- [Steve] It's not friendly.
(upbeat techno music)
- I tell you what guys,
I am over the top excited today.
Of course this is Bubba, the Yate leachie
at Steve's place, at Leapin' Leachies.
I've been following him on Instagram forever,
has some of the most amazing animals, really!
What I think is the best collection of leachies
in the world, in particular localities,
so today we're gonna have some really good times.
Look at that amazing animal list,
he has so much cool stuff and we're gonna learn
a lot because I'll be honest with you,
I don't know all that much about this stuff.
So we're gonna have a good time
and see some of the most giant geckos on the planet.
I'm here with the man, the legend, Steve.
First off, thank you so much for having me.
This place is ridiculous. - Thanks.
- I thought it was gonna be awesome,
it's like times 10 awesome, so this is amazing.
- (laughing)
Thanks, appreciate it.
- So, of course you guys met Bubba here.
Tell me a little bit about Bubba.
We're about to get educated on leachies.
- Bubba's a Yate locale GT Leachianus.
They're kinda known for their bulk and size,
and they come from the Yate region.
- When you say "GT", can you explain
what you mean by that?
- Sure! GT is Grand Terre, it's the main island
of New Caledonia.
- Okay, and that's where these guys are found?
- Yep.
- And obviously being the biggest kind of one,
talked a little bit about
size compared to weight.
- They're one of the most bulky of the leachies.
Some can get to a really long size,
but they definitely put on a lot of bulk too.
- Definitely gonna be adding some of these
from Steve's collection on to our place,
because I mean, come on,
who doesn't want a Bubba, right?
But again, we're gonna learn about a bunch
of different localities and I'm gonna
be honest with you,
we're gonna be learning together
because I know virtually nothing
about these other than they're absolutely awesome.
- These are Mt. Koghis Leachianus, also a GT form.
This is the original pair that Michael Treoger owned.
This is a melanistic version and a non-melanistic version.
- When you say melanistic is that a polygenically bred thing
or is it something that's recessive, or is it--
- So far we see it's simple recessive.
Yeah. - Simple recessive, okay.
- The difference is you can see that
they're melanistic when they hatch,
they hatch black.
- Oh, they hatch black.
Talked earlier about this just kind of
being a hobby that kind of goes crazy.
I know that happens with a lot of people, right?
I mean, so you started keep-- - Yeah, absolutely.
- Keeping some leachies and then what
was the next step to this, you know?
- Well, it was just like an obsession.
I had to have every form, and once I did...
Then of course you start producing babies
and, oh I can't let that one go,
I can't let that one go, you end up with a million.
- This was one of the babies from the pair
that you just showed, right?
- Correct, yeah, and this one hatched out black.
He's not quite fired up, he does get really dark
at night with the yellow of course which is a nice contrast.
- One of the things I'm already noticing
is the fact that the body structure of these animals
can be so differently, this is much longer
and more slender looking, whereas obviously
Bubba is much more robust, it's interesting.
So what do we have here?
- So this is Poindimié, my friend Charlie's gecko
that he bought from me a long time ago
and gave me back for breeding purposes.
They get real jet black and real long and lean.
- For people that are thinking maybe
that they want these giant geckos
because they really are cool, I mean
what's the advice, is there entry level geckos?
- Absolutely, you know, everybody sees the big ones
and go oh my god, I have to have that large gecko,
and the prices on the large ones are much higher.
You can get a perfectly fine giant gecko
for a very inexpensive price,
it doesn't necessarily have to be the giant form.
It's still going to impress your friends,
it's still going to be a big giant gecko.
- You know, these aren't unobtainable
if you want to get into a pet and kind of
work your way up to the more interesting lines.
Steve works with the entry level
all the way up to the most rare stuff,
so these guys are incredible.
Oh my gosh, that thing is ridiculous!
What exact locality is this one?
