- Ball, food.
("Sthlm in My Heart" by Henyao)
Yo, reptile behavior is starting to be one of the things
I'm the most fascinated with.
Just kinda understanding what they're thinking,
how to get them to do kinda what you wanna do,
and now, I'm gonna be totally honest with you.
It's something that I've just become fascinated with
over the last six or eight months
since we opened up The Reptarium.
I mean look at Toothless here.
You can see 100% isn't fearful at all.
Just looking at me, interacting with me,
trying to figure things out.
My buddy Kevin over at NERD
always says that it's intelligence mode.
When we can get them out of fear mode
and get them into intelligence mode,
that's when we unlock the true beauty
and behavior of these reptiles.
I am absolutely blown away at how much I've been learning
over the last six or eight months
about animals that I thought I knew a lot about,
and Toothless is certainly leading the way
with just how absolutely incredible he is.
Oh, and by the way, welcome to the vlog.
I hope the start of your day is absolutely incredible,
and I tell you guys all the time
that I wanna always be honest and transparent with you guys,
and the truth is is that my knowledge of behavior
with these animals prior to the last six or eight months
really came from, like, the ability to breed these animals.
I'd open up these cages,
and I'd have an idea of how they were laying,
what their body weight was,
what they were acting like,
were they bowl wrapping if they were ball pythons,
how their feeding response was.
All that behavior really came down
to how I could reproduce the animals the best I could.
Now don't get me wrong.
Those are all very important aspects of keeping snakes.
I mean, you wanna be able to understand how they're acting
and how they're behaving and all that stuff
in order to keep them healthy.
Typically, a healthy snake is gonna reproduce
better than, obviously, an unhealthy snake.
With that said, I'm gonna be totally honest with you.
I didn't properly give these guys the credit
for being as intelligent as they actually are.
Elvis, come here, buddy.
(hand rapping) Come here.
Right here, come on.
Come on out.
Come on, bud.
Come on out.
Come on, Elvis, come.
There you go, buddy.
Come on.
That's my boy.
Come on, Elvis.
There you go, buddy.
There you go, buddy,
and I tell you what.
Animals like Elvis blow me away,
just the behavior, what he's doing.
Again, reading his body language constantly,
not only when he's out
and able to actually interact with me just like this,
but also what he's doing in the cage.
We talked about all the time
that he has a safe spot way back in the corner there
where we never tried to take him out,
but you can see he's looking around.
He's intelligent.
He's trying to figure out what's going on.
He's saying, am I getting fed?
Do I just get a chance to walk around?
What's going on?
What smells different?
It's always amazing.
When we put something in the aisle way
that he's not familiar with,
immediately, he goes up and he investigates.
I mean, look at this animal.
There is no fear in this animal whatsoever.
He's just coming around, hanging out with me,
and, you know, I've always known monitor lizards were smart.
I've known certain animals were smart,
but being able to work with lizards like Elvis
have really changed my perception
of the entire game of reptiles,
and I don't think it's just monitors
and lizards that really are intelligent,
and I honestly think that I didn't give snakes
as much credit, either.
Of course, reticulated pythons
are known for being one of the smarter snakes.
I'm not exactly sure how we quantify that,
but they do seem to be very inquisitive.
They climb around a lot.
They do a lot of investigating,
but the truth is I think a lot of snakes
are smarter than we think.
You know, I maybe thought that they were really primordial
where they were just about survival,
and it's interesting that
even after 30 years of keeping snakes,
I can change my opinion on that.
I do think these animals are way smarter
than we sometimes give them credit for.
- Dude, reptiles are a lot smarter than you think.
I mean, the alligators next door, for me, kinda show it.
You click that little thing.
They're ready to eat every single time.
It's pretty amazing.
- Like Eric mentioned, you know,
training the alligators is a perfect example
of intelligence, right?
They will actually have a stimulus response.
When I click, (clicker clicking)
they come,
and they know it's food time,
and, of course, the response is I always give them food,
but they know they hear the clicker,
they come for the clicker,
they know they're gonna get fed.
That shows a sign of intelligence,
and I think it's absolutely wonderful,
(clicker clicking)
and there you go.
(chuckles) I get such a kick out
of feeding these little monkeys.
