Locality / Purity. Why Does It Matter?

[herpkeeper]

i read a thread the other week from a guy in France asking people to send him pics of what wild coastal carpet forms look like ??? what does this tell you people ???

 

[Boney]

i read a thread the other week from a guy in France asking people to send him pics of what wild coastal carpet forms look like ??? what does this tell you people ???

tells you that a guy in france wants to see a wild carpet form . never know he might be dissapointed!... do see your point but !

 

[daniel1234]

Interesting thread, tried replying but even I don't understand what I am saying so just some points:

I am one who doesn't really fully understand why I lean toward pure breeds but I do.
I have marveled over crosses.

Would an abundance of crosses lessen the $$$ value of pure breds or increase them (I think the former if anything)? Is this what established breeders are afraid of?

What do the people who made the rules say they made them for?

I would presume that a hatchling is wild until made tame (eg: bites and handling and would there be feeding issues if we started them on live food).

I remember a thread about a full grown snake under licence that escaped and now lives in the cavities of the house, comming out at night (don't know who feeds it or if it now finds its own). Think Dantheman started that thread about some one he knows.

Again interesting thread and congrates at getting this far guys without mud slinging

 

[PilbaraPythons]

If more people got to see all the different traits often subtly unique to many areas, I believe they would appreciate the locality specific ethic (sentimentality) for themselves. Unfortunately and realistically, this remains a privilege to very few.

 

[Sdaji]

Kathryn: I usually agree with you posts, but can't agree that we're arrogant if we think we can change animals for the better. Whether it's pure or a cross, we can improve snakes. You dog example is one of the best examples of how much good we can do (yes, mainly for our own purposes, but what's wrong with that?). A wolf would not make a suitable pet. It would not be fun, it would not be safe, it would try to kill its owner and anyone who went near it. We have friendly breeds, we have useful guard dogs, we have dogs which provide invaluable services on farms, invaluable services in substance detection (tracking/sniffer dogs) etc etc etc. Yes, we also have absurd little breeds which most people (including myself) can't stand, and yes, there are inbreeding issues in some cases due to people doing the wrong thing, but we can see if things are done properly, domestication is a wonderful thing.

Without domestication we couldn't be farming the animals we eat (cows, pigs, sheep being some good examples) or we'd have a much worse time of it (chickens, etc). The same functional principle applies to plants, and arguably the same ethical principle too. Without human alteration our food plant production would be about 90% less efficient (You'd be paying about 10 times as much for food, and most people on the planet would starve to death in less than a month).

There is no reasonable doubt at all that we can and do improve plants and animals.

In terms of reptiles, whether pure or crossed, we can make improvements. Yes, there some beautiful snakes in the wild, but only a fool would say that a typical wild snake is as good looking as a typical tenth generation captive snake (unless what you like is normal animals, in which case you are in a group which makes up less than 1% of reptile keepers - but yes, your views are still perfectly valid). The vast majority of people would prefer a hyperxanthic piebald albino than a drab brown animal. We'd all prefer an animal which readily eats unscented, thawed mice rather than one which is highly timid and needs to be force fed or only accepts live frogs.

What all this boils down to is that nature has created snakes which are well suited to the natural environment, not a captive environment (which as you say is nothing like the natural environment). Nature has not and will not try to make good captive snakes, but we can and do.

As for the taxonomic argument, it'd take too long to respond to! I'd be happy to do it, but it would bore and annoy everyone!

Whether or not we keep things pure, we are changing the animals to be suited to our needs, and we'd be silly not to.

salebrosus: That's odd. Unless the plating wears away you shouldn't be exposed to anything other than pure gold. Either way, it's a red herring I bet you just say it to get your boyfriends to buy more expensive stuff!

elapid@: A cross escaping poses no more risk than a pure animal escaping outside its local range. That argument only works if you want everyone to only keep animals collected within around five km from where they will be housed.

herpkeeper: it tells me that he wants to see for himself what some wild animals look like. Maybe he doubts the purity of his own animals, maybe he is just curious, maybe he has no doubt at all about the purity of his animals and just want to see pictures for the enjoyment of it. Coastals vary so much, you get pretty much everything imaginable in the wild.

I find my current thoughts on this topic a little disturbing to be honest! I gut feeling is that pure snakes are highly desirable, and I will continue to keep pure lines, but I'm realising more and more that I have no solid basis for it, and no legs to stand on when telling other people they have a moral obligation to do the same. I even feel a little guilty for spending the last decade or so acting like people who didn't care about it were in some way wrong! It's bothering me to be sounding like a hybrid advocate, and I'm not for a moment trying to encourage anyone to make crosses (I can't really see much reason to do that either, and generally you'll have nicer looking snakes by keeping them pure).