- So this is Green Poindimié,
this was a pair that I was given
with the name Poindimié that was green
so I just kept--
- So this is the same locality as the other one--
- Correct.
- Just this is a green version.
- It's said to be, said to be.
- Holy cow.
And as you were takin this one out
I couldn't help but to notice a little vocalization.
That's one of the things that's amazing about these, right?
- Some of the big GT forms are not the friendliest forms.
- Okay, gotcha.
- Especially in the cage, they can be very territorial.
- But when you get it out you can see
it's actually a puppy dog thing, but that noise!
I mean that is crazy to hear a gecko make that sound.
That is amazing. - I'm sure we'll get
to hear some of that in the videos.
- Well good, beautiful.
And once again it's pretty amazing, Steve,
just the kind of variety that these guys have.
Is that all based on locality or is it gene pool as well?
- [Steve] It's of course different localities.
This is Goro.
- So what is the size differences from these localities?
- GT localities have potential, of course,
to be the largest.
- So all the GTs.
- All the GTs.
Some are large than others, some are bulkier than others,
and again diet has a lot to do with that.
If you overfeed one of course you can get
any of these guys pretty heavy.
If you feed them lots of fattening foods
they will bulk up and of course have weight.
To me, I like a real nice, you know,
nicely built long gecko.
- I know you said that insects might
make a slightly longer gecko that isn't as bulky?
- It seems, with my experience that animals
that have been fed lots of insects
do gain a lot of length in the early years of growth.
Insect protein going in makes them grow a lot quicker.
The Goro locale is a darker form with the bands
on the side and a lot of them have the stripes
on the back, not all.
Of course it's easy to see in babies.
- Once again guys, these things are ridiculous!
I mean they literally don't even seem real, dude.
I mean like this can't really be on our planet.
- Yeah, there it is.
- This stuff's from the dinosaur era.
So which locality is this?
- This is Mt. Humboldt, another Grande Terre form.
Humboldts are pretty similar form to Yate, I guess.
Some of the animals, most of the females
have bars on the side as they grow,
they seem to fade over time.
So you can kind of see the vanishing bars
that's sort of still there and as the animal
gets older and older it kind of closes up
and just becomes a dot or a small bar.
- We talk about GT which is the main island.
- Yep, Grande Terra.
- Grande Terra, and then there's leachies
from other islands though, as well.
- Absolutely, so Grande Terra is the big elongated island
and then towards the Southeast would be Pine Island
which is a good size island, and then there are all
these other little satellite islands which
is where all the other insular forms come from.
- Okay, so some of the localities
can still come from GT...
- Correct, yep, Grande Terra--
- And then there's other island localities as well.
- Correct, so Grande Terra of course
you hear Yate, it's down near the bottom.
Poindimié is up near the center East coast.
Mt. Koghis, Mt. Dore are down near the bottom also,
one of the Southern blotched areas.
- Now has there been any recent expeditions there?
I know they haven't been collecting them, but.
- There are a lot of people that still go.
I went once with Frank and we had a hard time
finding any, it can be very challenging,
the trees are very big.
There are some people that are extremely lucky,
it also depends on when you go.
If you go in the right season you're going
to see animals, if you go in the wrong season,
they're gone.
- I've flown over New Caledonia,
that's a long trip to go and not find anything.
- Yeah it was, you know.
But we got to see the country, it was beautiful.
Beautiful country, surreal country.
We got to see a lot of cool stuff
and it was a great time with a good friend.
- Hoo doggy, this is one beautiful lizard.
Oh my gosh, so this is again a mainland?
- Yes, this is another Grande Terra locale,
this is Mt. Dore which is known kind of
for the real crisp bars.
I would say as far as Type B is concerned,
which is a name that was given
to try to group them, I would say this is
a good example of a Southern blotched form.
- Let's back up a second.
Type B, I heard you say Type C a little earlier.
- So at one point they were named with the types.
Philippe came up with a way to try to group them,
I guess kind of like dog breeds.
