Inter-species breeding

[Fred Albury]

Hybrid Snakes and fly fishing

First off: I DID purchase a hybrid snake from Rich Ihle, a Salmon Boa. Rich was one of the nicest people I had ever met in this business and took EXCELLENT care of his snakes, truly. Had the snake not been a hybrid I would NEVER have gotten rid of it. Rich did not inform me of its background, but then I DID NOT ASK, sothe blam really sat with ME, the consumer. I wish he bred 100% pure snakes, Id be his first and biggst REPEAT customer. He is a good salesman and seller, he just doesnt breed what I want, simply put. Not kissing anyones butt, but the snake involved didnt suit my tastes/beliefs system.


I get people that email all the time telling me about the hypo in my webshots account or on my NOW DEFUNCT website.

Bottem line:The account needs to be updated.
A new website built that more reflects my maturity(Or perhaps lack of it in some areas) in this business(sic) hobby.
I completely DISDAIN hyrbids and where as I can agree that they are indeed pretty and cool looking, are abberrations that shouldnt have been produced and they themselves genetically are a TOTALLY unknown quantity that may produce hideously ugly offspring, which pretty much destroys ANY value they have toward mankind(Remember, they are "cool" because they LOOK PRETTY...THAT was their selling point. Bred together you may get more of the same PRETTY snakes, or you may get butt ugly ones..

Regardless...whatever you get willnot have the same intrinsic value of its original parents.

It will be removed from nature and have no natural place in nature.

It will have opposeing behavioural quirks and physical quirks.

It will be STRONG, as hybrids have VIGOR..I suspect this is because we inbreed our snake sooften that NEW genes insure that the snakes that are mutts are very healthy.



Carpet PythonXChondro=1st example of a HYBRID SNAKE

Rainbow BoaX Anaonda=2nd example of a HYBRID SNAKE

Argentine boa(Occidentalis)X Suriname Boa=3rd example of a hybrid snake(Neither of these snakes would EVER come in contact with each other in the wild, man made)

and finally: Burmese PythonXRetic Python=4th example of aHybrid


All 4 snakes listed above are being produced as we speak, some by people that are actually very good snake breeders themselves, looking tomake something diffrent, looking to make money or looking to make a name for themselves.

Damn shame.....


Consider this...ALL the snakes in captivity that we dont have aLOT of success with in terms of breeding. Heres a partiallist:

Boelens Python
Eastern Indigo Snake
Black Headed Python
Some Scrub Pythons
Angolans(But soon will)
Suriname Boas
Trinidad Boas


Just think if the breeders of HYBRIDS, instead of putting their efforts to produceing some more fairly easily bred(relatively) HYBRID snakes....if they instead focused on any one of the snakes that is posted above and tried their hardest to achieve success in that area, then that breeder would have:

Money
Fame
Notoriety
Bragging rights
Respect
Satisfaction

But they dont, want to KNOW why?
In my opinion, and it is ONLY my opinion, they lack the PATIENCE toinvolve themselves in projects that may stretch out for periods of 6-10 years with potentially little or no return.
Breeding BCI to Argies gets you results usually within the first 2-3 seasons. but breeding BOELENS may NEVER get you any results.

So....the path of least resistance is taken.




Glen...I understand what you are saying, perhaps the way that I answered you versus Clays answer reflects our personalities when we are insulted or perhaps just questioned ONCE again about something we both are very clear about. I wont apologize, haveing been subject to limitless amounts of detractors over the years, but will say I understand your anger.

At any rate.

thats all for now


Time for me to roll in a ball,my Raiders lost yesterday.


Fred

 

[E2MacPets]

Okay here's an extreme hypothetical example of ethics:

What are your feelings on keep the following:

A venomous snake

A venomous snake with the venom surgically removed

A hybrid of a venemous snake that has been selectively bred to appear like the original but lack the venom and have adapted hunting characteristics of another animal that it was crossed with.

 

[Fred Albury]

Wouldnt want a Venemoid any more than a Hybrid

STEVE,

Great post.

Venomous Snakes? With kids around I would not keep them, not to mention Califs nazi like laws on keeping hots, its just not worth it all the way around.

Surgically altered snakes-Devenomized, . WELL..if I WAS going to keep a venemous snake, I wouldnt want one that had been surigically altered in any way. period. People defang or devenom(Remove ducts) cause they want to be able to handle snakes that would otherwise put them in the hospital. In my opinion, if a snake was meant to be able to bite you and cause you severe damage, than perhaps it ought to be left to do just that and not altered.


