- Okay, I've gotta be ready for a bite!
It's almost like all the things I've learned
over the years about the tongue response
and the way that they S up and all that type of stuff,
you kinda just gotta throw out with anacondas.
You might get bit or you might get messed up
with some other snakes.
She could literally be in this pose right here,
and she could swing around and bite me.
- I'm an expert so all I do is I just reach right in there.
- [Brian] I wouldn't get you bit.
I was just messing with ya.
- I honestly didn't know.
- Hey, good morning everybody and welcome to the vlog.
Today, I'm gonna talk about my pet anaconda, Ivy,
and how I actually understand her so that I don't get hurt.
Now the first thing to understand is that
every snake or every species of snake
and every individual snake can be different.
So the first thing you have to do is
really start to understand
not only different types of snakes, but also individuals.
When it comes to most retics
and a lot of snakes can be totally honest with you.
When you're going in the cage,
you really wanna pay attention to number one
their eyes of course,
but also their tongue movement.
You can see with Almachino here,
when he's in intelligence mode,
that tongue is moving really slow, really methodical
and he's just kinda sniffing around, right?
'Cause, of course, they use that tongue to smell.
And he's just scenting, he's just looking around going,
"Hey, what's going on?" and stuff like that.
Now with a retic, if their tongue stays out
and it kinda goes kinda fast, that means they're agitated,
whether they're thinking it's food or defensive.
That's one of the signs that, definitely when you see,
you're like, "Uh-oh, I better be a little bit careful
"because this animal could definitely strike."
And then of course, the next thing
is gonna be that S, right?
They're gonna get into an S mode,
they're gonna strike forward at you.
So if they start to get S'd out,
that tongue is sticking out and going really fast,
that means, "Okay, I better be ready for a bite."
And then you can do whatever you want to do
to get them out of defensive mode or feed mode.
But again, not every snake is just like Almachino.
When it comes to anacondas, they are a different
beast altogether, for sure.
And it's kinda cool because my girl, Verde here,
I was able to work with when she was young.
Now I've been around anacondas many, many times
over the years but when you work with them on a daily basis,
you really get to kind of know
their mannerisms a little more.
And a lot of things I talked about with retics,
you can again, just throw out the window, right?
Because these guys will kind of keep their tongue out
for a long time.
And instead of going fast, they're kinda slow so
they have a completely different movement.
So I have to really, get to know
what anacondas are thinking, right?
It's almost like all the things I've learned over the years
about the tongue response and the way that they S up,
and all that type of stuff, you kinda just gotta
throw out with anacondas.
They are a completely different animal.
And again, because I've been able
to work with Verde every single day for the last year,
I've really kinda learned her mannerisms,
and I hoped that I could apply what I learned from
Verde to my bigger girl, Ivy.
But again, you gotta learn your animals, right?
Not every animal is the exact same.
You can't apply one technique to all animals.
Obviously, I showed you retics and a lot of snakes
compared to anacondas.
And then you have something like
Sweetie the blood python here,
that is kind of a hybrid of both.
And what I mean by that is that these guys
will do the fast tongue movement with it sticking out,
but they will get into an S form and strike forward
much like a retic and many other snakes but
they will also strike sideways and backwards, too,
like an anaconda.
So if you only take one technique and go,
"Oh, I can handle that snake because it's tongue isn't
"coming out fast." Or, "Oh, I don't have to
"worry about it striking backwards."
You might get bit or you might get messed up
with some other snakes so learning each
individual type of snake and then maybe even learning
the mannerisms of each snake is really important.
Again, I talk about reading the animal, right?
So once you get to know animals, you gotta read
what they are and they would think
and sometimes it's natural.
I think I was just kind of born with the ability
to kinda look at a snake and understand
what it's thinking, not everyone has that.
But it can be something that's been learned.
I mean, take Lori for instance.
She definitely didn't have that ability when I met her,
but over the years, she's kinda learned how to read snakes
really well, and she's as good as it gets when
it comes to that.
Now the good news is that Ivy is right here up front.
She's kind of just chilling out.
But again, the thing I find interesting with anacondas
is they're very visual.
You can see, she's already starting to move.
As soon as I'm moving, she's kind of moving around,
her tongue is there.
Now the thing that's interesting is again, a normal snake,
if their head kinda comes up like this
and that tongue response is really sticking out like that,
that's gonna tell me,
"All right, that one might wanna be cage defensive."
When it comes to an anaconda,
I could touch her back here, and she could just
swing backwards and hit me.
So I have to really read everything she's doing.
See, she's moving a little bit more now.
So what I'm gonna do is just really, first off,
just gently touch her, here.
Just make sure she knows I'm not food, her tongue
is coming out fine, but you can see, she's giving
me a little buck, which is okay.
I'm not that concerned about that.
But she doesn't seem to be tensed up
beyond that, it's a little bit different.
