- Hey, good morning everybody
and welcome to the vlog.
I hope the start of your day is incredible, Reptile Army.
Can reptiles feel love?
That's a good question.
Come on Bella.
Well, it's really kinda hard to say
to be honest with you.
You can certainly see that Bella seems
to enjoy love.
I mean, there's something about it where
you know, you can call Bella over,
she'll come over.
She loves pet.
She raises her back up like a kitty cat
and stuff like that.
But, you know, there's something
that's called anthropomorphizing
and that's basically where humans
try to attach human emotion to animals, right.
So reptiles are not humans, right.
They're not dogs.
They're not stuff like that.
So, do they actually feel love?
You know, I'm not 100% sure,
but I certainly can tell that there are
certain animals, including animals like Bella
and so many other ones, that have this
kinda interesting relationship where they
definitely seem to love attention, right.
So, I mean, to me I think they have
to feel love in their own way, right.
It's probably a reptilian way of love,
but at the same time, there's no doubt
with working with these animals
as much as we have that there's some feeling there
or some at least kind of you know, need
for wanting to have attention, right.
Again, every time we're open Bella comes down
for pets, not only from me, but from everyone
in the public, well, when she feels
like it, because she's a little bit of a cat.
But, when she does you can see, she'll just
close her eyes, she loves the pets and stuff like that.
To me that has to be some sort of emotion, right.
I don't know exactly what it is,
but it's definitely emotion.
Matilda's another great example of that.
You know she loves Laurie.
Don't get me wrong, when I come in and other people
come in, she doesn't mind actually getting pets
and often times she seems to enjoy it.
But the truth is, whenever she hears Laurie's voice
she just kinda perks up and she'll come
running over for Laurie.
She loves her, right.
And that tells me that there's gotta be
some kind of emotional attachment
to certain people, right.
There's no doubt about it.
Matilda is great and Laurie absolutely loves her to death.
- Brian asked if I think reptiles can feel love.
And in some cases I think that might be true.
Like in the case of Matilda,
she definitely shows different traits
of wanting to be pet and loved and get
all the attention, whereas I think sometimes
you don't see it, but with her I really do
feel she does.
She's pretty funny.
She reminds me a lot of my dog, Phoebe, which obviously,
everyone knows dogs can feel and have those responses, too.
So, I think in some ways tortoises definitely have
that ability to I think get attached to people,
appreciate affection, and want attention,
which I think is adorable and super cute.
- When it comes to Elvis it's a little bit
of a different relationship.
I mean, he obviously isn't as cuddly
as say Matilda or Bella, but he still has
this amazing kinda curiosity,
and he definitely knows all of the keepers here.
I mean, he comes over and hangs out with us.
Often times when we just sit on the ground
like this, he'll just kinda come over,
just like this, watch, he'll just come over.
He's sniffin' me.
He's sayin' like, what's goin' on, dad.
You know, what you got goin' on?
And I'm sure some of it's food driven,
you know, where he knows I feed him,
the rest of the crew feeds him.
But, at the same time, you can see just
how absolutely curious he is about us.
But again, he is, he's an amazing animal
and there's no doubt that all our monitor,
we have this kinda really crazy relationship with.
Again, I know that we feed 'em, and that's
part of it, right, is that they know
that food comes from us and stuff like that.
But, it's more than that.
I mean, you can see he's just so curious.
He's not running away.
He's not trying to like get away from me
or something on that lines.
He's like coming over.
He's saying, you know, what's goin' on, dad?
You know, what do you got goin' on?
Again, you can see him comin' up.
He's smellin' me right now,
sayin', hey, what's up?
And that's just somethin' that I don't know,
you know, I don't, I don't wanna anthropomerphhise
things and I don't wanna put human emotion to things.
But when I see animals like Elvis
that are predators come over and just sniff on me
like this, like I'm like his buddy,
or I see Bella come down or I see the difference
of reaction with Matilda between me and Laurie,
that tells me that these animals
definitely have emotion, right.
Now, can they feel love?
I'd like to know what you guys think
down in the comments.
You know, I certainly think they feel something.
They certainly feel a bond.
There's no doubt about that that they know
us as people.
So, let me know what you think.
I know it's a weird kinda topic
and I don't think anyone can tell
'cause you can't ask 'em and they can't reply to you.
But, I can definitely tell you that the relationships
that we have with these animals are very, very special,
and they aren't just cold hearted killers
or stuff like that.
There's a lot more to these animals.
Right, Elvis?
Right, Buddy?
Look at that.
I mean, you tell me that that animal doesn't know me.
Come on now.
I mean, this is, he could go wherever he wants,
you know, he doesn't have to stay by me,
but he comes right over to me
and I think it's absolutely amazing.
- Hi guys, so there's no question,
snakes definitely feel emotion, too.
Like, it's not maybe that they don't really
love to be handled or maybe they do.
Take Sunrise here.
She's our big Albino Burmese Python
and man is she gettin' big.
You see, when we take her to like zoo to use
or we do some kinda activities with her
or we just even set her on the ground.
We let kids pet her and love on her
and all this other stuff.
She doesn't like run away.
It's not like she's you know, hissing
or trying to get away from anybody.
She just sits there and relaxes
and enjoys it.
She's obviously, all snakes got their weak spot.
You know, if you start tickling their tail
they might not like that, but touch my butt.
I might not like it either.
They might not be able to show their affection
as like monitors or some of the other iguanas
or something like that, 'cause you can't tell me
that snakes don't like to be handled or you know,
don't love people.
- Last two clutches are actually startin' to hatch.
These are the ones we cut the other day,
so when they're all out I'll show you 'em all
and it will be absolutely incredible.
