Quote Originally Posted by Mendel's Balls
By that line of reasoing why should we care about morphs then?
I hear you, but hybrids take it a big step beyond your arguments. I understand that breeding in captivity passes along genetics that might not be favorable or even chosen in nature, but at least you can breed a morph to a normal, get normal looking snakes and be positive that the snakes you have are 100% ball pythons. This isn't the case when species start to become hybridized in captivity. Just look at the carpet pythons and corn/rat snakes. It's almost to the point where you don't know what you are buying. I haven't read through this whole thread, but I read that Super balls are fertile and that F!s can breed with each other or either parent specie. I know that they are hard to produce, but if they were to become the next big thing, people would definately start breeding them back to balls to produce morphs and supers balls w/more bp characteristics. In that case eventually, long down the road, people would be right to worry about the possibility of impure blood in a bp they are puchasing to breed. Or maybe a few people will use bp genes to make a super ball morph, than cross it back a few times to bloods and claim they discovered the first piebald blood. If they got away with that, any future piebald blood or relative of one would never really be a blood python. Again, this is somewhat true for any captive breeding, but to a much smaller degree. Spiders for example, passing the wobble head gene to normals that get used in breeding projects with other morphs. I don't know if it's known whether this gene is seperate from the spider gene yet, but it's just an example. Whatever arguments you have for selective breeding not being natural, hybrids cross any gray line, because pedegree information for reptiles is almost non-existant, and unvarifiable at this point.