# question (probly silly)



## craig_mufc (Aug 30, 2008)

i had a thought but its probly really silly as i dont have a clue about genetics but please bare with me 

is it possible to breed colour morphs into other types of snakes through hybridisation(ssp) 

for example burm ball

if you take a pied royal x burm would you then get het pied burmballs?

if you do and then breed those back and are lucky enough to get pied burmballs ?

then you were to breed those pied burmball back to a burm you would get 75% het pied burmballs 

if you kept doing this for loads of generations breeding back to burms would you then pretty much lose most of the royal look and possibly genetics but keep the pied look and have piebald burms ? 

and last question can you out hybridise a hybrid by breeding back to single species of the parent and if you do this enough will you lose the look of the parent which it was not bred back to ?? 

dont know if its true but i heard that the candy cane corn snake originally came about from hybridisng corn x king then after just being bred back to corn just now gets called a corn rather than corn king cross ?

i hope that made sence and if its silly im sorry but dont flame me please

thanks craig


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## Vipera berus (Jan 20, 2009)

Most hybrid animals are sterile for example a mule is a horse/donkey cross & is nearly always sterile. It is generally very hard to get a nonsterile crossbreed but if it happens & is bred back to one of the parents species then it is again mostly sterile. I don't know how closely related kingsnakes & corn snakes are, this union seems unlikely, that said if it was two ratsnakes then I would say that there is a possibility. It would take at least six fertile generations for a hybrid being mixed with one of its parent species for what you describe for it to be considered a pure member of that species, this is because six generations is the earliest a gene can be completely bred into or out of an individual animals decendants.

Please note that I am working off memory having read something about this at least ten years ago & never seen it again, so if anyone sees any mistakes would you please point them out so I can correct this. Thanks.


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## intravenous (Dec 20, 2006)

In my opinion once a hybrid is bred into a snake line it can never be pure again (i.e. it doesn't matter how man generations you breed back to one parent species, it will always be a hybrid and not a pure member of that species).


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## paulh (Sep 19, 2007)

Horses and mules have different numbers of chromosomes. That is a major cause of mules' sterility. Rat snakes, king snakes, and bullsnakes have the same number of chromosomes and make fertile hybrids. I don't know what the chromosome numbers in Burmese and ball pythons are, though.

Yes, it's possible to breed color morphs into other types of snakes through species and subspecies crosses and then mating them to the pure species/subspecies through multiple generations. This assumes minimal fertility problems. The trick is to keep it up for all the generations needed. Off the top of my head, I'd guesstimate 10 generations to make pied snakes that otherwise look like Burmese pythons. That's a long time at 2-4 years per generation. And I'm pessimistic about the economics, from the standpoint of both decreasing rarity value and the cost of raising big snakes. By the time the project was done, pied ball pythons would be selling for the equivalent of present day USA $100. Also, you'd lose control of the project pretty rapidly by selling off babies. Keeping control would require removing excess stock from the potential breeding population.

A candy cane corn snake is pure corn snake. You are probably thinking of the jungle corn (California king X corn snake) or creamsicle corn (Great Plains rat snake X corn snake).


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## paulh (Sep 19, 2007)

intravenous said:


> In my opinion once a hybrid is bred into a snake line it can never be pure again (i.e. it doesn't matter how man generations you breed back to one parent species, it will always be a hybrid and not a pure member of that species).


Actually, that is my opinion, too. I should have made it plainer in my post that the pied "Burms" would only look like pure Burms. The proper tests would turn up differences from pure Burms.


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## craig_mufc (Aug 30, 2008)

thanks for the replies yeah i was the jungle corn i was thinking off lol and yeah it would never be "pure" to one of the parents but from what you are saying you would get the looks of one of the parents ?

and yeah it probly wouldnt be worth doing it from a finacial point of view lol (not that i ever had any intention of even trying it lol) but its quite interesting to see that in theroy it would work i think lol


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## DRD (Nov 12, 2008)

burm balls may have sterile babies,
bat eaters (BurmXRetic) have sterile you
carpondros (GTPxCarpet) have sterile young
blood balls (bloodXroyal) have sterile young
but with the genetics it is very unlikely as the link to the morph will probably resemble more calico in burms but you may be lucky.:2thumb:


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## GlasgowGecko (Feb 23, 2008)

intravenous said:


> In my opinion once a hybrid is bred into a snake line it can never be pure again (i.e. it doesn't matter how man generations you breed back to one parent species, it will always be a hybrid and not a pure member of that species).





paulh said:


> Actually, that is my opinion, too. I should have made it plainer in my post that the pied "Burms" would only look like pure Burms. The proper tests would turn up differences from pure Burms.


Guys if you read what you have written here you will realize that by definition it is flawed.

- what is a species? If two "species" can hybridize creating fertile young, how can that be hybridization? (this question is impossible to answer)

- If hybridization is a natural part of speciation, and occurs in the wild, how do you know what you have in the first place? What delimits a species?

It really baffles me why people make these statements sometimes. It seems to show no real understanding of many fundamental natural processes.

