listen, as a government regulator, please for the love of god call your city code enforcement on your landlords more often. we often have our hands tied and cannot enforce the law on code and permit violations until a citizen files a formal complaint. use the services available! PLEASE!
i hope they find a stupid tiny fish or something on mars and make mining illegal, just like the devil’s hole in california
these endangered bastards and their bathtub-sized habitat (just the surface shelf of a giant cave structure thanks) singlehandedly pissed off SO many businessmen lol
people always talk about how pretty the cherry blossoms are or the browning autumn leaves in the north hemisphere but no one appreciates the humble Ipê of Brazil
she does literally so much for us, and for what? Y'all don't give her her due respect.
Ratings for Reptile YouTubers and Other Content Creators
I'm going to try to add my ratings for every content creator I review to this post so they remain easy to find!
For YouTube channels specifically, I want to give a warning first. I'm kind of hesitant to recommend almost any reptile YouTube channels, because the more I dig into the popular ones the more issues I find. My blanket statement here is going to be to take any reptile YouTube channel, even those that are usually good, with a grain of salt, and fact-check them more than you would other sources. I don't know what it is about reptile YouTube in particular, but misinformation and bad keeping are rampant over there.
Reviews below the cut.
Creators that are usually reliable, with minimal caveats:
Clint's Reptiles is probably my favorite reptile YouTube channel, his advice is usually solid and you'll learn a lot from his videos. Even so, he's said some things about supporting unethical breeding practices like spider ball pythons in the past, so be aware of that.
Wicken's Wicked Reptiles is a channel I don't hear much about, but Adam keeps his snakes wonderfully and is a pretty great resource. His channel is one of the smaller ones, and he's very big on promoting best husbandry practices. His videos can be clickbait-y and he's been lukewarm on spider ball pythons recently, but overall his channel is pretty solid.
Herpin Hippie's TikTok channel is excellent. He's a professional working at a venomous snake facility, and clearly knows exactly what he's doing. His handling of venomous snakes is textbook perfect and he treats the snakes with respect.
Green Room Pythons is a channel I've grown to really love! He has some great advice for new keepers, and seems to really love and want the best for all of his snakes. A great advocate for proper snake enrichment and non-minimalist keeping.
Reptiles and Research: a wonderful channel! Goes over scientific studies and best keeping practices. My only note of caution is that he does tend to present new keeping practices that haven't been extensively studied yet but have been shown to be beneficial for some snakes as universally necessary for all snakes; just do your own research and come to your own educated conclusions, none of these channels are appropriate as a be-all end-all answer.
Creators that are usually reliable, with major caveats:
Snake Discovery's recent videos are pretty solid, and their how-to videos are spot on. I will exercise a lot of caution with them, though, especially with their older videos. Their enclosures now seem to be decent, but their older videos have lots of poor rack enclosures and I'm disgusted by how they used to take their alligator into public. Their breeding videos and egg hatching videos are pretty good, but I think they cut the eggs sooner than necessary to ensure the health of the snake, and I don't like that they breed scaleless snakes. It's worth being very cautious with taking information and husbandry advice from their videos, even if they're generally a reliable resource.
GoHerping is a channel that concerns me more the more I learn about it - his information is usually pretty good, but he doesn't take animals to the vet nearly as often as he should even when advised to do so, which is terrible practice for any reptile rescue/rehabber. He's also said some pretty nasty transphobic/racist/antisemitic things in the past, so be wary there.
Creators that have major issues:
David Orin: The conceit of his videos is that he does "snake bite ratings" by going into the wild, catching a snake, and goading it into biting him. He's coming from a good place by trying to educate about how snake bites don't hurt at all, but there's really no need to go and harass wild snakes to make that point.
Chandler's Wildlife: not quite as bad as some other channels that involve free-handling venomous snakes, but still very bad. He at least includes a disclaimer that viewers shouldn't copy him, but that is not enough. His information is usually good and his enclosures are excellent, but the free-handling is incredibly irresponsible.
Creators that are harmful:
Chrisweeet makes videos of himself free-handling king cobras. While his snakes are beautiful and healthy, free-handling venomous snakes is an accident waiting to happen. King cobras have the most quickly lethal venom of any snake, and free-handling them with an audience is both dangerously irresponsible and willfully ignorant. I'm terrified that his audience is going to try and copy him because he does not present this is as harmful and seems to believe he is absolutely right to handle these snakes in this way.
Jay's Prehistoric Pets and Brian Barczyk are very similar, click-baity channels. They're very bad for spreading misinformation, supporting unethical breeding practices, keeping snakes in tiny enclosures, and goading snakes into striking for views. I think their channels are definitely the most harmful of any I've seen.
The Reptile Channel: easily one of the worst I've ever seen. The entire point of the channel is to characterize snakes as dangerous "man-eaters" and make videos of feeding live small (often baby) animals to snakes and lizards. Their snakes are kept in terrible conditions and are often clearly sick and miserable. Don't give them views, comments, or any other attention; I have a breakdown of one of their videos here.
Fish that you've probably not realised the true adult size of
Black knife fish
Redtailed catfish
Bala shark
Arowana
Common pleco
Alligator gar
Giant gourami
Pangasius shark
Koi
Goldfish
Yes, those goldfish you see in the petshop will get this size. No, the tank this goldfish is in is not adequate. No, goldfish will not 'grow only to the size of the tank'. Goldfish are, however, good pond fish. They're also shoaling and domesticated.
Yes, I have seen all of these fish in petshops when they are 5-8cm long.
I read “Arowana” as arapaima at first and was incredibly concerned at the idea that people keep arapaima in tanks but then I reread it and was slightly less concerned but still somewhat concerned that people kept arowanas in tanks.
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