>>Blue, I hardly know where to start.
1) I wrote: "To the extent that you really believe" 99% of the top breeders have hybrids on their list "i think you're victim of assuming that because most of the people you associate with breed hybrids, then everyone must be breeding them...
You responded "I do not JUST associate with people who JUST breed hybrids" (emphasis mine).
Look back at my statement above. Did I say you associate only with people who "JUST" breed hybrids? Nope. So you misquoted me, then objected to the concocted quote. That's not effective argument. Worse still, IF you believe 99% of big breeders breed hybrids, then SURELY most of the people you associate with breed hybrids. So it had to be a stretch to object to what i said.
2) I sign my posts. I took pains in my post above, in this thread, to be specific about why and how I think hybrids can harm herpetoculture generally. People can agree or disagree with those opinions.
You repeatedly refer to my interest in propping up prices. Whether you can understand it or not, I genuinely object to hybridizing for some reasons that have nothing to do with my own financial interests, but rather with my admiration for wild animals.
You objected to my expressing my dislike for hybrids because "the fact that you are a prolific breeder can give enough pause for a newbie to think that is the way all herpetoculturists think." NO, it just might make a newbie or someone with much more experience than I have, pause to weigh the arguments and decide for themselves. If I've earned enough respect from some people to cause them to at least listen to my opinions, I'm happy with that.
3) I still don't think 99% of big breeders breed hybrids. You do, though I'm confused by one of your other posts in which you say of the 300 with websites on KS, fewer than 100 breed hybrids. I realize you made a distinction between "big" breeders and those with websites, and that's fair enough. But don't challenge me to prove 99% of big breeders don't breed hybrids: You expressed the opinion that they did, before I said anything, and I merely said i don't believe that. And I tried to offer an explanation of how your view--or, you're right, mine--might be influenced and thus in error by those we associate with. I'll stand with that opinion, too.
4) You and I have had some meaningful private exchanges spun off from the forums. I'm disappointed at the way this one unfolded publicly. Maybe I should have simply expressed my disagreement with you privately.
5) We continue to disagree on whether or not breeding hybrids might affect customers' thoughts about one's pure animals. I can't prove anything. I can tell you that I've seen animals at shows labeled as a pure animal, when digging revealed they weren't; I've seen ads on KS classifieds as recently as today, advertising in the headline an albino of a specific subspecies, and only in the third or fourth sentence of the text of the ad itself is it revealed (to the sellers' credit, but too little too late--the headline is a misrepresentation) the animal is a hybrid. If the breeder believes hybrids are as good as pure snakes, then why not identify it properly in the first place? Others have explained adequately in this thread, i think, how those misidentified or casually identified animals will in many cases be believed by some to be pure, and will be represented as pure by some people with less scruples than you have. But those hybrids simply are not pure, and I don't think they ever will be or can be. That misidentification bothers me as much as it would bother me for someone to sell polyzona as hondurensis or vice versa, etc., especially if they'd overtly created the misrepresentation.
6) I don't believe that having bred a hybrid back for nine generations produces a pure snake. I'm stating my OPINION. I'm not trained in genetics. I simply don't believe it. I stand ready to ahve someone educate me and change my mind. But it's gonna take more than someone simply expressing an opinion as fact. Here's one reason I don't believe it: I could breed a het/albino honduran to a "pure" honduran with no albino genes, and for nine generations I could breed back to normals, and keep only the normal looking babies, and breed them back to normals, and at the end of all that it is STILL possible for that f9 animal (hope i've expressed that correctly) to be HET/ALBINO. If that gene can persist through nine generations of breeding back to "normals" (and two such animals could, in the next generation, produce a homozygous albino) then why can't tens, or hundreds, or thousands of other queretero genes persist in an animal after nine generations of being bred back to, say, pyro pyro? And if those genes can persist, how can the animal possibly be considered "pure"? And if those genes can persist, how can it possibly be true that DNA tests wouldn't disclose that? Like i say, show me where this logic is flawed, but until then, this is part of the thought process that makes me consider those "gee it will be pure soon" arguments specious.
7) Sure, I have an investment to protect. But why is that value there in the first place? Is it because it's rare, is it a simple response to supply and demand? Is it in part because those pure morphs can be produced only by utilizing the existing limited gene pool, and not manufactured by crossing to this and that? I I don't recall any customer EVER discussing with me what i had available, and then telling me they'd decided to buy a hybrid instead. You said you "can see how a better looking honduran cross is a threat to your business" but I've never had a customer say they'd found and decided to buy a hybrid something or other because it was "better looking" than any of the natural morphs I breed. Not that it hasn't happened, but i've never heard of it, and i have no concern about that sort of thinking affecting my sales. People who would value one on a level with the other, and choose based only on which one has more yellow or more squigglies in the patern, are not the sort of breeders I'm dealing with. That just doesn't reflect what they value. But I HAVE had callers challenge me, "these aren't hybrids, are they?" and I suspect you know that is true. I think that hybrid breeders may resent that attittude but i think they know it's common in the marketplace. I didn't create it. I acknowledge it. And for reasons already explained, I share it.
8) speaking of valuation, do you know of any hybrid that sells for as much as any number of the pure morphs? if not, why not? I've heard it expressed that "pure" breeders resent hybrids because the "pure" snakes can't be "as pretty" so the pure breeders are jealous. That makes no more sense than arguing that the hybrid breeders can't or won't spend what it takes to get the real thing, so they work to create something close to it, instead.
9) Your pictures are interesting, but others would be too (I won't include them because this post is already too long! LOL) But for example, instead of the hybrid in your picture, what about the first anerythristic honduran--collected in the wild! It's a natural occurring phenomenon, and to me, at least, that's what makes it all the more special and remarkable. Assume for a moment that there are two snakes that look exactly like albino graybands. One required a breeder to cross a to b, backcross, backcross, whatever; the other required a serendipitous find of an animal in the craggy West Texas habitat where its kind lives and where, for the mysterious reasons known only to nature, a gene morphed, encountered its match in a mate, and produced a little natural marvel. Yeah, I"m verbally loading the deck. Maybe that's not fair. I'm just trying to express the appreciation i have for the natural animal.
10) Readers of this thread can read the first four or five posts and decide who first said what about whom, and they can decide for themselves whose approach they favor. Personally, I still wish such a discussion could take place without the rancor that filled this one. I'd love to see an objective, rational debate or discussion of the subject, with a fervid and knowledgeable hybrid breeder, and an equally enthusiastic and knowledgeable "purist," to explore the consequences of the two positions for herpetoculture. ALL of us could benefit from that, i think.
peace
terry
