- Happy new years, Reptile Army.
I hope that your day is gonna be amazing.
It's the start of a new year,
which means new beginnings and new everything.
And I hope that you guys are gonna have an amazing 2022.
I expect it to be a banger here.
It's gonna be an amazing journey with the expansion,
and all kinds of things happening this year.
So it's gonna be a good one, right?
Well, I wanna do a little best of 2021 for you guys.
You know, the best videos that we had as far as performance,
which ones you guys seem to like the most,
comments, likes, all that type of stuff.
So we're gonna start with number 10 right now,
and it happens to be when I was down in Florida
with my buddy Chandler from Chandler's Wildlife.
(owl screeches)
(Brian laughs) - Good boy!
- How cool is that? - Good boy!
- This of course is the boy and I'm with this guy here!
Chandler, - What's goin' on?
- from Chandler's Wildlife.
- He has, oh relax.
He's got the capability of pumping
with enough venom to take down a whole elephant.
You can totally see that this king cobra
has no interest in hurting me.
All it wants to do is get away from me.
Now he's a little bit laid back for a king cobra.
This is literally a dragon of Asia
lurking through the forest, going through the rivers.
I went to Thailand and I got to see how these guys live.
You can see some dukey right here.
This is the tall tale sign of a king cobra
finishing, digesting a Python,
so nothing but the scale's come out left,
'cause they're made of keratin, you know?
There it is. Cobra right there.
Oh, keep cleaning.
- I don't even see any feces, man.
- Get in the cage.
Come on, get in there.
Check this out. - Red snouted's are amazing.
- Whoo! Look at that gem!
- Of a crocadiddle. - I love the pattern,
just unbelievable. (crocodile hisses)
- Look at that broad snout, look at that.
- Broad-snouted caimen, absolutely wonderful.
- And there he is!
- A male American crocodile.
- That's him.
- This is Ziggy's future boyfriend.
We just had CrocFest recently.
Raised over $107,000 for gharial conservation!
Holy! (smacks face)
- I know you, Savanna worked your butt off,
everyone involved in CrocFest.
When's the next CrocFest?
- You and I are both going to it.
- All right, I'm going. - This is the thing you and I,
and every person who touches an animal on this planet,
we can get enough attention
to every project to make a difference.
- We actually have a lot of travel videos
that performed well in 2021,
and we plan on a lot more travel in 2022,
as hopefully we can travel more
and eventually get out of the country again.
We have a lot of plans to travel all over the world,
and bring you guys along on it.
But the number nine video happened to be with this guy here.
It was actually the largest teeth of a non-venomous snake.
And seeing Carl,
the emerald tree boa, eat was pretty amazing,
it seemed like you guys liked it.
We are about to go into the dragon's den.
That's right, the tree dragon, baby Kush.
There you go.
Now I'm gonna walk in.
I'm gonna just hold like this.
Oh, look at that. There you go.
And of course, Noah, they can't even open the tank.
- I can't even open the cage, the designs are flawed.
(water sloshing)
- Oh. - Whoa!
(water sloshing) - Oh, oh!
Get it, Noah, get it, Noah.
- Don't let it drop, don't let it drop! Don't let it drop!
- Whoa! - Whoa!
(Brian laughing)
- Get it off me, chill out!
- So Carl the Emerald tree boa
actually eats fresh dead food.
So it just took it and it's pretty amazing
to see the teeth on this guy when they actually eat.
I mean, definitely an unbelievable animal, really an animal
that was one of my first loves when it came to snakes.
When I was really young,
I used to actually have a picture of an emerald tree boa.
I used to stare at it for hours, and hours and hours.
Definitely so excited that now we have a couple of them
in our collection, and Carl is pretty awesome.
Emerald tree boas literally have
the largest teeth of any non-venomous snake.
You can see as Carl is actually going back
and undulating those giant teeth.
Now they will actually shed their teeth,
as well from time to time,
and we do sometimes find a little tooth.
As a matter of fact, I can see one in the cage right now,
and I'll actually pull that out when Carl is done
to show you guys, but it's pretty amazing.
Now, I have never been bitten by a big emerald tree boa,
but I was actually witness
to a few people getting tagged by them.
And let me tell you what, I've been bit by a lot of snakes.
I don't want to get bit by a tooth like that
in an Emerald tree boa, but what an amazing animal, right?
This is such a cool thing to actually witness.
You guys know that the reptile zoo has transformed my life
in the way that I keep animals and think about animals.
