one of the best high yellow animals you'll ever see.
- I bet I'll - yeah, that is insane.
But again, so many cool other green tree pythons here!
I see this guy up here just kinda checking out (mumbles)
- Yeah, that is Bolo,
he is always a favorite,
everyone loves the black outline on the dorsals there,
and he is always fired up.
I guarantee if you open up that cage right now,
- [Brian] You get lit up.
- He will come after you.
He's got calico blood in him,
in green tree pythons there is a lot of
emphasis on the lineage of snakes.
And so kinda like in dog breeding we have
champion bloodlines of dogs?
In green tree pythons you have kind of these
champion bloodlines of snakes
and one of the snakes that I just think is
the coolest in chondro history is this
one of this named Calico Junior.
And so a lot of the snakes that I have in my collection
come from the Calico lineage.
So it has to do with the bloodline being passed down
and Bolo is a great example of a Calico out cross,
that comes from that lineage.
- [Brian] That is amazing.
And you said that this female up here is, uh,
looks like she's about to ovulate.
- [Mark] Yeah, you can see right there on that right side,
you can see how swollen she is.
I would guess that she will probably ovulate
sometime in the next week, two weeks,
and she's been bred with that awesome calico male.
That's a male from October and Wameniac,
and just an absolutely epic male,
probably one of my most prized snakes that I have,
because of the Calico bloodline that's so strong in him.
- [Brian] That's amazing.
And you're producing clutches this year!
- Yeah, yeah!
- [Brian] That's awesome.
- So in 2019 we got two clutches here.
I've sold a lot from one clutch and then
the other clutch I held almost all of them back.
- [Brian] Oh my gosh!
- So we should definitely take a look though!
- [Brian] Oh my gosh let's do it!
Let's look at some animals.
- [Mark] Green tree pythons go through something called
an ontogenetic color change where they start out
either yellow or red
and then over time they develop green as they grow.
And so all these babies you can see
start out yellow,
and even these three babies you can see that they have
this red striping on their back.
And they call that a blaze pattern.
The yellow babies will sometimes have this red striping
and it'll typically go away,
it doesn't always affect the end color
that they come out in,
but man when they are young
and they have that yellow with red,
kind of a rust look to them,
gosh it is so cool!
- [Brian] They're insane, they're so beautiful.
Did you get any red babies this year?
Are they all yellows? - No,
all yellows.
So it's kind of a recessive thing where
if you have two yellow baby parents,
then they will make all yellow babies.
- [Brian] Okay.
- And so that's what we had, we had in both of the clutches
the parents were both yellow babies when they were young,
and they produce all yellow babies.
So you can see that these don't have the blazing pattern,
these are just pure yellow green tree python babies.
- [Brian] You guys remember when I was over at Kevin's
we saw a Gaboon viper teeth as well as rattlesnake teeth,
well Mark, what do you have here?
- Yeah, so I have some green tree python teeth.
These two big ones are from adult females,
now obviously they're not the size of the Gaboon viper,
thank goodness, - [Brian] No!
But for a python, they have some pretty big teeth.
- Yeah, well they're known for -
Emerald tree boas, green tree pythons,
they're know for their big teeth,
it's cool to finally see some,
and then the little one's from the little guy?
- The little one's from the adult male,
so all those come from the front of the mouth.
So like you've mentioned on the vlog before,
snakes will shed their teeth occasionally,
so they'll lose their teeth,
they'll come out
and occasionally you get to find some teeth
in the bottom of your cage that a snake just let go of.
- Yeah, it's pretty awesome.
So is this another one of those Calico lines?
- [Mark] Yeah absolutely, so this has both Calico lineage
and blue-line lineage.
- [Brian] Oh, wow.
- [Mark] It's also got some Biak, which is the locality
of the green tree python.
So this snake has just about everything
that you could ever want in a green tree python.
Some high yellow, has some Biak, has some blue line
and Calico lineage.
And it is a powerhouse.
- [Brian] Oh my gosh, it's so amazing.
I love that color, it's great.
Obviously you can see that color change,
from yellow to green as they get older.
Even though this one certainly has a lot of
yellow still left on it.
What do you think the reasoning is for them
to go through that change?
- [Mark] I'm not a scientist, I'm not a researcher,
but the kind of proposed idea is that
because the babies, when they're born,
they'll hang out in the flowers and kind of
in the lower parts of trees and, you know,
where there's more shadows,
so the yellow ones blend in with flowers
and kind of the sunlight that's in the leaves.
