- And we are at Ty Park's Iguanaland.
Now Iguanaland is actually gonna be really
the world's largest reptile zoo.
It's down in Punta Gorda.
We're going to put all the link in the description
and stuff like that.
And we are going to say, it's not open yet.
So it's going to be open I believe in September,
the end of September, and then October fully open.
But this place is incredible.
It's been working out for a long time. I cannot wait to see,
I mean, look at all of these outdoor enclosures
and they have so much stuff going on.
Today is going to be an absolute banger.
Can I-- look at that. Iguanaland! Ooh, doggy.
I've been waiting a long time to come down
and see the progress on this place.
Cannot imagine what we're going to see today.
So buckle up. It's gonna be awesome.
(groovy instrumental music)
Look at this mural! Oh my gosh! This is cool.
This is something that I'd like to add more to the outside
of our buildings too, is murals like that.
That is absolutely wonderful.
So of course I'm here with my friend Ty Park.
Thank you so much for having us, Ty. It's awesome.
Savannah, Danny, Jay's over here.
We're having a great time.
So we're just going to walk around.
Give me the tour, let's go.
- Alright, you got it, you got it.
This place is crazy.
- So, we're gonna...
We're walking in towards Chelonian center.
Actually, I'm looking for somebody to sponsor this area.
- [Brian] Okay.
- Like a naming right kind of thing.
- Gotcha. And I'll put a link in the description
to everything, guys.
If you're interested in helping out with Ty and anything,
this is an amazing place.
I'll have all the links in the description.
- So, you can see on the left side
we have these enclosures.
About half land, half aquatic.
They're all...
have its own filter system.
We are adding constantly right now.
So I think aquatic total wise,
I say we're pushing hundred species.
- [Brian] Oh my gosh. That's a lot. Wow.
- Yeah, but I want to end up with about
half of the world's species here.
- Wow.
- Which means about 180 species.
So that's what we're going to end up with.
- This is Geo.
- Geo is gorgeous.
- Geo is a male perentie.
I think he's about maybe five or six years old.
- Oh my gosh.
So we've been coming down here, Danny and I,
and doing a little bit of training with him
and they've gotten really, really great at being handled.
- Gosh.
- But that doesn't mean he's not going to bite you,
but we'll try it.
- It's okay, I don't mind it. Hey, listen,
It'd be a pleasure to get bit by something like this.
- I know, right?
- Of course this is the largest monitor lizard in Australia.
It's actually the varanus giganteus
is actually its technical name
and definitely one of the most spectacular animals.
I mean, just look.
As a matter of fact, I have-- look it,
I've got his brother on my arm!
- I have one too! See my perentie?
- We both have perenties.
So, perentie tattoos are a must
when you're into monitor lizards.
Just look it, I mean,
it's like that color on his chin and that neck
is almost like painted on.
I mean, it's absolutely a ridiculous animal.
Obviously, these guys are very adapt at climbing.
You can see with those big old claws and stuff like that.
But there are also really fast on the ground too.
So it's very unusual to be able to interact
with something like this in this country.
This is probably the only opportunity I'm ever going to get.
I have had the opportunity in Australia
to mess with these guys a couple of times,
but here in the country... Savannah.
- When Geo first came here, you know,
Ty has a great house-- housing set up for him.
But when I came back to visit like a week later,
when we went in, we couldn't find him anywhere.
We were freaking out.
So what I think a lot of people don't recognize is that
they're really great diggers.
And so he dug a burrow...
- Oh my gosh.
- Underneath, remember, Ty? He was underneath.
And we were like, "Where's he at? Oh my gosh!"
- [Ty] "Get a shovel!"
- Oh my gosh, that is amazing.
But this is, this is. Wow.
This is a dream come true right here.
- That's the dream right there.
- That is the dream. One day, one day.
Maybe, maybe, hopefully.
- [Brian] Savannah, what are you doing?
- Oh, well, I wanted to see if he was friendly,
but I think he's...
- [Man] Now you're in a predicament.
- [Brian] I think it's friendly.
Look, it's super friendly! Look at it!
Hi, little monkey!
- [Savannah] Hi there!
- You just thought there was food, right?
Of course our white throat monitor like our grits over here.
But this one is this one's actually really beautiful.
Could be because that natural light really does change
the total outlook of animals. But wow.
That is an absolute beautiful, gosh. Just look at it.
It looks like, I think this looks like
a little girl to be totally honest with you.
They have pretty powerful claws.