Here's the rub when it comes to Bella,
and by the way, I've never used that statement before,
but I see the movies like, hey, here's the rub.
I don't even know exactly what that means,
but regardless, here's the deal.
Bella here comes down for me.
You guys have seen.
I call her, she comes down, she hangs out.
She is just absolutely wonderful,
but the thing is is that when I'm not here,
sometimes, she doesn't wanna come down,
so much like the target training
that we do with the clicker with the alligators,
we wanna start doing a target with Bella, Elvis,
eventually Toothless and some other animals like that.
That way, she always can come down,
but the idea with a target training
is something like a ball on the end of a stick,
and then every time you offer her food
or something that she really loves,
you actually use that target
where she has to come down, she touches that target,
and that's the deal.
Anyway, when I'm not around
and we want Bella to come down to meet someone,
we just take that stick with the ball on it,
she comes down,
and that is how you target train.
We can do the same thing with Elvis
and you really, a lot of these other animals.
We're gonna start today
by giving a target for Elvis and Bella
and see if we can make this actually start working.
So first thing we have to do is head to the store.
We're off to the old trusted Walmart
because obviously we have to get some supplies.
We hit the home run here.
We got little skewers
to put the little cactus pads on for Matilda
so that people can feed that,
and we have some dowel rods that we can use for targets
for the monitors and for Bella.
This was what I was worried about.
I didn't know if we could find these,
and there's all kinds here,
so this is absolutely perfect.
Guess the only thing we need left now is the red ball
and this 70-inch TV. - I knew you were
gonna say that.
(Brian chuckles) Just keep walking.
We don't need another TV.
- You know, I saw like, a hundred-inch TV
yesterday at Best Buy,
and we're like we should totally get a hundred-inch TV.
- Where would it even go?
- I don't know but it would be epic!
(chuckles) Okay, let's find a red.
Lori made a good point, you know.
I always do this where I need something immediately,
and I'm like, I can't find what I want.
(Lori chuckles) I couldn't find a red ball,
but these little hand balls might be perfect.
I know they're blue, but I don't think it matters.
I mean, red might just be easier for them to see,
but I think blue would work, too.
I don't think there's any reason why it can't be blue.
I think I'm gonna just get those
and see how it goes from there,
and if I come across something else in the meantime,
I'll get that, and if it doesn't work,
we can order 'em online, right?
All right, so I think we have everything we need.
Now, the deal is I have to actually drill a hole
in this ball just a little bit,
and then, we'll actually hot glue the stick onto this.
That way, we'll have a little target that we can use,
so let's go ahead and drill a hole.
(power drill whirring)
Okay, with any luck, this stick will actually fit.
Perfect, so now, all I have to do is hot glue this in,
and we have a target.
I'll probably make two of these,
one for Bella and one for Elvis.
Now, again, we used the blue ball
because we couldn't find a red ball,
so if the blue ball doesn't work
because they don't notice as well,
we can always get a red ball later,
but anyways, hot glue this in,
and then, let's go ahead and give this a try,
Here's the deal, I have the target here.
The thing is every time I offer Bella
either a banana, superworm, blackberries,
whatever she really likes,
the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna show her the food,
but then she has to come down,
and I'll touch her nose to the ball.
Now, over time, every time she sees that ball
and associates it with food,
she's gonna come down.
So let's go ahead and see what she does here.
So first thing I'm gonna do is
I'm gonna show her the banana.
Then I'm gonna have her touch this ball,
and then I'm gonna feed her the banana, okay?
Now, I don't have to do this
every single time that she eats the banana,
just the first time that she comes down
and actually touches the ball.
Again, what I want her to do,
I want her to associate the ball
or the trigger item with food,
and then, over time, with a girl like Bella,
what you do because she likes attention
is you slowly take away the food,
so when she comes down,
maybe every other time you show her the ball,
you're gonna actually give her a banana
or blackberries or superworms to kinda reward her.
The other times, you're gonna reward her with attention.
Eventually, you could take away the food 100%
if you want to.
Now, the important thing here is to every time do this.
So from now on, from today on,
whenever we feed her a banana,
whenever we feed her superworms, blackberries,
whatever treat it is,
she has to see the ball first
because as soon as you do it once or twice without it,
it's gonna kinda confuse her.
