(upbeat music)
- Of course, Snazz is a wild-type normal Burmese python.
And today we're going to do a little history time.
That's right.
So I'm going to put my old man voice on and talk to you
about the past, you know what I mean?
But no, the truth is,
is that actually a normal Burmese python was the first snake
that I actually bought on my 15th birthday.
Now I had been keeping like garter snakes and everything
since I was a child,
but my mom would never let me keep another animal.
I've told that. And that's right.
The first choice, probably a Burmese python,
probably not that great of a choice,
but the truth was is that I worked at a pet shop at the time
and I really didn't know a lot about
the size of Burmese python.
The owner told me they get like eight or nine foot.
Now the thing that's really interesting
and what I want to talk about the history,
it's just how much things have changed
over the last 30-something years.
Back then no one was breeding Burmese pythons, right?
They all came in wild-caught, that's right.
They were shipped in as baby wild-caught.
And my first Burmese python that I got,
my first real pet snake was actually
a wild-caught baby Burm.
We would get like 10 or 12 in at a time at this pet shop.
And we were the only pet shop in the area
that kept reptiles and only two in the entire state
that kept reptiles, believe it or not.
So I actually had an opportunity to buy a Burm
only because that's what we had in stock.
My mom said, "You could buy a snake."
And I was like, "Well, I'm going to buy
whatever I have in stock right now."
And of course, Burmese pythons had just come in,
and I picked one out and it was pretty awesome.
It wasn't till about a year later that I actually realized
that Burmese get 17, 18 foot.
And I was like, "Oh my gosh,
maybe I've made a little bit of mistake."
But the truth is, is that now Burmese pythons
are being bred.
Not only wild-type, like Snazzy here,
but all kinds of different colors and flavors,
just like the stuff we have and the stuff that's available
is absolutely incredible.
It's amazing how far we've come in such a short time.
And really the captive breeding that happens now
is not only good for the actual animals,
but it's really good for conservation
and everything else too, right?
Because now there's not a demand for bringing these animals
out of the wild.
And I'll be honest with you,
I remember a time when we used to get
baby reticulated pythons in.
Again, wild-caught baby reticulated pythons.
And really, I still think that sometimes
a normal reticulated python,
what they would call a wild type,
is some of the most beautiful colors out there.
I mean Slim Jim here is an absolutely stunning snake
and it's not anything but a pure, normal,
wild-type reticulated python.
But the fact was way back then at that pet shop,
when we would get like,
say a dozen baby wild-caught retics,
number one, they were pistols.
I mean, they were on fire.
You couldn't even touch it without getting bit.
And the second thing was they would never eat.
I mean, probably two or three times my boss would buy them.
And I say probably 90% of them would perish.
We just couldn't get them to eat.
I don't know why, because baby reticulated pythons
that are captive-born now eat like crazy.
I mean, you never have any that don't feed, right?
But for whatever reason, those wild ones didn't work.
So it was really kind of a bummer back then because we'd
bring these animals in.
We had the best intention.
We'd try type of food we possibly could try
and they wouldn't eat, and a lot of them would perish,
which was really a bummer, right?
Now with all of the captive breeding,
I don't know if it's the fact that good-eating adults
are producing babies that are now good-eating
or whatever the case may be.
But the fact is, is now that's really amazing.
And then when you're buying a reticulated python
or a Burmese python or whatever type of snake
that's captive-bred,
you don't have to worry about not feeding.
You've got to remember, this was pre-internet.
So we didn't know what we were doing.
We're just trying everything we possibly could.
And it was just kind of like calling up friends that had
worked with them and trying to figure it out.
So, I'm so glad that over the last 30-something years,
the hobby has blown up to what it is.
And just like going back to the old times
I was saying about the Burmese python.
My second snake I actually ever bought was from a guy
that had an adult wild-caught ball python.
Now, you got to remember back then,
there were no captive-hatched ball pythons
coming out of Africa and nobody was breeding ball pythons.
I mean, that just wasn't happening.
So wild-caught adult ball pythons
were basically all you got, right?
And I loved ball pythons.
I thought they were such interesting animals.
So this guy that actually was a customer
of the pet shop came in and said,
"Hey, I'm going to sell my ball python.
Do you want to buy it?"
I ended up buying that animal and you got to remember,
there was such little information
back then being out there, right?
So, we didn't know much about these animals.
All I knew is that it wouldn't eat for me, right?
I tried mice, I tried frozen.
I tried live, I tried rats.
