Are you using a breeder or keeper mindset in caring for your Satanic Leaf-tailed Gecko (Uroplatus phantasticus)? Be deliberate in how you approach your husbandry!
Transcript (more or less):
Branch Demon Podcast
Episode 3: How Reptile Communities Evolve — And Where Phants Are Now
Misty Mountain Phants | branchdemon.com
It is morning in Andasibe, Madagascar. Last night we were hiking Maromizaha, and we were able to find three satanic leaf-tailed geckos — two during the day and one at night. One very cool thing about Andasibe is that it’s home to the Indri, a large lemur that is known for its mournful wails. It was a late night for me, but this is what greets us at 6:30 in the morning. I’ll probably fall back asleep afterwards, but I am not missing this.
Sitting out here, listening to nature, this is a good time to contemplate the past and plan for the future. We do that for our lives, but we can also do it for our communities.
Watching our communities for the last four decades, I’ve seen patterns develop and can see where they are starting again. Our reptile communities have their own patterns, and where we are in the development of those communities affects how we see our husbandry. This is Episode 3 of the Branch Demon Podcast.
My name is Bill Strand, and today we’re going to talk about the stages in reptile communities in general, and where we are in the Uroplatus phantasticus community in particular.
And how does this affect you, the intrepid phant keeper? We’ll get to that, because we are at an inflection point — a special stage where your keeping of a single phant can help propel us forward. So please, sit back, and I’d like to tell you a story about how reptile communities evolve. This explains a lot about what you might be running into in online conversations and what you see in care guides. It will lay the foundation for your husbandry going forward. This gets into community dynamics and may seem strange on a podcast about a certain species of gecko, but it lays the foundation to understand so much.
I ask for your indulgence as I tell you the tale of how reptile communities develop, and where we are as the Uroplatus phantasticus community.
Stage One: The Wild Caught Era
In reptile communities, everything starts the same way. We get reptiles from the wild. I got my start with phants at this stage of the phant community.
The first thing we have to do is figure out how to keep them alive in captivity. These are the pioneers — the people who have to learn how to acclimate these animals, figure out what they need husbandry-wise, what works, what doesn’t. It’s trial, error, and educated guesses. It’s careful observation, and it’s learning from failure.
This exploration goes on until we hit the first major milestone: successful breeding. Not just one lucky clutch, or a gravid female that was imported. I’m talking about multiple successful breedings — the point where we’ve figured out how the mating works, at least enough that we can provide the conditions for it to happen on a regular basis. We may not be able to do it on command yet, but we can do it consistently.
Stage Two: Building a Breeder Community
The stage after that is not just knowledge or breeding ability, but requires a desire to do more. This is when someone decides to take the breeding information and capability and create a side business offering captive-hatched individuals.
Yes, this happens often and somewhat casually when someone gets a pair, breeds them, and decides to open a Facebook page. But to really move the needle into this next stage, a handful of breeders need to make the decision to be serious enough about it that they become a community anchor — a source for the species when new members come in. You know you have reached this point when a new member of the community asks where to get this particular species of Uroplatus, or any species in the genus, and the answer is one — or hopefully more — names of breeders with websites that answer their emails. If your answer is to check the classifieds and keep an eye out for availability, then the community hasn’t achieved escape velocity.
And there isn’t anything wrong with that. None of the stages are a requirement for a community to be valid or to learn about their favorite species. Jumping to the stage where a side business could be made is a huge step forward for community growth, but it also brings in the ugliness that humans bring whenever money is involved.
So don’t take my stage structure as a suggestion that the value of a community is increased when it goes to the next stage.
Why Consistent Availability Changes Everything
But one thing that does increase as you go to the next stages is the ability for the community to grow and be more insulated from imports shutting down. This constant availability of captive-hatched individuals is a serious milestone in community development, because it’s at this point that people just joining the community can start with a captive-hatched individual instead of having to deal with wild-caught animals — and that’s a night and day difference. This is what supercharges community growth.
