I understand that you are absolutely not openminded to what other people think of something
There's a difference between being closeminded and requiring overwhelming evidence before changing a view on a subject.
Provide me with enough evidence and I'll happily change my stance. Provide me with nothing concrete or simple emotional reactions and responses and... Well, I won't be changing what I believe to be true.
You make someone feel he's a criminal because he thinks a certain snake is beautiful. I think that's rather blunt
Yes, I do in this case.
Hybrids are dangerous to the general captive population of either of the parent species... it's an insidious danger, a hidden danger... but a very real and tangible one that needs to be regarded as a potential threat.
As much as you or the individual who produced the neonate that you were supplying photos of may be honest and trustworthy individuals who will accurately represent any animals that happen to be leaving your collection, there is no way for you to guarantee that the animals leaving your possession will always remain in such good hands. Creating hybrids isn't the hard part... eliminating the hybrids from the larger gene pool if there is a leak is the difficult aspect.
As an example... In the United States, there is a great demand for phenotypical morphs with a genetic cause in reptiles, especially snakes. These recessive mutations are fairly hard to come by originally, often originating entire captive populations from a single wild caught animal and the price and public demand for anything new can be outrageous. Because of this demand, some unscrupulous individuals have taken species with an established phenotypical anamoly and crossed the animals into a speecies which had not previously displayed this trait, creating hybrid offspring that are heterozygous for the color morph. These offspring are crossed to produce hybrid animals which display the recessive trait and then, in many cases, great care is taken to try and remove the physical traits of the species which the phenotypical oddity originated in and rarely if ever is the true origin of the morph for the second species discussed, much less publically advertised.
This leaves some degree of the genetic material from another species floating around in the larger captive gene pool for the second species.
Trying to outbreed ANYTHING and eliminate a trait or a set of genetics from a bloodline or a population is difficult almost to the point of impossibility. Our own webmaster had a situation with a line of corns that were throwing oddly colored offspring awhile back and I believe he estimated the removal of the contaminated genetics would take, at a bare minimum, five or six generations of line breeding to identify animals carrying the undesireable trait. This is with something as easy as a recessive color trait which ended up in a breeding group that it didn't belong in... Less honest individuals would have simply failed to mention the possibility of varying genetics. Now imagine the process needed to identify less obvious genes that are present from an interspecies crossing.
Your opinion is "the only right opinion" and there is no room for other opinions.
Well of course my opinion is the right opinion... If it wasn't, then I'd change it.
There is plenty of room for other opinions, but there is also plenty of room for debate and defense of that which I believe to be true... If you find my position unyeilding, it is only because you have not supplied an argument which can convince me to change my stance. A strong enough argument with enough evidence can't be denied.
I think that's very arrogant
Perhaps.
I think
I can back up
MY position.
It's not arrogant if it's right.
You tell people what they are and what they do wrong, but you tell nothing about yourself (snakes you keep, breed, etc.)
Yes I do... When their actions damage or potentially damage the animals, the industry, the hobby and the science that I love.
I don't stay quiet about; hybrids, venomoids, people breaking laws, laws that should be changed, true animal abuse, defrauding customers, jerking around sellers, liars, bad care information and PETA activists.
If you had specific questions about what I keep/have kept, breed/have bred or anything else... go ahead and ask. I might even answer.
There were, at one point, a few other threads about hybridization, intergradiation, natural occurances, the problems with taxonomy, behavioral science and the ethical and moral issues surrounding hybridization in captivity. I *believe* the threads found an eventual home in the same forum this thread lies in. There's only four or five threads under this heading... Please read them all if you would like a more complete view of my thoughts on the subject; I intend no disrespect but I'd rather not have to go back and rewrite things I have already written... once you're "caught up" with the discussion as it has evolved, I'd be happy to entertain anything new you might want to go over or thoughts you would like to add.
