Januari 04, 2017
hello and welcome to reptil.tv! i'm here with jim pether. maybe you know him, because he is quite well-known he's british but lives on the canary islands. he's been in the reptile business for quite some time. and today he'll take us on a ball python hunting trip. we'll also take some experts with us. owriku works with the reptiles here in ghana. we've also got a trapper with us that has worked for us before. stefan: i forgot your name.jow: my name is jow albinegra. so here we have jow albinegra. he's a very experienced trapper. i've worked with him c couple of years ago. back then we found a piedbald. stefan: this is our driver. what's your name?driver: selassi
this is our driver selassi. he works for titi, titi works in the export business. it's 8.40am. we wanted to start our trip at 7am. originally we planned to start at 6am. i was able to negotiate 7am as our starting time - because i wanted to sleep a bit longer. in the end they came at 8.30am. i should have left the time, then our trip would have started 7am straight. let's go and hunt some ball pythons! we arrived at our destination. a nice small village in a mountainous area. we're about an hours drive away from accra. we're about 20 kilometers away from the capitol. this is a small agricultural village and we'll see what we can find. we're in a small village, about 20km away from accra.
i'm here with jim, whom i introduced in our short intro. a nice little story about him. i've told you the story about the rich canadian that owns 8 banana ball pythons. jim is even richer. he owns something very special - komodo dragons - plenty of these. jim has 12 komodo dragons in his possession. those are absolutely rare animals. that's incredible. an unimagable rich british man that is standing next to me. who will help me find ball pythons. i hope we will find something. we've got great people with us. let's get started. on this occasion i want to show you how life is in a village. back there, where you can see the woman walking, that is the main road. here we have the separate houses. this is a typical for a rural town. we would call it a village.
this is where life takes place. of course there are lots of children - in different sizes. this is a kind of kindergarten corner. the small one holding the big knife was crying all the time and now he is starting to cry again. he somehow knows when i'm talking about him. since he spotted us, he has been crying. i don't know what he wants to do with this knife. maybe we'll find out. now they are trying to get him out of the picture. the little squealer has to go. while we're waiting for the farmer, to ask him permission if we are allowed to farm on his field, jim is lending a helping hand. i belief it's palm oil that they are producing here. they didn't put these things here for tourists. this is how a normal village looks. white people probably only come here once a year - if the come here at all.
he's working on the palm-oil. the call it soup, they produce a sauce for the fufu. so we finally arrived. there is a ball laying around, but she is trying to escape. she didn't hide in a cave, as i would have expected it. the difference is, that if we were on discovery channel, we would sound something like. 'owe, attention, she bit me.' but this reptil.tv! that was a short discovery channel improvisation. reptil.tv is respectable. that's why our video is not as sensational. what's interesting is, that the animal wasn't buried in a cave. it was in the grass.
this is the farmer who cultivates this field. he also spotted the animal and told us where this nice animal was hiding. it's interesting how big this animal is. it is really well fed. in nature, and that is normal, the animals are fat and globated. i've seen pictures in books, where the write that they found an animal in the wild. what you see on the picture is a haggard animal. i doubt that these haggard animals were really found in the wild. the ball pythons i've found in the wild were as fat as this one, or almost as fat. it's got a decent size. i would say it's about ... well, i think this animal is about 1,5m long. 1.4m - 1.5m, that's decent size. it even looks like she is even longer.
nice animal. i want to show you the spot a bit closer. it's interesting, the soil is a bit damp. here the soil is even a bit muddy. swampy, a bit like in a marsh. i'll show it to you on camera, because i think it is important to have an idea in what kind of environment the balls normally live. they don't live in a dry savanna, as you might imagine. but they also don't live on tress. they live on the ground. what's interesting is that they don't try to bite you while you try to catch them. as you can see the animal is tame. and it probably hopes and thinks 'i hope that douche will put me back on the ground again and let me go along.' just to give you an impression that they live in the wild. the natives would say that a creak runs through here. i wouldn't call it that, but this is where the soil is moist.
there is some water running through. and here in the middle you can see a kind of grass hill. the grass is rather tall. and we found the animal at the rim - right there where jim is standing. we also found another cave there, which probably contains an animal. but it looks rather deep. here we have an other cave that is typical the trappers say that there must be a snake inside, because the entrance is clearly visible. even normal people can see that the entrance has been pressed down neatly. you can see that something crawled in and out - that's why they are sure it's inhabited. the problem is, that you can see the roots of these branches and you can see this big hill above the cave. they only would dig out a snake if the female is pregnant or they really need animals. and they would have had to carry along better equipment, not only a small pick.
