Zookeeper Gabe's Animal Thread V6.0

[Zookeeper Gabe]

Was that a work trip? DO you get to do a lot of i guess out in the field work?

It was more personal but because I got the zoo to help pay my way I did a presentation about what we found. We were on a coffee plantation doing a herp survey.
Edit. Don't get to do a ton of field work, but I'm hoping to do more soon.

 

[theocean]

It was more personal but because I got the zoo to help pay my way I did a presentation about what we found. We were on a coffee plantation doing a herp survey.
Edit. Don't get to do a ton of field work, but I'm hoping to do more soon.

In what areas? Both place and type of animals... Or whatever is open?

 

[Gaeric]

What do you think about tegus as pets, Gabe? I've heard more than a few stories about how people got more than they bargained for and didn't care for them properly. I've also seen some people with them and it's really cool to see how the tegus interact with them, they actually look happy which is not something I'm accustomed to seeing in reptiles.

 

[Zookeeper Gabe]

In what areas? Both place and type of animals... Or whatever is open?

Pretty much all of my
Field work post College has been with herps. Multiple species of turtles, some endangered beetle
Work. In Honduras we were doing a species catalog of what lived on the property including two critically
Endangered species. I just went to a lecture last night my biologist friend gave. I want to start doing more work with critters.

Gaeric- tegus are awesome when they go right. I love ours. But you need to be prepared to work with them a ton when they are young have a healthy diet to keep them from getting obese. Also you are basically going to need to designate a room or part of a room to them
This is Max, we got him from the SPCA in providence. He was confiscated due to improper care.

 

[Gaeric]

Damn he's huge!

 

[Anung Un Rama]

That zebra looking dinosaur is AWESOME!

 

[Anung Un Rama]

So check this out. The ant nest beetle, also known as the flanged bombardier beetle.

This study was just posted this month which I will provide a link to. Apparently this beetle walks into an ant colony and by using an acoustical language is able to fool the ants into thinking the beetle is the queen and is then treated like royalty. It is able to move about in the colony, eating ants at will.

It doesn't stop there though, because the workers, soldiers, and Queen all speak a different language, the beetle can speak all 3. This is like a horror story, every ants worst nightmare. This is the first time that acoustical mimicry has been observed in beetles to prey on ants.

This and your other ant related science is awesome.

You mean like this? I picked him up and he ran around on my sleeve and took me a second to get a picture.

little one was oddly cute tho.

Off topic, but cool:

 

[theocean]

Pretty much all of my
Field work post College has been with herps. Multiple species of turtles, some endangered beetle
Work. In Honduras we were doing a species catalog of what lived on the property including two critically
Endangered species. I just went to a lecture last night my biologist friend gave. I want to start doing more work with critters.

Gaeric- tegus are awesome when they go right. I love ours. But you need to be prepared to work with them a ton when they are young have a healthy diet to keep them from getting obese. Also you are basically going to need to designate a room or part of a room to them
This is Max, we got him from the SPCA in providence. He was confiscated due to improper care.

How was he when you got him. Seems like you trust him a fair bit. I'm amazed at how much I hear about people having reptiles like those. Local guy who runs a little zoo was telling me he's gotten 3 calls this month about trying to take things in. He said one was a 2 bedroom apartment and the guy had over 10 monitors all over 4 feet. Several years ago where I stayed in college there was a guy who died after a bite from a monitor got infected and by the time the police got reports and broke in like 10 days or so later the guys monitors had started eating him.

 

[Zookeeper Gabe]

Max was a pretty good animal when we got him. I do trust him but he almost bit my face once so I still have to be cautious. I was holding him and I couldn't figure out why he was moving his head weird. I looked down and his mouth was wide open going for my chin, I didn't want to drop him so I just moved my head back. I had been eating a Cadbury egg and my breath smelled sweet. Lol

 

[Chaos Spawn]

Usually species are relatively similar, but we have had some seriously nasty timbers and lots of medium and chill ones. I've never worked with gaboons but they are easy despite their giant fangs. The do very little, basically big pretty venomous slugs.
The only Elapid I've ever handled was a coral snake in the jungle in Honduras.