So he had named the Type As which were
the long lean animals that were mostly patternless,
Type Bs being animals that had lots of pattern
that were kind of shorter forms,
and the Type C was of course supposed
to be the real long form that had very heavy pattern.
- [Brian] Interesting.
- These are Pine Island Leachianus,
it's the largest insular form.
Males have very bulky broad heads
and of course they have real vivid bright bars.
Very clean bars, typically, not a lot of peppering.
- [Brian] Obviously all the leachies have
this kind of weird tail where it almost
looks like it's regened--
- Absolutely, yeah yeah.
- [Brian] But this one actually is a regen.
- This is what a regen would look like, yep.
It just takes away all the pattern on it.
They all have that fold that makes them look
like it's a spot where they dropped the tail
and it regrew but that's just there.
- You were mentioning the field collecting
of these were really kind of mid-90s era--
- Correct, yeah, mostly yeah.
- And you would actually have a pair
that's from the field?
- Yes, these are a pair of field collected
Moro collected by Frank Fast.
Moro animals, they're kind of known for having
these dark black lines with also
the heavily articulated iris, and if you look
at the nose from this angle it's very square.
- [Brian] Oh, okay.
- So you can see a very square nose.
- [Brian] This is actually
a captive one from the same locality?
- Correct, yep.
- [Brian] Okay, so I kind of get the difference.
What am I looking for as far as differences
that you'll see between the field collected
and captives, mainly?
- Field collected animals have a tendency to be darker.
This one's pretty light with a lot of color and pattern,
but usually they're a little bit darker.
It seems that the F1 generation
shows a lot more color and pattern.
- [Brian] And then now most of these will all
come in with regen tails, too?
- A lot of them do.
In the wild, god, they beat each other up,
so you can see even both of these
have regenerated tails.
Males are just fighting over females,
fighting over territory,
they're just brutal with each other.
- And that brings up a good question,
you guys, how do you keep these, in pairs?
Or how do you keep them?
- Yeah, mostly in pairs as long as they get along.
If they start to argue and you see
scars or bites you separate them out
and try again later or try a different pairing.
Sometimes they can get along for a long time
and then the next thing you know
they're just going at it.
He forgot to take out the garbage or something
and that's it, it's over.
(both laughing)
- [Brian] Now are these adults, here?
- These are adults, yep, mhm.
- Okay, so what's happening is,
the GTs are usually bigger?
- Much bigger, yeah, of course.
- And then the more insular islands
become smaller and smaller. - Are smaller.
- [Brian] So which ones are these?
- These are Bayonnaise.
Bayonnaise is known for having some nice pink blotching.
- And what's the typical, I mean what's
the longevity of a leachie, typically?
- Well there are some animals thought to be
in their forties, late forties.
Someone in Germany said they think they can hit the fifties,
there's some people there of course
who collected way before any of us so they
would have a little bit more experience about that
but for sure way over 30.
I've got animals that are over 30 that are producing.
- Oh my gosh, that's amazing.
I'm here with my good friends Ben and Ryan
from R&B Reptiles, they really helped me out
with this whole journey here between Steve
and everything with the animals with the collabs
I'm doing, so thank you guys, but I am excited
to tell you that if you guys are into
Blue Tongue Skinks like I certainly am,
that these guys have some really amazing
Blue Tongue Skinks and the reason I'm telling
you that is because you may have an opportunity
to get one of 'em.
Tell me what you guys are doing.
- So we're just trying to get some people
to know who we are and stuff and we like
Blue Tongue Skinks and we think that people
really would enjoy them as a pet.
We feel like they're almost like
that puppy dog of the lizard world
and they're kind of easy to maintain
and take care of so we wanted to share
our passion with them by giving one away.
So here's an Eastern Blue Tongue Skink,
we're going to be giving this little
guy or girl away, and so if you would like
to participate in that here's an opportunity
to get into it for free.