digging 2-3 hours would be too much in regard to the heat and the equipment. here we have an other cave. we are in the middle of a cassava field. he already started to dig. again the entrance was very neat, that's why they are sure that there is an animal inside. this is where the hard work starts. usually i would do the digging, but because i have to shoot the footage, jow is digging. he started digging is yet to find something. there was an other hole and that's where he is looking now. he is still looking, but he thinks that there isn't a snake there.
during this time of the year, they've just lied down their eggs. and the eggs have already hatched. and afterwards they go foraging. as you can see, the field is green and there is enough food that the snakes can find. a small overview of ball python country! our trapper jow says that near the hill at the back, there are plenty of animals. the problem is that this area is rather stony. the animals often have their caves beneath a cliff. in this case you can't dig them out. there are a lot of snakes, but they are almost impossible to catch. unfortunately we were forced to take a break.
our front tire flat. this is no extraordinary event, this happens almost every second or third day. our bad luck is that they put the four-way socket wrench in the other car, because they had a flat with this one. even in africa you can't open the bolts with your teeth and a leatherman just won't do the job. you really need a four-way socket wrench. they are asking around a bit, and we still need that thing. we found an other hole - there are also eggs inside it. the eggs are in this cave and the female probably crawled into an other hole. jim took out the eggs. these are not fresh, they hatched recently. there is a bit of an odor coming out of the cave. they think that the babies are still inside. as you can see, it was a batch with 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9, 10 eggs. a rather large batch.
i'm anxious what the female looks like, if we find her. the female is inside this cave! there are even babies inside! we've got some spectators that are having a good time. i want to measure the temperature inside this cave. we've got 30â°c. i'll try to get deeper inside. 30,2â°c. a bit further inside. ok, we've got 30.2â°c. even inside this moist earth, we've got a temperature of 30.2â°c.
they took the babies, but will let the female escape. they'll also close the entrance a little. i just want to show you where we are at the moment. we're on a corn field, with some young corn crops. here we have a termite den. and here is our cave. we are exactly in the middle of a corn and a cassava field. we really are in the middle of a potato field, as i would call it. cassava are tubers, just as potatoes are. this is the corn field. you can see the mountainous surroundings in the background. as i said, we are about 20km away from accra. supposedly there is a second animal in that termite den. but digging it out would be very cumbersome work. here we have the animal. you can see it laying there.
it looks like she is cuddled around her eggs. let's look what we'll find. alright, this one is also lying on eggs. the eggs are still closed, at least that's what it looks like. i want to check the temperature again. we have the female here with her eggs, let's find out what the temperature is. at the beginning of the cave i've measured 30.6â°c. i've i go deeper inside... 30.9â°c. but what i have to mention is that we opened the cave about 15 minutes ago. it probably was even 1 degree hotter inside. here you can see the animal. this animal is rather small. i would guess that it ways roughly 1.5kg.
there we have the batch. six eggs! we took our pictures. same game as before. they take the eggs, but let the female go. there she found an other hole. that one even looks bigger. well, maybe not, you can still see her looking out a bit. he's going to incubate the eggs at home. a tip for the kids. if you go looking for pythons or if you are on holiday with your parents in africa and want to go into the jungle... ... don't dress as stupid as me, don't wear shorts and a shirt. this is definitely not what you want to wear. wear appropriate clothing and don't get bite. besides pythons there are cobras and mambas here - and those are poisonous snakes. just a short glimpse how the people here live.
at the background you can see the houses. they still build their houses with clay. here they are cooking. there are children over there. there are goats and the chicken - they might get butchered sometime soon. this is one of the bigger, on of the better houses. you can see a deserted house, or a house without a roof in the background. this is an average house here. that's also why the people catch snakes. the eggs and babies we found, they are worth ~5$ each. if you sum it up, that's about 40$. together with the eggs that are about 70$. the animals he found earlier today are worth more than the average monthly wage here. i believe you can't blame anyone here, if they hunt these animals in the wild. and i have to say, there are still lots of pythons left in the wild. we weren't hunting for a long time and there are still lots of animals left. and i think it’s justifiable to take the babies or eggs. those are the so-called bush babies. not the farming that you might think of.
these animals are not exported during the time that is normal. these animals are exported during may, june, july, when the farm bread babies are out of stock. then these bush babies are sent. that is the end of our python hunt. i hope you liked it. we were very successful. we found animals, eggs and babies. everything we hoped for. i had the chance to measure the temperature. and i showed you the natural environment they live in. for me, today was very interesting. i hope you liked it too. say tuned! and check our balls! let's do it again! i was a blabber mouth again. we'll have to do it again. too much drizzle. take two, and i'll try to do it quick and straight.
today we are here in ... okay one more time. now she is taking a shit. this footage is something for our outtakes. i've got a ball python that is taking a shit. upsie! i just hope that she'll leave her tail pointing in this direction. otherwise i might be the victim and receive the whole shit. luckily jim already checked this cave for cobras and other animals. i can feel like a hero and put my arm all the way in.
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