(lighthearted music)
- Hey, good morning everybody
and welcome to the vlog.
I hope the start of your day is incredible
or whenever you happen to be watching,
and you know that if I'm spending time with my girl,
Ivy, the green Anaconda,
I'm having a good start to my day.
She's my spirit animal,
she is an absolute beauty,
and I wanna talk to you guys
about the largest snakes in the world.
Now, most people think that green anacondas,
or the Anaconda, is the largest snake in the world.
And you're half right, okay.
The fact is
is that they're not the longest snake in the world
but they are the heaviest bodied snake in the world.
They certainly can get absolutely massive.
There's been rumors of them up to 300 pounds.
Now, typically, they rarely get over 16 foot
although a giant one might be 18 or 19 foot.
I'm not sure that there's ever even been an anaconda
that has been over 20 foot to be totally honest with you,
but they certainly can get huge.
As a matter of fact,
I was up at Alligator Alley in Wisconsin,
and he has an Anaconda I couldn't even pick up.
I mean, legitimately, I tried.
Hey, where are you going Ivy?
Where's the big girl going?
And of course you guys know that I love my girl Ivy
but I'm telling you what,
even her getting on me right now...
I'm gonna go ahead and stand up see if I can pick her up.
Oh (groans) my gosh.
I cannot tell you how unbelievably heavy
just this animal is here and she's only 85 pounds.
I mean
she's definitely gonna get to at least twice this weight,
maybe even three times this weight.
And pretty soon in the next couple of days
we're gonna feed her a giant meal.
And I'll talk more about why I do that.
But listen, there's really four giant snakes in the world.
Now, currently there's big snakes like King cobras
and scrub python,
but I'm talking four giant snakes that can exceed 150,
sometimes even 200 pounds,
and certainly the anacondas are definitely one of them.
And the green anacondas are oftentimes get the bad rep
of being the meanest killers and stuff like that.
As you can see, that's just not the case.
I mean, a beautiful animal like Ivy here is unbelievable,
but once again, honestly not the largest snake.
The heaviest snake for sure, the reticulated python
win the actual battle for the length of snakes
and we're gonna get into a reticulated python here
pretty soon.
But just look at that,
that slow tongue, that methodical thing,
so curious.
I mean, I'm telling you what guys,
I've said this a million times,
I've been working with snakes since I was a kid
and I have never ever experienced
anything like this animal here.
I mean, she is incredible.
So curious, so friendly.
Literally I go into her enclosure,
you guys have seen it,
she'll just crawl right up to me
and she'll just hang out with me.
I mean, she is absolutely wonderful.
So for anyone that thinks the green anaconda is a killer,
you've been watching too many movies guys,
because these guys are unbelievable
especially when they're F2, F3, F4 generation,
which basically just means out of the wild, right?
So we're breeding 'em tamer and tamer
and you can imagine when Aries and Ivys has babies
that they will be so docile because behavior does pass down.
I'd say what, green anacondas, definitely the giants,
definitely the legend, definitely the iconic giant snake,
but again, not the longest snake in the world,
just the heaviest snake in the world.
And then of course like I mentioned,
there's reticulated pythons like my girl Daisy here,
who's over 18 foot.
Now I would take out Lucy,
but she's actually in that stage of shed right now
where she's probably gonna shed later on today,
tomorrow by the latest.
So if I took her out, it would break her shed
and I always talk about it's not a problem to shed a snake
when they're stuck.
So if she starts to shed
and she has some stuck shed and we soak her
and then actually help her get that shed off,
that's good but she's not ready to shed.
And if you take a snake's shed off
when they're not ready to shed, that can be a problem.
So we won't mess or mock with Lucy today.
We're just gonna play with my girl Daisy here,
my second largest snake.
And again, reticulated pythons can get up to 25 foot long
so they can be giants.
I mean,
that's a good five to seven foot larger than an Anaconda.
Come on girl. (laughs)
And I'll tell you what, they like to move
and they have a mind of their own.
Very intelligent snakes, unbelievably beautiful snakes.
And much like I talked about
when I talked about anacondas being kind of domesticated
in F2, F3, F4 generations,
with retics we're probably at F6, F7 generations,
and basically it just means
every generation out of the wild, right?
So there's maybe seven generations
of reticulated pythons out of the wild.
And where are you going Daisy?
Come on monkey.
Oh my gosh, she is such a big snake.
When you get involved with giant snakes like these...
Holy cow, that's a lot.
Oh my gosh. (pants)
She's wearing me out, there's no doubt about that,
but the fact is that every generation out of the wild
is typically tamer and tamer.
Oh, she's got a good tight squeeze I'm in right now, girl.
Okay, she's just hanging onto me like a tree.
And then I've always said
that when you're dealing with big snakes,
especially something like a reticulated python
or an Anaconda,
oftentimes they'll kinda squeeze on you.
