The 5 Best WEIRD Reptiles For Beginners

If you're a new reptile keeper looking for beginner species but you don't want ball pythons, corn snakes, and bearded dragons because all your friends have one, I'm gonna tell you the top five best beginner reptiles just for you. There is nothing wrong with ball pythons, bearded dragons, or leopard geckos, it's just everybody already has one it seems. So I wanna give you five unique options that are a little bit different but just as easy to keep. And to qualify beginner reptiles to me don't mean the easiest reptiles, it just means reptiles that aren't very fragile. So always do your best to care for your reptile exactly the way you should, but these reptiles are a little bit hardier and if you make a mistake or two, you're not gonna come down to a dead reptile in the morning. Starting with number five, instead of a bearded dragon, why don't you get yourself a blue-tongued skink? Blue-tongued skinks are a great beginner reptile but people don't talk about them that way just because they're not quite as popular. They're not as easy to find as a bearded dragon, they're not as cool looking some might say, but to me they're just more diverse in what you want in an animal. And what I mean is, there's two main species of blue-tongued skink. There are the Indonesian blue-tongued skinks and a bunch of different locales within that and there are Australian blue-tongued skinks and a few different species and locales amongst that. The main difference, Indonesians like my boy Erwin here, these guys like it more humid whereas Steve, my northern blue-tongued skink from Australia like it a bit drier. Everything else is pretty much the same. This is an animal that's going to be two feet, maybe 30 inches except for Steve here is the biggest freaking blue-tongued skink I've ever seen and their diet is super easy. Bearded dragons, people complain they need lots and lots of bugs when they're young and it's true. You need to feed them like twice a day, every single day. Blue-tongued skinks, you can feed them bugs and also eggs and also table scraps of vegetables and also dog and cat food if you want and I don't recommend this but people do it. Please don't do this. And then diet that's made for them. Bluey buffet is what I like to use so it's very simple to feed these animals. In the same way that people talk about feeding chickens where they eat basically everything including the diet made for chickens, same thing with blue-tongued skinks. They're basically garbage disposals. Blue-tongued skinks in my opinion are they're basically potatoes with tiny little legs that kind of shimmy along the way that they move but they're easy, they're fun, they're rewarding. That blue tongue is so freaking cool to me and if you want an animal that you can take outside and hang out in your backyard and it's not gonna run really fast away from you or sit on the couch and watch a movie, blue-tongued skinks for the most part are gonna be for you. Number four, instead of getting a ball python, have you thought about an Australian spotted python? I didn't purposely make this Australian animals but anyway, spotted pythons are cool because they're a python species that gets to a substantial enough size where it is fun and impressive to your friends but not dangerous to you or even children. They're semi-arboreal so they're a little bit skinnier than a ball python in terms of their makeup but almost just as long and they don't come in a bunch of morphs so it's really easy to find the one for you. They kind of all look the same. I mean, there's a few different morphs but they're really, really rare unlike ball pythons that have a brand new morph every other week it seems like. And spotted pythons are fantastic eaters. This is a complaint a lot of people have with ball pythons is that ball pythons go off food or they're difficult to feed or whatever. Spotted pythons are not this. Jimmy, my spotted python, a fully grown male is one of the most fun animals to take out. Every time I need an animal that I wanna give to someone who maybe is comfortable with snakes already has howled a ball python before, I give them a spotted python because I know he's not gonna bite them. I know that he's not gonna fly away from them so fast that it's gonna scare them but he's gonna move around and make it so it's a interactive, active experience rather than just sitting there like, oh cool, a ball python that doesn't move. Next week's video is all about ball python care. Hit subscribe if you wanna see that. Plus, it's about the same cage size as a ball python, four by two by two. You can give them higher cages for more height if you want but because they're such a small animal, two feet is plenty of space to give them to climb. Plus, they seem a little bit more intelligent than a lot of other snakes. They have these tiny little heads but they seem like they look around kinda like a carpet python and a reticulated python made a baby. That's, to me, what they look like. They're always looking for something. They're always assessing the situation, flicking their tongue out and they like to climb things and move through different levels of space. And to me, this is what makes it really, really, really fun to have one of these animals. Number three, instead of a leopard gecko, why don't you get yourself an African fat-tailed gecko? Now this is obviously very obvious if you know reptiles but if you don't know about African fat-tailed geckos, you're in for a treat. Imagine a leopard gecko that likes it a little bit more humid so easier to care for for most people still comes in a bunch of different morphs, really affordable in the exact same enclosure. You could basically take a leopard gecko care guide, substitute the humidity a little bit and then use that for an African fat-tail. They are so, so easy. In terms of handleability, the exact same as a leopard gecko. I love African fat-tailed geckos because in my opinion or experience having them for about five or six years, their hand structure is a bit different and they're a little bit stronger. I would guess in the wild, I don't know this for sure, I'm just guessing here, come on a story time with me, they probably go through different levels of space in terms of climbing a little bit more than leopard geckos would. Again, I'm just guessing based on their hand structure and how strong they are and how willing they are to climb up different spaces. Not that leopard geckos aren't, I just see it more with African fat-tailed geckos. Plus for morphs, there's striped ones, albinos, there's one that are called Oreo. I mean, how cute is that? The breeding is really, really easy. Two eggs at a time, breeding the exact same temperatures as leopard geckos and you can give them the same size enclosure. I recommend a 40-gallon breeder enclosure. I