#they are called hemiclitorises :)

[kaijutegu]

As if you needed another reason not to listen to Jay Brewer/Prehistoric Pets

Of all the reptile influencers, Jay Brewer is my least favorite. Let's see what he is up to today!

Recently this colossal idiot pet store owner who pretends he has any real knowledge about natural history went field herping. He grabbed a wild rattlesnake and filmed himself popping its genitalia for field sexing, without having ANYBODY CONTROLLING THE HEAD.

He just put his snake hook on top of it and popped out its genitals. In this incredibly unsafe video, he not only put himself and the snake at risk, but he claims it's educational- and that's why he did it.

Only thing is, he's wrong, and in fact spends time spreading misinformation. Let's take a look at some of his comments. This is the caption to his video.

The "nodes" are the hemipenes. He says that if there was one, it would be a girl. Thing is, girl snakes don't have hemipenes. While they do have hemiclitorises, those don't evert like hemipenes do. If "a node" comes out when you pop (read: bend a snake's tail back at the cloaca, forcing the genitals to emerge), you've given your snake a cloacal prolapse. This can kill them, but mill-style breeder Jay Brewer does not care about the lives of animals. We've known this. He doesn't care about his own snakes- he cuts eggs for funsies, he keeps giant snakes in drawers, and he regularly puts peoples' safety at risk for viral videos. But he also clearly doesn't care about the lives of wild animals.

What else has he said?

So here's a thought: Maybe your audience shouldn't know that they can pop a rattlesnake's hemipenes out of its cloaca because that is fucking dangerous. Not all information is good information to share in the Instagram format! Sometimes the general public shouldn't see you casually doing something dangerous without explaining what it is or why you're doing it!

Just wanting to know the sex of a snake in the field, when you're not actually doing any real research, is not a valid reason to do something this risky. Part of education is knowing what's actually educational. Another part is knowing how to appropriately frame dangerous activities so that you don't make your audience think that it's something anybody can go out and do. One of the things that makes me so upset about this video is the complete lack of context. It's not just that he has zero respect for a venomous animal, it's that he has zero respect for his audience.

Also, in the audio of his video, he doesn't call them hemipenes. He doesn't provide the most basic education he claims he does! He's just messing with an animal for the sake of messing with it!

He also promulgates a lie that popping doesn't cause the snake any harm, which is not what even most breeders say about it. Now, luckly, the snake seemed fine in this case. But there are plenty of people, mostly pet owners, who have lost snakes because they've tried to pop incorrectly and broken their snake's spine around the cloaca. Between the inability to eliminate correctly and infection caused from wounds, popping is one of the riskiest- and most unnecessary things- you can do to a pet snake.

Good breeders and snakekeepers do not take videos of themselves popping their snakes and put it on instagram and pretend it's educational. You pop snakes to guarantee the sex of the animal, and you do it ONLY when they are very young. Older snakes have more muscle control and it can hurt them pretty badly.

Even Spruce Pets knows that popping can cause your snake significant trauma, but fine, whatever. Let's traumatize random venomous snakes for Instagram views!

Also, he's just completely uninformed! Take this answer:

Probably? No, the answer is an easy yes. Rattlesnakes lose rattles all the time. They lose rattles due to terrain, to genetic deformity (some rattlers never form them!), and to predation attempts. It's just keratin. They're fine without it. Any real herpetologist would know this. If he can't get basic facts right, how can he be trusted to get more complicated stuff right?

And yeah, maybe this whole post is a little unhinged. But I hate this man and his practices so much. I hate that he's the face of an industry that could be so much better if it weren't for people like him. I hate that he's getting a TV show. I hate that people encounter his media and think that anything he does is a good idea. At least Brian Barczyck tries these days and actually promotes good care and safety at the Reptarium, but all Jay wants is popularity. He has zero respect for animals, and I loathe and detest that he's the face of our hobby.

[tomboyfriends]

They're called hemiclitorises! Female snakes have two!

The discovery is both surprising and not. The structures are small, fragile, and easily to damage or overlook; Sara Ruane, the assistant curator of herpetology at the Field Museum, in Chicago, says that learning about Folwell’s work was “the first time I have ever even thought about” snake penises having a female analog. Multiply that sentiment countless times over, and perhaps it explains how researchers mostly missed an entire organ, in an entire group of thousands of animals, until now. But evolutionarily speaking, there’s no reason snakes shouldn’t have clitorises, which arise from the same knot of cells that gives rise to penises. In addition to lizards, snakes’ closest relatives, other groups of reptiles have clitorises, as do mammals.