| Dachiu |
07-09-2007 09:16 PM |
I don’t know the gentleman, but have heard nothing but great things about him and his company. What’s your point??
For the sake of offering a well-rounded view - Here’s another perspective on inbreeding from another well known monitor breeder - FR.
Quote:
The first thing you need to do is difine ethics and compare that to opinion. If after that, you wish to discuss ethics, then have at it.
The answer to that question is, if you do not think its right, then ethicially, you should not do it. If you think its right or have no other choice, then do it. Hey thats simple.
The real question is, why and why not. For most here that is beyond their ability to understand. Other then to create an arguement. Which has been going on forever.
If you are really concerned, then lets think about it. First, reptiles live in restricted populations, they are enclosed by either or both, physical or behavioral barriers. This shows up in having local color morphs of the same species. Something reptiles are noted for. Hence all the colors of corns, kings, boas, lizards etc. There are natural color morphs because of inbreeding. IF they out bred, they would tend to be uniform in color. With monitors, they are highly population oriented.
I can assume that thru decades or centuries of time, even with these animals outbreeding may occur, but remember we are assuming that.
Recently scientists are classifying species thru genetics, and now the understanding of this is just begining. Remember, this is very confusing to these scientists. Which leads me to question, how many of you are so learned at this.
To understand their genetics again is a huge question. Most of the comments I have read here are very naive. Its more complicated that you think and at the same time much more simple.
Genes are a "history book" of that animal, its not a simple set of building blocks. In populations, these are a set of successful steps that allowed that animals or group to continue to exsist. Like an onion, there are layers upon layers of genes that were expressed at one time. They're successful genes, not unsuccessful genes. This is something to really think about. Unsuccessful traits were simply erased by nature. Remember, there are no vets, doctors or halfway houses that will allow the incapable to survive. They simply die.
Think of it like this, if there was a delerious gene, it would have surfaced, then it would disappear because its unfit. If these animals are restricted in area, then inbreeding has to occur. Examples of this are islands. Also, many of you go herping, when you do, you say you are going over there to find this or that. You know where some kingsnakes, cornsnakes, spotted turtles, whatever, are, so you go there. Those are restricted areas. If they were designed to out breed, you would not have to go to a certain spot, you would be able to find them all over and they would tend to look alike. We would not have to use adjectives to help others understand what they looked like. These traits are Homozygous genes. There are no deleroius heterozygous genes. Hetero genes occur thru outbreeding. Try to understand that. Outbreeding is most likely how delerious genes are incurred. Then inbreeding will express these genes. So maybe we should question the ethics of outbreeding?
In captivity, many times we have no choices, for instance, I was the genesis of many species of reptiles. But lets pick a couple. I bred Kimberlys and Red Acanthurus. We had a pair and a trio. If I understand you correctly, you would have me not breed them after the first breedings? Because every breeding after that would be inbreeding. Ethically I could only breed the first pair and trio. Then I should have killed and preserved the rest. As they can only be inbred. I will be right back, i need to go kill of a bunch of baby lacies and pop some eggs. As I have all the lacies I need or want. Any more would surely have to be inbred.
That would have to happen with all rare monitors or reptiles. The reason is, they are rare.
In reality, genetic bottlenecking is a mathematical certainty. But there are many problems with that, first of all, animals are a living changing enity, not math. And second, the amount of time its takes is totally unknown. It may take hundreds of millions of years or one year.
Back to reality, in our cases, most of the people are being very hypocritical, as most have some morphs of other reptiles that are products of inbreeding, or pets like rabbits, mice, dogs, birds, cats, horses, etc, etc, that are products of inbreeding. Yet for some reason, they are against monitors being inbred.
I do not have a good answer for that. Only those people are not about ethics, are they? But more about opinion, which we are all allowed to have.
For my own experience, I have been inbreeding and outbreeding reptiles of many types for around four decades and have not seen any health problems doing so. I will say, I have experienced lots of problems with poor husbandry. I may be a bit jaded, but as an old person(compared to most of you) I think in most cases, genetics was a cover for poor husbandry. Certainly it could not the the fault of the keepers, could it? I mean they were so good at keeping monitors that all species have been bred for many years(bad joke) I really think the people who want to blame genetics for husbandry problems, should get into model trains or something else thats not living.
For me, I do not understand were there could be ethics, when then is little understanding of what these animals do in the first place. I do understand, there are lots of opinions.
For me, there are many more unethicial things, like taking mass amounts of monitors from nature, only to simply allow them to die.
People keeping monitors in such conditions that the monitors are physically unable to grow or reproduce.
People who ask how to set up their rare(you name the species) monitor. Because its their first monitor.
Anyone asking about caresheets for a species of monitor(my personal pet pieve)
Those are only some of my ethics, or is that my opinions. Ok, it may be opinions, but then, we are allowed to have them, aren't we.
F
ps. sorry for any misspelling.
|
PS - Our apparently “inbred” silkback female has outgrown her outcrossed leatherback relatives by over 100grams. Go figure. |
