Dragon Snake, The Best Pet Snake?

Should i want to talk to you just a little bit about these incredible and unusual snakes dragon snakes are in the clayed colubroides that isn't the family collubridae they are in the family xenodermidae the clade callebroides includes the colubrids but also the vipers lapids and about 85 of all snake species and all of the members of this clade are more closely related to one another then they are to the xenodermids dragon snakes xenodermis javanicus are the only species in the genus xenodermis they have no close relatives and they honestly don't look like any another snake i have ever seen these snakes have very unusual head shapes with those big rostral scales and then a lot of smaller scales going down the rest of the head even the scales around their lips are not large and they've got these dark little eyes but honestly, that isn't what makes them so strange they also have abnormally long tails for snake especially a snake that isn't highly arboreal but this isn't what makes them so strange either the feature that really sets these snakes apart are the three rows of raised dark scales that go down their backs these are bonkers and we don't fully understand why they have these crazy ridges I know of no other snakes with anything even remotely like them they remind me of the ridges down the backs of cayman lizards but the animal these remind me of the most is the Borneo earless monitor should we do a video about them as well in the future these snakes are notorious for being unusual but also for being impossible to keep alive in captivity.

so is the dragon snake actually impossible to keep and will it eventually become the best pet snake for you to help you figure this out we are going to score the dragon snake based on our five categories which are handled ability care hardiness availability and upfront costs when it comes to handling ability we give the dragon snake a score of one out of five dragon snakes are actually very easy to handle but because they're so delicate it is recommended to handle them as little as possible they are also uninclined to bite or wriggle they won't drop that tail what they do when they get scared actually is they get real stiff and act as a stick so you know that's a pretty harmless defense they're unsurprisingly very interesting little snakes to handle but there are other weird animals out there to handle I recommend rubber boas and legless lizards if you want to handle something snake-like that feels rather odd for a snake I'd like to pause for just a moment to say thank you to our patrons of patreon and to point something out which is probably a lot of you here are like I've never heard of the dragon snake before and I can tell you that our patrons at patreon have known about the dragons think for several days now because our videos are available to them early I've noticed some of you comment you're like how did this person comment three or four days ago patreon and that's just one of the ways we say thank you to our patrons at patreon our stinkin rad fans and our rad fans for all that, they do for us so thank you guys so so much back to your regularly scheduled programming when it comes to care we give the dragon snake a score of one out of five the care for dragon snakes at this point in time is best left to expert keepers with deep pockets if you get a wild caught individual you should get it tested for parasites and other health issues as soon as possible then you should get it treated because something likely will be wrong that will cause your snake to die after that, you're going to need to provide a cool humid.

But well ventilated enclosure for the snake I say cool because temperatures much over 75 degrees Fahrenheit which is 24 degrees celsius or 297 degrees kelvin can be fatal for these snakes in not a whole lot of time they need a really deep substrate with a drainage layer and topped with a few inches of sphagnum moss altogether this will hold the humidity that you're going to need really well without being so damp and wet that it could cause you know scale rot or other health issues just be sure there's adequate airflow that's going to be really important and keep things dimly lit these are a largely nocturnal snake and when you're a tiny nocturnal noggin noodle a day is a dangerous place they may eat some fish like guppies and this can include mollies and swordtails but their preferred diet is frogs and tadpoles this may be a deal-breaker for some of you and that's fine getting one of these snakes is already a bad idea and you shouldn't get one even if you hate frogs and tadpoles even if you provide all of this care which you know's very specific and you have to be really careful with it,it involves a veterinarian these snakes are still very delicate and that brings us to hardiness when it comes to hardiness we give the dragon snake a score of one out of five until very recently i would have said that the dragon snake gets a zero out of five however in recent years some expert keepers like our friend scarlet nightshade at creatures of nightshade who actually provided the snakes that were filmed for this this video that made this video possible they have been able to keep some of these incredibly just amazing snakes alive in captivity and that's a big deal at the end we're actually going to set some time aside for Scarlett to talk to you a little bit about these because obviously, I've never kept one, and very few people have successfully she has so listened to her so all that said if you get one of these incredible snakes imported after watching this video i strongly recommend that you get a jar of alcohol ready so that you can preserve it after you watch it dies for real on a happier note as these keepers these expert keepers continue to dial in their care it is entirely possible that captive bred babies will be available in the future and that should make this a whole other ball game when it comes to availability we give the dragon snake a score of two out of five if you want to watch a dragon snake dies you could order one.

