- This is Lucy and she is a 20 foot, two inch snake
that's coming up to say hi to me right now.
And we're gonna be feeding
the largest snakes in the world today, right Lucy?
And reticulated pythons like my girl Gemma here
are actually the largest snake in the world.
When it comes to lengthwise, they can get up to 25 feet,
sometimes a little bit bigger, absolutely giants.
Now, oftentimes people think that anacondas
are the largest snake in the world,
but the truth is a giant Anaconda
is typically 16, 17, 18 foot.
I think a record is about 20 foot.
Whereas these guys can literally get five feet longer
than that, at least.
So they're certainly the longest snake in the world
and really the largest make in the world
in the sense that even if an Anaconda
is 300 pounds at 18 foot,
these guys may be 300 pounds at 25 foot, right?
So they're certainly
some of the largest snakes in the world,
and we're gonna be feeding some of them today.
So what do you say we just go ahead
and feed these giant snakes.
Oh, whoa.
She got out of nowhere there.
She went from like, I wasn't sure I want to eat,
to all of a sudden, wham.
That's the thing that's amazing about her.
And I always loved like just sitting down
next to a 20 foot snake as she's starting to eat,
'cause I think it's really amazing.
And I want to throw a few facts at you guys,
because you may ask like, you know,
how do you feed big snakes?
Like first off,
when a snake is young, like a young reticulated Python,
they're gonna feed more often.
Typically, you know, decent sized meals.
Their metabolism's gonna be really fast, right?
As they get older, their metabolism does slow down.
So it really depends on how much you want to feed, right?
We do feed Lucy about every seven to 10 days
and we gave her two rabbits.
They're about four pounds a piece.
So she gets about eight pounds of food
every seven to 10 days.
Now, if I were gonna feed her
say a 20 or 25 pound meal,
it's gonna take her a lot longer to metabolize
because again, as snakes get larger,
their metabolism slows down.
So it might take, 20 or 25 pounds of food might take her
two, two and a half weeks to actually digest.
And so I wouldn't feed her per se,
maybe every three weeks or something like that.
So you can kind of manipulate
how you want to feed your big snakes, right?
You can either feed them more often smaller meals
or you can feed them big meals less frequently.
Of course we do that with Ivy the Anaconda.
Now the differences is is that Lucy
will typically only eat rabbits.
So she's not gonna eat giant food.
Every time we've tried to offer a turkey or pig
or anything like that, she's always refused.
So she only really eats rabbits.
And of course, it's really hard to find rabbit
that over five or six pounds.
I mean, certainly Flemish giants are that way,
but we can't find them froze and thawed to feed her, right?
So basically it's just a matter of feeding her
every seven to 10 days, about eight pounds of food,
which again, equates to, you know,
under 10% of her actual body weight,
which is a perfect amount of food for her.
And she'll metabolize that in about four or five days,
where you can't even see a lump whatsoever.
And she usually goes to the bathroom within a week or so,
and then we'll feed her again.
But she is truly an amazing animal
and certainly a giant snake.
I've said this a million times,
but I think it's absolutely incredible that a snake
can get this large.
And again, she's not a giant, giant retic,
she's a big retic, but they can get much larger than this.
If she ate 20, 25 pound meals, she would get bigger,
but you actually don't want
your retics to be too fat, right?
If you feed them so much
to where she's twice the girth of this,
you're gonna reduce the actual lifespan
of the actual animal itself, right?
So what we want this animal to do is be lean and mean
like she would kind of in the wild,
and she's gonna live literally, you know, 30, 35, 40 years.
And that's when she's gonna get the real growth, right?
It's the next figure, 25 years of growth.
She's gonna continue to grow,
now maybe only two or three or four inches a year,
but she's gonna grow and she's also gonna girth up
during that period of time.
So right now at a 13, 14 year old animal
she's kind of perfect size, perfect weight,
and we want to keep her that way, and she is truly amazing.
So let me set the stage with Gemma here.
I've had her for about four and a half months.
And when I got her,
she was actually full of food
because she did a gigantic turd right after I got her.
And then ever since she hasn't eaten.
So she hasn't eaten in about four and a half months.
During that period of time,
of course I saw some follicle growth.
We actually ultrasounded her and she had big old follicles.
We thought she ovulated,
we thought she went through a pre-ovulation shed,
a post-ovulated shed, which would be a prelate shed.