Now I've gotta be honest with you,
anacondas are probably the hardest snake
that I've ever worked with as far as
reading what they're doing.
'Cause they can go from a movement just like this,
to swinging around and biting you,
and again a animal even Ivy's size,
which is just a mid-size anaconda,
could really put some damage on.
I got bit by an anaconda almost the exact same size once
and it was probably one of the worst snake bites I ever had.
But regardless, I have to kinda use my intuition
probably as much as my normal kind of understanding
of snake behavior, right?
Because these guys behave so differently
than any other snake I've ever worked with.
Again, you can't use the tongue response because
these guys have that slow tongue that stays out quite a bit.
So that makes it difficult to not be able to use
that as an indication of how she's feeling and once again,
because they don't do the normal S strike,
you can't use that as an indication.
I'm telling you guys, if I didn't have
a relationship already with Ivy,
and kind of have that kind of intuition
of what she's doing right now, she could
literally be in this pose right here
and she could swing round and bite me.
And that's what a normal green anaconda
often times will do, but again,
now that I've been working with Ivy for
the last couple of months I just have
kind of started to learn her kind of actions
and how she's moving around and stuff like that,
and you can see she's absolutely incredible.
This is a beautiful snake, and I really
have grown to trust her, and it's really
cool to have a pet anaconda that is so amazing
but certainly, I always talk about the fact
that the successful way of keeping reptiles
and not getting bit, which of course happens on accident,
it happens to all of us,
but the fact is understanding their movements,
understanding their actions and once again,
anacondas are the hardest animal of all in
my opinion, to actually have those triggers
where you see what their actually gonna do.
But once you have a tame animal, whether
it's Verde or my girl Ivy here,
oh my gosh, it's probably the coolest
reptile experience that I can ever imagine,
I mean an anaconda.
I am so grateful I have not one, but two amazing anacondas,
which both one day are gonna be a couple hundred
pounds, and gonna be pretty impressive,
and unbelievably tame snakes.
Like I mentioned, some snakes just are a little
bit harder to read, and some snakes you know
exactly what's gonna happen.
Ah, hey Eric.
What's going on?
How are you? - How are you?
- Oh I'm doing great.
- [Brian] Good, I wanted to give these guys an
example of a snake that is pretty predictable.
- Oh, guarantee ya.
- [Brian] Albino Chinese rat snake here.
- It'll bite ya.
- [Brian] So I just wanna show them like what
you're looking at.
- Well it's only predictable if you're not an expert.
- [Brian] Right, are you an expert?
- I'm an expert, so all I do is I just reach
right in there, I got it and you know,
as long as you know what you are doing,
which I do, because you know, I'm an expert,
I know what I'm doing so I won't get bit,
but if you are not an expert, like Eric isn't,
he will get bit.
- Right now Imma tell you the snake,
I can read it's body language, and its not happy.
Please don't.
Ow, ow, ow!
- See it's biting Eric but not me,
and there's a reason for that.
Because he can sense the fear in that male body,
and he can't sense the fear in my body,
because I'm not afraid, so therefore,
he will not strike.
- Is that true?
- That is true, and that is a fact.
And since that went so well,
I'm going to put him back now.
- Very slow, we're going to move very slow.
- [Brian] So how was that?
- There we go.
- It was great.
- How'd that go?
- [Brian] Well I'm impressed, no, you did a good job.
Eric, you did a good job too.
- Wow.
- So the key to having success in this world
is don't be predictable.
- [Brian] Wait, that's exactly opposite of what
I'm trying to teach today.
- Oh no wait, then know, scratch that.
- So okay, all right, this is the end of this segment.
So my friend Max Strong is back in the house,
just hanging out, doing a cool little
kind of photo thing, stuff like that.
And I wanted you to hold this snake right here.
- Well why this one?
- [Brian] This ones the cool one that's why.
His name is Rico.
- This is really cool.
But like look at it.
- [Brian] What's the worst that could happen?
- I really don't know, I don't even know
what type of snake this is, I don't know anything about it.
- [Brian] It's called a blacktail cribo,
it's a colubrid from central America.
- So like what's gonna happen to me if I get bit?
- [Noah] Rear-fanged venomous.
- [Brian] No, it's not rear-fanged.
It's not, it's just completely, it's completely good.
- I mean do you feel like his eyes make
him look like he's mean or is it just me?
- [Brian] Yes, he does, it is true.
- There's like a-
- [Brian] Watch this, I'm going to pick him up for you.
And you're just going to hold him.
See my hands right close to him,
what could possibly go wrong?
- I don't know.
- And of course for you guys that don't know Max,
I'm going to put a link in the description
to his Instagram channel, a really dope guy,
works with all kinds of really amazing animals.
Travels all over the world to do so,
so it's always a pleasure to have him in town.
Definitely go show him some love.
- Look at this, we're friends.
- [Brian] See!