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it in this thread yet, but for the record, I only have one lizard which is not locality pure and only two pythons which are not locality pure (according to the seller of my first snake, even they should be and at the time I didn't know enough to recognise what was what, but I can now clearly see that they're mongrels). I will continue to do my best to ensure that pure lines of all my pure animals continue to exist, and for a reason I can't put my finger on, I think I'll always be passionate about locality.

 

[Sdaji]

If more people got to see all the different traits often subtly unique to many areas, I believe they would appreciate the locality specific ethic (sentimentality) for themselves. Unfortunately and realistically, this remains a privilege to very few.

Care to post pictures of some good examples? I won't be upset if you convert anyone to the pure side!

 

[salebrosus]

salebrosus: That's odd. Unless the plating wears away you shouldn't be exposed to anything other than pure gold. Either way, it's a red herring I bet you just say it to get your boyfriends to buy more expensive stuff!


To be honest Sdaji, im allergic to anything that isn't pure silver. Gold plated, titanium etc and even gold i get rashes from. I can get away with surgical steel but everything else irritates my skin.

 

[nathancl]

A big part of it for me is taxonomy . More and more species are being split up all the time for example, Saltuarius swaini has recently been split into 3 different species and unless you know the exact locality of your leaf tail gecko you might aswell consider your leaf tail a hybrid.

Its the same with some of the varanids like brevicauda and scalaris aswell as many other gecko species. Once they are looked into and split up due to dna research proving they are a different species what happens then ? Unless you know the locale on your animal or can key it out to be one or the other you will probably find yourself questioning the species you keep.

Now i have written that theres the question of who cares if its a hybrid ?? so then it goes back to sentimental value, pure or non pure ?

I dont think there is a real answer for this but i think its a great topic for discussion.

 

[PilbaraPythons]

Sdaji
I can't really say that I have any particular example in photo, but I can say that I do notice colour, pattern, and scalation traits specific to many areas.
In a not so subtle example of traits with say W.A stimsons pythons, even from short distance extremes, I can easily tell by looking at the prefrontal scales of wheatbelts stimsons to know that they are genuine wheatbelt stimsons. Even their overall pattern, colour look (even if you aren’t sure what it is that tells you it looks different) that you have a wheatbelt. Now to get more subtle, in some parts of the wheatbelt area, all specimens have no single mid lateral prefrontalscale at all and this trait is very consistence ( My ideas as far as evolutionary relationship to northern populations is yet another unfinished story).
Take another example with stimsons from Pannawonica, they are commonly darker brown in body colouration and commonly thinned lined rather than displaying thick lighter markings that give the overall appearance or description of being slightly blotched
which is far more a typical trait of Port Hedland DeGrey specimens. 50kms direct east of Port Hedland they are typically of lighter colouration and display more a slightly better reddish hue. I am sure you get what I am trying to highlight.

 

[Sdaji]

salebrosus: That's odd. Unless the plating wears away you shouldn't be exposed to anything other than pure gold. Either way, it's a red herring I bet you just say it to get your boyfriends to buy more expensive stuff!


To be honest Sdaji, im allergic to anything that isn't pure silver. Gold plated, titanium etc and even gold i get rashes from. I can get away with surgical steel but everything else irritates my skin.

You're allergic to solid gold? Wow! And to think I was angry at my immune system for being allergic to Death Adder venom! :lol:

Nathan: I agree entirely. I don't personally care for taxonomic purety - it's not good enough for me. I want locality purety and will not be as satisfied with anything less. This doesn't change the question at hand: Why does it matter?

Dave: Like you, I fully appreciate things like that. I love to see a tiny little trait and be able to make some meaning of it. The question is, how do we get Joe Average to appreciate a small scale or a trivial difference in a stripe? I get very excited about the head scalation of my Water Pythons. When they hatch I closely examine each one, and often for up to a year or two after people buy them I remember the noticable uniqueness about individuals. Sometimes someone will say "Hi, Sdaji, I bought a Water Python from you 18 months ago" and I'll say something like "Yes! I remember that one! It had three post oculars on the left side and perfectly symetrical parietal scales! Lovely snake that one!" and they'll say something like "Huh? I have no idea what that meant, but I don't want to talk to you any more, I hate you :evil: ". :lol:

I love these tiny little traits, but I can't see how or why we should try to get Johnny Nobody the pet owner to care.

 

[nathancl]

I have sort of got an answer. Accuracy of bookwork, say you have varanus scalaris and they got split nth queensland specimens are now varanus whatevertheyarei and the ones from nt are scalaris, when your book work comes around and you have them down as scalaris when in fact they are actually whatevertheyarei what then ???? the only way to prevent that is keeping locality pure animals.

