Cross breeding snake species..

[DLLNP]

To each their own, but something about this just seems so wrong to me. Would love to hear other opinions.

http://i284.photobucket.com/albums/ll23/Dillllon/IMG_0227.png (http://s284.photobucket.com/user/Dillllon/media/IMG_0227.png.html)

Dillon

[Bandit]

I've never been a fan of hybrids. To each their own, but I really do enjoy the animals as they appear in nature much more than I do hybrids, or even morphs.

[DLLNP]

I've never been a fan of hybrids. To each their own, but I really do enjoy the animals as they appear in nature much more than I do hybrids, or even morphs.

My thoughts exactly. Not to mention any biogical issues that may arise from cross breeding... I mean blood's and carpet''s are not closely related at all. Compared to something like carpets and gtp... although I'm not for that either

[EL Ziggy]

I'm not a fan of cross breeding different species but some of the carpondros are beautiful and don't seem to have any known health issues at least none that I'm aware of.

[dave himself]

I like some of the hybrids, especially some of the ones which can occurre in the wild. Such as Bateaters, Cateaters and Gambino, just a personal preference not looking to start a war with anyone :)

[dannybgoode]

As a locality philistine I cannot think of anything worse! Given people have even started crossing rare snakes like Boelens pythons I think it's truly dreadful where some people are taking it.

@Dave - out of interest as there any recorded occurrences of natural cross breeding?

[pet_snake_78]

Definitely not a fan.

[dave himself]

As a locality philistine I cannot think of anything worse! Given people have even started crossing rare snakes like Boelens pythons I think it's truly dreadful where some people are taking it.

@Dave - out of interest as there any recorded occurrences of natural cross breeding?

I'm not sure Danny I never really checked, I maybe should have written COULD appear in the wild. Anyway like I said, I lime them :)

[dannybgoode]

I'm not sure Danny I never really checked, I maybe should have written COULD appear in the wild. Anyway like I said, I lime them :)

That's what I was interested to know - whether it was a theoretical thing due to location of recorded.

Of course there is natural crossing of some of the B constrictor and B Imperator species so it's not beyond the realms of possibility.

[Minkness]

I actually like them. I find it rather interesting biologically speaking, and most that I have seen are also rather beautiful. I am particularly fond of the carpet/gtp crosses and will be lookingbinto getting a biak male to pair with my IJ female at some distant point in the future. Burmballs are another rather interesting mix as well.

As for the rarer animals being mixed, I don't know exactly how I feel about that. The way I see is is that so long as the females are bred to the same species of male to produce more of the same, then the males can otherwise be bred to whatever else since it doesn't really affect the number of new same species babies if all the females are already bread to the same male....I hope that makes sense.

But yeah, outside of known health issues and locality purists, I see no reason not to cross breed. No offence to those who do like those pure localities. =)

[dave himself]

That's what I was interested to know - whether it was a theoretical thing due to location of recorded.

Of course there is natural crossing of some of the B constrictor and B Imperator species so it's not beyond the realms of possibility.

I remember reading years ago that cottonmouths and copperhead crosses have been found in the wild, sounds a bit mad to me, but who knows

[SerpentineDream]

Not a huge fan of Frankensnaking.

I do have some natural intergrade house snakes and one hybrid that I originally thought was a pure Nelson's milk snake with unusually orange vs. yellow bands but that turned out to be a cross with an Apricot Pueblan milk snake. He's gorgeous but I'll never breed him.

As long as they aren't causing harm (i.e., crossing very rare localities with other subspecies such as what's happened to the Hog Island boa, or being released / escaping into wild populations) then I guess people should buy whatever they like.

[dave himself]

Not a huge fan of Frankensnaking.

I do have some natural intergrade house snakes and one hybrid that I originally thought was a pure Nelson's milk snake with unusually orange vs. yellow bands but that turned out to be a cross with an Apricot Pueblan milk snake. He's gorgeous but I'll never breed him.

As long as they aren't causing harm (i.e., crossing very rare localities with other subspecies such as what's happened to the Hog Island boa, or being released / escaping into wild populations) then I guess people should buy whatever they like.