And listen, the eighth most watched, commented,
everything video of the year was when I gave you
a cage-by-cage tour of The Reptarium.
We went cage-by-cage, it was like 25 minutes long,
something like that.
No breaks just let's roll, like you walked in the door,
and I showed you every animal in the place.
It was a banger.
You guys seemed to like it, and I'm glad that you guys did.
And I hope that sometime you can come here,
and actually visit The Reptarium and see it in person.
Hey, good morning, everybody, and welcome to the vlog.
I hope the start of your day is absolutely incredible.
You guys know that things
are always changing here at The Reptarium,
and we're showing this and we're showing that.
And it's been a long time, probably close
to seven or eight months since I've done
kind of cage-by-cage tour of the place.
Look at how beautiful she looks.
And she is definitely getting big.
(easy going groovy music)
Of course, Ben and Jerry, I mean, come on,
you don't have to say much about Ben and Jerry,
the two headed snake.
I mean, just look at how good they're doing.
They're eating like crazy.
And of course, Ben and Jerry have eaten just recently,
which is really great.
(indistinct) Actually pretty cool,
you don't have to ever really worry,
he's really pretty docile.
You can just kind of bring him right out like that.
Really beautiful, big, big animal.
Again, 40 gonna turn 42 here pretty soon.
And he's still got 150 years in him.
And then speaking of 150 years, Matilda.
So there is the tour of the zoo, guys.
I hope that you enjoyed it.
You know, breeding snakes doesn't always go smoothly,
and sometimes things actually go wrong.
In this case, the number seven video
was a California king snake that had egg bound.
And I was trying to save her life by trying to,
what they call aspirate the egg out,
without hurting the female itself.
The video did well,
and the female thankfully lived and is still doing fine.
Unfortunately, a couple of times a year,
we actually get egg bound females
and sure enough, this banded black
and white California king snake yesterday started laying.
And she laid a couple eggs and she is definitely egg bound.
The idea is to take a probe,
and go right into the anal vent like this,
and then apply a little bit of pressure the other way.
It's gonna be a little bit difficult with this one.
I don't know if we're gonna get it.
And you can see the eggs are actually stacking a little bit,
which is not a good sign either.
That means that there's something
that's blocking right here.
I'm just gonna do my very best
to just kinda get the probe in here
and just kind of feel around,
and see if I can get to the egg.
I know girl, I know.
Here it comes.
Finally, I'm starting to get the egg out.
I've never struggled so hard to get an egg out before,
but we definitely saved the oviduct.
We didn't rip the oviduct at all.
And sure enough, that egg came out.
I tell you what, I have gotten a lot of eggs out
of females over the years,
and that was the most difficult egg I've ever had.
I really struggled with it.
You guys know, I love my anacondas,
I talk about Ivy a tremendous amount.
But the biggest bombshell of the year didn't happen
with Ivy, it actually happened with Arianna.
At the time was Aries, which we thought was a male anaconda.
Well of course, she had a virgin birth.
We were able to catch it on film,
which was absolutely crazy.
And I tell you what,
I've never seen anything like that in my life.
So yeah, that was the number six best video of the year.
This is a baby anaconda.
And this may be one of the coolest things
that's ever happened to me in the 35 years
that I've been breeding snakes.
This story actually started last night.
(birds chirping)
(energetic electric guitar music)
So we're actually open here tonight
at The Reptarium, and guess what?
Our male anaconda, Aries,
happens to be eating something kind of interesting.
Now, of course you remember
that I didn't understand why Aries,
and Ivy didn't breed this year,
because they both look like they're about the same thing.
Well, guess what we found?
We found Aries actually having infertile ova.
I cannot believe my male anaconda is a girl,
and she had these bunch of infertile ova!
Take a look at this!
It's absolutely insane.
Never thought I'd see that in my (chuckles) entire life.
I guess I should have sexed that animal out,
and made sure that it was a male when I got it.
Rather than just wasting that in fertile ova,
they will actually ingest them,
and eat them just like Aries is doing right now.
But that wasn't what the craziest part is.
The craziest part is what happened next.
To be totally honest with you,
we just expected Aries to have a bunch of infertile ova,
because again, it was just two females.
And Aries has never been in with another anaconda
other than Ivy that's a female.
And then we noticed a baby sticking out of Aries.
We were completely blown away!
- [Camerawoman] What do you have?
- A little baby anaconda.
- Whoa, I tell you what.
