- This is Gemma, my 17-foot python,
and up until last week she went 15 months without eating.
Today we're gonna try to feed her again.
I tell you what, it was so exciting last week
when she decided to eat.
You can see she's got that look on her face,
like she wants to eat.
Come on, girl. Come on, girl.
You can do it. You got it. You got it.
Come on.
Yes! How awesome is that?
This is so amazing.
She lost about 15% of her body weight over 15 months.
That's right, 15% only for 15 months without eating.
Now this is her second meal.
We started her slow with a couple small meals,
and then we'll start to work her up
into bigger and bigger meals,
and we're gonna be able to take her
from where she was, about 120 pounds.
Now she's down to probably only 90 pounds.
We're gonna be able to take her back up to 120, 130,
maybe up to 20-foot in the next year and a half or so.
I am so pumped.
But it begs the question,
"How can a snake, or any animal for that matter,
go 15 months without feeding?"
Really, the only time that Bugatti comes down
is when it's ready to eat.
So, I know that it is ready to go.
(toy squeaking)
Oh, my gosh.
Did you see that?
Vicious, vicious snake.
Tiger Lily, the Brazilian rainbow boa's ambushing back here.
She's being a tricky one for me today.
Every now and then you gotta do
a little tease feed with them.
Oh, there she goes.
Like I said, every now and then
you gotta just play with the animals.
She's like, "Yeah, I don't know if I want to eat or not."
But if you tease 'em a little bit,
then they go, "All right, I'll eat."
Gosh, look at Neo.
Every time I see this snake, it just blows me away.
Come on, girl. There you go.
That is one absolutely gorgeous girl.
And getting back to the whole,
snakes going so long without food,
it's all about the caloric energy
that they burn, right?
You know, with a human, we're warm blooded.
As mammals, actually 70% of our energy
is keeping our body at 98.5 degrees.
Basically what happens is
we're using all the energy that we're taking in
just to keep ourself at a body temperature.
When it comes to reptiles,
they don't have that problem.
Their temperature comes from the heat.
As they go up and bask they're gonna burn more calories,
as they go down they're gonna burn less calories.
So, when an animal is kind of in a position
where it's not eating,
typically goes to a cooler side of the cage,
burns less calories,
and it doesn't take up a lot of energy
and that's why they can go months and months and months.
- Four, five, sic, seven, eight.
Seven pieces each. Quick math.
(Noah singing)
- Ooh, what you doing, Mike?
- Oh, hey Noah.
Nobody's excited. (laughing)
- Alligators can go a long time without eating.
Mike, what's the longest time
that you went without eating?
Catch her.
- The longest time I went? - Yes.
- What time is it?
- It is 11.
- About 25 minutes.
- That's the longest time you went without feeding?
- Today. - Up.
How long can she go without food Mike?
- So, some alligators are known
to go about a year depending on
what they ate last.
- A year?
What food would they have eaten last?
- If they find the carcass of something that big
they'll sit there and tear into it.
Good girl, Salty. - Wow. Science.
- Obviously our alligators have heat all the time.
The water's nice and warm.
- Grab it.
- There. - There it is.
Nope, Miss.
- I wasn't the pitcher in baseball, you know.
- Oh, you were the catcher?
- Pepper? - Pepper.
- Whoa! Flying out there.
That was a close one.
It's pretty awesome feeding snakes.
Whoa!
Whoa! Calm down.
Snakes are on fire today and it's crazy to think
that snakes can go 15 months without eating.
I mean we feed these snakes every week,
but that gives you an idea if you have a pet snake
and it skips a week or two.
Come on, 15 months?
And the snakes are definitely on fire today.
Every now and then you just get one of those days
where, I don't know if it's the weather pattern,
or what the deal is,
but they are all hyped to eat,
which is great, especially with Gemma.
I mean the second week in a row that she's eaten.
That makes me so happy.
She's probably about 30 pounds heavier than she is now.
So, she only lost about 30 pounds.
Gotta remember,
she was about 120 pounds when we got her,
but she probably lost about 15% of her body weight,
which isn't terrible.
But now that she's eating again
she's gonna put all that weight on and more.
Come on, Marshmallow.
Boom, there it is.
Now, I will say that the longest
I ever had a snake go before Gemma,
was actually, I think, 13 months.
15 months is definitely a record for me.
That was a long time and it really was an interesting thing,
because when we got her she was really fat
and she actually pooped right after we got her.
