Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have been following the discussion of the pure verses morph/hybrid troops the past couple of days and thought about some past experience from another area that both groups might want to consider with regard to breeding those creatures we keep. Terry has his Ghouldian finch experience, I have my freshwater cichlid fish experience.
For the "pure" folks to ponder-In the 60's I became involved with the breeding of freshwater Angelfish from the Amazon basin. Using wild stock to begin with, I bred the same line over generations. In the beginning the fish laid eggs on a smooth surface and then would guard eggs and resulting young until the fry got big enough to fend for themselves. Finding that I could get more batches of fry by removing the eggs and artificially hatching them I could increase my number of spawns as the parents were not tied up in rearing fry. After several years I began to notice that the holdbacks I had weren't inclined to raise their young. If I allowed eggs to stay past the usual time of removal they would eat the eggs. In the mid 70's I noticed the same thing with Mouthbrooding cichlids from Lake Malawi. I would strip the eggs from the females and get double the egg production. But down the line the holdbacks would be less and less inclined to carry a mouthful full term. It was as if they knew what to do up to the point the net/hand usually came and took the eggs. Question--will our wild caught, "pure" charges really stay the same years down the road????
For the hybrid/morph folks to consider--Again with Malawi cichlids. Cichlid types are pretty geographically segregated in the lake which is a huge body of water. When captured and sold to aquarium keepers they end up in aquariums together and freely cross. Because of the political instability in the countries surrounding the lake some ares that were open years ago may never be open again. So you have a beautiful specimen of a certain type that is now only a memory because it has been crossed and the original form is no longer seen. The resulting hybrid may or may not look good. Will the same thing happen with the snakes we keep???

I believe the key word is responsibility. My favorite getula are splendida. I have a couple pairs of a natural intergrade of splendida/holbrooki from Jim Hogg county Tx. I will be getting a couple of pairs of intergardes from further north and, hopefully, a couple of pairs of "pure" splendida from the El Paso area. I believe I have a responsibility to maintain them as lines unto themselves. My favorite Gopher is the Sonoran. I have several morphs from a couple different sources. I believe I have a responsibility to represent the snakes as what they are: a morph of P. affinis. I have several different morphs of "brooksi" including a pair of Lavender Albinos that may or may not be hybrids. I believe I have the responsibility to represent them as such.

I have always appreciated the Seans of the Herp world who seek to keep the snakes as they are. I'd like to think that into the future the traditional form of Blotched King will always be a reality and not a memory.
But I have also come to appreciate the Ranier's of the world who have the patience and off-centeredness to create living jewels.

I think there is more than enough room for all of us without taking shots at each other. Remember there are people who would like to get rid of snakes and are out to stop keepers. Wouldn't our energy and passion be better served by standing together rather than giving such a witness of division????

Well, that's the sermon for today! Shalom, y'all!

Pat

I too come from a tropical fish background and many of my views are also based on my fish keeping days.
Believe it or not, I am not opposed to hybridizing, morphs or anything else that comes along with captive animals. But what does scare me is the willingness of some, not all, but some to regard wild forms of herps as 'unimproved' or uninteresting unless they are part of some project that involves a color mutation. Further, there are some who freely sell their extra het offspring without identifying them as being so. This has become especially true with the multitude of captive hatched cornsnakes that might be carrying several different mutation genes. One well known breeder that I know personally, called his normal appearing hatchlings "Heinz 57" corns when I last visited him. In my view, I would rather this not being occuring for obvious reasons.
Something else too. While I hate to admit this, the fact is that many reptile breeders are unscrupulous, plain and simple.
I tried to explain this fact yesterday and that in my personal experience, locality breeders tended to be more reputable than those who were in a race to produce the next popular mutation.
Think about it...a person who is breeding a given animal with the intent on preserving that lineage, or maintaining a locality form as true as possible to that found in a given area, would be inherently more 'trustworthy'(for lack of a better word) than someone who is not. Having said that, I would quickly add that there are abuses on the part of some locality breeders.
AND, I would add that there are many breeders who produce both locality pure ( oh man, I can hear the sirens for that word already!) and hybrid animals who are completely trustworthy.

The thing that all of this debate reminds me of is what has occured with Discusfish.
There are now all kinds of Discus that are offered to the aquarium keeper. The number of mutations probably even exceedes the number found in cornsnakes.
But, you can still obtain the three or four 'wild forms' without any trouble. There seems to be no confusion or worry about what their genetic background might be. The reason is because most Discus breeders are very concerned with maintaining their crediblity and are concerned with the animals first and foremost.

You know it is interesting that you bring up Discus. I believe part of the reason Discus have been maintained is because of their high cost/value and a relatively few breeders willing to go to the trouble of working with them. You also have to meet more stringent requirements to keep them so that average aquarists are afraid to try which also serves to keep prices up. The tropical fish hobby also tend to spawn (pardon the pun!) specialty groups of like minded folk. For example there is an American Cichlid Asso., an Amer. Livebearer Asso., an Amer. Killifish Asso., there are several Fancy Guppy groups, etc. These groups have, or used to have, national Conventions and their own publications. Within the bigger groups were smaller groups dedicated to keeping the particular fish they liked so that one could find someone with a type that had sometimes disappeared from the hobby. We kind of have that in the various forums but we could learn alot from how these other organizations are run and organized. I would love to get together once a year with other Kingsnake folks where buying and selling were secondary to the swapping of info and stories. The Aquarium Hobby is also much older than Herpetoculture and that is a factor.