And for someone that's not comfortable,
they would think that they're trying is kill you, right.
What they're doing is
she's just trying to hold onto me like a tree,
she's using me as a branch.
And she is absolutely amazing, unbelievable snakes.
Reticulated pythons, crazy cool,
but definitely the true giants of the reptile world.
I mean, literally 25 foot.
When you talk largest snake in the world,
you better be talking about reticulated pythons.
(lighthearted music)
(air whooshing)
Now with that being said,
not every reticulated python is gonna be a giant you know.
They're not all going to be 20, 25 foot long. (chuckles)
Even with Lucy and Daisy, which are siblings,
they're both 12 years old,
we hatched them here ourselves
so we've had them since they were just tiny babies,
but Lucy is two and a half foot longer
and maybe 75 pounds larger and they're siblings.
I mean, just think about that.
But then you have animals like Al here, which are still,
what they call the main land version
which are the giant snakes,
but he is now eight years old
and he's only about 12 foot long.
Now sometimes males will stay a little bit smaller
like this 10 or 12 foot,
sometimes males (laughs) will still get 18 to 20 foot.
I've seen some giant male reticulated pythons,
but the fact is Al probably won't get a whole lot larger
just because he doesn't have the food response
that a large female
or when we are feeding them decent amount
it seems like he doesn't put it into growth as much.
And that's just the way it is.
Not to mention, we've talked about before,
that there's insular islands of reticulated pythons
that sometimes can stay under six foot long.
So the actual reticulated python
is the longest snake in the world,
but not every reticulated python is gonna be the longest.
Every individual is different, right?
Some people are six foot five,
some people are five foot eight.
It's just the way it is.
Every snake is an individual,
but definitely retics take the cake
when it comes to the giant snakes.
But don't let that fear you off if you're like,
"I want to reticulated python because they're amazing."
You just have to choose wisely if you want something
and only gets 10 or 12 foot.
Because, listen, Al is absolutely incredible.
(air whooshing)
I honestly don't have anything else to say
about reticulated pythons
other than the fact that Night Fury just shed out yesterday
and looks ridiculous.
I mean, look at the shimmer and sheen on that animal.
The iridescence, the rainbow coming through this.
Oh my goodness.
I tell you what,
this snake is definitely one of the most stunning snakes
that I own anywhere.
I mean, literally every single person that comes
into the reptarium is always blown away,
especially when he's fresh shed.
I mean, that is crazy cool.
And that's one of the things that's amazing
about reticulated pythons
is the designer-morphs that are out there.
I mean, there are hundreds of different color fazes
of this animal.
I mean, it's just absolutely incredible to me.
And you know, there's a pied reticulated pythons.
Can you imagine when you get a Night Fury into a pied
where you have that black, shiny, shimmery iridescence,
and then you also have the white of the pied.
Whoa (indistinct), I tell you what,
there's a lot of cool retics could've come to
but they get 18 or 20 foot,
and it's kind of hard to have a huge colony of 'em.
If these guys were this size,
oh my gosh, they'd be the coolest snake on the planet.
And then of course, there's the Burmese pythons.
I had mentioned so many times that I think of them
as the puppy dog of the giant snake world.
And it's just because they're a little bit more mellow,
right?
You know, the retics are always on the go.
Obviously anacondas aren't oftentimes as mellow as Ivy is.
And then of course the Rock pythons
that we'll talk about in a minute
are definitely not the tamest and most calm animals,
there's no doubt about that.
But Burmese really can, especially captive bred,
getting back to what I was talking about
about generation after generation of breeding.
These guys have been around and probably been bred longer
than any of the other giant snakes.
And, you know, giant snakes aren't for everybody.
There's no doubt about that.
You know, I've been keeping giant snakes
since I was 15 years old,
but I don't necessarily think
that a lot of people should keep giant snakes.
I mean, don't get me wrong.
If you have ability, the knowledge, everything else,
if you wanna be safe about it, certainly
I think you should have the ability to keep giant snakes
but we all know it's happened down in Florida,
but let's just say
that certainly the majority of the problem in Florida
with the invasive species down there came from the Hurricane
and the fact that facilities were blown away
and that's how it is.
But we can't say that there's never been a giant snake
that's been released in the wild,
even here in Michigan we've had it happen a couple of times
where, you know, someone gets a cute little Burmese python
or an Anaconda, or a reticulated python
and then they get big like Sunrise here
and they just don't know what to do with it.
So please do me a favor,
if you wanna enter into the giant snake world,
it is truly an amazing journey, there's no doubt about it,
but don't do it if you're not able to keep these forever.
These animals get big.
You know, Sunrise here is only about 10 foot long.
She's gonna get about another eight foot at some point.
So you have to be able to keep them
not only house them but also be safe with them.
You know,
I don't think that anyone should ever handle a snake,
even Sunrise aside, without someone else there, right.