Hey little monkey, what are you doing?
- (Savannah laughs)
- Ah, look at this. I think I made a friend.
What are you doing over there? Hi!
How's it going?
Savannah, you got a friend!
- I know, I love making friends!
- (laughs) My god, that's awesome.
- Woo hoo hoo hoo!
- [Ty] You want a stick?
- Nope.
- [Ty] Okay.
- Yowch!
- Good job, Brian. Good job.
- Here you go Danny, you want a turn?
- Get it, Danny. It's your snake, Danny!
- [Danny] What do you mean, "It's my snake?"
It looks like Brian's snake now!
- [Brian] This is a beautiful snake!
You just have to gain her trust a little bit. See?
- [Ty] Oh, you want this animal for... Gatorland?
- [Brian] Gatorland?
- [Ty] Yeah, you got it.
- [Brian] Nice!
(laughter)
- [Ty] What do you think, Anna?
- Well, that's going to be a great animal
at Gatorland, right Ty?
- Whatever you say.
- I think sometimes people forget how wild animals behave.
So this'll be a good example of that.
- Ctenosaura pectinata,
But these are the bananas,
which are these beautiful yellow colors.
I tell you what, all the spiny tails here are incredible.
Ty, would you say you have the most ctenosauras?
I mean, you've got everything right? You've got everything.
- If it's legal.
- Yeah. You got it. Exactly. Wow.
I mean, and again, they really,
they come in a lot of different
colors, flavors, sizes, stuff like that.
I love the banana.
And then the pieds are absolutely ridiculous too.
And then of course these are actually the pied pectinata
or what they sometimes call the Panda pectinata as well.
And it's just like a piebald spiny tail iguana.
I mean, look at that.
And they can be variable as well.
Sometimes they have super high white,
sometimes they have just a little bit of white.
That is just an absolutely crazy cool animal.
I mean, look at how cool--
that's wild, you know what I mean?
And that's the thing about Iguanaland.
There is a lot of great iguanas, but as you guys can see,
it's not just about the iguanas here.
There is a ton of cool animals.
You guys know that I am all about fiscal responsibility and
being smart with your money. But the truth is,
is that we've all had issues where sometimes we get
over our head with credit cards, stuff like that.
Well, right now there's actually a company
that we've teamed up with called Upstart
that can maybe help you with some of that.
Upstart is actually a company where you can actually pay
your debt off online really quick and simple.
Whether you're paying off your credit card debt,
a personal loan, whatever you happen to be.
Over a half million people have actually used Upstart
to get really good interest rate loans.
And unlike other lenders,
Upstart actually uses AI to get you actually
the best possible loan.
So basically they don't just look at your credit history.
They look at all kinds of stuff like your income,
your employment history, so on like that,
really making sure that they find the right loan for you.
And that just means you can get smarter rates
with better lenders with just a five minute rate check.
You can get your rate upfront
and actually get anywhere from $1,000 to $50,000.
And you can get that loan as quick as one day.
Again, I am all about fiscal responsibility
and if you have high interest rate debt,
Upstart could be a great opportunity
for you to kind of take care of that
and get back in control.
Find out how Upstart can lower your monthly payments today
when you go to upstart.com/brianb
that's upstart.com/brianb
Don't forget to use our URL to let them know we sent you.
- You can actually see the eggs she's laying right now.
You see the eggs?
- [Brian] You can see the eggs right there.
They're so very soft, kind of squishy.
So they have literally just been laid.
She still has some more in there. No?
Or you think she's done?
- [Ty] I don't think so. Yeah. She's not done yet.
- She's not done. Okay.
So, we're going to go ahead and leave this girl alone
'cause we don't want to upset her and have her (whispers)
But that is an amazing experience
to see a Lewisi hybrid actually in the midst of laying.
I mean, that's incredible.
So let's go ahead and back out of here.
Just so we don't mess with this girl too much.
- Now we want to take a step further
and do a lot more education.
- [Brian] Yes.
- That's why I wanted to open this to public.
- [Brian] Yeah, well--
- You know that, I mean, education is very important.
- [Brian] Education leads to conservation.
- Right. Plus it's very unique.
We have a very unique place here
where could do a lot of research.
- [Brian] Yeah.
- Like for instance, if you wanted to research
a rock iguana, I have hundreds here.
- [Brian] Yeah.
- Where if you go to the island,
when you would draw blood for instance,
you got to get cited permit.
- [Brian] Right.