So, we knew that she was eating really good
and for whatever reason it took her 15 months
to settle and decide to eat on her own.
I wasn't that concerned,
because although she was losing some body weight,
she was actually still acting fine.
She looked fine,
her tongue response was fine,
everything was going well.
She was shedding good.
So, I knew it was okay,
but it was stressing me out a little bit,
because, listen, you always want your snakes to eat
and 15 months is a tremendously long time.
Hoo.
Whoa, there he goes.
Now, keep in mind we actually bred Night Fury to Gemma.
What could have caused that 15 months is
what we would call a false pregnancy.
Basically at some point we thought
that we saw an ovulation with Gemma.
We thought that she may actually produce a clutch of eggs.
Ultimately, she ended up kind of reabsorbing that
and gotten skinnier.
So, that actually is one of the reasons
why she could have went an extra few months without food
and during this 15 months she could have continued
to absorb that follicles
and that's possibly what caused her to not eat.
You guys may have noticed that I'm wearing this
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It's always my favorite time of the year
when holidays come and we could do some holiday designs.
And I tell you what,
we have some banging designs this year
and I can't think of a better way to represent reptiles
during the holiday season than getting one of these.
Not to mention, these guys make incredible holiday gifts.
So make sure to go to ReptileArmy.com.
That's right, ReptileArmy.com and grab some swag.
Got bandit here.
Bandit is a monster too.
This thing eats like crazy.
False water cobra, absolutely incredible
when it comes to feeding.
Look at that.
And that's why when someone like reaches out to us
and says like, "Hey, my ball python hasn't eaten
for three or four weeks.
Should I assist feed?"
No!
Number one,
you never assist feed animals
that are already feeding.
Number Two,
two, three, four weeks for an animal
really isn't that big of a deal
as long as it looks healthy
just like Gemma did for 15 months.
There's no reason to panic.
Come on Luna, you are getting so big.
Come on, girl.
Yeah, we are. (chuckling)
I love seeing these animals grow.
Look at Pinocchio right here.
Come on buddy. Oh, there you go.
It's cool. Baron's racers are amazing
and Pinocchio's doing really good.
One day he gonna be six, seven foot long.
- Noah, I told you grab that blue thing.
- Salt, stay.
She's good.
- Up we go.
- Oh, my goodness.
Look at that beautiful majesticness.
That's probably why they lived 100,000, million-
- A 100 million years?
They tried to use watches and, ooh.
- Watch your face. - I got it, I got it.
Up. (laughing)
I am not having good luck with this today.
- [Cameraman] Just look
where you're gonna throw. - Come on.
- Come on. - You're not supposed
to have your eyes closed? - No.
- Up. Good girl.
- Let's see if my training works.
Oh, my goodness, she moved.
Salt, I told you to stay. Stay.
Hey, stay Salt.
- Yo, crocodilian Bert. - Aligatorese, I'm talking.
- Come on. Grab it. - She's so cute.
Don't you just wanna cuddle her?
- I wish we could.
I'm a big baby.
Come on. - Good job.
You're doing well.
- Like I don't do this every week.
I have the worst luck today, man.
Come on, Pepper. Back it up.
This one, like professional.
Come on. Up. Crap.
This is the one, come on. Boom.
Cows dung.
- I tell you, one snakes
that aren't gonna go any time without eating
are the black headed pythons.
These guys are absolute monsters
and will eat anytime, any day.
Hold on about that.
Course, that's Snap there,
Pop is up here already ready.
I could see it going,
"Oh oh, where's the food?"
And that's that.
And believe it or not, there's actually records
of reptiles going up to two years without food.
Can you imagine living without food
for two years and still surviving?
But Gemma's gonna probably take her two
or three months of heavy feeding
before she gains back all the weight she lost
and then she's gonna start putting weight back on.
The fact that she's that docile
and gonna be that big is just absolutely amazing.
There it is.
Lurking in the weeds up there somewhere
is Ice Cube the diamond.
I don't know where it's head is.
Where you at?
Hopefully it's not going for my hand.
Oops, there it is.
Oh. (chuckling)
With the fact that reptiles don't have that caloric burn
for keeping their body temperatures,
why they been able to survive all the major cataclysms
that's happened over the hundreds of millions
of years on the planet?
Again, when food becomes extremely scarce,
mammals die off.
