Episode #1098: Baby Sawscale Vipers Check In, Also Pigs and Pentastomida (Armillifer armillatus)

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 Viper Keeper handles snakes a certain way, it doesn't mean you should try it too. Okay, time to move these guys to a different substrate. These are babies who were born at the beginning of this year or at the end of last year.

When was October? 5th of October. I think they were born. These survived two of the three. The other one was too small to do so. We need to take them off the paper towels and place them on some crushed walnuts. A better substrate for them. These will do it. uh now they're both feeding on roses uh originally I started them with geckos and now they're going to suffer a lot because I'm going to pick them up and move them from one place to another so we can you know, put them on something clean and they're not going to like that, as usual, we don't normally put a dish of water because we spray it because they're kind of like flake straws, so let's see if you can move this little guy, it looks a little dark, right?

Come on, I know the bait is cold. Oops, we're going to be the L noodles. Come on, I'm trying not to rough you up so you don't have too much bleeding, oh, you blend in really well with that substrate and there you have it, these are SAU Egyptian flakes. The Bard and the bread here in the lair are quite hemotoxic. That snake would definitely take me to the hospital. They have grown quite a bit since they were born. This is probably the fifth or sixth Eus Paramam calf I've had here in the den. Egg layers usually only have 4 to 6 eggs, that's all. the females can fit in them and the only living carrier in the eus genus is eus soari and the record for that particular species here in the den was 39 babies which is a lot of ekas to care for and let's find homes for them.

Let's not raise those guys anymore, so let's move this guy back to the shelf where you can get worms because that substrate is not as hot right out of the bag and we'll see if he'll feed in about a day. He just fed yesterday, that way he can hurt himself for a few days and, uh, I don't have to particularly worry about him not feeding. We'll put this aside for now and clean that up. after we finished, here is the second

baby

, this one has been eating much better than the other, the other one was a real pain for us to start feeding him Stop, yes, it seems like he is looking for more food, yes. yeah, this one's a little bit better, the feeder started eating mice, uh, before her brother, and you can see there's a little bit more chunks here, she's a little bit, I think she looks a little thicker than the other one. , I know, I know.

She's a hook, what can I say? Come on, there, go, you have your furniture and your furniture. The entire H morph appears to be more or less the same, but we'll give it some time and there's no reason for us to worry. Too much about the sex they're having right now is just that we want them to be fed and keep them happy and grow and then we'll figure out if we're going to find a home for them or if they're going to hang out here with us since Eus are relatively easy to care for once they are fed and they don't bounce around the room with the greatest of ease, makes them a little easier for us to keep, they are not very big. snakes, so, they're easy to cage now, meanwhile, you know, from the movie Jurassic Park, uh, remember when mun said we're being watched, well, they're watching us, so that's when they fed us, you probably have made.

I already saw the video, the special table version, yes the table version, they fed him three mice instead of two, so he is still looking for something to eat, although he is quite fat and healthy, overall, sorry , my friend, it's just not like that. He's going to pass it to you, well, what we have here today are some very lively pygmy rattles from South Florida. uh, Lori commented that it's not that pygmy, well, it's a pygmy, uh, it's quite toxic, certainly one of the most cytotoxic, uh, uh. rattlesnakes that exist, their favorite prey when they are small is actually the scolopendra centipede and they grow quite a bit in Florida.

They are

also

prone to getting something called PID and I will make a short video about a PID. after they put her in her new clean tub, but she's a viper, she has a really cute, cute rattle on her tail that you can't even hear, that's hers, that's her shed that she just came out of, so I thought. This was a good occasion for everyone to get a good look at Miss Pig. It's the only rattlesnake I currently have in the collection and I actually promised it to someone else so they can relocate it very soon.

Actually, I think it's not a shadow, Mr. Pig, again, we don't normally put things on the table, but we think it's a small snake. I have a pair of my tongs that were provided by the folks at Midwest Tongs. Viper Keeper signature, uh, miniature tongs, that if she decides to play snake hockey, I'm just not going to waste any time and I'm going to get her with the tongs, um, come on, pygmies come in a variety of different colors, They are actually quite common and one of the most common snakes that we can find on a road cruise in Florida, in the Everglades, they sit on the dirt roads and warm themselves and sun themselves, they caught a lot of them, in They don't really catch them, it's not really the word I use basically, we just go out for sport, see what we can see and do some sort of Corral the Critter, take some pictures and let it go, um, I'm not very good at taking snakes from the wild but I'll show you what a PID looks like because PIDs were never in the pigy rattlesnake population in Florida and they recently found out that they were when I show you this PID you might be put off having it. a piece with a certain shape, uh, spaghetti, um, that's common in pasta salads, uh, um, and I can tell you a little more about them, once she's out and I don't have to pay as much attention to what he is doing. are you going to behave no, of course, of course, no, come on, I don't want to use, we're going to play snake hockey, no, we're not going to go in there, no, you don't want to go in there, did you have a taste of freedom, yeah, and that's why we have a uplex, so we'll take her back to it, but I don't know why I'm calling her, I'll take it back to the other side of the room, uh, Lori can follow me. and you can see how ingenious the uplex is and why it is a very good piece of hardware to have in your snake collection because you have the snake contained and you can just line it up with the slot on the shelf and just slide it in. and there's no chance to play snake hockey properly, so let's pause the camera.

I'm going to go get my PID and we'll talk about it. Don't know. I guess it goes down well. I'll leave that clip in the video. Lorie abandoned me because I'm about to remove this pesto from her preservative bottle. The story behind this is that she had an East African Gaboon viper captured in the wild and I found it. dead shortly after arriving, with his mouth open and uh uh outside the outside of his mouth uh uh in the substrate was this guy, see if I can get it out without breaking it, although Lor is hoping I break it so we can throw it away. because she doesn't like it, it's pretty disgusting.

I have to admit it's pretty gross. um, like I said, it took my spaghetti off like this for quite a while, okay, so that's a PID that's a larger variety from Africa, um, it crawled. from the lungs of a gabon viper and pygb rattlesnakes are now being infested with these guys um it's very interesting because taxonomy has trouble classifying this is kind of a cross between a worm and an insect and uh it's actually a u uh a parasite that these snakes carry that you can actually uh uh get um Me when I found this outside the gabon

vipers

uh mouth when it was dead um I got in touch, took a photo and contacted my friend Don Boer, who He is the reptile curator at the Bronx Zoo. house uh but at that time he was the curator at the San Diego Zoo the reptile collection there um he told me what it was because I had no idea um and he warned me to be very careful because these can infect humans um the only way They know that to get rid of them, it's actually doing a bronchoscopy and taking them out one by one.

They burrow into the lung tissue and eat it, so that's what finally killed the Gaboon viper, but now they are smaller and infesting. uh pygmy rattlesnakes in South Florida so what a pest it is and uh uh you can see why I was put off for a while a pasta with a certain shape. U because of its size, Lori was absolutely disgusted at even the thought that I was going to take this out and show it off, uh um, but it's an unusual thing to be aware of if you're a snake keeper, especially if you get wild snakes, they can carry all kinds of zoonotic parasites that you could end up getting yourself, so I'll end the video here.

I'll put Mr. PID back in his bottle. Go back to my collection of oddities that I have and you guys can go, you know, throw up in the toilet. probably