Reptile & Amphibian Forums

hermanbronsgeest was the closest guesser. It is a hybrid of a Texas Red Bull snake female and a red morp jani. Here's the parents. Pete Marshall of Oakland California had the two cage together not really trying to do anything with them when the Red sayi came up pregnant laying eggs and producing these beautiful morphs as I'm told. He kept this one and sold the others. Here's the parents.

Pretty cool.

How on earth did that combo produce stripes?? Pretty cool

Great! Tell your friend thanks for being responsible. ( rolls eyes )

Now, since those hybrids were created, and sold off, they will only, if bred, pollute other lines.

Great job!
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Genesis 1:1

AHH The old I left them together for a mo and they bred by accident tale

Nothing personal Pat, but I have to agree with Billy here and I personally Hate man made hybridization,especially in my beloved Pituophis.

Heresy! Heresy! Heresy! Sometimes I'd rather be wrong, LOL.

Actually, a Red Bull x jani cross is one option I also had in mind. I've seen this particular cross before, and on colors alone it looked very similar. Ultimately, the abberant pattern made me lean towards vertebralis, rather than sayi.

I would pass on this particular specimen, as I would pass on any hybrid, but for what it's worth, I think it looks pretty cool.
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I'm Dutch. Somebody shoot me.

I don't really understand the terminology of genetics, so just bare with me please while I try and get this point across;

I have kept a couple of pits for a few years now (after keeping various species of snakes for well over 20!) but have only just got my first bull after waiting many, many years to get the right animal. (Imported from the States as it happens!)
And the reason for this is that many of the bulls in the hobby in the UK these days look somewhat suspect. Many of the animals seem to have saddles on the lower third that just look way too far apart!
This runs hand in hand with an unhappy coincidence that there was a bit of a trend in the UK of creating "pinbulls" or "pinxbulls" as they are known. No prizes for guessing the parents, and all in the name of making something "interesting"?

I don't think any of us would deliberately taint the lines of a species of animal, but the problems arise when someone buys a snake which looks 100% like one of its parents, and is then bred on by a new, un suspecting owner. Not from the very unique obvious hybrids like the one shown in this thread.

Pituophis in general are "out of fashion" in the UK at the moment, but seem to be coming back! This unfortunately means that there are quite a few people looking to get into pits that haven't really done their research, and at a time when morphs of any species seem to be more popular than normal animals. You COULD sell them anything, and I feel it may be almost too late for milks/kings and corns over here already!

I don't suppose this is the response that the OP was looking for, but I think you really need to look out for the purity of your native species, as there are a lot of us around the UK and Europe counting on you!

It's a bummer your animals in the UK are having to be under such scrutiny. I guess we take things for granted over here in the US. There are so many people who breed only local animals, and wouldn't even THINK about out-crossing to another locality bloodline, much less something outside of the same species/sub-species. I know when you are dealing with ANY animal within your own breeding program, after a few generations you start to develop a "look" to the specimen. For instance, in quarter race horses, you can always tell a horse that is 1-2 generations from Easy Jet, because they all have the same head... maybe, the breeding programs in the UK has developed the "suspect" animals within the species and not really out-crossed as much as you think? Maybe you are right, and breeders are just trying to develop something that looks "cool". There are all kinds of people who are in the breeding circles for different reasons. You're right about all the morphs, as opposed to the natural patterning. It's just so much fun waiting on eggs to hatch and see what is going to come out of them, as opposed to a clutch of non-morphs where you know what they're going to look like. AND, it is unnecessary to produce animals that are unmarketable. These days, if a snake doesn't have a jillion different possible morphs, they are really hard to get rid of. When I got my first bull, I was looking for a plain old bull...I ended up blindly getting a really nice bred kingsville red, and now I have nothing except for him and one female that aren't at LEAST triple morphs, and up to quint morphs. Of course there's always the draw to produce that new something that hasn't been produced yet.

And then there's people who still remember why they got involved with snakes in the first place, and who are still capable to enjoy them just the way nature intended them to be.
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I'm Dutch. Somebody shoot me.