As far as a snake that has been line bred or crossed just to provide its owner with a measure of SAFETY while handleing a potentially dangerous and deadly creature...well it IS a potentially dangerous creature, and it has been made that way by our creator for a reason. The venom helps it hunt its prey, aids in digestion and also is an aid in defense. Why take ALL that away from an animal, 1000's of years of developing, just so we can pick the thing up and hold it in front of our friends?


You want a big snake? Buy a Silver Retic

You want a potentially deadly snake? Buy a Mamba


You want a snake that is prone to bite? Buy a Emerald tree boa



But dont buy these..undeducated...not knowing their specific needs, or buy them thinking that if they are altered, they will make a better "PET" example:

The new CRAZE in DWARF RETICS:RETICS get BIG, even dwrfs get to 10-11 feet or more. Whats so DWARF about a 13 foot retic?

The 23 year old kid with the devenomized king Cobra
Think about this, the kid wants tohandle one of the deadliest snakes in the world, so because he has money he can buy one that doesnt have the power to defend itself as it naturally should.What MAKES that King Cobra awesome is that it HAs the power to affect change if you harrass it.


Sometimes I think...people would wish to be God, to create life, to actually be the CREATORS of life..but...failing that...they will settle for the MANIPULATION of life.

Some things need not be changed for our benefit.

HYBRIDS
Venemoids
Breeding for smaller size on snakes that naturally get BIG.


sincerely and just my opnions,,
Fred albury

 

[Seamus Haley]

Not sure if Steve's post was directed to anyone in particular, so I'll answer it anyway...

A venomous snake

Have some right now in fact, all kept in locked enclosures, all permited (when required) and they don't get handled.

A venomous snake with the venom surgically removed

Never have and never will... Many people will compare this to cropping (docking?) the ears or tail on a dog, or even declawing a cat... But these are not identical or even particularly similar to a venomoid snake... venomous snakes have evolved to eat prey that has been envenomated, venom is currently and is thought to have evolved originally as a digestive aid, there are some serious health concerns involved with opening up an animal's head and removing it's digestive capabilities that you don't encounter when nipping off the floppy part of an ear... Plus most venom removal techniques aren't 100% anyway.

A hybrid of a venemous snake that has been selectively bred to appear like the original but lack the venom and have adapted hunting characteristics of another animal that it was crossed with.

I'm not certain that this is even possible but, working as a pure theoretical, I wouldn't own one for a few reasons... I don't like hybrids for starters, you can't truely alter the physiology of a snake that is signifigantly venomous inside of one generation anyway and mostly...

I subscribe to the phrase "The most dangerous snake in the world is whichever one you happen to be working with RIGHT NOW." A cornsnake in the hand is more likely to hurt me than the taipan in Australia... I dislike the concept of anyone starting to take liberties with animals that may be dangerous or able to cause serious injury. The cornsnake example is extreme obviously and I don't know anyone who isn't ophidiophobic who bothers to worry about injuries with them, but it's an all or nothing principle. A lot of venomous snakes won't be able to kill you, doesn't mean they should be treated with any less respect for their potential. Crossing a hot with something that isn't (maybe some colubridines... maybe...) leaves a lot of indeterminate characteristics as the physical formation of a hybrid can't really be assumed to go in any particular direction, individual parts may be similar to either parent species, something halfway in between or something altogether different and new- I wouldn't trust a snake that appeared non-venomous to stay that way as it aged.

 

[Glenn Bartley]

Hey Fred,

Please calm down. Now you apparently imply that maybe I insulted you and Clay; and you think I am angry!

Glen...I understand what you are saying, perhaps the way that I answered you versus Clays answer reflects our personalities when we are insulted or perhaps just questioned ONCE again about something we both are very clear about. I wont apologize, haveing been subject to limitless amounts of detractors over the years, but will say I understand your anger.

I did not insult anyone. To take what I have said in this thread as an insult is really stretching what I said and how I said it. I have remained quite respectful throughout my posts in this thread.

As for me being angry; well, I easily loose my temper all too often, but not this time. I am not angry, please don't label me as being such when I am not. I said my piece but was not angry at all. If I was angry I would have gotten nasty - I do that when I get pissed and I certainly don't think I got nasty. Had I been angry I may have become quite sarcastic, abrasive, and insulting too, but it would have been blatantly obvious. What I actualy felt about your other reply to me was not too happy, but not angry.

As for how I feel right now, I am a bit flabergasted to see that you now mention within two sentences that I am angry, that I may have insulted you and Clay, that I questioned you about something you already were clear about, and that you have been subjected to limitless detractors! You also seem to imply that maybe I was looking for an apology. If that is what you think, you are way off the mark. I wanted you to do just what I suggested, to reread those posts and see what each of them really said. I think you have still missed the points I was making, and somehow arrived at the conclusion that I was attacking you.