Then of course,
she went through another shed telling me
that there was a good chance she reabsorbed eggs.
My hope is, is that she goes on to food.
Typically what happens when you're reabsorbing eggs,
pretty shortly after that shed
they'll actually start eating again.
And that's really good,
'cause we want to get her back onto food
after four and a half months.
So this is the first time I've offered her food
since she actually came out of shed.
So I have no idea what's gonna happen.
We're gonna give it a shot right now.
Gemma, you interested, you interested, girl?
Come on, you want some food?
I'm not seeing any interest at all from her.
I'm gonna just kind of continue to try
to just touch her a little bit.
See if there's any way I can tease-feed her,
see if there's anything I can do to get her to eat.
I'm a little bit bummed out that she's not feeding,
but you know what?
There's nothing I can do about that
but continue to offer her food.
Like every week we'll try to offer food,
and eventually she's gonna go on back onto food, you know?
She looks completely healthy,
it's just that reproductive system, right?
She's probably still in a reabsorption phase
where she's still kind of sucking her follicles up.
So Gemma has given me some nightmares.
There's no doubt about it, but hey,
we've got some other big snakes to feed.
Of course, we always have the fun little Butterscotch there
who looks like she's definitely ready
for some food for sure.
So let's go ahead and see if she wants to take a rabbit.
Come on. Whoa!
I tell you what, she is high energy.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
What are you doing, girl?
Oh, there, she just grabbed.
Oh, man, she is such an amazing animal.
Never gets old, I tell you what, man.
It's just crazy. My heart gets pumping.
It's just exciting. I mean, what an amazing animal.
I tell you what,
she's about five years old now and she's about, you know,
maybe 12, 13 foot, she's growing like crazy.
There's no doubt about it,
but I love this enclosure,
just 'cause we can get that kind of really cool experience
every single time she eats up.
Wow, what a cool animal.
Daisy's actually up next,
and she's usually a pretty good animal
to be totally honest with you.
But sometimes she can be a little bit crazy
when it comes to feeding.
Come on girl.
So Daisy is actually Lucy's sister,
for those of you guys that don't know.
And obviously they're very different snakes.
She's only 18 foot, whereas Lucy's 20 foot.
Lucy obviously has a crazy disposition.
Daisy's actually pretty good.
She's just starting to look like
she's starting to go into shed, just a little bit opaque.
And it certainly doesn't look
like she has any interest at all.
So when it comes to the big snake,
the largest snakes of the world feeding today,
we kind of struck out to be honest with you,
we certainly had a great Butterscotch feeding.
And Lucy's always great.
We'll feed her a second rabbit here
when she's done with the first rabbit,
but it's always a trip when you're feeding snakes,
you never know what's gonna happen.
Normally everything's gonna be eaten,
but obviously Daisy is going into shed.
Gemma doesn't seem to want to eat
because of reproductive issues.
Hey, we at least fed
some of the largest snakes in the world today.
(groovy music)
Now we're actually not feeding
all of our giant snakes today,
because we're opening up the reptarium later on,
and we don't want to feed and then handle animals.
You always want to give your animals at least a day
in between feeding and actually handling.
So there are other giant snakes like Sunrise
that will be out a lot tonight, so she's not getting fed.
And Burmese pythons are certainly
one of those giant snakes as well, too, right?
They're not gonna get 25 foot,
but they'll definitely get 18 foot
and up to a couple hundred pounds,
in a rare occasion they might hit 20 foot.
But the truth is is that they are still considered
one of the giant snakes.
But again, today we're only feeding the giant, giant sakes,
which are the reticulated pythons.
And speaking of handling, you know,
it's very important for us to be able to handle
these giant snakes.
That's how we take them out every time that we're open
at the reptarium.
And of course Perdida is the prime example
of being unbelievably handable.
And I know a lot of people ask like,
why is it that some snakes are so amazing?
It's a lot of times about socialization
and desensitization, right?
So basically the more you handle your animal,
the more they're gonna be desensitized to being handled.
That's why you can do anything.
You can touch Perdida's head,
you can touch her anywhere.
You can touch her tail and stuff like that.
So it's a lot of work, you know,
just hours and hours of repetition, of holding.
And of course, once we're open to the public
and we actually have animals like Perdida out,
you guys are doing a lot of the work, right?
Because you're coming here and you're holding her.
So literally dozens and dozens of people at night
are actually holding her,
which is basically keeping her more and more docile.