It's about repetition,
doing it over and over and over again,
and then, she'll kinda get used to it.
So this is the very first day of hopefully target training
my girl Bella to where she'll come down.
Again, one of the advantage to this is
is that every time we're open to the public
or we have a tour and people wanna meet Bella
and maybe she's being a little stinker
and saying no, I'm just gonna stay up here,
I can actually take out the target,
she's gonna come down every single time.
The other thing is I'm not here,
sometimes, she won't come down for other people.
This way, whoever's here can use the target
and use it to get Bella
to do exactly what we want, you know?
It's just a stimulus response thing,
so I'm pretty excited about it with Bella.
I'm gonna try it with Elvis as well.
Now, when it comes to Elvis,
it's gonna really be more about food, you know,
because he doesn't come for attention so to speak.
I mean, he does love to come out and get attention,
but we'll always probably use this target training for food.
So I'm gonna have him touch the ball with his nose first.
Then, I'm gonna give him food,
and that's what I'm gonna continue to do.
So now, what I'm gonna do over time,
he's so smart that if I get him to follow the ball,
I touch the ball to his nose.
Now I give him food,
and I'm gonna continue to do this
over and over and over again.
It's probably with him because he's so smart,
I think that it won't take a long time
for him to figure it out.
I have a feeling that within about a week or so,
he'll associate this ball with being fed,
so I have to just continue to do that.
Come on, bud.
Elvis, Elvis, hey, Elvis.
So again, ball on nose.
Now you get food.
Ball,
food,
and ultimately, what's gonna end up happening is
as soon as he sees this ball,
he's gonna want to come out,
he's gonna know that it's food time,
and then, I could probably take away the food a little bit
if I wanted to to get him to do something,
but to be honest with you,
he's pretty good about the attention side
and the kind of exploring side,
so there's a little reward there,
but this way, again, I'll start to target train him,
and then, if I want him to do anything particular,
I can use this target.
Again, he'll start to associate.
It's pretty cool just to see the behavior.
Again, we can start doing this
with a bunch of other animals,
maybe Taz, certainly Toothless, so on like that.
It's just a great way to kinda enhance that behavior,
and it is enrichment as well, right?
I can have him follow me all the way down the hall
knowing that if he gets the ball,
there a good chance he's gonna get food on the end.
So there is that is the way
you train reptiles like Elvis and so on like that.
Now, the important thing, again, is consistency.
Every single time, you need to now use the ball,
or he'll lose track of it.
Obviously, it's a stimulus response.
If sometimes I'm using the ball and sometimes I'm not,
I'm not really training him.
He's not learning anything,
so I have to be very consistent.
A trainer once told me,
"Even if you do something wrong,
"do it wrong every single time.
"That way, the animal associates that wrong thing
"every single time."
I think the way I trained RJ
is probably not the right way to do it,
but because I've been doing it the same way now
for seven or eight years,
he gets exactly what I'm trying to do with him.
You do that with another alligator,
maybe it doesn't work,
so it's all about consistency, consistency, consistency.
Again, I've been amazed at how, like,
I've kinda really been getting into behavior.
I mean, take for instance Perdida here.
I mean, she certainly is such an inquisitive animal.
I mean, the way she acts.
the way that people are able to handle her.
She's just such a good animal.
I mean, that is a sign of intelligence.
I mean, there's no doubt about it,
and I kinda feel bad that,
although I always thought reptiles were amazing,
I guess I didn't really dive into the intelligence
and behavior side
except for the breeding side up until recently,
and it's just kind of opened up my entire eyes to something
that I'd never really seen before,
and it's kind of reinvigorated my love and passion
for these animals
because now, I don't wanna just learn about
just the husbandry in order to breed them,
but now, I'm interested in what makes them happy,
what keeps them enriched.
I mean, there is such an amazing amount of knowledge
that needs to still be gained not only for myself
but really from everyone with these amazing animals.
Let me know down in the comments
what you guys think about behavior,
how you train things, if you have any advice for me,
what else I should be looking at
because I absolutely love this thing.
As for now, you guys have an amazing day.
Be kind to someone.
I promise I'll see you guys tomorrow.