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Growing up in South Africa, John was fortunate enough to spend much of his childhood developing a passion for wildlife and especially reptiles. While other boys were involved in the routine of school, John was already showing that he was a non-conventional type of person by focusing his attention and free time on studying wild life, reptiles and catching venomous snakes.
During his late teen years having already successfully kept and bred dozens of different kinds of reptiles, John joined the Transvaal Snake Park and worked as a professional herpetologist. There he "milked" the venom from poisonous snakes to be used in snake bite vaccines. He was also hands on with their successful captive breeding program where they produced the first captive born Angolan pythons (Python anchietae), Lesser African rock pythons (Python sebae natalensis) & Madagascan ground boas (Acrantophis madagascariensis) among others.
John´s love of reptiles and travel took him on various projects round the world. He worked at a reptile park in Germany, sailed half-way around the world on a yacht and in 1981 at a zoo in the UK, he broke the world "snake-sit-in" record by sharing a cage with 24 highly venomous snakes for 69 days and nights.
While still maintaining reptiles as pets, John made a career move in IT Software, eventually working as an executive for several international firms and technology start ups.
During the early 2000s while living in the USA, John began to once again build a reptile collection with ball pythons, carpet pythons and dwarf Central-American-boa morphs. In 2004 after looking for some type of breeding guide on morphs and not finding one, the first edition of the book was born with the writing of Designer-Morphs (first edition).
Apart from being a reptile breeder, John is also an entrepreneur with several different business interests, an author and speaker. He and his wife Mel have been married for 26 years and have 2 daughters, Jessie and Megan.

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