Reptile & Amphibian Forums

O.K. so I am sitting in a hotel room in salt lake city were I should be doing paperwork for work but instead am thinking of my lovley collection of "exotic" pets. I was reading an earlier post about hybrids (which I did respond to) and read someones post which said more or less if you can breed it someone will buy it. Which is a opinion and probly true.It made me think (here is the question)Is breeding between genuis part of domesticating pets? case in point dogs and cats people bread diffrent "catagories" of feline/canine to develope specific traits to make useful companions (they really screwed up with feline)Question 2:If It is,Is breeding differant pythons together just part of the Pet evolution if you will? I do not necassarly agree with what I have asked I am just asking if that make sense
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thanks
Kevin
I am lost w/o spell check

Yes, I guess so, it's all part of domestication.

Breeding between species is not possible- the true definition of a species is that reproductively viable progeny are not possible, at best only sterile 'mules' are produced.

Within a species inter-racial breeding, as may be the case with bloods (are blood crosses fertile?), is certainly possible and may be done to produce 'desirable' traits. Even within a species and group the effects of domestication are evident, poor feeding, aggressive temperament, colouration, size etc may all be factors in the decision to breed a particular individual, or not. Throw in the reduced gene pool in captivity which will increase the incidence of expression of recessive genes and it won't be long before the Poodle and Great Dane versions of blood pythons start to emerge. Corn snakes are well on the way!

PS Agree about the cats; perhaps there never were any good traits to breed for in the first place...

bloods have been bred to balls, burms to rocks and retics to burms,... alot can be done

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-echo-

1.0.1 - Ball Python
1.0.0 - Tiger Retic
0.0.1 - Brazilian Rainbow Boa
0.0.1 - Savu Python
0.0.1 - Spotted Python
1.0.0 - Tiger Salamander
1.1.0 - Red Spot Toad
0.1.0 - Betta Fish

The definition of species can vary, and in most cases I think it actually consists of two different population groups that don't interbreed in nature. By this definition, there are some animals that are considered different species but can still produce viable offspring. Anyway, I'd prefer keeping the different populations separate, or at least keep very close track of which snakes are of a single species and which ones are hybrids in case something were to happen to the wild population.

I don't necessarily agree with the comparison to dogs - dogs were originally bred for work and it was important to breed for a few specific traits over many generations to acheive individual breeds. These breeds can not be bred out to other breeds if they wanted to remain pure, even though they are all the same species. I guess I'm not too worried about snakes. First of all, I don't think that they will be domesticated (bred for a 'pet' temperment). Breeding for single genes involving color traits (albinism, etc) doesn't have to involve much inbreeding. OUtcrosses can still be done.

And what's wrong with cats?

Other have responded to your definition of species, and I'm sorry to be such a pedant, but I would like to draw attention to one further element of your post:

"Within a species inter-racial breeding, as may be the case with bloods (are blood crosses fertile?), is certainly possible and may be done to produce 'desirable' traits."

For one, "race" is not a biological category. I don't just mean vis-a-vis humans, I mean that you do not have "different races" of snakes. "Race," as a social construction, applies exclusively to humans, where it also has no biological validity.

Thanks,
SWA

You are correct, I think race is more of a social descriptor than a biological one. I guess the term that should be used is strain, breed, type, or variety.

In a biological sense, geographical separation does not in itself infer speciation, but could (in theory) result in speciation through evolution. Whether it is possible to generate a new species in this or any other way is a matter of some dabate, particularly in some states in the US!

I have the feeling you are talking about my post. I like hybrids, cross breeds, morphs, pures, ect. As for mixed bloods...thats not even worth discussion in my opinion. They can/will and do mate on their own...so that cant mean its that bad. Im sure it happens in the wild all the time...hence the crazy moprhs that pop up here and there. As long as they are not being sold for high prices as something they are not..then I dont see a problem with it. Hell, we "Americans" are 99% muts anyhow(so how pure are we, lol).

