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[Fuscus]

Good meeting, heaps of herps, SA MDs, Young Jungle, beardeds and a SA woma. And a pigmy blue tongue, these guys are everywhere. Got to meet flavirufus (nice bloke, certainly knows his stuff - needs a haircut . Going to hand some money to him if his breeding is successfully). He is the third APS member I have meet, I'm becoming quite a social butterfly.
Herp of the month was the pigmy blue tongue. The speaker is one of the original workers on them after their rediscovery, same guy as the Warrawong talk. The PBT shown (the one who does all the shows) was caught as a new-born in Feb 1993, eleven years old. See the Warrawong thread for photos. There was also another scientist there who is attempting to find the animals range. Interesting points included when the PBT was first discovered density was about 100 a hectare, currently it is about seven. It is believed that the high density was unusual, for a long time they couldn?t find PBT but could find brown snakes containing PBT, so it is possible that predatation could have been greatly reduced as browns where removed. Also there was a locust plague, which made feeding easy.
Main talk was on keeping herps, basic housing, etc. Huge range of views as expected.
The second part of the main talk was on substrates, with the recommendation being paper or gravel (boy, is that going to stir the pot). The speaker has kept reptiles for over thirty years and has kept alive individual animals for over 20 years. Strangely two people had stories of their pythons swallowing rocks, so there is a warning there folks.