ren.,

i'll try to give you the short version. if you want more info, i suggest you head to a library and check into a few books on quantitative genetics.

essentially, the reason your argument is flawed is because you are talking about a very large number of genes.

to provide an anology, if you flip a coin, you get 100% heads or 100% tails. no inbetween. this is the case for your one gene example, of eye color. however, if you flip 30,000 coins, you get damn near 50% heads, 50% tails.

lets start with the original cross. we are in agreement, no?, that this F1 animal received one allele each from its two parents. so it is 50% ball/50% angolan.

(incidentally, within genetics circles, F1 refers to the generation since the orginal cross, within a closed breeding system. so if we adhere to that definition, you are correct the backcrosses of the hybrid to a parental species are not F2s. however, within animal breeding circles, and especially among snake breeders, F1,F2,etc is used to denote the generation from the orginal breeding of interest regardless of whether subsequent crosses are retained in an inbred system or not)

now, when that hybrid animal is crossed to a ball, the hybrid again passes along one allele and the ball one allele FOR EACH GENE. because there are thousands of discrete genes, the chances are extremely high that the F2 animal (or second generation animal if you prefer) will receive from its hybrid parent nearly exactly 50% ball alleles and 50% angolan alleles (so combined with the pure ball parents alleles 75% ball alleles and 25% angolan alleles).

so, you would be correct to say an F2 animal (or 2nd gen. animal) MIGHT have 100% ball python alleles for eye color. however, to say that it has anything but 25% angolan alleles (ie. genetic material) overall is incorrect.

incidentally, there are likely only a small number of genes (just guessing, perhaps 5-30 or so of the thousands the animal has) that affect color and pattern. so the animal could, quite by chance, receive say 8 ball alleles of 10 color/pattern genes from its hybrid parent (plus 10/10 ball alleles from the pure parent) and thus have 2/20 angoloan alleles in the color/pattern genes. and so, look very much like a ball python. but it is still 25% angolan.

as far as the misrepresentation thing. i suppose as long as you present the whole thing as just your opinion, and also disclose that the animals are crosses between a hybrid and one parental species, it isn't misrepresentation, you are just giving an (incorrect) opinion to go with the facts.

i didn't mean to be insulting, i am however, sensitive to the proliferation of poor information available with hybrids. very tired of seeing "candy mastodon het for firedragon" instead of "25%speciesX, 25%speciesY, 50%speciesZ" in describing hybrid snakes.

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