To ship them into the US that take years sometime.
- [Brian] Right.
So they could come here,
do all their blood work and be done in a couple of months
where the heads there take a couple of years.
- Exactly.
We're going to head over to the rock iguana section.
I'm excited about this and it looks amazing by the way,
just seeing it from here.
I know you've been working hard at it.
Oh my goodness. Wow.
This is cool. It's like you're walking into Disney World.
- Yeah. I kind of liked that, but better!
These guys are craftsmen. Right?
- [Brian] They are craftsmen. Oh my Gosh.
Hey guys, how are you?
- This is Brian.
- [Brian] Hi, good to meet you guys. Amazing work.
- This area here has seven cages like this.
- [Brian] So it's going to go all the way down then.
- [Ty] Right, all the way down.
- [Brian] Oh my gosh.
- [Ty] And you'll have seven cyclura species.
- [Brian] Oh, so each species-- oh, that's awesome.
- So it'll be a cyclura center.
- [Brian] Ah yeah, that's awesome.
- And it'll be very unique.
I don't think any zoo would...
Yeah. I don't think there's any zoo
have more than three species.
- [Brian] Wow, and you'll have seven!
- Right. We're actually, I'm pushing for eight
because that's all the species in the US.
- [Brian] That's all. Ah, gotcha.
- Okay. So I'm like--
- [Brian] Which one are you missing now?
- Hundreds of species that's not in the US
are not gonna-- you know,
we're not going to import them.
So basically we can make an iguanas one,
- [Brian] Yeah, okay, Jamaican iguana.
- That's one we need to acquire.
And other than that, we have all the species
that's in the US.
- [Brian] Wow. Wow.
That's amazing. Isn't this cool, Jake?
- [Jake] Dude, unreal.
- [Brian] This is awesome.
Joe is our-- oh my gosh, Joe, that's amazing.
So Joe who works here at Iguanaland,
and what are you going to show me right now?
Right now I'm going to show you our Anegada iguanas.
This is a cyclura pinguis.
This is our little female, one of our two females.
And this is one of our three males.
His name is Gus.
- [Brian] Gus. Nice.
He's, he's got, he's putting up a fuss over there, Gus.
Fussy Gussy.
So you said these are the rarest of the Cyclura
in the country?
- [Joe] I think so, yes. Absolutely.
- In the USA they are.
So there's 13 of them in the whole USA.
- [Brian] Wow.
And this is a program that we're doing with our zoo.
Okay.
So basically...
we have five of the 13,
in our facility
and we have out of those,
we have two females.
Actually, there's only four females
left in the USA right now.
- [Brian] Oh, wow.
- So yeah, this is a very important program for me.
We want to produce as many as possible
and we're going to probably repopulate
a Puerto Rico island that's ready for them.
They used to occur there.
- [Brian] And now they don't?
- They do not.
I think, a thousand years ago
that this species is still there,
but they're extinct from that island.
And our idea is to get the babies
and put them back repopulating.
- [Brian] Have you had any success yet?
We just only had them for four months.
- [Brian] Four months, so they're new.
- So I'm hoping she is pregnant.
It looked like 50/50 chance
that she might lay some fertile eggs.
It's very difficult species to produce.
I think last one they produced was in the USA as a whole,
the zoos have produced one in last ni--
I think nine years ago they produced one.
And before that I think you have to go back 20 years?
- [Brian] Oh my goodness.
So I think that's one reason why they're here.
- [Brian] Because you do so well with cyclura.
Oh my gosh.
They feel so weird. It's so soft!
- This one came at San Diego Zoo.
He was he'd come from San Diego Zoo.
- [Brian] Oh boy, wow.
- And it's been a target trained in everything
so he's very, very friendly.
- [Brian] That is unreal, the color!
- People come in here, they hear that,
come, come approach you and stuff.
- [Brian] That is amazing.
I mean, it is so different than the Lewisi or iguanas.
- [Joe] It's like suede, right?
- So this is actually the cyclura ricordii.
Very rare rock iguanas. I mean, unbelievable.
This is, this is amazing, Ty, that you even have these,
that is incredible.
This is the boy?
- [Ty] That's a male and that's the female right there.
- [Brian] She's full of eggs.
You can see. Oh my goodness gracious.
Of course, he's not very happy.
He's like "Leave my girl alone! Stay away!"
- [Ty] He's protective.
- He's protecting, it's okay little one.
I promise I'm not going to do anything.