Also another point i just thought about is the animals requirements. If you have a scalaris that is from the arid parts of its range and it does not require high humidity , you then aquire another scalaris that is a nth queensland rainforest animal which does require high levels of humidity and you keep it in with your dry style scalaris and it dies due to humidity related issues. That would be your fault for not researching the requirments of that animal and although you may have researched it you could have read something about the animals from the arid parts of their range that is tottally irrelevant to the care of the rainforest animals. And again with knowing the locality of your animals gives you a better understanding of what their requirements as a captive are.

Nathan

 

[caustichumor]

I don't think you will get them to care Sdaji, And if you did convert the masses then specific locality would become flavour of the month, and that would mean there would be so many "locality specific" animals for sale that the gravitational field around the earth would colapse and life on this planet would cease to exist.... or something....
It is too late to change the fact that most of the animals bred in captivity are simply lost to their native origins, As for why it is important, it is only important to the keeper that houses and maintains them, if you are happy to look at your animals and know that their great great great grandfather python used to eat possums and water rats down by ross river, then that is your answer. Most "pet" keepers are happy to know that their snake eats white mice and turn them into hairy chunks of crap...

 

[Kathryn_]

There is no reasonable doubt at all that we can and do improve plants and animals.

Funnily enough I usually agree with your posts, but I'm really not coming to the party here. My understanding of domesticated plants and animals is that, while beneficial in the short term to us humies, they are disastrous for the general environment and species diversity, especially in Australia. I almost want to say more than anywhere, in Australia. Weirdly, beans are a really good exmaple of this - there used to to be hundreds upon hundreds of varieties of beans in the wild, now the species diversity has plummeted to include only those people like the taste of, and "old" wild species which exist only in botanical collections. I think that's really sad. Many of our snake species are pretty safe because their habitats just won't support us, or in the case of QLD and NT species, their habitats are protected (for now), so there's little danger of captive stocks becoming the only ones. Imagine if it ever happened, though? Say in a couple of hundred years the only representatives of particular species are hybrids and fancy mutants, with maybe a couple of wildtype animals in zoos? It sounds far fetched, but it's already happened to a huge number of plant an animals species due to captive breeding and habitat destruction.

I own a really gorgeous proserpine locale coastal. I don't know how many generations of captive bred animals she comes from, or how likely I would be to find anything that looks like her just wandering around the bush in that area. What I do know is that she looks nothing like most captive coastals I see from other localities, and it would be really sad if the different locality type animals disappear into a general coastal mush of brown - that's such a diverse species, it would really be a shame. It would also be unfortunate if a handful of really attractive animals of a particular locale were inbred consistently over generations and ended up with health problems. I remember seeing someone on this site advising someone else that it would be ok to breed sibling animals to one another. The fact is you just don't know what hideous recessive conditions are floating around until they pop up through inbreeding or bad luck, and then you've got a clutch of very unwell animals.

The dog example proves that people will keep breeding unhealthy animals in spite of this. The pugg's breathing problems are the dalmation's skin problems, almost every breed has its quirks and problems. European horse breeds are another example of animals that have been hideously, hideously inbred for aesthetics - Fresians in particular are just messed up. As far as I'm concerned, the fact that an animal is useful or pretty doesn't excuse messing with the natural order and increasing the potential for health problems in its descendants.

 

[cement]

Its probably more patriotism for me. I like the thought of Australia being a bit different to all other countries and the fact that our native wildlife really makes us stand out because of its diversity and difference. To melt all of that into a big pond of hybrid stew just doesnt suit me.
Plus i am genuinly interested in the different locational pressures that combine to make a species a little different from itself in a different place. It keeps the learning going, sort of like playing the guitar.

 

[Sdaji]

Kathryn: Some fair points there, however, the purity debate still falls on to sentimental grounds (if you want to talk about the mixing of captive and wild animals, pure ones outside their natural range are just as bad as crosses). Domesticated reptiles wiping out other species will only happen if we somehow manage to produce 'supersnakes' which is extraordinarily unlikely (if it was possible it would already have happened naturally, unless we used exotic snakes, in which case you'd have a remote chance of it happening, and I wouldn't condone the keeping of exotics either pure or crossed).

In some cases plants have been tampered with in bad ways, I entirely agree. In some cases they have been used and introduced irresponsibly, causing severe damage, but I don't believe the plant examples are relevant to us in this context.

Inbreeding is another issue entirely, and while it's an interesting discussion it belongs in another thread, so I won't touch it (by all means, start the thread and I'll get right into it).

cement: I like your thoughts, and I share many of them. I think they're quite valid reasons for liking pure animals, but they're still sentimental reasons we can't expect everyone to agree with.

