- This is an egg eating snake,
and it is definitely one of the weirdest snakes
in the world.
That's right.
This snake right here is from South Africa,
and it actually eats eggs.
How crazy is that?
So we're going to show you a handful of really bizarre,
weird, weird snakes,
some of the weirdest snakes in the world.
This one is a feisty little monkey right there.
Woo, doggy, but, wow, is it absolutely amazing.
What makes these snakes so absolutely interesting
and so weird is the fact that they eat eggs whole.
Just take a look at this.
This snake doesn't even look like
it could fit it in its mouth,
but it will go up to it, and it just opens its mouth
and devours it like crazy,
and the interesting thing is that these guys basically
have very, very small to no teeth whatsoever,
so they just use the pressure of their self
pushing against the egg to actually push it down,
then ultimately they will angulate it
down into their throat area, and they actually have a throat
that expands quite a bit bigger than the rest of their body,
made just for having eggs in it, and then ultimately,
they'll crack the egg inside, ingesting all the albumen
and yolk, and then spit up the egg shell.
What a weird animal.
You've got to admit that's one of the weirdest snakes
on the planet.
There is no doubt that the Calabar burrowing python
is one of the most bizarre snakes in the world, for sure.
It's just a really weird West African snake.
I've always said it's like the poop emoji snake.
This is its head right there, and then this is its tail,
on this side here,
so its head and tail looks almost the same, and then,
of course, as it goes into a defense position,
it actually rolls up like this,
like the little emoji poop thing,
and it's just such a bizarre animal, and unfortunately,
there's just not a lot of these captive bred unfortunately.
They do come in from the wild
and typically don't do very well.
This animal was actually captive hatched over in Africa
and I got it as a baby, a fresh hatchling,
and it's done well for about the last 10 years,
but I haven't been able to get it a mate,
but look at that little head right there.
It is so weird, and then to make things even weirder,
it's actually in the Boidae family,
but they call it a python, and it lays eggs,
so it's just a all around weird animal.
Classification wise, looks wise,
you can't think of a weirder looking snake
than a Calabar burrowing python.
- What are you guys doing? - What happened?
What happened?
- She got him. - I got him.
- No, you don't have him good though.
- Junior crazy.
- Can you pick him up? - Yeah.
- Oh. - See what he did now?
- That was close. - See what I...?
He's out.
He hasn't bitten me yet.
- Start thinking, start thinking, start thinking.
Use your brain. - There he goes.
- Use your brain. - See the little tongue going.
- This is Junior.
This is our new tegu.
As you guys know, we had little Tato in here,
but we got this beautiful guy,
and we're going to do some harness training with him.
How do we do this?
- So no, no, that piece first and then do the lasso.
- Oh, yeah, boom.
- Great job. - Then we swim now
and he usually runs out of it first.
- Good job, Junior, good boy.
Go, Junior, go.
Good boy, Junior, this way.
Come on, this way, Junior.
Do that thingy.
- Oh, dude, through the door.
Whatever.
- So now he's getting a little bit tired and that's okay.
He's still doing great.
We're gonna give him a little bit of pets here.
- Wow. - And there you guys have it,
a little bit of Junior training for ya.
- [Keeper] He just doesn't like being picked up.
- This guy's awesome.
- My daily egg hunt is on.
There's a bunch of female ball pythons
that are due to lay eggs.
This girl has definitely not laid.
This girl should be laying anytime.
This is actually a big pinstripe,
so we'll just peek in here.
Oh, no, look it that.
Oh, she is so close.
Certainly within the next couple of days,
she's going to lay, for sure,
and this just is the exciting part of my day, guys.
I'm not going to lie to ya.
I come in everyday.
Look it our pastel yellow belly, absolutely loaded.
She should be laying anytime.
This pinstripe should be any minute.
Is it? No.
Look at her, but the way she's laying,
she's starting to look like, I think, tomorrow,
maybe the next day at the latest.
