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RE: your mostly right...

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Posted by: qroberts at Fri Dec 9 10:08:40 2005   [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by qroberts ]  
   

The fact that any of these snakes can interbreed and have a viable offspring means that they are divergent from a very common progenitor. Breed a baboon to a human and you wouldn't even get fertilization. Breed a tiny dog to a large dog and you will get a viable cross because every dog variety is a different race of the same species Canis familiaris.

Species may be separated by mountains now, but they've been on earth for hundreds of millions of years. The fact that retics and burmese (or whatever) can interbreed means that they diverged from one species after their population was separated by developing natural boundaries. It's called divergent evolution.

Now, try to breed snake species that were never related and only came to be similar by convergent evolution and you won't even get a pregnancy.

Interbreeding is a way of maintaining genetic diversity. Overspecialized animals go extinct in the end.

So before you condemn hybrids remember that all mother nature "intends" is that life continues by whatever means necessary and human intervention is a small footnote in the history of organismal development.


   

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