You know, don't do it alone
because you never know what's gonna happen.
Again, these guys aren't killers by any means,
but you never know, they're strong animals
and just like I mentioned when I was holding Daisy,
there's times that they're just holding on
like you're a tree, bracing themself,
and they're so strong that you can kind of almost go like,
"Holy cow, am I gonna lose consciousness?"
I've been doing it a long time
so I understand how to actually deal with these animals.
The fact is that Burmese pythons
are definitely amazing, amazing gentle giants.
And because of all those years of breeding Burmese pythons,
of course there's a lot of color mutations, you know.
In this case, this is actually an Ivory Burmese python,
which is a super Fire or a Hypo, whatever you wanna call it,
and they're really amazing.
I mean, again, when we started breeding Burmese
there was really just the albinos and normals,
now there are dozens and dozens of mutations
that are really quite amazing
and new ones being produced all the time.
Which just means,
again, if you wanna get into that gentle giant,
you have the ability to keep that giant snake,
you can get a cool color palette that fits your needs.
(air whooshing)
(lighthearted jazz music)
And certainly one of my absolute favorite mutations
when it comes to Burmese pythons
are the Hypo Granite Burmese pythons like Jeffrey here.
Believe it or not, we actually brought in...
the second Granite Burmese python was brought in,
actually a guy named Eric Crider brought in a few babies,
but then we brought in a yearling adult
that was from the wild and I worked with it,
and ultimately that's where we produced
our first Granite Burmese python
was from that particular female,
got big enough and actually produced babies.
So we've been working with the Granite project
for a long time.
And then of course the Hypos came around
maybe 10, 12 years ago or something like that.
And then ultimately when they bred Hypos together
or Fires together, they produced the white snakes,
which was really cool, but again,
you could see the unbelievable colors and patterns
that Burmese pythons have.
I mean, I never thought that they would be like this
when I got into 'em when I was just a 15 year old kid.
(air whooshing)
And then of course there's Snaz,
the normal Burmese python.
These are the ones that you would see in the wild,
this color.
And the reason I wanna segue that into
is the last of the giant snakes
which kinda looks similar
to the wild type Burmese pythons in a way of course,
but these guys are from Africa
and that's the African Rock python
Now, I actually had an African Rock python for 22 years
named Baby.
She ended up getting like 18, 19 foot,
and she was a handful.
I was the only person that would actually handle her
because she was definitely a little aggro.
I'm not gonna lie to you, you open up their enclosure
and she would come charging out after you.
And they have giant teeth,
I mean, some of the biggest teeth of the giant snakes.
And just like I was talking about how over time
we're actually breeding to kind of get them tamer
F3, F4 generations,
I think the reason why Rock pythons are probably more aggro
is they haven't really been bred in captivity
nearly as much.
You know, they can't be imported into the country.
There's not a lot of bloodlines out there,
and because they're a little bit hard to work with,
a lot of people just aren't working with them quite frankly.
I think that they're amazing animals.
And I think that if you are able to breed it
maybe three, four generations in captivity,
you could probably get them as tame as a Burmese python.
At least I would like to think so,
and I think they're really amazing.
I would love to add an African Rock python to the reptarium
to be totally honest with you.
That way we could represent
all four of the giant species here,
and it would be really cool.
But truth is, you just don't see them around hardly at all.
And believe it or not
there's actually one mutation that's in the country,
it's our patternless African Rock python.
It's almost like the Green Burmese pythons
or patternless Burmese pythons,
but in a Rock python, which is really cool.
So hey, if anyone knows any cool Rock pythons
I would like to get one, I'm not gonna lie to you,
cause I miss mine.
It's probably been 10 years since mine passed away.
Again, she lived for 22 years and was a pretty cool animal.
I'd love to add another one, to be honest with you.
But again, giant snakes are amazing.
I couldn't imagine life without them.
I've told people my very first snake ever
was a Burmese python just like Snaz here.
How crazy is that?
So all these years later
I've always had giant snakes and I love them to death,
and I wouldn't want it anyone to think
that because they're giant
and people think they're dangerous,
it's just not the case.
I've never been in one situation in all those years
where I was nervous about my health.
So as long as you're being responsible and smart
and have that kind of buddy system, like I said,
have someone else around when you're handling the big snakes
you're always gonna be safe, there's no doubt about it.
So giant snakes are absolutely wonderful.
(air whooshing) I tell you what,
giant snakes are amazing.
I mean, just look at Ivy and Aries in there.
I mean, they're absolutely amazing.
And I still I'm always blown away
at the fact that there are these giant snakes
that live in our world.
It's just bizarre to me
but I am so thankful that I get to work with them.
If you enjoyed this video, there's actually a playlist
you can watch right here
of me handling a bunch of giant snakes
and lizards and stuff like that.
You can also subscribe to my podcast channel right up here.
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Have an absolutely wonderful day.
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