There is no attempt to minimize anything. If you actually read what I am saying, Its not about those few here they produce hybrids, its about the hundreds, even thousands that do that without knowing what they are doing. There are tens of thousands of folks that buy from petshops and they by animals that are produced willy nilly for the pet trade. Then for some reason man has to label something so they are called a THIS OR THAT. When in fact they are not.

As I mentioned many times here, I did a panel discussion With J.Collins, about zoos and hybrids. He was not concerned with intentional hybrids, but he was very concerned with un-intentional hybrids that Zoos were commonly doing. That is, they were buying animals from Exporters, animals dealers and taking their word for what they were pairing up. For instance, many of our western rattlesnakes were the same species a few years ago, now they are not, they have been divided into different species. In the past those producing these pure snakes were actually producing hybrids. Or pairing animals for extremely different parts of their ranges. Which actually were NOT THE SAME species. This is and was commonplace.

As I mentioned here, many of the first L.mexicana types produced in captivity were much like that. Back then, we did not have a complete picture of what was what. So some Thayeri were indeed unintentional hybrids. Same for many of the milksnakes. I am sure many of the animals we breed now, will in the future, be considered different species and that will mean many of what you call pure now will be hybrids in the future. Like North Fla kings bred to south Fla. Kings. MtDna will rock this captive world soon. Cheers

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