what do you think of hybrids

[pitbullNpythons]

It will happen, whether intentionally, or un-intentionally. But there is nothing to stop people from breeding whatever they have to whatever they want to breed it to. It will just be interesting to see what happens. I personally have two normal balls and when i breed them i will be ensuring the continuation of PURE ball pythons just like alot of other people will continue to do. I forget that fellow's name with the funny pic but he said something like, "were here to preserve the species we have not obliterate them" by creating a bunch of "scatterbred" although cool looking, junk.

[bonheki]

true i like alot of your opinions now i decided to breed only pure breeds but now its hard to get certain pure breeds cuz just some people you cant trust

[MarkS]

I'm comparing the two, to show you how 'short sighted' your showing yourself to be...

You complain about hybrids as if in the future, there will never be any purebred animals left. You could hold that doomsday idea all you'd like. Your choice. Tell me how are hybrids really detrimental to a species? If they weren't meant to breed together, then they wouldn't both in the wild, AND captivity. Nobody is forcing them to breed. As for random mutations...they're still genetic. Lets say Ball Pythons go extinct in the wild in the future, and they want to re-introduce the species....but all we have left are albino's, pastels, etc. Tell me how would they benefit the species, vs. a hybrid who more or less holds the best traits of the parent species?....

Andrew, when I say that hybridizers are being short sighted, what I mean by that is that they typically do not think ahead about what is going to happen to the offspring that they produce, much less the offspring of their offspring. They're goal is mainly to breed the animals and produce a cool looking clutch of baby snakes and they give little thought to what is going to happen to those animals over the course of their lives.

As MPenn said, animals often change hands many times over the course of their lives. Paperwork gets lost, inexperienced people are confused over what a pure species is supposed to look like or act like and will unintentionally misrepresent the animal, many people simply don't care or think it's that big of a deal... To a pet owner, it really doesn't matter whether their beloved pet snake is a hybrid or not, but to a serious breeder it matters a great deal for reasons that have already been covered.

Also, if there were ever a situation where all the ball pythons in the wild were wiped out, nobody would even think about replacing the populations with stock obtained from hobbiests, that would just be ridiculous. The necessary stock would come from an AZA accredited zoo or aquarium that was working on a species survival plan for that particular species. http://www.aza.org/ConScience/ConScienceSSPFact/

If you think I'm being overbearing in my attitude on hybrids, you should check out that link to see how seriously those zoo people take it.

Mark

[herpmajor]

I 100% agree with you mark. Zoos and other such groups take this very seriously. And so should everyone who cares about the future of herps in the wild.

[Aric]

Zoos and other such groups take this very seriously. And so should everyone who cares about the future of herps in the wild.

You've got that right! Its sad that the Taxon reports on each individual animal has that its not a hybrid or a hybrid, on every single report.