I am only trying to have a fairly decent conversation here about hybrids/cross breeds and so on. If I asked you something a second time, or pointed out what appeared to be a discrepency or inconsistency SO WHAT. That is what usually happens in forums and discussions about issues on which people disagree. I am not detracting from anyone, I have not insulted anyone, I have remained respectful and yes I do have an inquiring mind so I asked you about something in your initial reply and I asked you to explain yourself further, in light of what was then an apparent inconsistency between your post and that web site photo. While your stance may have been clear as crystal to you, it was pretty murky to me, at least until you explained it further. I now undertstand your stance on the hybrid issue since it has been further explained to me. You really cannot expect everyone to immediately understand your point of view the first time you explain it to them - can you? I guess I am not that smart a fellow to always get it the first time around. For that my apologies.

Good night,
Glenn B

 

[BrianB]

Ok, I'm zipping up my flame-retardant suit and jumping in here with a tangental question:

Salmons are hybrids? This was new info for me. Could one of you more knowledgable folks fill in the blanks for me on that one? I'd assumed they were pure BCI, maybe an intergrade of two localities, due to that type of thing not being tracked so well with the importation of the founding stock. Are you guys saying that the Salmons have been hybridized deliberately? With other locality BCI or with another ssp?

Thanks.

 

[Fred Albury]

Salmon-Hypo boas

Brian,

My understanding about Salmon-Hypos is that they are
a mixture of Colombian boa constritctors and Nicaraguan locale boa constrictors. I akin it to crossing Suriname Boas and Trinidad boas. Both BCC, but different locale, separated by very large tracks of land.

I am not insinuateing that Mr.Ihle was dishonest, merely that I myself dont enjoy hybrid of crossbred snakes, localities withstanding... Rich is a damn nice guy, and were he selling something other than Salmons,Id buy from him anyday.


But yes, Salmons ARE crosses. Locality Crosses that wouldnt naturally occur in the wild. Enough said.

Fred Albury
Aztec Reptiles

 

[BrianB]

Fred,

Thanks for the info.

 

[diablohogs]

hey fred... ( of aztek reptiles??)

how about we just take all of your examples from the previous post and make a silver-tree-mamba and we'll call it a "jurassic salmon python"

hows that for trolling?

p.s. wern't you kicked off of kingsnake.com? just curious.
p.s.s. i'm aware that you cannot cross a live bearing snake with an egg laying snake it was a joke.

to prevent being catogoriezed as a troller i guess i'll have to explain my stand on this issue.

1. crossing two genetically different snakes and producing hybrids in no way effects the genetic makeup of said parents. therefore preserving thier genetic makeup.

2. any captive bred animal has no buisness being reintroduced to the wild hense they effect the ecosystem's gene pool in no way.

3. we are talking about an industry ( the pet industry) where personality and asthetics are the traits the consumers look for. in most cases a locale specific or pure bred animal will sell for more. and if you are truely concerned about being lied to than goto a reputible breeder that prides themselves on purebreeds they're everywhere... i.g. this forum.

4. every captive animal will die. weather it is pure or not. if people are so concerned about saving pure genetics than you need to get activly involved with habitat preservation. heck, sell hybrids to fund your trips to these places where these pure snakes inhabit and make a real stand.

5. i feel snakes need to be reclassified using modern science technology. there are ways to have the genes checked on birds and dogs for the breeders of those animals. why not genetically reclassify all snakes starting with colubridae?!

6. in a case where you have a rare or protected snake in captivity ( i'm guessing legally), you should have bought 1.1 so you can repopulate (the pet industry? cause what are you gonna do... let em go in the wild?) with said animal. or better yet boycott the purchase of rare snakes to prevent people from catching them in the wild for profit ( i'm sure these rare snakes you speak of arn't cheap) thus lowering the wild population even further.

