Bearded Dragon X Rankins Dragon Hybrids

I have a strong oppinion about making hybrids for money and I have expressed it here before. I see no reason to fight the laws of nature. What are the chances a ball and a blood will ever meet in wild? Not in our life times. Snakes have went through many many years of evolution to get where they are now. By creating hybrids, we are forcing them to start the adapt to survive deal all over again, for what? So we can make a good dollar? No good reason if you ask me. Wonder why so many hybrids are infertile, probably because its not meant to be. I mean herps have developed all sorts of features and characteristics to help them survive where they live. Be it eyes on the top of the head in the anacondas to the black color of Marine iguanas to warm up quickly in the sun, they got these features for a reason. I don't want to rub anyone the wrong way here but I feel I can be straight up with everyone here. Hope this post makes sense.
Jake

i think that hybrids suck, wow ya there cool lookin some of them i guess but they arent meant to be at all. i guess you could say that about designer morph snakes to i guess to each is own i know i woldnt have highbrids thats just my take on this thread i guess.

Thanks, I'm glad it was appreciated! To be honest, I as a bit hesitant to post it, given the prevalence of anti-hybrid sentiment I've seen in the herp community. It's always puzzled me that inbreeding is so widely accepted in spite of its known negative effects, yet there's such hostility towards hybrids, in spite the fact that hybridization has precisely the opposite effect, often leading to 'hybrid vigor'.

Henry

*****

Since when has inbreeding been widely accepted? I know when i bought even my ball python hets, he refused to sell me related hets.

Some breeders are better about it than others, but I cannot count the number of times I've heard people recommend proving out traits or hets by breeding the offspring back to the parents or to each other, with scarely a mention of the word 'inbreeding'. It's not universal, but from my perspective, it seems to be disturbingly common.

let's not your crazy experiments dirty the lawsons or beardies genes anymore.

Did you even read the post I made? Did you even try to understand the genetics?

"Dirty genes" is a myth, an obsolete concept that certainly has no basis in modern genetics, if it ever had any basis at all beyond knee-jerk emotional reactions.

Hybrids produce novel combinations of genes, that's all. If the hybrids are between closely-related species, there's little chance of major problems, and the capacity for major improvement (look up "hybrid vigor").

Since I've seen absolutely no evidence supporting the negative view of this hybridization (known examples of hybrid animals dying early in large numbers, etc), and a priori genetics knowledge suggests that such hybrids may actually enjoy superior health, I see no reason to give any creedence to your opposition.

Henry

Interesting to see an intellect posts regarding hybrids. I have to admit, its refreshing to see something other than "dirty genes" or the like in all these posts.

not saying that breeding different species is okay. Rankins need to be pure and not mixed. It's bad for the offspring and it's bad for the gene-pull. breeding two different colored viticepts though for color is okay, I don't mind breeding different breeds of a species. We do it all the time with dogs, but don't mix species like a lawsonii and a viticepts

Originally Posted by dandielaine

not saying that breeding different species is okay. Rankins need to be pure and not mixed. It's bad for the offspring and it's bad for the gene-pull. breeding two different colored viticepts

Your chance of finding pure rankins any where other than Australia is close to zero.

Crossing them is not bad for the offspring, actually when we started crossing these in the early 1990's we had better survival success with a lil larger dragon that were stronger feeders and would take larger more available food items than a supposedly "pure" rankins.

Don't get me wrong, I do no like hybrids at all.

You also have to consider that these are being produced for the pet trade only.

Henry,

Your arguments were very refreshing. I actually had to read your posts a few times, haha. Though I'm not very "smart" when it comes to this subject, my boyfriend actually explained a lot of it to me.

Thanks for all of the information.
-Nichole

I personally really like the idea of breeders pushing nature to its limits but it requires funding. They're not bad people and could have the same passions as us. They can't just be money grubbing capitalists because that would take away to much time from raising these very needy hybrid spawn. !BREEDERS ARE PEOPLE TOO!