- I swear you always do this,
you always build it up to where it's going to
be something that's like bad.
(laughs)
And it's not.
- I know I was messing with Max,
I'm like "I can't tell you if its mean or not."
Actually Rico moves a lot, but he never bites.
- Yeah, he's moving a ton, but he's chill.
- [Brian] He's super cool right?
- I like it.
- [Brian] I just had to put you to the test.
- All right, no thank you, I like it.
- [Brian] You passed with flying colors.
He didn't even, he was like "All right,
"I'll handle whatever so."
Think about that, that tells you a lot about a person,
with that kind of courage,
that he doesn't know if this snake is bad,
but he just did, but I'm glad that he now has
a chance to hang out with Rico a little bit.
- Yes, thank you, you opened my eyes to the little guy.
He's a little twitchy, I can't lie to you.
- [Brian] He's twitchy, but he's super cool.
- Yeah, he's cool, his scales and everything,
I mean it's kind of wild.
- [Brian] Yep, but its a good snake.
I wouldn't get you bit, I was just messing with you.
- I honestly didn't know.
- You guys know how much I love my monitor time,
my boy Elvis here is absolutely incredible.
I can't wait to get some more monitors
when we expand for sure.
It's gonna be amazing, but for now
I'm just going to spend a little time with my
guy Elvis, who absolutely, yeah he loves the camera.
Do you like the camera, Elvis?
(laughing) Yeah, that's for sure.
We'll go ahead and feed all the monitor
lizards today because today is when their feedings is.
And as always, we always do the target training,
it's real important to keep that regiment going with these
guys so that they're always really habituated to it,
you don't want to ever break.
Consistency is the key that if you break
that consistency then they kind of lose it all,
so we'll go ahead and feed Elvis
and all the other monitors and just
have a good time like we do every time we feed them.
(upbeat music)
Lori's excited, remember us all working on those stickers?
Well by us I mean me and Jay, mainly Jay taking pictures.
Regardless stickers are here,
so you wanna open up and see how they are?
- Yes.
- All right, can't wait.
I hope that these turned out good cause if they didn't
some people are gettin' fired around here,
you know what I'm saying?
- Yeah I do.
- Wait, wait, are you saying I'm gonna get fired?
- Yeah I've already tried that.
(ambulance sirens)
- [Brian] Yeah right that doesn't work, look at that.
We got a little Nova, oh my gosh look at that.
Nova turned out great.
That's Bowser, we've already done Bowser.
I like Elvis, I think this one turned out really good.
Perdida, my girl, look at Perdida she's looking amazing.
Ahh, the Salt one turned out dope,
look at that, that's awesome.
Aw, Potato one turned out really super cute.
That one turned out good, Pepper,
oh my gosh that one turned out really good.
There we go, a bunch of new stickers that will
be on the reptarium.com or you can pick 'em
all up here when you come visit us.
Awesome!
- We're about to start setting up the Frilled
lizards tank, I'm going to try and make it
to where they can get to different levels,
so they can thermoregulate.
I've got some plants here, some cork bark.
Some vines just to give them, you know,
places to go and run and hide, and you know climb on stuff.
(upbeat music)
- Okay, Jay just came over to tell me the
great news, they got the cage set up next door
for the little baby frillies,
so just like Jurassic Park, we're gonna back it in there,
clear the gate, little zap guns,
we're gonna let them free in there,
I can't wait to see them running around,
dog pilin' each other.
It's gonna be really cool, go check it out.
Well this is the easy part,
just put them right in, looks pretty good, Jessica.
I like that.
- Well thank you.
- Plenty little places to hide and run,
you can help me out if you want.
I'm just gonna grab one at a time,
or should I just kinda like jolt it so they all fly in.
Okay no, let's not do that.
Well here, we'll just start putting them in here.
There we go, I'll just kind of sit you guys in.
Watch them disappear.
Gosh they blend in so good, don't they?
You can barely even see them.
- [Jay] You can barely see them at all.
- [Eric] You can't tell they are in there.
- [Jessica] Can't see 'em until they're next to each other.
- I know they're quadruple size,
I feel like, you know, just in a short amount of time.
- I thought they hadn't grown at all, they look so small.
- [Eric] Yeah!
- [Jay] The colors changes in the season too.
- [Eric] It's incredible.
(calm music)
Can you get on there?
- [Jay] Awesome.
- They're in.
Sweet, is that all of them?
Sweet!
- And like I mentioned in this video,
it's very important to read your animals,
and having a pet anaconda definitely takes
a lot of my kind of years of experience,
figuring out how to work with that animal
and be safe, of course.
If you like this video, here's the video when
I actually got Ivy, which I absolutely love.
Here's a playlist with a bunch of giant snakes.
Over here, you can just hit that subscribe button.
If you don't mind, can you turn the post notifications on.
Remember to have a wonderful day and be kind to someone.
I promise I'll see you guys tomorrow.