With wild-caught, you’re dealing with parasite loads. You’re dealing with sickness, dealing with the damage and stress of capture and importation on top of life in the wild, which is not easy. You’re dealing with acclimation, which is its own challenge.
Captive-hatched animals still have their challenges — they can have parasites, they can still have stress — but it’s not like what you get from wild-caught. What this does is it allows a much greater number of people to get involved with the species. It expands the community, and this expansion is critical, because now breeders who are doing it for the love of the effort can actually have a side business breeding these geckos.
This is a good thing. A side business breeding geckos for the love of it disappears as soon as there’s any financial difficulty — as soon as the breeder no longer loves losing money for every sale to customers that sneer about the price being charged, we lose that breeder’s experience. But if the breeding project is making money, then it can stand the test of time. For example, if the breeder at some point is laid off from their job and the breeding project is losing money, then that breeding project is a dangerous anchor that’s going to drag them down and will be cut immediately. If the breeding project is making money, then this side business suddenly becomes a lifeline. Breeding projects that make money — including a value for time spent, not just cages and weekly feeder bills — stand the test of time, and we retain that breeder’s experience in the community.
Now, I’m not telling you this to encourage you to become a breeder — that is a completely separate consideration we can talk about later. What I’m saying to anyone who is breeding the other Uroplatus species like sikorae or ebenaui — which are both on the edge of this stage — is to make sure you have a viable breeding project that accounts for both time and expenses.
Reptiles should not be cheap, considering how much effort goes into producing and making healthy animals available. And making them cheap — whether because of poor business decisions or some misguided desire to make these widely available — is the first nail in the coffin of the future of that species. Because once it’s seen as a cheap species, it will not be bred and it will disappear when imports stop.
The Economics of Community Growth
This is a major stage because it also requires the market to grow to purchase the babies produced. Uroplatus breeders are lucky in that each clutch is two eggs — it’s much easier to control supply that way. But there needs to be enough of a community built up to support production, or else the breeder community shrinks and we could slip to the previous stage.
Any breeder will tell you: the one thing you need is people to buy what you’ve bred. If you have 10 babies, you need enough of a community to buy those 10 babies. Otherwise you’re just running a private zoo, and nobody can sustain that. If a breeder can’t sell what they’re producing, they stop breeding, and the community contracts.
During this phase, breeders are rightfully seen as the top experts. These are the people who pioneered the care, who figured out how to breed these animals. They have the most knowledge, the most experience, the most animals under their care. They’ve earned that respect.
But here’s where something interesting happens.
The Breeder Care Ceiling
To get to the point where you’re producing enough captive-hatched individuals to maintain consistent availability — so the community can grow based on that availability — you have to develop what I call “breeder care.” What this means is you’ve refined the care to a point where you can replicate it. You can replicate it in many cages, because you need a breeding colony, you need multiple individuals. You can’t just have one pair.
Pairs aren’t always breeding at the same time. For consistent availability, you’re going to need multiple pairs, and you can’t guarantee when they’re going to mate, when they’re going to produce eggs, and when those eggs will hatch. You have to have a room or facility that can handle unexpected surges in population. You need a lot of cages. And this means those cages are going to be on the smaller side. They’re going to meet the minimum size requirements, but they’re going to be efficient. Because you have multiple animals to support, the caging itself will be minimalistic so it’s easy to maintain.
This develops a breeder care approach that is efficient, replicable, and sustainable.
And here’s where things get complicated. When breeders become seen as the ultimate experts — which makes sense, they are the experts at this stage — sometimes there’s a tendency to believe that the care they’ve developed for breeding is the ultimate care. The best care. The care everyone should follow.
This is easy to fall into. When everyone’s praising you as the expert, when you’ve solved the breeding puzzle, when you’re the one teaching everyone else, it’s natural to start considering your methods as the standard.