I would never agree with muddying the gene pool with rare snakes. But with the likes of burms and retics you pay an awful lot more for crosses. Although I will admit trying to get a pure Burmese is getting harder, they're usually het this or het that. But then again thinking about it that's nothing to do with crossing with another species. But that's a whole different conversation.

[Trouser Snake]

I'd be interested to see what they all look like but I'd never get involved in it myself, especially if it involved the diluting of a gene pool of a rare subspecies etc, ok people will differ in opinion to me and others who have commented and hybrids will continue to be born in captivity, but as long as the majority of people are just breeding pure species and this hybrid breeding idea doesn't get too popular. As far as health issues go there is the age old anecdote of "hybrid vigour".... How true this holds with reptiles, I don't know lol... But my personal preference is to enjoy natural species.

[Trouser Snake]

To each their own, but something about this just seems so wrong to me. Would love to hear other opinions.

http://i284.photobucket.com/albums/ll23/Dillllon/IMG_0227.png (http://s284.photobucket.com/user/Dillllon/media/IMG_0227.png.html)

Dillon
Just looks like a big sand boa with a pythons head.

[DLLNP]

Ya it is definitely an interesting conversion starter for sure.

I love to see purely breed animals, I think because I love the natural history of the animals I keep. I love seeing what the actual animal would look like in the wild.

Keeping blood lines pure is definitely important to help reduce the demand for wild caught animals in the market. I guess cross-breeding is okay but I would really really hope that everything is clearly documented and recorded to avoid cross bred animals being mistaken for pure bred's to the untrained eye. i.e new snake owners

I actually own a Colombian/Sonoran boa (50/50)... technically not a species hybrid (although with the potential reclassification of the species it might be) but even a mix of localities would make me second guess breeding him.

[jjhill001]

Thing is, not all of the hybrids are gonna look good enough to even sell. Its just annoying to see animals that we really can't get much new blood for end up as hybrids. They are harder to sell in my opinion which encourages mistreament.

To Danny's question, yeah natural intergrades happen. Not sure about full on hybrids like this though.

[dave himself]

I had a wee look before I went to bed and seems there are naturally occurring snake hybrids in the wild. I was actually thinking of trying to breed Bateaters a few years ago and had a male retic especially for this purpose, but then I decided against it for my own reasons and gave the male to a mate of mine. Maybe the reason we don't see many hybrids in the wild is because of the clutch size which is greatly reduced when crossing species. Again I can only speak for pythons because this was the only snakes I researched in any detail and it was quite a few years ago. So there's probably a lot more fresh information out there now :)

[dave himself]

Thing is, not all of the hybrids are gonna look good enough to even sell. Its just annoying to see animals that we really can't get much new blood for end up as hybrids. They are harder to sell in my opinion which encourages mistreament.

To Danny's question, yeah natural intergrades happen. Not sure about full on hybrids like this though.

I totally agree mate some hybrids are just plain ugly others are beautiful IMO. But then everyone's opinion can be different :). When comes to trying to sell babies it all depends on the species. Once again my knowledge of this is limited but I know the Bateaters are in great demand among large snake keepers here in Ireland anyway that's why I was seriously going to give it a go. Plus like I said the clutch sizes are a lot smaller than normal, so less animals to sell. The question that I asked myself and made me not even try was, just because I could breed these, should i ?

[Herpin' Man]

I am not at all in favor of hybrids. Not that the snakes themselves aren't sometimes interesting, but my concern is for how they and their progeny are represented when they are sold, and the pollution of future bloodlines.

[warbeast720]

I am against....



false advertisement; selling hybrids and passing them off as "purebreeds" (although with the effort required to create them, I doubt this will happen since snake hybrids aren't as easy to breed compared to say dogs)
wanton collection of species already living in the wild
damaging the ecosystem by releasing the hybrids into the wild

If this is humanity's attempt to "domesticate" snakes as pets so that no new samples from the wild need be collected, then great.



With today's technology and discovery, perhaps man can engineer "lap dog" versions of retics, rocks, etc. (again, like how man domesticated cats of old).

[scales.jp]

According to Wikipedia, cross-breeding does occur in nature:

"Recent studies also show that some Neanderthals mated with ancestors of modern humans long before the "out of Africa migration" of present-day non-Africans..."

We're all hybrids!