And then the red ones would blend in with
more of the dead leaves and the twigs
and that type of stuff that's lower in the foliage,
and then as they grow up,
they're moving further up into the canopy,
and so they turn more and more green
so they won't be seen by predators.
Again, that's kind of the theory.
Regardless, you can just see how beautiful these snakes are.
- [Brian] Super cool to see Mark's collection.
I love going to visit kind of small collections,
really kind of awesome animals,
really a truly passionate guy.
Now we're actually off a slightly larger collection,
Bill from Phoenix Reptiles,
he has some really cool stuff,
and he moved into a new place,
so can't wait to see what he's got going on over there.
(Upbeat music)
Super excited here with my friend Bill,
of course from Phoenix Reptiles,
going to put all the links in the description,
go show him some love,
crazy cool collection.
First off, thank you for having us.
- Brian, it's great to see you again.
Thank you guys for coming all the way from Detroit.
- I know.
So we're going to jump in right off the bat
and just see some amazing stuff,
probably one of the coolest snakes in the world,
is the Sickness.
- The Sickness.
This is an animal that I've produced,
five years ago now.
- [Brian] (whispers) Oh my gosh.
- And he is just a dream come true,
he came from a melanistic animal,
lightly melanistic,
basically bred to a pretty normal-looking green female,
and he popped out. - [Brian] And he popped out.
And he is literally ridiculous.
Now I was down here about a year ago,
and the Sickness was in shed,
so I didn't get a chance to see him, and oh my gosh.
Holy cow.
That is amazing.
It produced three this year.
- It did.
- [Brian] Oh my god. Got seventeen babies,
fifteen were established, - [Brian] Oh my god.
Which was really great,
they were all red Neos,
and they look fantastic, they're doing great.
- [Brian] Oh my gosh, I can't wait to see those too.
- Yeah, we'll see some of those for sure.
- [Brian] So, this is the first time he's produced?
- [Bill] First time he's produced,
and we can take a look at who he produced with,
which makes it even more of a special combination.
So the Sickness produced with this
blue Cyclops Colubrid type female,
so it makes the pairing very very special.
- [Brian] Wow.
Can you imagine those two together?
And they're all red babies,
because they're both melanistic as well as blue-faced right?
- [Bill] Yeah, she's a locality type,
and the Cyclops mountains have propensity to have
red babies anyway. - [Brian] Right.
He's a designer animal,
his father was a red baby,
his mother was a red baby,
and so that's how a lot of the designer stuff
works to breed.
You try to produce a high percentage of red babies
cause you're looking for that melanism
or that blue.
- [Brian] Blue, exactly.
Now it's gotta kill you to wait for that change right?
- [Bill] (laughs) Yeah.
You've got these beautiful red babies,
you're like 'what are they gonna look like?'
But they're pretty special I'm sure.
- Yeah, it's a great way to-
I mean that's one of the really cool things
about green tree pythons - [Brian] Mhm.
Is you get to see that ontogenetic color change.
- [Brian] Yeah.
- And that happens really anywhere from 18 months,
you know, to five years.
- [Brian] Do you think this is like, I mean, not that
I'm sure there's a lot of great stuff produced this year,
but that has to be the most exciting clutch
of green trees this year, don't you think?
- [Bill] I think in this year, probably.
- [Brian] Yeah.
- [Bill] Maybe not in history or in the last decade,
but certainly in the last year, it was.
- [Brian] Yeah, last year, wow.
- And you can see he's got a terrible temperament on him.
- [Brian] Oh yeah,
well that's one of the things that I loved about
the last time I was here is you talking about not only how
these animals are sometimes portrayed as defensive or bitey,
the other thing is about how hardy they are!
- [Bill] Yeah, that's one of the things that we touched on
when we tried to debunk some myths
about keeping green trees,
like you mentioned that they're difficult to take care of,
that they're defensive,
that they have high husbandry needs,
and it just isn't the case.
If you get the right animal,
you get a US captive bred animal
and you put it in the right box and the right temperatures,
it's gonna be as hardy and as easy to care for
as a ball python.
- [Brian] And that's probably great news
to the people watching.
Because everyone loves green tree pythons,
but everyone's kind of afraid of them!
Cause they think 'oh, they're so delicate,
they're so hard' but US captive born, established animals
is really the key.
- Absolutely.
And that's - that can be hard.