loving all the herp talk gabe especially concerning the hots.

kept herps as a hobby for better than two decades, and knew a few keepers that had venomous in their collections. i'd be lying if i was too proud to admit that keeping hots wasn't a bit of a pipe dream for me at more than one point in time...i just knew deep down that it was a terrible idea. not how i want to make my exit.

i've always been baffled by private keepers that keep mambas and the like. i mean, really wtf?

i can remember stumbling across that website of that knob from the uk that was running his "king cobra sanctuary". he was free handling them in his videos. i remember also showing the videos to friends and family members with the introduction "wanna see someone who's gonna die soon?"...that goof got the cookie a few months after i discovered his site, i was shocked (/sarcasm).

i think i read that you have or are getting copperheads. highly underrated display animals imo. the southern subspecies and especially the trans-pecos subspecies are just beautiful snakes. do you guys have and or are you getting any of those?

 

[Zookeeper Gabe]

Some of my friends have serious hot collections. One of my buddies in MO has over 400 snakes with over 10 species of cobra alone. Lol. No thanks.

The southern and trans-pecos are gorgeous animals. We are getting some that were confiscated down south but they are "northerns". They are lost likely intergrades and not as pretty as southerns but more colorful then most northerns.

 

[Chaos Spawn]

Some of my friends have serious hot collections. One of my buddies in MO has over 400 snakes with over 10 species of cobra alone. Lol. No thanks.

The southern and trans-pecos are gorgeous animals. We are getting some that were confiscated down south but they are "northerns". They are lost likely intergrades and not as pretty as southerns but more colorful then most northerns.

yeah northerns are pretty too, and not uncommon just south of where i grew up. i didn't mean to disparage them. i like the whole genus tbh.

i find herp intergrades especially fascinating.

 

[Zookeeper Gabe]

yeah northerns are pretty too, and not uncommon just south of where i grew up. i didn't mean to disparage them. i like the whole genus tbh.

i find herp intergrades especially fascinating.

Yeah they are super rare up here, we have a timber exhibit and soon the copperhead because they are our ony two venomous snakes and both rare. Yeah the ones coming are probably Osage or some sort of mix.

 

[neverwas]

went to a reptile shop yesterday,they had rac****s and a skunk on display as pets.got some nice pictures of my kids holding a big burmese and a couple of colour morph royals.

 

[MusterX]

Saw this news report from 1993. All I can say is wtf.

Jet Drives Tiger and Other Zoo Animals to Kill Their Offspring
AP , Associated Press
Jul. 1, 1993 12:12 AM ET

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) _ Tigers, lynx and foxes panicked when a jet buzzed their zoo, and tore apart and ate 23 of their babies, including five rare Siberian tiger cubs, the zoo owner said.

''It was stress from the big sound above us,'' Ake Netterstrom, owner of Sweden's Froso Zoo, said in a telephone interview Wednesday. ''The mothers tried to protect their children. But they are not like human beings. They ate them to protect them. We found pieces.''

The Siberian tiger cubs, which were 1 week old, were the zoo's main draw for 130,000 visitors a year. Netterstrom said 15 fox cubs and three lynx kittens were also killed. He called the deaths ''an economic catastrophe.''

http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1993/J...Offspring/id-60a4c99188fcbf0f83a38b2c2a201485

 

[ThinkGreen]

Wtf

 

[Zookeeper Gabe]

I believe it. Some zoos have no fly zones over them. I've seen zebras panic from a low flying helicopter

 

[neverwas]

gibe,any thoughts on a boa constrictor imperator? theres some real nice ones going about at the moment,but I'm not sure how big they get.

 

[jefferz]

Takashi Amano passed away today, he was a legend in the planted aquarium world. A lot of the plants the aquarium community uses can be contributed to him. The Amano shrimp can be contributed to him also.
He founded ADA, if you want the top of the line aquariums and supplies you buy ADA.

Here's some of his designs

 

[Zookeeper Gabe]

I did not know of the man Jefferz but holy fucking shit. That is a loss.

@neverwas, bci is a large constrictor. They can get over 12' and are quite heavy bodied for their size. So you need to be prepared to have a custom enclosure