>>Weren't many of the Hondureans hybrid or intergrades with Oligozona and Polyzona and not to mention Stuarti? ...Or were they "PURE" L. t. hondurensis EVERY time in your collection?



Fair questions. I think all we can do in our endeavors is what can be measured by our intent. When i started breeding hondos there was no discussion i was aware of that they had incorporated occasional breedings with a variety of ssp. When the subject came up--when Brian Barczyk advertised his albinos as polyzona--plenty of us were interested in seeking the truth. He and Louis Porras traced their snakes back to what they believed were the same European origins, and concluded both were working with Hondurans. Right or wrong? Dunno. Would I ever have bought for breeding purposes with my hondos a snake i thought was one of the other ssp? Nope. Once, I imported an anery (hypoanerythristic) "honduran" from Honduras but when a few friends saw pix of it one of them questioned its identity. I sent it to the most knowledgeable of them. He concluded it was not hondurensis, but one of the other ssp. I let him keep it, where it's being bred "with its own kind". Yes, based on all that many smart and experienced people have reported, I think there were inadvertent crosses with other L.t.ssp, and that to a small degree many "hondurans" today fall short of 100% "purity".



Ironically, it's the arguments of many hybrid advocate that diminish the impact of that conclusion. Many "hondurans" imported from honduras came from collectors at the fringes of hondurensis range, and sometimes--as was the case with the anery i imported--from the range of another ssp from an adjacent country, where a collector found it and brought it to the honduran exporter. The infrequent captive crosses of closely-related ssp created intergrades like those occurring in nature along the edges of north american milk ranges, for example. (continued BRIEFLY in next post)

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