I tried frozen, I tried live.
And then back then, a lot of times people would say,
"Try gerbils."
Now there's something that's called ASFs,
which is African soft furs.
They even call them multi-mice
in certain parts of the world.
The fact is, is that a lot of ball pythons will eat ASFs,
but there were no ASFs back then.
So gerbils were something that people would often say,
they would say they were species-specific feeders.
Meaning that, hey,
they would eat something like a gerbil in the wild,
which is actually more like an ASF.
I tried that, it didn't work. And I was going crazy.
I was again, a 15-year-old kid, right?
So I started spending almost every dollar I had
making the money from the pet shop on vet bills,
trying to get my pet ball python to eat.
I mean, we inject it with B12,
hoping it would stimulate its appetite.
We essentially assist fed it for a while.
Then we even tube fed it for a while.
And for two years I would take it to the vet
at least once a month because it would not eat.
And ultimately it ended up perishing,
and that's just really bad, right?
So back then the hobby wasn't what it is today
where you can get captive-bred animals
that do so absolutely phenomenal, right?
So, it's amazing how far we've come.
And I don't know if it's, again,
because we're getting into five, six, seven generations
out of the wild to produce animals.
Now, ball pythons obviously eat really well, right?
I mean, yeah, they go off of food from time to time,
but they're actually really good animals.
And now we know we went from a normal ball python
to thousands of different mutations of ball pythons
that are absolutely incredible.
So it's so great that the hobby is that way,
and then when you're buying a snake or you want a pet,
obviously you're not having that bad experience that I have.
Cause I'm not going to lie to you, when that happened,
it almost made me want to get out of the reptile hobby
completely because I really was broken-hearted.
Losing my second snake that I ever had after working so hard
and spending so much time, energy, and money,
trying to get that animal to live over a two-year period.
And when I'm talking about F generations,
just so you guys understand,
if it was a wild-caught reticulated python,
it's what they would call an F1.
If you bred it, that generation would be F2.
You raise those up, breed those, it'd be F3,
raise those up, it'd be F4.
So on, and so on, and so on, and so on.
So now we're into F5, F6, F7 generations
with all these animals.
Burmese pythons, reticulated pythons.
Anacondas are now in F3, F4 generations.
You're not only seeing them eat and do better,
but you're also seeing them being more docile.
There's no way that 30 years ago I'd have
a retic around my neck without probably getting bitten.
Now we have Predilla and all of our retics
that are dog tame, and that's something that happens.
I mean, think about it a little bit
like domesticated dogs, right?
I mean, probably dogs hundreds of years ago
were probably like wolves, right?
They would attack you and stuff like that.
Now we've bred them domestically for hundreds,
thousands of years or whatever it's been,
and now they're actually puppy-dog tame.
I wonder where that term came from?
Anyways, the point is,
is that they actually can have better temperament
as you're breeding.
Now think of it this way,
If I'm going to breed retics,
I'm going to breed the tamest retics, right?
And that's going to pass on to their babies, right?
I'm not going to keep back my meanest retics to breed
because that may pass on to their babies as well, right?
So every F generation you get in,
you're getting better quality animals,
not to mention the cool color phases and stuff like that.
It's really about the health and actual temperament
of the animal.
And that's why I think it's so amazing
and kudos to everyone out there that has put in the work
to produce these animals for generations and generations,
because it's allowing everybody, people like you,
people like me, to buy these amazing animals
and have amazing experiences with them.
I can promise you back in the day
of the old time Brian over there, trust me,
he wasn't having great experiences, right?
It was a pain in the butt to work with
a lot of these animals.
And it's amazing that we've come so far.
And I just think it's great.
And I think the future is absolutely wonderful.
Speaking of all this captive breeding,
let's go ahead and take a look at a Coluber clutch
that just hatched out that I love, you know?
I love the black and white Cal Kings,
and you've got to remember Colubers
were just like pythons, you know.
In the beginning days when you had wild-caught Colubers,
they didn't always do well, too.
Although like, stuff like corn snakes usually did
a little bit better, and so like that,
and breeding with corn snakes actually did kind of happen
earlier than some of the python type of stuff.
But there were a lot of species, rhino rat snakes,
mangrove rat snakes, Mandarin rat snakes,
all these types of things that literally when you got them,
they did horrible.
But now that they're captive bred,
they're absolutely pretty amazing,
and they do really good.
Mandarin rats are the perfect example.
99.9% of the imports will not make it past three months
or something like that.