Because most of the animals that people come across
especially at Reptile Exposed
are not gonna be US captive bred animals.
They're gonna be imports, or at best farm babies that
are not established well.
And those animals have, rightly so,
a reputation of being defensive,
get sick easy,
are hard to take care of,
and they're certainly not a first time
green tree python keeper's goal,
because they'll just break your heart.
- [Brian] Yeah, you don't want that,
and that's exactly what we don't want with people.
We want people to have great experiences
so they wanna keep going,
not negative experiences so.
Alright, what else do we got?
Let's do it.
- Dude, look at this thing bro.
This thing's incredible.
- [Brian] They're so vicious, you know.
- I know, I'm super scared.
- [Bill] So defensive, even at night, you know?
- I'm terrified.
- [Brian] I know, it's crazy!
I mean, I love disproving things like this.
- Well, yeah, and that's the thing is that
I mean, it's kind of with all snakes
I think most people think that
everything's super dangerous.
Most of the time they're just misunderstood.
- [Brian] This guy is just crawling around like nothing.
- He's cruising.
- These have always been kind of a dream snake of mine.
I remember seeing pictures when I was younger
of these guys -
oh, they're falling down -
I remember seeing pictures of these guys
and of course that's a rough scaled python.
Which is just incredible,
and for a long long time
they thought these guys were actually extinct in the wild.
They didn't think there were any left.
And then Johnny Weigel from the Australian Reptile Zoo
actually rediscovered them at some point,
and bred them,
and crazy enough, Bill,
now they are in Texas.
- [Bill] They are.
Three clutches this year in Texas.
I was lucky enough to have one of them.
- [Brian] You knew one of them.
Oh my gosh.
So what are they like to work with?
Are they more like a green tree or more like a carpet?
- [Bill] Genetically they are more related
to a green tree python,
but husbandry wise,
I keep them more like carpet pythons.
- [Brian] Okay.
- [Bill] So they're semi-arborial,
but they much more prefer to bask than perch,
like a green tree will perch,
but otherwise I keep them like a carpet python.
It's crazy.
- [Brian] One of the largest teeth you will ever see
on a python.
These guys have unbelievable teeth.
Trust me, I've been bitten by them,
they're not fun to get bitten by,
and they get pretty sizeable too.
But this is a male that obviously fathered the clutch.
- It is, and luckily they have big teeth
but they have good temperaments.
- [Brian] That's awesome.
Oh, that's so cool.
- [Bill] He's a beautiful animal.
They're very inquisitive,
they've got great stone-blue eyes.
- [Brian] And obviously that scalation,
the rough scale is where -
it's like an Angolan python,
in a carpet python body or something.
- Yeah, they call that keeled scaling,
I guess rattlesnakes also have that,
but it's a very unique feel to the animal skin.
- I can't come to a cool collection
that also has cool ball pythons in it
and not do some ball python stuff.
This is amazing,
so this a pastel lesser spider orange dream sugar?
- Correct.
- [Brian] Alright, wow.
- Female. - [Brian] It's a female too.
That's awesome.
That's really good.
I just love how soft they look.
You know what I mean?
Like that pattern just really does something
and for whatever reason
that orange dream just cleans things up like crazy.
So you've been working with ball pythons for a long time,
so what do the green tree python people think of
your ball python addiction?
- You know I get razzed a little bit,
from some of them,
but most of them, um, they think it's cool.
- [Brian] Well you work with some amazing ones,
there's no doubt about that.
And this one is crazy.
This is maybe my favorite one,
to be totally honest with you.
And that's just a lesser orange dream sugar.
- [Bill] Right.
- [Brian] Gosh that is so amazing.
I mean the striping on that is breathtaking.
And then this one would be the same animal as that,
just with pastel.
So thank you so much for having us out,
the new place is ridiculously cool,
thank you.
Again, I'm going to put links in the description,
if you guys ever looking for green tree pythons,
obviously ball pythons,
rough scaled pythons,
anything,
he is definitely the man and he's always gracious to us
so thank you so much for having us out.
- Brian, thanks so much for coming and visiting
and kind of breaking in the new facility with me.
- Oh my god, it's amazing,
and by the way if you guys are interested
I did a video last year with Bill.
You can see some of his other stuff there,
I'm going to put a link right here,
a playlist right here,
if you don't mind, if you could subscribe over here,
turn those notifications on,
have a absolutely wonderful day and be kind to someone,
I promise I'll see you guys tomorrow.