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Panther chameleons like this one are featured in videos on Clint's Reptiles and Brian Barczyk channels. Photo credit to Pierre Barmin for Unsplash.

Go Herping on YouTube with these Reptile Channels

Today we are continuing our safari through the exotic animal regions of YouTube with the Channel Galaxy's cluster of Reptile channels. Whether you are looking to find new YouTube channels to get your kids interested in science, nature, and animals or are just looking for high quality reptile and herpetology content Channel Galaxy can help you find it.

Discover these five reptile focused YouTube channels featuring snakes, lizards, turtles, and the occasional crocodilian, both captive specimens and wild specimens encountered on herping outings.

Brian Barczyk

The largest reptile focused channel on YouTube, Brian Barczyk’s channel makes kid-friendly videos on the exhibits in his family’s large reptile zoo The Reptarium, located in Utica Michigan.

Brian Barczyk’s videos feature frequent quick cuts and high energy background music and dialogue great for holding short attention spans. The camera shots often show the presenters, including Brian but also frequently his teenage sons, having excitement and enthusiasm for learning about the exotic snakes, lizards, crocodilians, turtles and occasional invertebrate they are handling.

This video tour of the Reptarium’s lizard exhibits is a great example of the frenetic pacing and high energy of Brian’s content. In the video Brian moves quickly from enclosure to enclosure and giving a short description and some facts for each animal, maintaining a quick pace with tight editing throughout. He holds each colorful and exotic lizard up to the camera to give a great view of the dozens of colorful and exotic lizards he is showcasing.



His channel is great for sparking curiosity in young minds about the natural wonder of the world. Check him out on YouTube or see related channels here on Channel Galaxy:

Snake Discovery

Another one of the most prominent Reptile channels is Emily and Ed Roberts’s Snake Discovery channel.

Like Brian Barczyk’s channel, Snake Discovery also features a family that runs a reptile zoo, located in Maplewood Minnesota, and the animals displayed in their educational exhibitions. While also making family friendly content, Snake Discovery’s relatively natural and toned down presentation style may be more adult-friendly than the high energy of Brian Barczyk’s channel.

Ed covers camerawork and Emily uses her background as a naturalist for Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources to present educational videos on reptiles from all major reptile families, including some on crocodilians and tortoises. And while Brian Barczyk’s channel mostly uses their own zoo to shoot their videos, Snake Discovery will frequently travel to reptile exhibitions and occasionally go “herping,” which means hunting for wild reptiles.

This video features a recent herping expedition Emily and Ed took to the Costa Rican rainforest. It is a fascinating opportunity to see some of these exotic animals in their native habitats:



Watch their videos on YouTube or check out their Channel Galaxy page for links to even more Reptile focused channels:

NKFherping

Unlike many of the reptile channels on YouTube Noah K Fields rarely stays indoors when shooting his videos. His channel nearly exclusively features herping videos taken from his expeditions around his native Georgia, but also all across the southern United States, from California to Florida.

Each video is a truly unique experience. You never know if the next piece of ground clutter will reveal a spectacular snake specimen when flipped over or when Noah will spot a turtle on its way across a forest path. Snakes make up the majority of his finds, but lizards and amphibians like salamanders are also frequently featured. And while each video includes dozens of finds it may take Noah hours of off-camera searching to get those shots.

This recent video shows a pretty spectacular colony of Pigeon Mountain salamanders nestled into the cracks of exposed rock surfaces in the forest. Noah finds dozens of individuals here and gets great video of the eye-catching markings and coloration of this species.



Go along on an adventure with Noah by watching his content on YouTube or see what other channels NKFherping connects to here on Channel Galaxy:

Wicken’s Wicked Reptiles

Adam Wickens brings a professional videographic sensibility to the reptile space on YouTube. The tight editing and clean shots in the videos he produces make his content noticeably more smoothed, polished, and professional in quality. Adam has said he was inspired by Tarantula Collective’s high level of production quality, something we noted about that channel in our review of Bug Channels. The similarity is immediately apparent, and that is a good thing.

Wickens covers topics with a focus on home hobbyist care for reptiles. Typical topics would include enclosure reviews, comments on the suitability of some species for inexperienced hobbyists, or the history of the reptile hobby.

This recent video on setting up a low budget enclosure for the colorful red-eyed treefrog is a great example of both Adam’s ability to clearly explain a topic as well as showcasing his ability to edit great shots of these small animals into his overall smooth production:



Watch his series on appropriate reptiles for different sized containers on YouTube or check out a cluster of reptile channels related to Wickens on their Channel Galaxy page:

Clint's Reptiles

Dr. Clint Laidlaw’s PhD in biology education may make him the most heavily credentialed reptile YouTuber. On his channel he uses his expertise to educate viewers on care for exotic reptile pets, although he will also occasionally feature other kinds of exotic pets like velvet ants or isopods.

Clint’s presentation style has been compared to a reptile focused Mr. Rogers, and I can see how his warm friendliness and curiosity could be seen that way. And though many of his videos are centered around asking if a particular animal makes a suitable pet, he very frequently will upload videos about the general science around reptiles and their relatives.

This recent video is a great example of Clint’s engaging presentation style and depth of knowledge. Though not all dinosaurs were considered reptiles, as Dr. Laidlaw explains, here he discusses the slight inaccuracies in the Jurassic Park movies’ portrayal of velociraptors. As it turns out the dinosaurs depicted in the movies did really exist, but they are not what modern scientists call velociraptors. Watch the video to learn what the proper name was for these seemingly fantastical creatures:



And check out the rest of Dr. Laidlaw’s educational and instructional videos dealing with reptile care on YouTube, or find even more reptile and exotic animal content from related channels linked on his Channel Galaxy page



And while you’re here make sure you click around on the Channel Galaxy recommendations for these channels. We couldn’t get to every herpetology and reptile related channel in our database of over 30,000 YouTube channels, so you’ll want to explore the Channel Galaxy to find loads more!

Or maybe you’ll branch off into your other related interests. We’ve already visited insect channels and channels focused on deep sea exploration earlier on our safari through channels featuring exotic animals on YouTube. The Dark Den channel featured in our Bug channels guide directly links to the Wicken's Wicked Reptiles and Clint's Reptiles channels featured in this guide. So be sure to check out our guides on those topics as well.