There will always be unscrupulous breeders/dealers because of human nature. In fact, as I've said before, if that ever changes I'll be out of a job!!! And that would be fine!!!! It behooves folks to do their homework before dealing with anyone. It doesn't take long to figure out who is a straight shooter!!!
Shalom,
Pat

I also found private fish breeders to be more likely to GIVE their offspring away in an attempt to have more of them around.
Some of the cichlid groups are great!

When I stated that a locality breeder would be inherently more trustworthy than someone who was not, I was refering to when trying to obtain a mutation free animal. I didn't not mean to imply that these are more trustworthy, or better people in other areas of life.
Sorry about that.

Having gone thru a time when there was only wild caughts and no captive produced morphs.

Anything that is common, no matter how nice, becomes normal. The exception then is rare and for some reason nicer. That is all about us humans.

I produced the first Albino kings of anykind. They were striped, it was amazing, but then when I had more albinos then normals, the albinos started looking like so much fish bait. Throw a normal Calking in with a pile of albinos(specially baby stripers) and the normal will indeed stand out. Of course the first albino indeed stood out in with a bunch of normals.

As wild populations diminish and they become rare, they will indeed be sought after and bred pure. With obscure wild natural populations being the most sought after. In the meantime, making something different is what humans do and theres absolutely nothing wrong with it.

Unless we learn to slow down making babies(reduce the population) all we will have is captives.

The quick draw will be, getting the wild ones in captivity just before they are protected. My guess is, unless we ban together as a group(all captive herps) they will try to ban keeping of all reptiles and non of this will be of any importance.

I guess I should start molding them so you could have fake snakes in your various cages. Oh man, that gave me a very sad thought, I bet when they are fake, the cages will be real nice and all naturalistic. As in, not shoeboxes/rubbermaids, etc.

Just an old guy rambling, FR

I agree. While my wife loves the bright colors of the various albinos (insert any colubrid) there does, after a while, develope a certain "Yawn Factor". I too used to gasp at a regular albino corn snake but now my eyes just glaze over at the countless deli cups full of hatchling albinos and other variants that we see at shows.
Although I used to want all of the various dicusfish, if I had to choose one type to keep now, it would be the wild type Lake Tefe greens.
Likewise, if I had to pick one corn snake to have I would always go for a nice 'normal' Okeetee or Devil's Garden corn.

Oh yeah!!! Nothing better than a Lake Tefe Green!!!! And Frank is right on! I remember when a good looking Coastal California King was ho-hum. Now I think they would be sought after. Look at the responses above about patternless, striped and blotched goini. Frank also speaks a truth that we should all hear and heed. If we don't watch ourselves, the freedom to keep snakes of any kind could be taken away. We must remain vigilant and, dare I say, get along enough to work together to fight those forces that would seek to stop us. It truly is a clear and present danger!

Pat

I tend to belong to the "keep 'em as they are crowd", and really appreciate locale-specific. But I also realize that very few "pure" strains of anything exist.

Moreover, the MOST important thing for this forum is polite, civil discourse and exchange of varied ideas. There is no Right/Wrong counter here.

Sometimes hybrids are not only beneficial and interesting in their own right, not uncommonly they supercede the original "pure" stock.
(Think America and many parts of Europe, Australia & New Zealand, and the Anglo-Saxon/Celt hybrid stock that long since replaced the pure, isolated Norse & Celt communities.)

And a mighty fine sermon it was too. Personally, I like them all...Helane Oh Yes...AMEN!!

Amen, brother, hallelujah! Seriously, i commend you for your personal standards. I wish everyone practiced those. As you know, we frequently already see snakes advertised as species or subspecies they're not. There are lots of snakes being sold without correct identification, and they'll no doubt be bred into pure lines of what those snakes are claimed to be but are not. So a lot of hash being made. Your diligence will prevent that from happening while the animals are in your hands at least.

RE: your fish, my birds... The "increase the production rate" with gouldian and other finches was to swap the eggs under (the very domesticated) society finch, which is actually a hybrid of various mannakins, a finch species. The societies were more reliable parents, and the goulds and other species (called periodic layers) would lay again shortly after their eggs were removed. So they might produce four clutches of eggs in the time they'd take to lay and raise a single clutch. There was always the concern those "fostered" offspring would be less successful parents than the originals. But other than anecdotal evidence, it's hard to draw a conclusion: The main reason fostering was used in the first place was because so many of the wild caught or parent-raised finches would fail to feed their young. That's ot just the case with goulds, it was common with many african finch species that were still being imported wild-caught and certainly were not fostered animals. Anecdotally, i had fostered young that (like the wild caught) weren't very good parents, and some fostered young that were good parents. Conclusion: the jury's out.

there was also some seemingly sound scientific research that claimed to identify the age at which fostering's "imprinting" phenomenon (fixing on the foster species as the parent) became irreversible. Happily, that age was found to be AFTER the animals became old enough to separate from the foster parents. So we just routinely returned fostered young to holding cages with their actual species BEFORE they reached the age where imprinting was believed to be set. Since snakes don't feed or care for their young, it's hard to figure exactly how this phenomenon could be a factor with our herpetocultural practices. But if you're suggesting behavior may be altered in ways such as FR proposes, with the selection of nest sites, or period after prelay shed to egg deposition, etc., that's certainly a possibility.

terry

To funny
Catch a tri-color yet???
Later Jason

I like the implied warning about linebreeding and the diversion that can be seen when we take these creatures out of their native habitats. I also like that you show appriciation for both sides of the debate.

That said, this is my last post.