conclusion: i feel that we have lost touch of what we are here for. it is not to repopulate yuganda with pure yugandan whatevers. it is to provide the buying public with exceptional and healthy snakes. if i can produce a nicer ( behavior wise) better looking animal by crossing it with another, therby making it more suitable for the pet industry than i think that it has served a purpose. not crossing a Christmas mt. grey band with Lajitas will not save the world nor will it provide the wild population with a stronger backbone. and if i produce a kingXcorn its not going to deplete the population of either in the wild (or captivity). it will just create a larger population of king corns in the pet industry. and my question to you is: how does that effect you? you fear that uneducated people might buy one of my kingXcorns believing it to be a pure breed? i agree that many snakes are in danger of losing thier habitat and that is sad but the snakes i buy become a member of the pet community the second i whip out my wallet weather WC or CB and will never be reintroduced into the wild or put in a zoo or museum as a display. i do respect a locale specific animal for what it is and would never misrepresent any animal i sell as being pure when it is not. but that doesn't mean i won't cross a king snake with a milk snake or a corn snake in hopes of making a new color morph or patern. but don't worry i'll still feed it and take care of it, even if they come out ugly.

thanks,
chad elmore
diablo snake farm
http://www.diablosnakefarm.com

 

[diablohogs]

salmon boas

for the record the orgin of the salmon boas is a mystery even to its originator. read the article in REPTILES magazine about them. he says that the parent of the first salmon boa was donated to him at a pet shop where he worked. the salmon boa was produced when he crossed it with another boa he had.

wow does that mean that a snake with a lost history can still make a great pet and attract a large audience and be worthy of making one of the more reputable reptile care magazines in the world?? a mutt with a 5 page spread in REPTILES magazine????
i rest my case.

chad elmore
diablo snake farm
http://www.diablosnakefarm.com

 

[diablo snakefarm]

I must disagree or at least ammend #2 of youre post
I believe captive bred being released for increasing the #s of wild populations in decline are perfectly fine if there locale specific and I mean stock origonating within say 10 miles of their release point,bred/ raised withought any contact with any non locale animals and under all permits that may apply.

Jeremiah Ronsonet
Diablo Snake Farm

 

[BryonsBoas]

If i remeber correctly , mother nature has provided some species with crossing boundries with others that will allow "mutts" to be produced in the wild . Hogg Island boas in their native insular habitat would have inbred themselves to death if not for the fact that other boas had washed up on the island to throw fresh DNA into the mix .

What some people are doing is wayyyy out of touch with the plans momma nature had intended . My boss is trying to figure out how to cross a King Cobra with an Anaconda. Never happen but as long as people have these ideas and intentions it will eventually happen . As long as the crosses are advertised properly i see no problem with it . Some species will eventually need to be outcrossed to a similar species for fresh DNA anyways . Can only breed Hoggs for so long before they are all brothers and sisters.

No idea if i made any snse as i've been painting all day and am kinda woozy.

Bryon

 

[Seamus Haley]

Inbreeding unto itself does not automatically cause problems, it merely strengthens the existing genes...

While this can occassionally cause negative traits inherent in the gene pool to rise to the surface as sucessive generations reinforce minor traits until they become major ones... The situation in the wild is very different than the situation in captivity. In the wild, animals which are less able to survive never get a chance to enter the gene pool, removing those negative genes from the population. In captivity, we've removed the process of natural selection, far too few people will properly cull their clutches, allowing minor negative traits to become major ones in a FEW instances.

Basically, wild populations of animals can't "inbreed to death", it's simply not possible.

It's really comparatively easy to get something INTO a captive gene pool, all it takes is shoving two snakes together (An oversimplification perhaps but not entirely untrue, the snakes do the real work). Getting something OUT os a gene pool is nearly impossible.

Take, as an example Creamcicle corns... How many people who own them do you think know how the "morph" was created?

How many well intentioned but basically ignorant owners have you seen who have big ideas about how they'll breed snakes by crossing the two that they happen to have avaliable... Or those that don't understand how the pigments and the genetics work who want to cross their creamcicle with their lavender to "see what happens"?

If they succeed... and there isn't much preventing them, corns aren't exactly a tough breeding project, merely a tough breeding project to do the right way... Do you think that they will represent their offspring as being 75-25 hybrids? How many of the big broker companies purchase animals from just about anyone, only to mix them up, send them out and get them resold?

It's bad enough when you can't buy two normal looking cornsnakes from most sources and breed them without getting a grab bag of ugly pigment-lacking-mutants... Now people will need to worry about having cal king genes in there too.

So far I have not seen any arguments presented that really validate hybridization, the best people can come up with is "dey look kool!!!111" or "Hey, I can breed my ten dollar corn to my ten dollar cal king and sell the offspring for eighty bucks to people who don't know any better." whereas the arguments against hybridization include genetic contamination, questions about long term health effects and a legitimate danger to wild populations.

 

[themselves]

to prevent being catogoriezed as a troller i guess i'll have to explain my stand on this issue.

1. crossing two genetically different snakes and producing hybrids in no way effects the genetic makeup of said parents. therefore preserving thier genetic makeup.