Now, when it comes to Daisy and Lucy,
they weren't really here obviously for the reptarium,
so they weren't handled like the same way
a lot of our snakes are now.
So they weren't as socialized and habituated.
Now Daisy is an amazing Amba,
but see how she'll buck me like this?
She doesn't really like to be handled,
which is kind of a bummer.
'Cause even though she's super docile,
she's not a really good snake
when it comes to coming out of the cage, right?
So, and we all know Lucy has quite the attitude.
Daisy is absolutely beautiful,
but certainly now the giants that we work with
actually are habituated right from the start.
And I can't believe how big Neo is getting, but again,
a reticulated python.
Now the genes that actually are in this are locality,
like, you know, Motley, golden child, pie.
And they really don't get those 25 foot lengths.
And that's one of the things
that you guys have to understand
about with the giant snakes,
is not every giant snake is gonna get 25 foot, you know,
particular areas like mainland Indonesia and the Philippines
typically get really, really large.
But then when you get into insular islands
where a lot of the mutations are actually found,
they actually stay much smaller.
You know, again, golden childs,
typically, maybe 14, 15 foot at the most.
Motleys don't really get much bigger than 14 or 15 foot,
but she's still gonna be a sizeable snake.
And the fact is is that every single day
we handle this girl because it's very important
to keep her super social and actually habituated
to where, when we bring her over to the reptarium,
which will actually be pretty soon,
that she's an amazing animal, much like Perdida.
Again, when Perdida was this size,
she wasn't at the reptarium yet
'cause the reptarium wasn't open,
but she was being handled just like we handle Neo.
And then eventually when we opened up
the reptarium like I had mentioned,
you guys do all the handling
on top of the things that we always do,
and it keeps them absolutely wonderful.
So the fact is, is that obviously our older snakes,
like Lucy and Daisy and some of the other animals
that are around before the reptarium,
aren't gonna be nearly as handleable when it comes to the
big snakes as obviously the Sunrises, the Perdidas.
And of course the Neos here in the future.
Lucy is obviously just finishing up a rabbit,
but of course, she's gonna have to push that down.
You can see it's right in her neck right now.
And when you're offering a second meal,
you want that rabbit
to be all the way down in her belly, right?
So she's gonna undulate, pushing that animal down.
It's still gonna probably take her
another two or three minutes
to get the animal all the way pushed down,
just by snaking or undulating those muscles
to push into the stomach cavity.
So you never want to offer them food
until that's all the way down,
because obviously she's gonna have that
stuck in her throat and then you're gonna have two rabbits,
it's not a big deal,
but it's definitely something that you want to do
when you're feeding an animal two meals in a row,
is make sure the first meal is all the way down
into the stomach before you offer the second one.
And if we're talking about giant snakes,
obviously one day this is gonna be a giant snake.
Of course, a patternless rock python.
We also have the hat patternless rock python
that has the normal wild-type pattern.
I love this animal, and rock pythons are that giant animal.
I mean, they'll get as large as a Burmese 18 foot,
you know, really heavy body,
the biggest snake on the continent of Africa.
Absolutely wonderful, and these guys are getting so big.
I cannot believe every time I look at them
it seems like they've like doubled their size
or something like that.
They won't be long before these guys
will be over at the reptarium,
'cause we definitely want to handle rock pythons.
They typically have kind of a little bit of an attitude,
much more than Burmese and reticulated Pythons.
And a lot of that has to do with probably that F1, F2
out of the wild situation, right?
The longer out of the wild,
the more domesticated animals are.
Rock pythons haven't been bred
nearly as much as Burmese pythons or reticulated pythons.
And although this is a recessive pattern mutation,
it's still probably only F2 out of the wild.
So these guys can get a little bit tricky, and trust me,
they have gigantic teeth when they get bigger.
So we want these guys to be super docile,
so they need to get over the reptarium pretty quick
so we can start handling them every single day
with you guys so that they stay absolutely mellow.
Looks like Lucy is ready for rabbit number two.
Come on, girl. You want another one?
There you go, sweetheart.
It's always amazing.
There it is, feeding the biggest snakes in the world,
the reticulated Python,
and I feel so absolutely blessed to be able to work
with such amazing, majestic animals
like the reticulated Python.
I hope that you enjoyed this video.
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Have an absolutely wonderful day, reptile army.
Remember, be kind to somebody,
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