But here’s the thing. Breeder care is optimized for a specific purpose. It’s designed to be efficient, replicable, and sustainable across multiple animals. And it’s excellent at that. It works. It needs to work.
But once we reach the point where we’re successfully breeding a species reliably and consistently, there’s actually a next stage.
Stage Three: The Enrichment Frontier
The next stage is enrichment. And this is where breeder care kind of hits a ceiling. You can make it more efficient, more effective, but it doesn’t naturally evolve into enrichment keeping. You can add enrichment to breeding operations, but there are constraints that make it difficult to scale.
This is when keepers need to step up and become the ones exploring what’s possible and lead us to the next stage.
And when I say keepers, I mean people who can concentrate on just a few geckos — or even one gecko. What matters isn’t the number of geckos you keep; it’s what you’re able to set up for that individual animal. Because if you only have one gecko, you’re freed from the constraints that breeders face. You don’t need 50 identical setups. You don’t need to be able to check 40 animals in 20 minutes. You don’t need simple, replicable systems.
You can build something complex. Something beautiful. Something optimized for one individual’s quality of life instead of efficiency across many.
And that’s the keeper mindset.
Where Phants Are Right Now
So where are we with Uroplatus phantasticus?
We’ve reached that breeding milestone. We have consistent, reliable captive breeding. We have regular availability of captive-hatched babies. We have multiple breeders producing quality animals. This is a serious achievement.
Phants are the only Uroplatus that have gotten to this point. There are other species that are on the edge, so we have exciting growth in the Uroplatus community happening in real time. And I’m excited about it. I’m hoping other Uroplatus species can get there too. But it requires a certain critical mass — dedicated breeders who are willing to step into the serious breeding mindset. And with everything it takes to do that, it’s no wonder that many experienced breeders prefer to be more casual with their projects. There’s no shame in that.
The phant community got here because of a number of people who were serious about phants. Yvette was a huge part of getting us where we are today. She dedicated herself completely to phantasticus. She focused on diversity in bloodlines. She doesn’t work with any other reptile. She is Uroplatus phantasticus. And through market ups and downs, she has been a constant over the years.
We now have a community of breeders providing consistent availability. That problem is solved for the satanic leaf-tailed gecko. So the question is: what’s next?
Well, now it’s time for the phantasticus community to take the next step. We can’t stop at the breeder level. And this is what Yvette and I are doing with our approach to phants. We’re moving to the enrichment level. How do we enrich the lives of these geckos?
What This Means for You
Yes, Yvette will continue breeding. That’s her contribution, and it’s vital. She is working under the constraints of breeder care because she maintains a breeding colony. That’s her role in the community. But I’m taking a different role. I’m becoming a more visible part of our operation when it comes to showing people how to keep their phantasticus. Because when you’re a keeper, you have the freedom and ability to provide a much higher level of enrichment — because you only have one gecko. Or a few geckos. Not 40.
Throughout this podcast series, I’m going to be talking about how I keep my personal phant. And I’m going to be very clear: I’m not keeping mine in the minimum requirements. I’m keeping my single phantasticus in a 2×2×4-foot tall cage. That’s the kind of husbandry I want to present, because that is what’s best for the individual animal.
When you get a phantasticus, there’s no reason for you to treat it like you would if you had a complete wall full of them. Unless you are a breeder, there’s no reason to use those smaller, more space-efficient cages.
Treat your phant like I’m treating mine — like the princess she is. She’s going to have a large cage all to herself. She’s going to have plants, branches to move through, gradients and microclimates. I am going to spoil my phantasticus because that’s what she deserves. And that’s the kind of care I want to pass on to you. That is what we’re going to be talking about in this podcast series.
Now, when you look at care guides that are already out there, when you talk to breeders, they will usually give you the care protocols that they use for their geckos. And of course that makes sense — you teach what you know and you teach what works. But that’s where you’re going to see recommendations for smaller cages, and that’s why you’re not going to find a whole lot of enrichment in those care guides. Right now, most people who keep phants and talk about them publicly are breeders, so you’re hearing breeder care.