You guys like when I dodge snake bites,
there's no doubt about it,
and it's something that happens.
When you're working with reptiles,
you're gonna have to deal with that to some extent.
Number five best and most viewed video of the year
was me dodging a bunch of snake bites.
Ooh.
(staff member laughs) I have to give him my shoe now.
Stop, stop, stop, stop.
You know, when you take the shoe out, you know you're gonna.
Okay, so I guess Night Fury's not gonna come out today.
Back in your cage, back in your cage, back in your cage.
Oh, woo.
What in the world?
- [Staff Member] Ahh, no, Brian!
- We don't got the cage.
Get him over here, ah, ah, ah! (laughs)
This doesn't normally happen, guys.
I mean, you know, it just really fired up to eat.
And I can't seem to get him to stop.
This is very unusual.
And basically I can just tell his tension in his body
that he wants to still eat.
And it's not an aggressive thing at all,
it's just a food mode thing.
Just wants to eat.
Ow, it's got my hand.
I think if I can get him up, here we go.
Okay, now here we go.
Like Lucky here.
Whoa, definitely isn't gonna be a tame animal.
And it's not that Lucky as necessarily a mean animal,
what it is, is very defensive.
And there are certain species of snakes
that are just a little bit more like that, for sure.
I mean, and he is certainly one of them,
there's no doubt about it,
Where they just, whoa!
Where they're just kind of a little bit cantankerous,
if you know what I mean.
It's not a, whoa! It's not a mean snake.
It's not anything like that.
What it basically just means, is that he wants to eat.
Now with Lucky here, different situation.
Whoa, it's getting close to my face right now for sure.
Come on buddy. Woo.
But as far as taming an animal like this, like I said,
it might be a little bit hard to do,
but you can do it, just through socialization.
The more you handle it, the better chance of it taming out.
But I've handled Lucky for a lot of years
and it's never really gotten over it.
It's a defensive snake,
but it's also absolutely gorgeous.
Hey, this way, this way.
Ah, yes!
You guys know that I love feeding my reptiles,
with the exception of that one time
that Perdita missed her food and bit my arm.
The truth is, is that we feed the reptiles
every single week, but we don't film it every single week.
But this happens to be the fourth most watched video
of the entire year was when we fed everything
at the reptile zoo.
Today, we're gonna feed the entire zoo, that's right.
It's a day where we're feeding snakes,
we're feeding lizards, we're feeding alligators.
We're feeding everything today.
So we're gonna have a really good time.
And we're gonna start with Perdita.
Aw, there you go. There you go.
Come on, come on now, come on now,
come on now, all the way, baby.
There you go. That's my boy.
So amazing. Here you go, bud.
I won't make you do too much work today.
Oh, yep he got it.
Take it, take it, oh there it is.
Oh my gosh.
Oh, there it is. Perfect.
Hit right on the face.
Now I'll try to get, perfect hit right there.
Right here, we're here.
Woo, woo-hoo-hoo!
Come on, wow! I'm a little close there.
There's our little Drogo.
Look at how cute he is.
There you go, there. That didn't take long.
There it is, perfect.
Oh! There it is.
Oh, I'm so happy she ate.
(upbeat music)
This is really unusual. There we go.
Oh, I just think she was hungry.
(water sloshing)
Oh yeah, oh, and I think Salt is ready for another one.
It's time to go, whoo-hoo!
Ah, there she is.
(easy going synthesizer music)
It's crazy that snakes can get 20 foot long
like my girl Lucy here, and all of our giant snakes.
The number three most watched video
was actually me going around and showing
all of the largest snakes that we keep,
some of the largest snakes in the world.
Obviously reticulated pythons get the longest in the world,
but anacondas are giant and Burmese pythons are giant,
and all kinds of them.
So this video happened to be
all about the world's largest snakes.
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, Avi, the green anaconda,
I'm having a good start to my day.
She's my spirit animal. She is an absolute beauty.
And I want to talk to you guys about
the largest snakes in the world.
We won't mess, or muck 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.
Night Fury just shed out yesterday,
and looks ridiculous.
I mean, look at the shimmer and sheen on that animal.
And then of course, there's the Burmese pythons.
I've mentioned so many times that I think of them
as the puppy dog of the giant snake world.
Back to my anaconda cage and my girl, Ivy.
This time, we're actually down to
the final two best videos,
or most viewed videos of the year on this vlog channel.
And it happens to be when we fed Ivy a gigantic pig.
