Inbreeding

Originally Posted by Neverland Dragons

I am really disappointed that the original thread on silkbacks was locked without many of the questions being answered. I do understand why and it was heading in a totally unproductive direction.

I tried to ask questions that I thought were important and remain diplomatic. Many of the questions posed here were posed in the previous thread. I tried to point out that there were differences in husbandry (not better or worse, just different) and I received a reply with a bunch of subtle and not so subtle insults.

My main concern is, how inbred are these animals? And, if they have only been around a year or so, how can anyone possibly state there are no genetic problems with them? The honest answer to many of the questions should probably be, "I don't know." How related were to two leatherbacks that produced the first silkbacks? And for goodness sake, when was the first silkback hatched out? I asked that question at least three times. Was it in 2006, like Dachiu posted on their site? If so, the breeder himself would only have limited knowledge of how a captive environment, breeding and other factors affect this mutation. More importantly, there may be genetic issues that just have not had to time to show up in offspring.

To me, it is irresponsible and self serving ($) to go full speed ahead with this project with so little information known. Now, it is possible that Alessandro knows much more, but he sure has not answered the questions that would help us to understand that. So, either there is a language barrier and he does not understand what we are asking or he knows the people will not like his answers so he is remaining silent. He also just may not want to answer the questions, in which case he should just say he does not want to share that info. He came on that thread basically saying as long as people played nice he would answer questions. People were being respectful and trying to find answers. He then disappeared and people assumed he split and was avoiding the forum to answer the questions being posed. I do not know the truth to that, but I would hope, that if he wanted to help the community understand this mutation, he would have answered more of the questions. He has the right to not share any info, but by doing so, he leaves it open for people to make assumptions, and that is usually always worse than what the actual truth is.

exactly! when asked the hard questions he got defensive no matter how nicely we asked them.there are so many contradictions on husbandry,fragility and when and how the silkbacks came about.there is a person here that has the answers but decides to lurk instead of answer.to me and many other ppl this is an admission of guilt