PROFILING A SPECIE LIKE NO OTHER
BIRTH
I was born in France and I have grew up in the department of Ain.
1983
YOUTH
PASSION - WORK
Outside of work, I am a professional photographer (weddings, events, glamorous beauty portrait) but also always fully into speed skating.
Already passionate about reptiles, I breed Morelia Amethistina and build bioclimatic cages at home.
My twenty first years were devoted to Extreme sports : speed skating, sailing, climbing, downhill mountain biking, canoe / kayak, judo, endurance... But I was already very drawn to nature.
2003
2012
2013
ALIGATOR BAY
I am hired in this park to build bio-climatic cages for alligators and turtles. If the animals are feeling well, they will breed. My goal was to give them the best possible living space for this.
BIRTH
I was born in France and I grew up in the department of Ain.
1983
YOUTH
PASSION - WORK
Outside of work, I am a professional photographer (wedding, event, glamorous beauty portrait) but also always fully into speed skating.
Already passionate about reptiles, I breed Morelia Amethistina and build bioclimatic cages at home.
2003
My twenty first years were devoted to extreme sports : speed skating, sailing, climbing, downhill mountain biking, canoe / kayak, judo, endurance... But I was already very drawn to nature.
2012
ALIGATOR BAY
2013
I am hired in this park to build bio-climatic cages for snakes and lizards. If the animals are feeling well, they will breed. My goal was to give them the best possible living space for this.
ENCYCLOPEDIA
It was in 2015 that the encyclopedia project began for me with my expatriation in Asia and more and more trips across Asia.
2020
PROJECTS
Between 2013 and 2020, I take care of several projects related to the development and preservation of nature:
- General Manager of a wild animal farm for the reproduction of turtles, birds, mammals and reptiles.
- Responsible for a turtle breeding farm in Vientiane
LET ME ANSWER YOU
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Which animal impressed you the most and why?
There are a lot of them but if I had to name one it would be the Aipysurus Laevis, a sea snake. I had been looking for it for tens of hours in New Caledonia, snorkeling and diving for tens of kilometers. The last day I could find him I dived alone at 10-15 meters deep in murky water with 1.5 m of visibility (visibility at arm's length, hardly more). This sea snake is prey to sharks and it feels safe in murky waters which does not make it easy to capture. I was in a bulldog shark area so on my guard with little visibility. All of a sudden, this snake appeared right in front of me. A poisonous snake of 1.40 m, which comes face to face with me after tens of hours of search. I took it behind the head with my glove and I landed at the bottom of the water to lean on the muddy sand on my knees and bag it. It was not easy because he is leaning in the water to pull back and to back up. I was in my mud cloud putting it in the bag and I was super happy to have it to photograph it.
Have you ever been stung or bitten? By what and what were the consequences?
Reptiles don't sting, they bite. I have been regularly bitten by harmless species because I do not take special precautions. On the other hand, for all dangerous species whether venomous with proteroglyph type hooks (fixed hooks) or solenoglyphs (long movable hooks) or not poisonous but dangerous (large snake, crocodile, monitor ...), I am very careful. I was never poisoned so I didn't have any venom in my system. For other reptiles like monitor lizards, crocodiles and large snakes I take great care. I have only had mild bites which have disappeared after a day.
Have you always been as passionate as today, even small?
I have always been interested in nature. When I was a child I watched ants, bees, I used to catch lizards already and I have always been passionate about this. I was catching lizards and gecko when I was in the south of France with my great aunt. I caught my first snake when I was eight years old. It was a grass snake at the back of the garden. Otherwise I would catch frogs that I put behind my house in a stream. I actually, always had an affinity with reptiles and then when I was able to have my first snake, it is at that time that my passion really grew. I started in the terrarium with a ball python, a very common snake to start with.
Which animal would you absolutely like to find? Which is your "favourite"?
There is a long list but one that really would make me happy would be the olm (Proteus anguinus) . An amphibian - an aquatic salamander. It lives in caves in Europe. It has a very special ecology because it lives extremely old and moves very little. It is unique.
Otherwise there is also the moloch horridus (horned devil), a lizard which lives in Australia and has pikes all over his body.
There is also pseudocerastes urarachnoides, an Iranian viper that has a tail which looks like a solifuge and which moves it to attract birds.
However, my favourite would still be the olm.
What role does the animal play in the biotop?
For reptiles and amphibians, their roles are really diverse because we are talking about 19,000 different species that have different modes of predation, links in the ecosystem and functions. We have reptiles which are super-predators like certain snakes which are at the top of the food chain. They will regulate the species that are below them because they have no or very few predators. Other snakes, are down the chain food, even if they are predators. I think of the aquatic snakes that live in ponds and eat small fish but are eaten by other animals. Some small snakes regulate ant populations and can be eaten by just about anything.
An example of the role of a snake: in Java, they killed all the cobras which led them to be infested by rats. They tried to use traps but were unsuccessful. So they had to reintroduce the cobra to solve a problem that they themselves created.