Snake Discovery

Snake Discovery is the official channel of Snake Discovery LLC, a small business based out of the Minnesota and Wisconsin area. Snake Discovery does many reptile programs, teaching kids about reptiles. In 2021, Snake Discovery opened a reptile zoo and pet store called "Snake Discovery: A Reptile Experience" in Maplewood, Minnesota. It is owned by Ed and Emily Robertshttps://www.linkedin.com/in/emily-roberts-322587bb, who are married. Ed often helps by serving as a cameraman, but he has recently overcome his fear around cameras and is seen/heard in most videos now. Emily was born on May 9, 1991 in Woodbury, MN. Ed was born on May 21, 1990.
==History==
Emily's first job was at an ice cream store called Maggie Moo's. When she was 16, she started working at Cookies by Design. When she was 17, she left Maggie Moo's and started working at PetSmart. She graduated high school in 2009 and continued to work at PetSmart; while working, she met her first boyfriend Ed, who was shopping there. He referred to her as "The Bird Nerd" and they clicked from there. She did half of college at a local community college, and finished at The University of Minnesota, where she got her Bachelors degree in Fisheries and Wildlife. She got a new job with the Minnesota DNR as an "Interpretive Naturalist", which was a summer job where she had to make programs to teach people about wildlife. That's how she started loving to do programs.
Ed and Emily then got their first snake, Athena, which Emily used in her programs. After two years, she stopped this job and resumed working at PetSmart. Ed and Emily eventually got married and bought a house. Ed encouraged her to make her own job and to create her own programs, and she saw a "perfect" job opportunity at a nearby cave. She only worked there for a week and was loving it, but unfortunately, she would go home crying every day because her co-workers would belittle her and yell at her for "being a new employee". Due to the mistreatment she received at work, she quit. She decided to start her dream job, so she spent the next few months planning the curriculum for her programs.
After waiting her whole life for her dream job she finally had it. People at her programs wondered how to take care of the reptiles she brought because they fell in love with them, but she did not have enough time to answer all of their questions because she would have to go to her next program, so she wondered if she could make a YouTube video answering all of their questions. She made the Snake Discovery YouTube channel and uploaded her first video, titled "Kingsnake Shedding his Skin". She continued to make videos but she wasn't expecting that other people would want to learn about reptiles from her. Her channel unexpectedly reached 50k, then 100k, then 1 million subscribers. In March 2020, Ed and Emily bought a facility in Maplewood, Minnesota. They built a Reptile Zoo and store and consistently made "Facility Updates" filming the construction process.
== YouTube History ==
Emily's first YouTube channel appears to have been macawlover,https://www.youtube.com/user/macawlover/about which was created in June 2007, although she personally has never confirmed this. This assumption can be made primarily because the only video uploaded to it is titled 'Oscar attacking his new toy', and the aforementioned name is that of an African grey parrot that Emily is known to have owned.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sabyOZvLIgQ In addition to this, its username is oddly similar to that of macawlover2, a channel that Emily has admitted she created, and that was started later that same year, in November.https://www.youtube.com/user/macawlover2 The last recorded subscriber count of this channel before its boost in popularity was 156. The channel is no longer active.
The kinds of videos uploaded to macawlover2 were generally short films of her different pet birds. These included, but were not limited to: Cheyenne, a parrot that she still owns, who had a feather plucking issue due to neglect at a previous home; Oscar, an African grey parrot who she taught tricks; and Oliver, a military macaw. In total, only 31 videos were ever uploaded to macawlover2, the last of which was on June 6, 2014.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsFCUE_4W74
==Snake Discovery Company milestones ==
Since Emily opened the YouTube channel, she has always done animal programs under the business name “Snake Discovery”. Through this business she has also sold snakes and other reptiles by breeding her own animals, a business that was run out of their home. 
On May 12 2023, a video was posted announcing that the Snake Discovery Facility had been robbed. 
On February 6, 2024 in a video, Snake Discovery announced they had bought a building to be their breeding facility, separate from their “Zoo” building. 
==Personal Life ==
Emily and Ed currently reside in Hudson, Wisconsin. Emily has at least two sisters, Bethany and Grace, the latter of whom is scared of arachnids, and thus Emily named their first tarantula after her. Emily's Macaw, Cheyenne, was with her before she ever met Ed, and served as the ring bearer for the couple's wedding. Emily and Ed are godparents to siblings Abby and Austin, who appeared in a video about collecting leaf litter for snake habitats, though it is unknown if those are their real names or pseudonyms created to protect their identity. In 2022 Emily underwent two separate rhinoplasties, footage of which was used in a video posted 10 January, 2023. In 2022, Snake Discovery announced the death of their dear friend "Chad", who appeared in a few of their "challenge" videos. The couple got married on 2013. 
==Facts about Emily== 
*She once worked in a cave
*She is allergic to cats
*Prior to getting into snakes, she was a big bird person
*She owned several birds but now only has Cheyenne, whom she shares with Ed
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*In a Q&A she once joked that she promised a wizard her firstborn [human child] and that she didn't want to fulfill that promise, implying she and Ed do not plan on having any children. Off of that she and Ed are often referred to as "mom" and "dad" when it comes to their animals, for example in video "thought text" by an animal or when Emily is talking to Rex (their rescued pet alligator) or Cheyenne about Ed.
*She loves pokemon, an interest she shares with Ed and many of their fans.
*Cheyenne was the ring bearer at their wedding. Emily has shown a photo of a wedding helper leading a very young child, the flower girl, down the aisle while also holding Cheyenne. 
*Her stepfather Phill is the biological father of her sister Bethany, making them technically half-siblings, but Emily just calls her “sister”.
==Facts about Ed== 
*Ed first met Emily when she worked at Petco, he kept coming to her (in the reptile department) to ask her questions as an excuse to talk to her because he was attracted to her.
*He collects bottles of certain alcohol.
*His "gateway reptile/snake" that got him into the reptile keeping hobby was a female snake named "Athena". Athena sadly died due to burns related to a heating mat mistake that the couple made early on before they knew about how to prevent heat mat issues.
*On 25 July, 2024 on the YouTube community tab, Emily announced that while on their way to the Schaumburg reptile show Ed had to have an emergency appendectomy (surgical removal of appendix), the YouTube video to correspond with even was posted on their YouTube channel on 20 August, 2024.
==References==
Category:Educational YouTubers
Category:Vlogging YouTubers
Category:American YouTubers
Category:Users who joined in 2015
Category:One million subscribers
Category:Two million subscribers
Category:Three million subscribers