All you'll have to do is go to our page
and you'll have to subscribe to our channel
as well as comment in the comments below
and we're going to draw from people that comment.
- You're going to go over to their page,
I'm going to have a link in the description.
Go ahead, subscribe to them, do a comment.
They're going to use a random comment generator
so you guys can win and on May first
they're going to be doing that drawing
and you could potentially win this
absolutely beautiful skink.
Oh, and by the way they're going to have
some other giveaways here in another few weeks after that
so definitely go show those guys some love.
- These are Brosse locality which originally
were known as the striped neck locality.
This is a field collected and you can see
how they earned that name, 'cause the band
is kind of at a diagonal.
- When it comes to colors like this,
I mean you're doing a lot of selective
breeding for certain things?
- To a certain extent, yeah.
I'll take sometimes something with a lot of color
and something with a lot of pattern
and put them together and hope to get
something with a lot of color and pattern.
- [Brian] Yeah, well you're doing a good job.
- Thank you.
- We're on locality, I don't know, eight or nine,
something like that now, and the reason I really
really appreciate the fact that Steve
was allowing us to come and do this
is that I've never really seen much on the localities
of these so I figured that we'd come
to the person that probably knows more than
anyone that's working with these guys
and actually see 'em, so I hope that
you guys are enjoying and appreciate
the fact that he's opened this up to us.
So, thank you for that.
- Oh, you're very welcome.
- Now what do we have here?
- These are Nuu Ana locality and this
is a field collected female, it's kind of the standard
look on a Nuu Ana, of course short and stumpy,
short snout, nice coloration on it.
And this is one that's bred for color.
Of course, because it's a pink Nuu Ana.
This is an F2.
- [Brian] F2 only?
- Yeah, two unrelated F1s that showed a lot
of color and pattern and I put 'em together,
and there it is.
- [Brian] Wow, that was a good choice.
- Yeah, thanks.
- Getting down to the last couple localities here,
now which ones are these?
- These are Nuu Ami which were named by
Philippe and Frank as the Mossy Leachianus.
Blotches kind of blend into the background
and gives them kind of a mossy appearance.
A lot of the older animals will have
yellow and black polka dots.
These are Caanawa.
- Gosh, they're unbelievable!
And they do actually have that
purplish tinge to them, right?
- Absolutely, yeah the Caanawa to me are
the ones that truly show purple in a pure locality.
And you can see the fired up and fired down,
right there.
- [Brian] So which one would be considered fired up?
- This is fired up.
- [Brian] That's fired up, that's fired down, all right.
- These are Duu Ana, they're known, of course,
at one point, Philippe had claimed maybe they eat crabs
on the island because there were very few
fruit trees, definitely thought to possibly
be extinct in the wild, also.
- [Brian] Oh, so these ones are thought to be extinct.
- Possibly, yeah, hard to say.
I don't know if anybody's gone back
to see if they're still there or not.
- [Brian] Oh my gosh, that's crazy.
- And this one here had one of it's legs
amputated way back when and she still produces sometimes.
It's definitely a locale that we're trying to save
in captivity but they haven't been
awfully prolific, they've been difficult.
- Well that's an absolutely great way
to kind of end, I mean, I tell you what,
I'm going to absorb so much of this.
I'll be watching this video probably ten times
'cause I want to hear what he has to say
about all these things, it's pretty amazing.
Again very seldom am I kind of in awe,
and today I'm in awe.
Not only of your knowledge and your localities
but your entire setup is unbelievable.
As always guys I'll put the links
in all the descriptions, go show him some love,
follow him, tell him I sent you and stuff like that.
Steve, thank you so much, dude.
- No problem, thank you.
- This was absolutely amazing and as for now, guys,
I'm just going to end the vlog because
I need to absorb this, all right?
Have a wonderful day, I love you guys.
Be kind to someone.
I'll see you tomorrow.
(gentle music)