But the amazing thing is, is look at this enclosure here.
This, believe it or not, is cement.
I mean, everything in here is cement.
It looks like a log. I mean, obviously this isn't cement,
but the rest and then the painting in here
is absolutely wonderful.
- [Ty] That's actually painted, hand-painted.
- Hand-painted. Unbelievable.
This is attention to detail
Like you can't believe and no wonder why the ricordii
are doing so well in here,
because this is absolutely beautiful, Ty, wow.
That's incredible. And you're going to have eggs soon.
That's impressive. That's impressive.
Take a look at the size of this Lewisi hybrid right here.
Of course, this is just like my girl Tayana
but this of course is a boy.
So they get that beautiful blue in them
and are absolutely incredible and get much larger as well.
I mean, this is an absolute beast.
That's like a little prehistoric dinosaur.
I mean, this thing is ridiculous, Ty.
And this is your pet, huh?
- Yeah.
- Oh my gosh.
How long have you had him?
- [Ty] I had him about 12 years.
- [Brian] 12 years, oh gosh.
Like, he's still got a long way to go though, too.
- Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
But he's, probably about 16 now.
- And you have some even more blue ones
that are just ridiculous.
- Yeah. I do. I do have them.
I mean, every year I try to give back the bluest ones
and then produce from them.
What I want to do with this species is
these are hybrids, right?
And I think they make great pets
if you take care of them right.
And they live six years, I mean, 56 years.
So he is perfect pet in my opinion.
- [Brian] I agree with you.
- But having said that,
what that have to do with conservation?
Well, first of all, you had these animals available readily.
They're not going to be taken out of the wild, right?
- So that reason is part of conservation.
And more than that, I just want people
to get to know this species, right?
And unless you know that animal, you're not going to try to,
you know, protect them and stuff. It's very important.
- People protect what they love.
- Exactly my point.
- This is Donkey Kong. It is a rhino iguana.
He is a 25 years old, about 25 years old.
Ty's had him for about 15 years.
He is, he's just a big sweetheart.
- Oh my gosh. Yeah.
And what you guys may not know, do you know,
we have Diddy and Dixie.
Well, Donkey Kong is actually the lineage
of Diddy and Dixie.
So this is an old patriarch of that entire line.
So just think one day Diddy is going to get this size.
(shouting)
That is so--
Okay. What was that?
- [Joe] That's probably next door. He's not as friendly.
- So can you imagine that one day they're going to,
it's going to be big.
I mean, that is the cutest thing in the world
and just absolutely amazing.
And it's just cool to see where Diddy and Dixie's line
actually came from.
Of course, Donkey Kong.
- Again, definitely having a really great time here.
Of course, the Florida rain hits every day.
That's just the way it goes.
So we've got a little bit of wet,
but now we're back to beautiful day here.
And I tell you it's so inspiring.
And just look at these amazing animals, sail-thin dragons.
I mean, just everything is so cool
and I can really see his vision,
you know, the place isn't done yet.
You know, it's got a ways to go, but I can see his vision.
I understand his vision.
And I really appreciate that vision for sure,
because it's pretty, absolutely amazing
when this place is completely gone.
It's going to be ridiculous. I mean,
it's going to be (unintelligible) again.
I don't know any other zoo in the world that is going to be
this many acres of actual reptile.
So I think this is the largest reptile zoo
in the entire world.
Here comes that Florida rain again, but that's okay.
Cause I'm having a great time.
Yeah.
Got some little baby and green iguanas
that are a hundred percent (unintelligible)
We got a little marginated tortoise
and a red-foot tortoise that just camped out too.
Absolutely cool, I mean, that's awesome
to be here for eggs and babies.
That's so cool.
Take a look guys.
This is an Aldabra tortoise. What an absolute sweetheart,
just like my girl Matilda, but a little bit bigger for sure.
But unbelievable.
I tell you what, this place is absolutely incredible.
Again, I believe they're trying to open September 28th.
So if you guys are down in the Punta Gorda area,
anywhere in Florida, anywhere,
even in the Southeast part of the country,
I would definitely try to make it over to Iguanaland
cause this place is incredible.
If you enjoyed this video, do me a favor.
Right over here there's a playlist
of some of the travel adventure stuff
that I've done on this side.
Do me a favor and hit that subscription button.
It would mean the world to meet me,
mean the world for her too.
Have an absolutely wonderful day Reptile Army.
Remember, be kind to someone, and I promise
I'll see you in the next one.