columbians and argentines

Originally Posted by reptodude

The question is, why would you even want to cross the two.

The real question is...why is this all being posted in the Classifieds section instead of the tegu forum?

because i have a columbian and it was sold to me as an argentine and wanted not to get rid of the col because i really like him and was planning on breeding args wth cols

because i have to much to do besides looking for tegu forums,why not put it here ,people can read it just as fine as the other places,

Originally Posted by chickenman

because i have to much to do besides looking for tegu forums,why not put it here ,people can read it just as fine as the other places,

i dont think anyone suggests you do breed them together... best to avoid. Why ruin a perfectly good breed by mixing it with others?

OK, I figure I'll weigh in. First, about the possibility of viable offspring, it's unknown. As Vanyard said, there's no evidence it's been tried. I did a bit of poking around, and the info on chormosomes on all Tupinambis is contradictory, so it's possible the babies would be sterile, inviable, or fine. Basically, there's no clues as to the results.

Now, many here know I'm quite supportive of hybrids, and find most objections to them shallow and baseless. That said, I'm not keen on 'undirected' hybridization. If you were trying to get offspring with a particular set of traits (say, a tegu with the size and docility of an Argentine with Gold tegu colors), that'd be one thing, but just because you don't want to buy a third animal is, well, lazy. Hybrids can be great animals, and can even be healthier than normals, but things *can* go wrong, so it's important to actually think about whether the benefits of the mating (producing a stronger or more desirable breed) would outweigh the potential problems if something *does* go wrong. Those problems are very rare, but they can happen. This shouldn't dissuade hybridization (the opposite outcome, animals with 'hybrid vigor', is much more common), but it should make you stop and think about why exactly you want to mate the animals you do.

Henry

i just thought it might be cool to be the first person to ever cross col wth args

I'll use an analogy, based on my experiences with plants. Plants hybridize like crazy, and making hybrids is actually an industry of sorts in some plants, such as orchids, since exceptional specimens can be preserved by asexual reproduction. As such, hybrids are very common, and many people hybridize.

However, because they're so common, simply being a hybrid alone isn't enough to make something neat; it has to be pretty, hardy, cold-tolerant or somehow 'special' to be considered anything but a waste of time and pollen.

I could, if I wanted, be the first person to cross Nepenthes tobaica with N. khasiana, but since both plants are almost identical and in no way really 'special', why even bother?

Same thing here: sure, you could be the first, but so what? Does that really mean anything if the hybrid isn't really special or an improvement in any way?

I'm certainly the last person to discourage experimentation, and my view on hybrids is probably the most positive on this forum, but hybridizing two species just for the hell of it is probably just a waste of time. The trick to making good hybrids is to know what you want, and pick species accordingly, rather than just throwing species together and hoping for something cool.

Henry