Eric Goode, the filmmaker behind Tiger King and Chimp Crazy, has turned his fascination with reptiles into a five-part HBO documentary series about the strange, secretive world of exotic animal trafficking. Monsters of God, which premiered August 6 on HBO Max, follows the global reptile trade from its origins as a loosely regulated hobby in the 1960s to the international, billion-dollar criminal enterprise it has become. The series explores the human desire to possess something larger, rarer, and more dangerous, and its inevitable cost—in this case, vulnerable animals are pushed toward extinction. “We were really intentional about not making it a traditional true crime doc,” Jeremy McBride, an executive producer on the series, told TIME. “It’s really a portrait of how obsession drives people to get the rarest of the rare.” —Clara Scholl