2. any captive bred animal has no buisness being reintroduced to the wild hense they effect the ecosystem's gene pool in no way.

3. we are talking about an industry ( the pet industry) where personality and asthetics are the traits the consumers look for. in most cases a locale specific or pure bred animal will sell for more. and if you are truely concerned about being lied to than goto a reputible breeder that prides themselves on purebreeds they're everywhere... i.g. this forum.

4. every captive animal will die. weather it is pure or not. if people are so concerned about saving pure genetics than you need to get activly involved with habitat preservation. heck, sell hybrids to fund your trips to these places where these pure snakes inhabit and make a real stand.

5. i feel snakes need to be reclassified using modern science technology. there are ways to have the genes checked on birds and dogs for the breeders of those animals. why not genetically reclassify all snakes starting with colubridae?!

6. in a case where you have a rare or protected snake in captivity ( i'm guessing legally), you should have bought 1.1 so you can repopulate (the pet industry? cause what are you gonna do... let em go in the wild?) with said animal. or better yet boycott the purchase of rare snakes to prevent people from catching them in the wild for profit ( i'm sure these rare snakes you speak of arn't cheap) thus lowering the wild population even further.

thanks,
chad elmore
diablo snake farm
http://www.diablosnakefarm.com

now if you actually read that is all makes sense. and i greatly thank this person for taking the words out of my mouth! read all of that it he has found every good point about the topic! every good point! nothing is being destroyed!! wow i love whoever wrote this! it couldnt have been said in a better way! thank you DIABLOHOGS!

 

[Chris_Harper2]

Were the offspring able to reproduce or were they mules? (Although I recently heard it reported that a real mule has reproduced). And what about inter-genera breedings?

As for me I think it is ok, so long as it is not producing absolute freaks like snakes with deformities. I think that such would be a help to geneticists, and possibly advance scientific and medical research.

Hi,

Some mules have proven fertile. All of them males, last I heard. In another post, possibly in one of the other threads, someone mentioned this is due to different chromosome numbers in the parental species. This is likely not the direct cause since other species with different haploid numbers have consistently been able to produce fertile offspring. In fact I believe it is fairly common in waterfowl.

With mules the primary cause of infertility is that homologous pairing does not occur, or if it does it seems to be due to little more than random chance.

As most know, a mule is from a cross between a female horse (diploid chromosome # = 64) and a male donkey (diploid chromosome # = 62). So each contributes 32 and 31 chromosomes to the hybrid offspring respectively.

When gametes (sperm or eggs) are produced within each of these hybrids there is no homologous pairing during meiosis. So some gametes could, hypotheticaly, end up with zero chromosomes, others with 63. I don't know if either of those extremes have actually been documented, but I say them to make a point.

So it is an issue of chromosome number, but not necessarily the parental diploid numbers as was presented in another post.

As I said early, other species with different diploid numbers have been able to consisently produce fertile offpspring.

But to get to snakes, it does appear that interspecific and even intergeneric hybrids are usually fertile.

Many have mentioned that this should lead to reclassification or that it somehow contradicts long-standing scientific principles. I believe what these people are getting at is the Biological Species Concept which suggests that if two sexually reproducing organisms can produce fertile offspring they are the same species.

What people need to know is that this was always a criticized species concept from its onset. It has maintained a strong presence in textbooks simply because it was and still is a useful way to get students to think about what a species is, or more importantly, what a species is not. Unfortunately most of our junior and high school teaches went on to teach this as a widely accepted species concept and taught it as fact.

With our current understanding of reproductive biology what we know is that the issue is reproductive isolation, or what prevents two organims from reproducing in the wild. In the case of snakes there was likely little pressure on them to develop reproductive mechanisms that would prevent them from breeding with other species. Reproductive isolation can be seasonal, temporal, pre-copulatory, post copulatory, just to name a few. To cut this post short, modern science simply does not emphasize one type of reproductive isolation over another when classifying species. The ability of two species to create offspring in captivity, fertile or otherwise, simple has little effect on our perception of how closely they are related.

The one issue snake hybridization does effect in science is the long-standing assumption that hemipenal variation is a form of reproductive isolation. Older papers do write of this assumption. But with all of the bizzare hybrids in the snake world scientists have now considered that hemipenal variation is less important as a means of reproductive isolation and is more important in the role of sexual competition. So in that regard science has appreciated and paid attention to the hybridization events that have occurred in captivity.

Hope this helps and that it's not to vague relative to this particular thread. I'm sort of addressing generalizations I read in at least three different threads on this particular forum.