This girl is gonna go, so again,
we probably have about seven or eight females
that are right on the cusp of producing right now,
that could have eggs anytime.
This is just a fire Enchi girl.
No eggs here, but some days, there's no eggs.
Other days, there's two or three clutches.
So it's the way it goes.
I think there's, let's see, one more girl down here,
which is actually just a het albino bred to an albino,
big old girl, doesn't have any eggs over here,
and let me check this girl up here, and, oh, wait, wait,
wait, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Look at this.
Oh, yes.
Take a look at that.
It looks like some beautiful eggs.
This is actually Enchi het for pied bred to a pastel pied,
so let's go ahead, get this girl down,
we'll set up an egg box and pull this clutch, so yes,
we've got a clutch of eggs today.
♪ In the dungeon ♪
♪ The mighty dungeon ♪
♪ Where python eggs are made ♪
Right, come on, mama.
There you go.
Again, she is not a big girl,
but the clutch looks really nice,
and remember how the first few clutches,
we had some fertility issues,
and as we're getting going here, oh, mama, oh,
she wants to bite me.
Don't do it, mama.
Oh, yep, yep, yep, whoop.
She's a good mama, protect her eggs.
You're okay, girl.
You're all right.
She's one of those girls that is gonna give me
a little bit of a hard time getting the eggs out, but, hey,
she did a really good job,
and look at that clutch right there.
Again, not a big female at all, and again,
it's an Enchi het for pied,
and she was bred to a pastel pied male,
and this is that beautiful male right here.
Again, it's a pastel, a pied.
The pied is recessive.
The pastel, of course, is incomplete dominant.
He actually has fathered several clutches this year.
The first clutch wasn't good, remember?
It was pin head to pied, but this one,
and the last couple have been awesome.
Let's go ahead and get these eggs in the egg box right here.
Again, beautiful.
Only four good eggs, no slugs, can't complain really.
Probably going to be one of the smallest clutches
I've gotten this year, to be totally honest with ya.
I probably wouldn't have many clutches under six eggs
this year, but, hey, I'm not complaining,
'cause hopefully there's going to be a couple
of beautiful pieds in this clutch.
You know that my life's mission is to get people
to love reptiles.
Well, you can help out by joining the Army.
That's right.
You can be part of the Reptile Army,
and you can go out there
and you can make people love reptiles as much
as I want to make people love reptiles.
You can go to reptilearmy.com.
You can get your swag, but do me a favor.
If you get some, you go out there
and you represent the movement,
and you make sure people know that you love reptiles
and how awesome they are.
So go ahead and go to reptilearmy.com and join the movement.
Certainly another really bizarre snake is what they call
a sunbeam snake, or a Xenopeltis,
and it's just a very unusual, highly iridescent snake
that comes from Southeast Asia.
These guys really can range all the way from Malaysia,
to China, to Thailand, all over the place,
and there's actually two species.
This was a little (indistinct) monkey.
In the wild, these guys will eat snakes,
they'll eat amphibians
and they will eat small rodents as well.
In captivity, thankfully, he eats rodents,
which is really good,
and they're really just a really interesting,
bizarre, cool animal.
Again, very unique.
Only two species in the entire Xenopeltis genus,
which makes them very unique.
They've got that little small head.
They spend most of their time burrowed,
to be totally honest with you.
That's one of the reasons, when we got this Xen,
we thought it'd be a really cool display animal
for the reptarium.
The problem is they hide all the time.
They just are buried 100% of the time,
but when they're out of their buried nest, oh my gosh,
look at the iridescence and beauty of that animal.
There's probably no other iridescent animal
better than the Xenopeltis.
There's no doubt about that, and it certainly is up there
with some of the weirdest snakes in the world.
Well, this is certainly a weird snake,
there is no doubt about that, and of course,
this is a rhino rat snake, and interestingly enough,
I've been working with rhino rat snakes for quite some time,
and the ones I'm raising up now are all hyper
for some reason.
The ones I had before were super tame.
