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Diamond X Irian Jaya Jag

My personal opinion is to avoid breeding diamonds with carpets.

My reasoning is purist in a way; pure diamonds are fairly uncommon and will likely become less and less common the more the diamond is diluted with carpet.
I have looked into diamonds a few times but shied away because of the small chance that the diamond advertised has carpet in it. It could be from way back but sometimes (by unscrupulous dealers) things get sold as "pure" when they are in fact 88% (or whatever) diamond. the person who then bought the "pure" diamond breeds it to true pure diamond and gets 94% (or whatever) diamond and sells it as pure because the original 88% was marked as "pure." Eventually the offspring will be close to pure but still have carpet in them. Breeding them to a carpet would be taking a step back IMO.

Besides, diamonds are very beautiful on their own, no reason to tinker with that.
 
Diamond x Coastal

Here's a link to a pic I posted that is apparently from breeding a Coastal Carpet with a Diamond.

http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=443054

I hear the argument for keeping things pure, but since I lack the faith that it's possible, I am embracing the "designer" aspect. The only way to bring new genes into different locales is to destroy the purity. Also, I'm sure when we say a snake is 87.5% Irian Jaya, we are only guessing. Who's to say what traits were inherited along those generations. With that in mind, breeding a Jaguar to a Diamond, and breeding those offspring to a pure diamond, would eventually lead to a Jaguar that is 97% Diamond. But is it really? Considering that every Jaguar produced inherited a gene that is the direct descendant of only the carpet.

I don't know what's right or wrong, but I do believe that the wildest looking snakes we will create, will be from mixing it up. I am breeding an 88% IJ Jag to the Diamond x Coastal female in the link, and although the genes are about to get pretty cloudy, the appearance of the offspring is my only concern.
 
SoCalAce;1688301I hear the argument for keeping things pure said:
good points.
I really don't think there is a right or wrong, if I am not mistaken, diamonds and carpets interbreed in the wild too.
It is kind of like the pure locality vs cross locality Alterna argument; both look nice.
I also want to back pedal a little and say that I hope to work with chondros in the future; crossing sorong, manakwari and nabire locales to get the blue tones I like with them...
I guess my issue with pure diamonds is when shady people knowingly sell 88% as pure to get higher dollar amounts for them; those who accurately represent there animals I have no issue with.
Click to expand...
 
Yeah I hear ya there. Makes Diamonds a weird market, because it's so hard to trust the background. Even if the person selling them is being honest, it's hard to say the person they got theirs from was honest in the first place. Kinda stuck with "Well, they look like pure Diamonds." Haha!
 
I believe she's a 50% diamond, if I had a pure diamond male I would breed them. Im not going to breed her with the IJ Jag, I was just curious what they would turn out to look like.
 
Gotta say this (mcdowelli) Coastals have a huge range and intergrade with (spilota spilota) Diamonds and even (cheynei) Jungle Carpets along the northern edge of their range (I've even heard this from Australians)

With that said I personally feel this trend of adding Irian Jaya into everything is not only irresponsible, IMHO, but...why? I honestly don't get it. I'm assuming its the possible blushing effect?
 
Anerythristic said:
With that said I personally feel this trend of adding Irian Jaya into everything is not only irresponsible, IMHO, but...why? I honestly don't get it. I'm assuming its the possible blushing effect?
Click to expand...

I feel it is only irresponsible because many people do not keep clear records. If all breeders were to keep accurate records of the animal's lineage then it would be fine with me. The problem is that few are doing that. The resulting carpet python genetics and even species/subspecies have become rather muddy.

achieving high blushing could also be done by selective breeding over many generations within a species/subspecies/locality; adding Irian Jaya instead does the same thing but also creates mutts.

On the flip side; humans have been doing this sort of thing for thousands of years, for example: dogs, cats, domestic cows pigs, etc... so carpets would not be that different in that respect.

The biggest problem I see with the "domestication" of carpets is that the original species used to create the "domestic," watered down versions will eventually become far less common or disappear from the hobby if everybody keeps trying to create the next big carpet combo.
 
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