Episode #1088: West African Sawscale vipers & Horned Adders

Keeping venomous reptiles is a relentless hobby that requires proper training and a lot of experience. A simple mistake can be the difference between life and death. Remember that the most poisonous snake in the world is the one that just bit you. There are no venomous snakes with training wheels just for the sake of it. If you see that the viper keeper handles snakes in a certain way, it doesn't mean you should try it too. Here are my very beautiful but very dangerous North African Sawale

vipers

, also known as echus osus, they are brothers, unfortunately, you know, I didn't get any females.

From the small lit litter I had, you can see that he is a male due to the sturdiness of his rear end. You see from here that she is fat and the females, the tail would taper abruptly into a really thin structure. The reason he's fat is because he keeps his trash there. These guys, even though you know, they were raised, they are very, very shy. He heads to the log because we, of course, went in and no, he doesn't head. For the L, maybe he'll go out and see if there's something to eat, yes, well, he probably smells the rats we have or the mice.

Well, hello, yes, I have, I have food, but they are big mice and from the look of your scales, I don't need big mice, okay, like this. Don't bite each other because there is a mouse smell in the air and everyone is moving for cover and you can see it's a male. You can look at that tail, it almost goes backwards, so that was the eoos elatus and You know, I put them in the cage so we could see them and visit them because they used to live in the tuh next to each other. I thought they were siblings and they wouldn't breed and we could put them in the cage together and we could enjoy watching them because they are really beautiful, with serrated scales, but they stay hidden all the time, they are very, very shy, even when you meet Lori and I , and you know they know I bring treats, but they're just, you know, very shy. with me, however, our friend the Egyptian kale sace knows that I bring treats and I'm here with treats and uh uh this uh I don't know if it's the male or the female, but before he ran to the front because he saw me for the first time, today It's Saturday and usually everyone eats and, you know, I came here and I was begging and running against the glass and then of course it ended with a strike right now.

I just finished with a strike, uh, because it doesn't mean, I'm not going to cross the glass just to please you again and make you feel like you're starving me, but they'll feed a little later, when I. We have food of the right size here, we have cordalis or South African horn. These are very variable in their appearance. You can search it on Google and you can see what they are made depending on the region. they're from South Africa, the location, um, they'll have different colors and patterns and things, well, you missed, there you go, and it's the minimum amount of shake and bake there, uh, horn viper venom is basically cytotoxic and hemotoxic Certainly, it would be a very bad experience to be bitten by one, but probably not life-threatening with supportive medical care, you could lose a piece of your finger or whatever was bitten, but Venom, you know. coagulopathy would have to be treated, you know, maybe with blood products or something, but it's kind of like doctors have to get over it because there's no specific antidote.

I know you know the South African polyvalent has been tested many times and I don't think there is any real study that I can refer to where they have been used in a clinical setting and I don't even know of an inv vitro or laboratory study where they have been used. have used. I used South African polyvalent in a trial where it is mixed with Venom and they can determine, you know, the neutralizing ability of the antien. So, this is done all the time, you know, with a lot of snakes. I see it being done. In fact, when I first imported bidis parviocula into the country in the mid-2000s, I worked with my friend Doug Hodel and Dr.

Ela Sánchez at the Natural Toxins Resource Center. I extracted poison from one or two of the bidests. part bacula actually probably only one because the yield of the venom was quite high and they only needed a small amount, but they actually did trials comparing the South African polyvalent with puff and parvula venom and found that in the South African polyvalent Be polyspecific for parve Oculus , so if a zookeeper or a private individual was bitten by a parula and I know at least one person who was bitten by a parula, they use South African polyvalent and it worked quite effectively. um so these trials can be done uh it's just that the horn bites really aren't many and usually it's the private Guardians that you know are wrong like you know we're all human and you know you can make a mistake legitimately and they bite you or you can be an idiot and you know, try to handle things freely uh and then if you get bitten, uh you know, okay, it's up to you, don't blame the animal, the animal was just being the animal and you already know.

One of my long-time favorite sayings is that you can take the animal out of the jungle but you can't take the jungle out of the animal. This is very true, so they will always have some wild characteristics, um, you know, and especially snakes, you know. They haven't been kept in captivity for hundreds of years, like other quote-unquote domesticated animals, but look how many people are mauled, bitten, and killed even by dogs that have been domesticated for, you know, hundreds and maybe thousands of years, like that. that there's always a The wild part is still there waiting to be activated and you know, and that's the way you have to work with these animals and, um, you know, the bison and the national parks are racking up dumb leftist butts. right and sideways um they have to get a selfie with a bison and they paid the price sometimes it's a serious price uh it's certainly not worth it to me uh you just know I'll take a step back and appreciate the animal for what it is and I won't risk my life for something stupid like a selfie.

It was certainly nice of her to turn to the camera like that, yeah, yeah, she's pretty cooperative. The little boy is right under the lip, near the door, so we're not going to get much video of him. I think, uh, he. he just falls apart so uh uh maybe he's hungry because he hasn't been fed for a while and actually you know he's more like a dog uh um if he's in the back of the cage at The Hot Spot uh and I tap in the front R of the cage and he smells food, he actually inches or sometimes sleeps forward, uh um, so he usually feeds pretty well, but last week he didn't and I must have missed his feeding cycle. shed, um, I did it.

I didn't catch it when it was dull but it didn't eat and I said well, okay, no problem, it's got a lot of weight, it might go for a week although I have snakes here that, you know, are a little worried about the green. Rocket and big blue girl uh they've been eating since November uh I haven't raised them this year um but that doesn't stop green rocket um we're going to make a video uh um showing some comparisons between their babies and and Big Blue's babies, which were eggs , they were fertilized naturally instead of the green rocket, basically, she basically cloned herself, so let's move on, since that's over, we have to give it some water and we'll go visit the mail now. and watching what he's doing is usually like he has his head up above the glass.

I'm sure he knows something because you know the substrate on the glass certainly makes a lot of noise and vibration and stuff, okay, we're. approaching, oh, that didn't take long, okay, so it's a strike on the release. I told them it wouldn't be a great video for him because we have other things to do, we're not going to hang out watching him eat, thankfully. The woman decided that she was going to put on a very nice little show for us. We'll leave the mail alone and catch up with him later and make sure he's eaten. Bye sweetheart.