 

[natrix]

I think most of it has to do with scarcity . There'll always be a high dollar market for things scarce.
Possibly meaning that in the future a 'pure' snake will fetch a whole lot more than what we
would now consider a rare & scarce animal.

 

[Sdaji]

Pure snakes will never hold high dollar values. When pure animals are in demand, impure animals get labels of purety smacked on them. It is so common both here and overseas. If you want pure animals you often need to know where to look, and it's a lot more difficult than just buying from someone who makes the claim - everyone does that. It's difficult for newbies and I myself was burned when I bought my first pair of snakes, buying as pure from a reputable breeder, only to discover they were not what I had thought. This is all an entirely different issue though; you're talking about capitalism. Interestingly, even if what you are saying was the case, it wouldn't really matter. As you say, scarce things are valuable. If no one crossed, all animals would be pure, and a pure status wouldn't hold high value. Crosses might be valuable because they were rare, in which case they would be the valuable things.

 

[natrix]

Ok , point taken .
Out of curiosity , what would be your own answer to your appreciation of morphs surfacing after the 'pet style keepers flooded our ranks' ?

 

[Sdaji]

Ok , point taken .
Out of curiosity , what would be your own answer to your appreciation of morphs surfacing after the 'pet style keepers flooded our ranks' ?

At first I had no interest in morphs. I didn't like them, I'd have been happier if they never existed. I liked the idea of a natural animal, I liked the idea of having an animal exactly like the ones in the wild, so I could learn about and appreciate nature. The herp scene changed, the demand increased and changed. I didn't like it at first, and I suppose part of me still doesn't, but I'm realistic enough to accept what will never be the same. With a zillion people, many of them idiots, comes a lot of money and a lot of potential for problems. Poaching has never been as extensive as it is now. Exploitation is everywhere you can imagine, and a lot of areas you wouldn't even think to look. What I like about morphs is that you can't poach them. Some of the zillion new people in our ranks are idiots and many are irresponsible. Many will hate me for saying this, but I do not like people being encouraged to go out on field trips etc. I've seen too many good herping locations destroyed by irresponsible amateur herpers. The serious ones will go out and do field herping whether or not anyone encourages them. If you need to be encouraged I don't believe you should be going. If people think of snakes as artificial mutants, they won't be inclined to go our herping, infecting wild reptiles with whatever is on their hands after they played with them before leaving. They won't be destroying habitat and they won't be poaching. Because of the change in people, I love morphs and hope they catch on as quickly as possible. I have gained an appreciation for some of them, although I'll always love my naturalistic animals more than anything else, and for reasons I can not explain my personal preference remains for pure animals, even when it comes to designer morphs.

Morphs are also great because they do very poorly in the wild. A natural morph may live and breed if it escapes, potentially causing trouble. An albino snake will most likely be picked off by the first kookaburra which flies along. Hard hybrids (Carpondros, Water x Carpets, Woma x Scrubby etc) are extremely unlikely to survive in the wild; much less likely than pure snakes, and even if they do they are unlikely to reproduce. "Soft" hybrids (Carpet Crosses/locality crosses) are about as likely to survive and reproduce as pures, but then again, a pure is as bad as a hybrid outside its range.

 

[Kathryn_]

pure ones outside their natural range are just as bad as crosses.

Cant agree with you there. For me it's about the degree of genetic difference between the parent animals, and that degree is far greater between a Stimpson's and a Childreni than between a wheatbelt stimmy and another locality.

Domesticated reptiles wiping out other species will only happen if we somehow manage to produce 'supersnakes' which is extraordinarily unlikely (if it was possible it would already have happened naturally, unless we used exotic snakes, in which case you'd have a remote chance of it happening, and I wouldn't condone the keeping of exotics either pure or crossed).

Maybe I didn't word my post very well, I didn't mean that I think captive bred animals are a direct threat to wild animals, but that I think it would be unfortunate if a particular species or subspecies became extinct in the wild due to habitat loss etc, and the only captive examples of that animal weren't stock-standard wild-types, but morphs or hybrids.

In some cases plants have been tampered with in bad ways, I entirely agree. In some cases they have been used and introduced irresponsibly, causing severe damage, but I don't believe the plant examples are relevant to us in this context.

Maybe not in your context I'm talking about loss of genetic diversity, so for me it seems entirely relevant.

Inbreeding is another issue entirely, and while it's an interesting discussion it belongs in another thread, so I won't touch it (by all means, start the thread and I'll get right into it).

I just don't know that I'm *that* brave, though I did notice that nobody answered my question about SXR's "albino pairs". : /