Cross breeding snake species..

[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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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!