put mine in 50-gallon enclosures, which are three feet long, one and a half feet deep and one foot high. They're just so easy, so cute and they're great for beginners because they don't really need a lot in order to keep them happy and if you wanna handle them twice this week, three times next week and then not again for a month, they're gonna remain handleable throughout. Where some animals, you need to tame them down and make them handleable and then if you go away for the month, then they forget that they were handleable before and you have to start all over. These are not like that. The really cool thing with these species is if you wanted one of each, because I don't know if you know this, reptiles become addictive and you want more than one, you could easily fit them all in one stack of eight square feet in your bedroom. Keeping track of more than one reptile is where it gets a little difficult unless you use today's sponsor, Husbandry Pro. I was a customer of Husbandry Pro before they sponsored and let me tell you, it's only gotten better. Their customer service is like no other company on Earth that I've ever dealt with. Plus the ease of use. If you've got a tablet, computer, phone, whatever you wanna use, you download the app, you enter your animals, super duper simple and then track sheds and poops and feeding and breeding. Whenever you wanna track, you can, super easy. If you wanna sell one of your animals to another user of Husbandry Pro, in the same way that you'd give a iPhone contact to another iPhone, you can give that animal on Husbandry Pro to another Husbandry Pro user. And that way they have all the records that you took right there on their phone, tablet or computer. And if you're brand new to reptiles and you wanna try this out, you have three or four reptiles, under six reptiles is always free on Husbandry Pro and you get 30 days, no matter how many reptiles you have, free as a trial to make sure you like it. So hit the link below and see why there's no other way I'd ever keep track of all of my reptiles. Number two, and I'm shocked no one puts these on these freaking lists, it's so obvious, African house snakes. African house snakes instead of corn snakes, I mean, keep in mind, every time I say instead of, those are all great reptiles too. They're amazing, I have all of them. It's just, I wanna give you something a little bit more unique and African house snakes are definitely that. Unless you live in Africa, which you see them all the time, but for the rest of us, there's a few different species. I prefer Copensis. They're just a little bit easier and have different morphs and they're really cool anyway. I've been to an African house snake breeding facility to see all the different morphs over at Reach Out Reptiles, Garrett Hartle's place. It's crazy how many new ones are coming around. And I think if you wanna get involved in a breeding project, something that, maybe you wanna make a little side hustle out of, African house snakes might be the next best thing in snakes or the next big thing. And in terms of hardiness, there might not be a more hardy reptile in the entire world than an African house snake. For this example, don't do this by the way, you could put one in a coffee can and feed it once a week and change the water once a week and it would live for its whole life like that. Now don't do this, I'm just giving you an example of how hardy and not needing tons and tons of craziness in order to keep them happy that they are. And they're small, we're talking about two feet for males up to four feet for females, although they usually don't get that big. And they're skinny, so they're smaller than corn snakes too. And they're not a colubrid. I know I'm making a comparison here, but colubrid just being like a type of snake, right? Ball pythons are pythons, corn snakes are colubrids. These are their own thing. So they are just unique and special and they have a bunch of different morphs. And even the ones that are normal, normal that I have, I've got 30 of them, they all look a little bit different. I love African house snakes. I'm selling a bunch still, if you're in Canada, hit me up, I'm selling pairs. But I'm keeping a bunch of them too, so I wanna breed them and create a really cool population here in Canada that we can create the next best beginner reptile and you know where to go. Wiccans Wiccan Reptiles. And the number one beginner reptile that your friends don't have, Schneider Skinks. I don't know what I'm gonna compare them to, but they're just so goofy and fun. And every time I go in the enclosure, I pick them up and it's kind of like, you know that scene in Toy Story where the guy goes down with a claw and the claw. It's kind of like that, they don't react, they just kind of think like, oh, this is really cool, where are we going, on an adventure today? They jump out of the enclosure at me, okay? They literally jump out of the enclosure at me. And they're easy. This is an animal that you keep pretty darn hot, you keep them pretty arid, meaning that the humidity is pretty low, you feed them bugs, change their water every once in a while, that's kind of it, make sure they have UVB light. You keep them kind of like a bearded dragon, almost like that, except for they're way smaller, and you don't really have a bunch of morphs to pick from, so it's really easy. Get yourself a Schneidersgang, because it's Schneidersgang, because it's Schneidersgang. Mine are really cool, their names are Bonnie and Clyde, had them for about four years, and I will never sell them. They're so cool, and they take up no space. A pair could easily fit in a four by two by two enclosure, we're talking eight square feet of space. They don't need tons of height, they will use a little bit of climbing height, but generally they're fossorial, animals are partially fossorial, meaning they like to dig. So I give them a sandy substrate that's a lot of sand mixed with coconut coir and things like that, and they dig through there, and they create tunnels and burrows and just kind of chill there with their eyes above. Like imagine an alligator or a crocodile with their eyes and their nose above the water, they do that, but above the sand, like a land, an orange land crocodile. Schneidersgangs are so unbelievably underrated, and if you get one, I mean, I just recommend it. Everyone that I talk to, I always tell them to get one, and eventually they come and say, hey, you were so right, I've never had someone get one and then sell it and say, no, they're not for me. But I wanna hear from you, let me know in the comments section below what your favorite beginner reptile species is, if you're brand new, or what was your favorite reptile when you got one, whenever that was. And because we do videos on Mondays and Thursdays, that means I'll see you in the next one.