But for now I wanted to show you
what I've got going on.
I have this list right here,
all of these pages that I have to go through,
and basically what this is, this is
the breeding master plan of the year,
what I'm gonna breed to what.
First one, Sunset.
What am I breeding?
I'm not gonna tell you.
But, the fact is I have to rearrange everything.
So ultimately, what has to happen is let's say
the male Sunset is right here, my first male, right.
And then, second male, third male, all the way
down the line here.
Well, the first group has to go right here,
and the second group there and the second, third
group there and the fourth group and so on like that.
So basically what ends up havin' to happen is
I've gotta rearrange every single animal
in both of these isle ways so that I have
a great breeding schematic, because organization
is what it's all about.
If I have to go all the way over to there
and then come back here and then go over to there,
it's gonna take me forever, right.
So, if I put in the time today
and making it really, really easy for breeding
like I have the last couple years,
it's super good and then I don't miss, right.
It really goes from like maybe taking
a half an hour, 45 minutes to get
all my males in with females, to if I don't
have it organized it might take
an hour and a half.
So, if you think about that, if I can save
a half an hour to an hour each and every day
for the next four to five months
I save a ton of time.
So, putting the time in now
and rearranging is more important
than anything, right.
So, I'm going to start with group number one
and rearrange this whole room.
(upbeat music)
Organization is everything to me right now, right,
so I want as much information on as I can.
So, this is all the information from last year.
So basically what I can do is I'll basically
just write on this right here, I'm gonna write
that it was clutched five of last year,
laid four eight, and now you can go back
and cross reference everything there.
Then I'm gonna actually mark that it's being bred
to a clown head ghost.
That way I know what male's gonna get bred to.
I know what female that's actually in that enclosure
so that I can go back and check back records
if I wanna know three years, four years,
five years down the road I can go back
with that information there.
And I just stick this right on here
and now it's all set.
(upbeat music)
- Yo, what's up people?
We're back and we're better than ever.
Bing bong.
- I can't.
- If you guys remember, we have a bunch
of little baby turtles in here, including
the, what do they call?
- Razor Back Mustard.
- American, hoo rah.
They like to stay toward the bottom
and sometimes they can be hard to find.
So Mike and I are gonna have a race
to see who can chase.
- Who can grab a turtle first basically.
- Let's go.
(upbeat music)
Dang it.
- Got him.
- Mike stole my spot, he cheated.
- Hi guys.
- He's bigger, he grew.
- Yeah, these guys have literally almost doubled
in size since we got 'em.
When we got 'em they were only like
the size of quarter.
You can see why they're called razor back now,
because you know, obviously that razor crest.
It is kinda sharp pointy.
- Wow, that's, that's science.
Sharp.
- Is that your Lunchable?
- No, American right here.
It's American born.
- Yeah, you can find these in the south of America,
North America, still America.
- It's like someone took gum and just put
gum all around 'em.
Turtles are so cool.
(upbeat music)
- Well, I'm exactly halfway through
the female reorganization.
I've been down here for six hours so far.
To be totally honest with you, the second half
will go quicker because there's less animals
to kinda be moving back and forth and stuff like that.
I would imagine I've got about two and half,
maybe three hours left to get finished up.
But, every time I switch groups into new groups
I start thinking of the potential, right.
I start thinkin' I can't wait to get a male
in and breeding and those eggs and then
cutting those eggs.
I mean, I'm already thinking ahead.
Every single female that I move I think,
what can we potentially get next year?
And every year we upgrade our males, right.
So, we have a buncha new really amazing males
up to size.
We've got some older males, too.
But, nevertheless, I am getting so excited
and just in two or three days we'll have
our first males in with females
and the season begins.
But, it's been a blast.
I mean it's been a lotta work, but hey,
it's been an absolute blast.
- I actually was not here unfortunately,
for these guys unboxing, but I had
to bring them back out and see them myself
and also show 'em back out to you guys.
These diamond pythons are absolutely incredible.
They're just so beautiful and so docile.
I used to have one of my own actually
a while back and I, I loved that snake so much.
It just wasn't the right time to keep it,
so I ended up gettin' rid of him,
but man, I am so happy we got the opp,
we have the opportunity to work on these.
These guys aren't at the Reptarium quite yet.
They are gonna be moved over here eventually,
but for now they're in BHB bein' raised up.
They've been doin' great honestly.
These guys are eating like champs
and I'm I'm so excited to have 'em here.
Wow.
(upbeat music)
- Well, after nine hours of working
rearranging the females all of the females
are now in breeding groups
which is just absolutely fantastic.
I do have to tomorrow switch all the males
into their position.
So again, you know, male number one will be here
and the group one will be there and two
and three and four, all the way down,
so it makes my life really easy.
So even though it took me nine hours
to rearrange these and probably
another two hours tomorrow for the males,
the truth is it's gonna save me
hundreds of hours and I'm gonna be able
to be as efficient as possible when breeding.
So, this is amazing.
I am so excited.
I cannot wait to get the first locks of the season.
We're talking three days from now,
putting males in, probably have locks that same day.
So, guys, it's it, it's on, man.
2022's breeding season is officially started.
Hope you enjoyed today's video.
It's gonna be pretty amazing to get the breeding
season started just in a few days.
I appreciate you guys joining me for that adventure.
If you do enjoy the vlog, can you do me a favor?
Here's a playlist right over here.
You can watch a couple videos.
Another favor that would mean a lot to me
is subscribe to this vlog channel right over here.
Have a wonderful day, Reptile Army.
Remember, be kind to someone
and I promise I'll see you in the next one.