Pheonix Herp Society

[Shadowgamer21]

Not sure if this is in the right forum topic or not. Just wanted to know if anyone has heard of them or been there before. Pretty amazing place in my opinion. Supposedly one of only two accredited reptile/exotic animal, sanctuary/rescue in the U.S. So if there is an major criminal bust involving any exotic animals, largely reptiles, law enforcement goes to them or the other non-profit rescue for help. They only adopt out animals that make good pets unless you can prove that you know what your're doing (not everything is adoptable, including some that would make fine pets). Even adoption for your average kingsnake or leopard gecko is strict about whether or not you can provide for an animal. They require pictures of the enclosure you will use plus a description of the lighting/temps and what kind of diet you will supply. They also say they have the largest collection of venomous reptiles in the U.S. They also go out to schools, or schools go to them to teach kids about reptiles. Overall, it's seems like a pretty awesome place. They have quite a few tegus. Black and whites, reds, a blue and a couple albinos. They have a lot of animals that are illegal in the state of AZ, like crocs/gators and kinkoujou. I signed up to volunteer, too bad it's so freaking hot out there, was like 113.

 

[Shadowgamer21]

These are all from the Pheonix Herp Society
[attachment=2937]
These pics don't do justice to the animals. Not sure what this was but was amazing.
[attachment=2938]
Albino tegu or some kind of morph.
[attachment=2939]
Supposedly a blue they have for breeding.

I would take more but a lot of the enclosures are outdoors so they would come out worse than the ones above unless I went inside the enclosures themselves.

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I tried to add this to the post above but edit is on a time limit of 10 minutes I guess.




Also their tegus that are housed outside are way aggressive. I think there are three reasons for that, one being that the temps here in AZ are really high so they have a lot of energy. Two would be that they are housed from 2 - 4 per enclosure (size of enclosure is fine). Three is that there are not enough volunteers to be able to feed each individually outside the cage so they have cage aggression. It was like some Jurassic Park missing footage, they attacked the door as soon as they saw the bucket, one even climbing six feet up the side of the cage. They don't fight with each other but they attack the feeder more aggressively than any of the large monitors did. The only comparable temperament was from some young monitors. They were all Argentine black and whites.