To answer the OP, The ability to cross a colour morph (or any other characteristic) into another species would depend on whether the genes that control these characteristics were on compatible chromosomes, in compatible positions, and functionally similar. It is therefore not easy to predict.

Andy


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## Ssthisto (Aug 31, 2006)

craig_mufc said:


> then you were to breed those pied burmball back to a burm you would get 75% het pied burmballs


I'd specify that slightly differently - pied burmball X burm = het pied 75% burmese hybrids (they wouldn't be 75% het pied  )



> if you kept doing this for loads of generations breeding back to burms would you then pretty much lose most of the royal look and possibly genetics but keep the pied look and have piebald burms ?


No, you'd never have Piebald Burms that had a royal ancestor no matter how far back it is - they'd always be Piebald Burmballs with high Burmese content, and the colour patterning sourced from the Pied royal would be the dead giveaway to the fact that "this snake isn't pure Burm."



> dont know if its true but i heard that the candy cane corn snake originally came about from hybridisng corn x king then after just being bred back to corn just now gets called a corn rather than corn king cross ?


Yes, some lines of candy canes are hybrids or have hybrid ancestors, but NOT of kingsnakes.



Vipera berus said:


> Most hybrid animals are sterile for example a mule is a horse/donkey cross & is nearly always sterile.


Most MAMMAL hybrids are sterile. Many bird and reptile crosses are fertile.



> I don't know how closely related kingsnakes & corn snakes are, this union seems unlikely, that said if it was two ratsnakes then I would say that there is a possibility.


Corn X King hybrids, Corn X Milk hybrids and Corn X Bull hybrids exist; the former two are quite fertile and can be reproduced into the umpteenth generation.... but they are NEVER going to be pure corns no matter how many generations back the non-corn ancestor is.



paulh said:


> A candy cane corn snake is pure corn snake. You are probably thinking of the jungle corn (California king X corn snake) or creamsicle corn (Great Plains rat snake X corn snake).


Actually, some lines of Candy Canes were developed using Great Plains rats, because of the whitening/lightening effect that the GPR has on the cornsnake Amelanistic trait. If I wanted one that is LEAST likely to be a Candycream I would go for a VERY red-saddled individual, rather than an orangey one.


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## intravenous (Dec 20, 2006)

GlasgowGecko said:


> Guys if you read what you have written here you will realize that by definition it is flawed.
> 
> - what is a species? If two "species" can hybridize creating fertile young, how can that be hybridization? (this question is impossible to answer)
> 
> ...


I will admit it baffles me that some species (once you start to get away from mammals) can hybridise and produce fertile offspring as I was always taught that this was an important feature of what defines a species. However, I feel comfortable enough that who ever it was that classified the different species knew what they were doing and had good reason for doing it. I'm especially confident in this case (putting aside the fact that they do actually produce sterile young) seeing as the two snakes in question come from different continents...


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## GlasgowGecko (Feb 23, 2008)

intravenous said:


> I will admit it baffles me that some species (once you start to get away from mammals) can hybridise and produce fertile offspring as I was always taught that this was an important feature of what defines a species. However, I feel comfortable enough that who ever it was that classified the different species knew what they were doing and had good reason for doing it. I'm especially confident in this case (putting aside the fact that they do actually produce sterile young) seeing as the two snakes in question come from different continents...


I'm not sure this really addressed my point, but:
1)It would be nice if classification were as simple as that, the truth is that classifications systems are constantly evolving, based on different characteristics and species concepts. In fact the truth is even more bizarre. We are currently unable to tell exactly what constitutes a species, if indeed the term species is even valid.
2)The fact that they come from two different continents does not, by default, make them incompatible. The period of time they have been separated, tied with the amount of functional mutations could make them incompatible, but this is by no means a guarantee. Range size across species can vary hugely.

Andy


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## craig_mufc (Aug 30, 2008)

thanks for the replies guys some really interesting opions keep them coming :2thumb:

and although these arent techniqually seperate species but would the jungle jag not kind of count as crossing morphs from at least one sub species to sub species ?


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## Scott W (May 19, 2007)

We are breeding our female burmball to a co-dom ball python morphs, we have no idea if she's up to size or even fertile and of course no idea on what effect the 'morph' gene will have on the hybrid.

Only time will tell.


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## craig_mufc (Aug 30, 2008)

wow :flrt: thats just one fanstatic looking snake 

whats it like temperment and feeding wise have you noticed any specific characteristics from a burm or a royal 

i hope you get lucky with the breeding and id love to hear what the outcome is sny specific morph you are breeding too ??


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## Vipera berus (Jan 20, 2009)

Lions & tigers are sperate species & they have some sterile & non sterile young, even if the crossbreed is fertile & bred back into ether parent species the young of the crossbreed & one of the parent species is sterile. Yet these are seperate species. All of the big cats can crossbreed & produce some fetrile young, this is despite the fact that they are seperate species. There are a lot of cichlids in lake Victoria in africa which are seperate species where in lab tests simply by changing the lighting conditions can produce hybrids. As I understand it a species is considered a seperate species to another if it will not interbreed with the other species in the wild.


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