And then now the babies that you produce are just like
these Cal Kings here, just absolutely wonderful.
They do just as good as a corn snake or anything else.
So this one is just a bunch of aberrant
black and white Cal Kings,
and look at some of the colors and patterns on these guys.
And there's a lot of variability in this particular clutch.
I mean, we have something right here,
that's almost like, just like a striped
black and white Cal King.
We have banded black and white Cal Kings.
We have 50-50 banded black and white Cal Kings.
Aberrant higher white ones, lower white ones.
This is about as variable as you're gonna get.
But again, it's really cool to see all these babies.
And it's great that, you know,
I've seen the majority of this kind of experience.
I should get in that old man voice.
I've been around a long time people.
In fact, this is that,
you know, I have seen it from the beginning to now.
And it's so awesome to see kind of the evolution
of the hobby, and how it has exploded,
especially in the last four or five years.
I mean, it's become so mainstay for people.
It's hard to find people that don't keep reptiles almost,
or at least have someone that they know keep reptiles.
You gotta remember, back in the day, I was one of,
I was a freak that I kept reptiles, all right?
So it's cool to have seen that and to be part of it.
And I can't wait to be part of it for the rest of my life.
Another really cool clutch.
Of course, ball pythons.
Going back to producing ball pythons now
that actually do well, of course, is this clutch here.
Which was actually a pastel cinnamon spider bamboo
ball python that was bred to a pastel leopard clown.
So everything is going to be het for clown in here.
And there are some rippers right here.
Take a look at this one right here in particular, wow!
This is actually what they would call a pewter leopard
and it's het for clown.
Just absolutely wonderful patterning on that animal.
Love it to death.
Then we have some stuff like this,
which just would be a pastel cinnamon spider het for clown
ball python, of course.
And then we have a whole bunch of variations
of different things here.
This is kind of cool here.
This is actually just the cinnamon spider leopard
het clown ball python.
Just kind of a cool thing.
Genetically really nice for producing
some cool clown ball pythons in the future.
And then we have this animal here,
which is basically the all gene animal.
This is a pastel, it's a spider, it's a cinnamon,
it's a bamboo, and it's het for clown ball python.
That's an absolutely banger and powerhouse genetically.
There's no doubt about it.
It's just cool to see all these animals now being produced,
not just by us, but by everybody in the reptile hobby.
It's just awesome to see and knowing that, you know what,
99.9% of these animals are going to live
rather than 99.9% of them not living
with wild-caught animals.
Certainly there is nothing more apparent
than water monitors, or really all monitors for that matter.
Still to this day, there are wild-caught baby monitors
that come into the country from Indonesia.
And I can tell you what, you wouldn't want to be down
letting it lick you in the face like this.
I can tell you that much.
Because again, those are F1 generation animals
and they can be tamed out, there's no doubt about it,
but they often times take a lot of work to be calmed down.
Whereas animals like Elvis that are like fourth,
fifth generation being bred by so many amazing monitors.
This one came from Nerd, of course,
but there are tons of great monitor breeders
that are really breeding tame monitor lizards.
Urban dinosaurs as Kevin would actually call them.
And it's really true.
I mean, they are so placid
and that's all about captive breeding.
Back in the day,
they didn't even import captive babies from Indonesia.
It was always mid-sized wild-caught monitors
that were just so absolutely aggressive.
And you just have to be super, super careful.
They'd whip you with their tail.
They'd bite you, they'd scratch you up.
They'd do everything.
Now, you've got animals like Elvis here
that just want to hang out with me.
They just want to be my pal.
You know, he just wants to hang out and say,
"What's up, dad? What are you doing?"
What are you doing Elvis?
I love you so much. It's amazing.
Again, we're unlocking the ability
to really create these animals
as more domestic animals, right?
And that's just through lots of hard work
from amazing people.
Again, all these monitor breeders really pave the way
for a completely new sector of the reptile hobby.
And it's one that I'm obsessed with.
You guys know, I love monitor lizards,
and to be able to have a monitor like Elvis or Toothless
or any of the monitors is just absolutely incredible.
And even like the lace monitors that are being bred now,
they're still a little bit hyper, right?
But they're only on maybe F2 generations.
once we get to F4, F5 generations,
yeah, it's going to be pretty absolutely incredible.
So I wanted to take you guys just down on that
little bit of a history road.
I hope that you guys enjoyed it,
and then appreciate where we're at in the hobby these days.
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Have an absolutely wonderful day, Reptile Army.
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