You only have to look overseas to see how it can end up. It seems almost impossible to find a pure bred carpet.+1 YT.
No place in my collection for 'mixed' carpets as they now market them.
I may be a dinosaur but I just don't see the point in cross breeding even within the M. spilota sub species. It seems that some breeders do it just to see what they will get and produce a lot of worthless bastard animals.
There is so much more potential line breeding selected animals within a sub species including albinos, axanthics, stripes and unusual colour variations and these are worth more on the market. You can line breed to produce Jag like animals that are pure and without the Jag problems. It's got to the point when I will not buy an animal if I can't confirm it's pedigree so I do not risk contaminating my bloodlines.
I'm also a purist, and don't like the jags, and "crosses" either. I do think you might have argued against yourself though, Oshkii. Carpet pythons are the same (imbricate, bredli, and GTP's aside), and you say you're ok with breeding them; then you say you don't like to breed different locales. If the carpets are basically the same, then what we call jungles, coastals, etc. are just different locales surely?
Not having a go, because I'm on the same page. To me, there is nothing better than seeing pythons as they would be in the wild. Although I do still appreciate good line breeding too, especially when it incorporates better dispositions as well.
Worthless bastard animals?
Worthless bastard animals?
These hybrids may not have the desired pedigree that so many purists covet, nor the pretty colours or patterns that a group of people have deemed pleasing to the eye, but they're still living creatures and, believe it or not, some people still love them. It's not the snake's fault that some human decided it would be cool to hybridize whatever species or subspecies.
I'm sure everyone will be grabbing their torches and pitchforks in regards to what I'm saying, but I really don't see why people get their knickers in a knot over hybrids, particularly when it comes to carpet pythons. Were we not just having a discussion that carpet pythons are all one and the same? I don't particularly believe it myself, especially when it comes to imbricata and bredli, but that's my opinion. I'm more of a lizard person anyway.
Would I ever keep hybrids? Certainly not. It's against our licence conditions in WA, and I doubt it would effect the hobby here for years to come, and even if it were allowed I still wouldn't keep them. They're not something that I personally like. I myself prefer animals with a known ancestry and looking as close to their wild counterparts as possible. I would not even breed the same species of two different known localities together. And I'm sure many members here are aware of my soft spot towards melanistic animals. Interestingly, it appears that many people believe the wild types to be ugly and boring. Even the so-called purists, whose self-appointed jobs appear to be preserving a snake's wild origins. Now why would that be? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, after all. People hybridize snakes to create a "pretty" snake. Are purists really that different when they line breed for brighter, cleaner, reduced patterned animals, albinos, hyper/hypomelanism, striped, spotted, pattern-less, or whatever else people are line breeding for. Double standards much?
For the record, I don't particularly like the look of albinos, nor jags, or jag-like animals. But of course, that's my opinion. I admit that I'm fond of melanistic and axanthic animals. Does that make one better than the other? Of course not. It's only personal tastes. And that's what it all comes down to at the end of the day.
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