But reptiles can actually survive,
because they can get through that period
of one to two years where there's hardly any food
and then once food starts to replenish
they actually can survive.
That's why reptiles have been around
for hundreds of millions of years.
Lucky, good morning.
Hey, where you at?
Lucky where you at?
It's disappeared. I can't find its head.
Whoop. There it is.
Hello. Good morning.
There it is.
What a weird snake.
- Oh, what are you doing?
- I'm locking the enclosures.
This our new keys for the place.
Those are old, they don't work anymore.
- Get down. Yeah, come- - This way, dude.
- They can go not that long without food.
So, every seven to 10 hours
they like to clock in a little food chart.
- Well, yeah, so do I.
Doesn't mean I can't live that long.
- Juicy.
- They can still go a couple months without food.
- Couple months? - You know,
Komodo dragons are known
to take down baby goats and stuff.
- It's like when we get like five guys for fries
instead of you just like-
Look at all that juice, bro.
Hey, hey, lick it.
Look at you cool dude.
Hey, cutie, cutie, cutie.
Ooh. (babbling)
Onto the next.
- Come on. Come on.
Wow! He's on for today.
Boom. Bing, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
- Boom, bang. Fire power.
- Up, up, up, up, up.
Fish on the lens.
(Mike slurping)
- Really get in there.
- Ah, you broke it.
- We've been working on getting Elvis to play catch
for the last few weeks.
Elvie, right here. - Up, up, up, up.
Elvis, Elvis. Open, open, open.
- Hey - Okay, that's a start.
I'm feeling a little risky today.
So, we got this full fricking filet.
Put it right in your mouth.
Oh man, did that- - It's not easy.
- Oh, Oh.
That went down like nothing.
- That was amazing.
- Wasn't even exciting.
That was actually boring.
- Next up we have Joker.
Come on buddy.
Come on. There you go bud. Cool.
Here's the blue Barons racer.
Again, the females not as bright a blue as males are.
We actually have a male coming up
that will be super, almost like powder blue,
but still absolutely spectacular.
And look at, this one's in shed and still eating.
Hundred Flower rat snakes have been around forever,
but all of them come in kind of as imports,
so captive bred ones are very hard to find
and they actually don't do well at all.
But as captive bred,
you can see they absolutely thrive.
Whenever I have any leftover rodents,
if something's in shed or something doesn't want to eat,
I always give it to Bulger.
He's comin'.
Hand feeding a dinosaur, right there.
That's so awesome.
Of course I was excited
when Gemma ate her first meal last week after 15 months.
The fact that she's eating two meals in a row,
week after week,
means that she's turned back onto food,
which means she's gonna be able
to put all that weight that she lost back on
and get her to a new giant size in the future.
And the reason we got Gemma is
we wanted a giant snake like Lucy,
but that was really good for people to handle.
So, although we've been handling her for the last 15 months
we haven't handled her as much as we wanted to,
'cause she was off of food,
so we didn't wanna stress her out too much.
Now that she's back on food
and she's gonna start putting that weight back on
we can start taking her out a lot more often
and feel a lot better about it.
- [Cameraman] She made light work of that.
- She took that so fast.
I'm not saying that.
That's impressive.
- Last time we fed, we fed huge meals.
Now we're gonna feed kinda smaller meals,
just to vary it up.
Not to mention the different proteins
between rats and rabbits.
So again, we go rats, rabbits, pigs.
It's gonna make the animals even more healthy.
Perdita definitely took that one quick.
Guys, check this out.
Come here, come here.
Quick, quick, quick, quick, quick.
What a cool shot this is.
Take a look at that.
Oh my God, that is actually Pop,
just hanging down from the rock.
Look at how far he's hanging down.
He's all the way down there twisted up
and she's eating like that.
Again, I just imagine this happening in the wild
and that's what makes me so excited
when I see stuff like this.
This is fricking dope.
(vibrant band music)
Al is spooky when it comes to this type of stuff.
Got such a long strike.
Hoo.
But that little,
I mean that is like,
that gets your blood pumping.
I've fed a lot of snakes like this
and I know that sometimes they overshoot.
It's pretty easy to get bit,
but Al is just absolutely gorgeous.
So glad to see that Gemma's food strike
has finally come to an end.
Speaking of end,
hope you guys enjoyed today's video.
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Have a wonderful day, Reptile Army.
Remember...
- Is that you again, God?