Anyhow, have you ever heard of, or seen the "Humanzee"? It was on the discovery or learning stations the other day. It was Artifically created so they say by a scientist back in the 60s. It something like ~99% ape/monkey ~1-2% human. It had mostly monkey chormosomes(48cells each), but it had a 2 that were 47each(which is what you get when you mix a human cell...46 and monkey 48 = 47). And, thats exactly what they did. The humanzee ended up with 2 sets of cells with 47 each. They said something tha in theory a female humanzee could potentially be fertilized by a human male. But to make the humanzee, you must use all the DNA techonology and cell reserach stuff to first artifically make the humanzee. But, afer that who knows what could happen....Technology is amazing. I am for all of it...and cant wait to see what they mix/make next. Im currently attempting to mate a male balck back ball pyton with a female black blood python. Im gonig to get them in mating mode with the correct species snake...then pull the switch on them and let them go at it and hope for the best. I hvae been putting the blood and ball together from time to time so they wil be used to each other when I attempt this later this year. Ill update the board...good or bad. Good luck with whaever you do. Snake projects are fun(and can really bring in some cash if done right).

The 'Humanzee' to which you are refering is called Oliver and he is 100% Chimp. I don't think the gene jockeys had the tools in the 1960's to do what you suggest and Humans and Chimps share 98% of the genome already.

Anyway, thanks for the interesting discussion topic.

Yeah, you’re right on his name. Its Oliver. I as well as any other person knows that we are 98% of what a chimp is in terms of gene structure. Thats not the point...Oliver isnt 100% chimp. If he were, then he wouldn’t be as famous as he is. He has two sets of messed up chromosomes that are 47 each which is halfway between chimp and human. All his others are pure chimp having 48 each. If he were 100% chimp, he wouldn’t have them screwed up chromosomes. And, they did have the technology back then to remove all the DNA except what’s in the shell and substitute it with something different. It just wasn’t on every discovery and learning channel like it is today with americans doing it in labs. Instead, it was over in japan, kept super low profile, during the 60s Now days, we can do that and much., much more(i.e. .stem cell research). But thats a whole different story. Since Oilver, they/we have made many copies of them...but as soon as they reach a certain size, they kill the embryo. Its easily possible. They said they can also effectivly do it the opposite way and makes humans that are a little bit of a chimp. Take a human egg and take the DNA out and put in all the chimp DNA(reverse of what needed to make antoher oliver). In theory, you would have a human that is ~2%chimp(based on the DNA left in the shell/case). They say they havent attempted it yet, but Im not so sure about that. They said they have know about that and have had the technology to do it for the past 20 years. So, You know how that goes.....

Anyhow, apparently Oilver was caught out of the wild, but that doesn’t mean for certain that he is wild. Scientist and such suspect that he was possibly created by one of the many japanese scientist that were doing experiments of this sort back then(60s) and released into the wild. If that’s true or not...who knows!?!? Thats just one of the options they had on that show for a possible reason how/why Oliver might exist.

Wilkins, Crick and Watson discovered the structure of DNA in 1953, but the genetic code was not unravelled until 1966. The first recombinant DNA was constructed by Cohen Herbert and Boyer in 1972 and the first cloned animals to which you allude were not produced until the mid to late nineties by Ian Wilmut and his group up at the Roslin Institute in Scotland (remember Dolly the sheep?). A baffling piece of work- they managed to create a sheep that looks exactly like....every other sheep! The inscrutable 'they' in Japan could not have done the work with Chimps even if they wanted to- they didn't know how, and anyway they were too busy inventing Playstations and stuff.
Oliver was all chimp, he just exhibited different genetic traits - similar to albinism for example, at most he was a different breed and it is entirely possible that he is not alone in the African Bush. However, if you wish to believe what you say go ahead. I am not saying your wrong entirely, just your timescales may be a little out. It hasn't happened yet, but it could happen and it could happen very soon.
Scary stuff