Right now you won't see them in pet shops or expos though in the future, they may be available captive bread and again that will change everything they do lay small clutches of eggs this means they will be very rare and very expensive even when they're being successfully bred it also means that the wild population cannot support a ton of people buying snakes to put in jars so don't do it when it comes to upfront costs we give the dragon snake a score of two out of five the snake is expensive but not insanely expensive that said it's a pretty expensive thing to put in a jar of alcohol so plan to spend a considerable sum of money on vet visits tests and treatments really just wait for them to be available captive bread you aren't the one that's going to produce them you're going to watch them die so let the experts perfect their care and provide captive bred babies they will be expensive but a 1 000 live snake is better than a 300 dead one someday when you can get one captive-bred the enclosure you need won't be too expensive at all this isn't a very big snake you're gonna need a good lid because you don't want your super fragile snake to escape into your house that isn't set up for dragon snakes at all, you're gonna need a substrate that holds moisture a nice big water bowl a good stock of frogs and tadpoles and then you may be very successful keeping a captive-bred dragon snake in conclusion as of right now, we give the dragon snake a score of 1.4 out of 5. 1.4 is a pretty low score it isn't human child-level low but it's pretty darn low if what you want is a 300 snake in a jar then a wild-caught import dragon snake is the perfect pet snake for you if what you want is a tiny reclusive a semi-fossorial creature with crazy ridges that look like a freaking dragon then a captive-bred red-eyed crocodile skink might be the perfect pet for you but if you can wait a few years thanks to amazing keepers like scarlet nightshade a dragon snake might be a possibility as well and so here is Scarlett to share a little bit more about these amazing snakes please listen to her hi guys my name is scarlet nightshade I'm the breeder behind creatures of nightshade and you saw my dragon snakes in the videos today i just wanted to take a moment to explain why these snakes are better left to keepers that are able to establish them as wild caught imports um they are a very exceptionally fragile species unfortunately and the sad reality is that many keepers who haven't dealt with wild-caught imports before especially one as fragile as the dragon snake they end up taking them in and they pass away very very quickly I would hate to see their demise as a species as a result of us trying to just appreciate them in captivity however, we are um hoping to breed them in captivity very soon here um in the next few months actually we have high hopes for it we have a group that we've gotten established they've been doing well for a while our oldest being a little over two and a half years old so be patient I promise you it will pay off if you'd like to see more of the dragon snakes you can visit our website Facebook and Instagram under our business name creatures of the nightshade.

We do have a youtube channel that we're starting to launch but it's still in the process of kind of getting some content built up there as I just released it a couple weeks ago so give us some time and there'll be lots of content our website does have tons of educational guides and other care information that you can find so thank you for watching and clint thank you for featuring us thank you scarlet for those really amazing thoughts and for sending them incredible footage that made this video about this most bizarre of all snakes possible please check out creatures of the nightshade both on Facebook and on youtube they're just growing their channel now go-ahead and subscribe you're gonna see some animals you're not gonna see almost anywhere else as always like and subscribe and we hope to see you real soon without a dragon snake based on our five categories which are handleability care hardiness available not dang it what is with you too this is a rodeo well my hand didn't work I know you usually use that one I do but I've been doing it in the safe way and I'm like oh I'm not even using the hand that i usually fail with that I could go this way so I can go the other way and I'm like no this is the defector's hand people are always like can you add celsius I'm like sure I'll cover all my faces but you're a tiny nocturnal noggin noodle what are you thinking I'm just like can we pretend to do b-roll  okay put your mask on Michelle now film his hands wow oh it's dead nice get my jar of alcohol