In this episode, I want to give you permission — and the framework — to take all of that information and give your phantasticus something more. A better life, more space, more choices, more enrichment. Invest in your little Branch Demon. Spoil your little Branch Demon. Treat your Branch Demon as the unique and very special experience that it is.
The Basics of Keeper Mindset
Let me give you some basics of what this keeper mindset means. And some of this might be surprising if you’ve already done research into phantasticus care.
First: you don’t need to breed. I know it’s fun to think about breeding. I know the idea of having a whole jungle of satanic leaf-tailed geckos is appealing, but each one of those babies needs its own cage. And maybe you do it once for the experience, but really, when you’re starting out, don’t immediately think about breeding. Think about enjoying the phant for what it is. This means you don’t need both a male and a female. You don’t need to plan for future babies. You don’t need space for multiple setups. You don’t need breeding equipment. Just get one phant to start with.
And male or female — it’s fine, either one. They’re both amazing. It’s not like some species where everyone wants the male or everyone wants the female. With phants, both sexes are equally incredible as pets. They’re equally dramatic in the cage.
So pick one, and put that one gecko in an impressive cage. Not just a holding cage. Not just a cage for containment. A cage for enrichment. Instead of asking what the minimum is, ask how big of a cage you can fit.
Give them enough space so they can move around at night. Because when we see them during the day, they’re just sitting around doing nothing — it’s because they’re sleeping. But look at them at night. These are not geckos that lounge around being lazy. They’re bouncing around. They’re walking. They’re hunting. They can be ambush predators — yes, they’ll sit and wait for prey. But they also move. They jump. Give your gecko the space to move and jump at night. Your phant is going to be spending over 10 years in the space you provide. Don’t just have a containment cage.
So that’s the foundation. That’s the keeper vs. breeder mindset. And that’s why the care you see from breeders might be different from what I’m going to be talking about here. The approaches are optimized for different things. And both are necessary for a healthy community at this stage.
A Quick Disclaimer
When I talk about “breeder mindset” and “keeper mindset,” I’m not putting people into boxes. These aren’t identities — they’re approaches. And we all exist somewhere on the spectrum between those two extremes.
Plenty of breeders care deeply about enrichment and give their animals incredible setups. And plenty of keepers think about efficiency and space management. I’m using these as teaching tools — two ends of a continuum — to help illustrate a choice you’re making, often without realizing it.
Where you land on that spectrum is up to you. And it might shift over time.
So when I say “breeder mindset,” I mean the collection of constraints and priorities that come with breeding goals. When I say “keeper mindset,” I mean the freedom and focus that comes with not having a large population. You can have both. You can blend them. You can move between them. I’m just showing you the two poles so you can navigate the space between them consciously.
The Stage Beyond: Small Batch Breeding
Now, I suspect some of you have something at the back of your mind that is bothering you. I’m talking about breeder care, which is about production, and keeper care, which is about enrichment. It makes sense from the human perspective — but what about the phant? Isn’t it the same phant we’re talking about? Shouldn’t the care be the same? Shouldn’t optimal care be the goal for all of us?
The answer is yes.
And there is another community stage beyond the keeper enrichment stage. That is what’s known as the small batch breeding stage — where this dual personality of needing to produce enough captive-hatched to fuel community growth merges with a deep desire to provide the best enriched care possible. Because that’s what we got into this for in the first place.
We have many episodes ahead to talk about this. But for you right now — if you’re getting one phant or even a few phants — you have freedoms that breeders don’t have. You can do more. You can create something beautiful. The minimums are not for you and your little night fury. It’s time for us to think in maximums.
My name is Bill Strand. This is the Branch Demon Podcast. Thank you for stopping by the Night Forest.
Subscribe, leave a review, and find us at branchdemon.com
Phants available at mistymountainphants.com