This one wants to bite me in the face,
and this isn't the one that typically is bitey,
which is really weird, but of course,
they have that appendage,
and that's why they are called the rhino rat snake.
These guys come from Vietnam
and they use that little appendage there as an actual lure.
So these guys are gonna be up in the trees in Vietnam,
and that nose is going to look like a grub worm,
and of course, a bird is going to come up and think, oh,
I'm going to get a meal of this beautiful grub worm,
and then, look at this guy coming at me like this,
and of course, that bird comes up, thinks it's a grub
and this snake gets a good meal,
and it's perfect adaptation.
What an amazing evolutionary thing.
I have no idea why the two rhino rats I raised up a year
and a half ago are so feisty.
They are crazy, 'cause my bigger adults are really cool,
but again, definitely one of the weirder snakes
you'll ever see,
and certainly up there with the weirdest snakes
in the world.
Here we go.
Oh, boy.
- It's shedding time.
Come in.
- Let me think about this.
Reptarium? - Oh, yeah.
It's always the reptarium, until you get too good,
which is probably now.
You're probably already too good for this.
- Hm, this is a tough one.
This is a tough one.
- I actually ripped the head off.
- I'm going to say, hang on a second,
let me just think about this for a second.
- Come on. - Let me think,
let me think, let me think.
- It's going to be the one, guys.
- Is it Ben and Jerry?
- No. - Okay, second guess.
(indistinct). - Fudge. (clicks)
- Got it? - Yeah.
- Suck it.
It took me two times this time.
There we go. - Damn.
- All right. (laughs)
- How do you know?
- Super excited.
We have our first official meeting with my architect
and structural engineers since we hired the firm,
to talk about the expansion.
(upbeat music)
(laughs) Now, Lori finally let me back in here,
just collect one clutch of eggs, but let's...
A little tiny egg time?
♪ Egg time ♪
Okay, let's go ahead and see.
Of course, this is a great clutch though.
This is a Mexican black kingsnake.
You guys know how absolutely amazing
Mexican black kingsnakes are, so we're going to go ahead,
just pull these eggs really quick.
I'll stick these in the egg box right here,
and then we'll take a look at mama,
just make sure she's all good.
Look at how gorgeous that snake is.
Mexican black kings are unbelievably beautiful,
and of course, she definitely is going to need
a little bit of water,
she's going to need a little bit of food,
and for those of you guys that see that there's no water
in this cage, I've said this last year,
I'll explain it again this year, probably multiple times,
we take the water out a day or two
before they're about to lay,
because they will sometimes lay a clutch in the water
and then the eggs actually go bad,
so we'll get her all cleaned up, get her some fresh water,
get her some food in the next day or so, and let's go ahead
and see how many eggs we've got.
We've got two, four, six, seven eggs.
So all in all, seven beautiful eggs from a nigrita, and,
hey, Lori was a little bit mad at me, but at the same time,
I did get to collect this clutch of eggs, so I kind of won.
We are full on now, and this actually is an albino
that is het for lavender snow,
and it's bred to a lavender snow, so again,
this was that girl I showed a few days ago,
that was just loaded up with eggs,
absolutely beautiful animals.
Again, half this clutch is going to be purple snakes
and half them are going to be purple with yellow bands.
That is absolutely incredible.
Let's take a look and see what she has.
Wow, that is a gorgeous clutch of eggs right there.
I can't complain about that.
Going to open my egg box really quick
and take a look at that.
Two, four, six, eight, nine beautiful eggs.
That is great for a cal king, so again,
we'll get her cleaned up, we'll get some water in with her,
we'll feed her up, get her ready for second clutches.
About six weeks now is usually when you see a second clutch
from a Colubridae, but that's awesome.
I hope you enjoy today's video.
If you did enjoy today's video,
here's a playlist of me collecting snake eggs like crazy,
over on this side.
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Have an absolutely beautiful day, Reptile Army.
Remember, be kind to somebody
and I promise I'll see you tomorrow.