One of the first times that we fed her a giant pig.
And we weren't even sure if she could eat it,
but she sure did, and you guys seemed to like it.
Lucy, my little girl over here,
well, not so little girl, gets a little treat.
Here we go, Ivy. Ivy, girl!
Here's a little food for you, baby girl.
Come on sweetie. That's a girl!
I know you're hungry girl, that's a girl.
Oh, she got it, whoa! Whew doggy!
I tell you what. That is always exhila...
Oh, she's got my foot now. Get, get, get.
That is always exhilarating.
(easy going, smooth synthesizer music)
And there she goes, she's actually got it,
and she's starting to drag it towards the water.
I knew this was gonna happen.
She does it every single time.
(easy going, bass and synthesizer music)
And Ivy is all done.
And remember when we fed her her first giant pig
how huge she looked?
It looked like she was like giant.
Now, you can barely see a lump.
I mean you can definitely see a lump,
but it's just shocking how big she's actually gotten.
And the number one video viewed of the year,
commented, liked, shared, all those things,
happened to do with my girl, Salt.
When we took her PetSmart.
Never thought that you guys would like that so much,
but we had a great time taking her there,
met a whole bunch of people.
And I tell you what, it turned out to be a banger.
This is my albino alligator, Salt.
And you guys know that Easter's coming up,
and guess what?
Jay came to me with an interesting idea.
- I got an idea.
- What?
- Let's take Salty to the pet store
and get her a Easter outfit.
- Hey, let's go!
Good morning, everybody,
and welcome to the vlog, reptile army.
Let's go ahead and have an adventure
with my girl, Salt.
(upbeat, amusing orchestral music)
Okay Salt, it's important to not drive aggressive, okay?
Just keep your eyes, and always looking at
the rear view mirrors and stuff like that.
Okay, you're doing a good job.
This is your first time driving,
you're doing absolutely amazing.
(upbeat, amusing orchestral strings music)
So we're obviously in PetSmart.
How you doing? We brought Salty.
You guys got some good outfits for her?
- Probably.
- What aisle is that?
(woman laughs)
Uh-oh, did you find some?
Oh, my gosh. That would be so cute.
You know, I still think the other one.
- All right. - Let's get those two.
- [Jay] All right. - Those two would be cool.
I think that Salty's gonna like it.
You want to look around some more, Salty?
- [Jay] Yes.
- Maybe she can find a toy, too, huh?
I'm not sure that Salt really needs an alligator bed,
but it looks pretty cool.
I don't think she'd use it much, though.
(upbeat, energetic music)
Yeah, 'cause they can't swallow it.
- [Jay] No.
- [Brian] Yeah, you think it's good.
- Yeah. - It's extreme.
We need an extreme.
(upbeat, playful orchestra strings and xylophone music)
Goodbye!
(upbeat, playful orchestra strings and xylophone music)
Oh. - Oh!
(everyone laughs)
- Why you coming towards my face? Go in the hole!
- I was going to the hole,
but she was trying to find it.
- Here, why don't I hold her? - What? No, give me that.
- [Woman] She doesn't even like it.
- Oh, she bit it, she don't like it.
This was a bad idea! (woman laughs)
- [Jay] This was a bad idea.
- Look at this!
- [Woman] Both of these are dumb as hell.
This is what you guys walked away with?
- This wasn't really thought out too well.
- Yeah, (chuckles) we just didn't think about this.
- [Jay] Maybe this is a good time to put this one on her.
- There we go, now she's, aw, there it is! Perfect!
Oh, now she let go. Oh no!
She don't like that at all.
Watch out, she's fighting.
All right, so-
- [Jay] So looks so adorable.
- She loves Pink Floyd.
- Yeah, how about you guys
don't pick out outfits anymore?
Because this is the dumbest thing I've ever seen.
- So there you have it, the best of 2021.
Thank you guys so much for joining me
on this amazing adventure.
Like I said, let's hope 2022 is just as great as 2021.
I appreciate you guys so much.
Let's make this year absolutely incredible.
I'll be sending all the positive vibes
I can possibly send to you guys.
Thank you so much for all of your support.
If you did like this video here's a playlist
of all of 2021, you can watch
as much as you possibly want.
Can you do me a favor over here?
A New Year's Day gift for me,
can you subscribe to this channel?
That would mean the world to me.
Have an absolutely amazing new year, reptile army.
Remember, be kind to someone,
and I promise I'll see you in the next one.