Hybrids - Lets Not Discuss Them!

All Reptiles
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So now I’ve dragged you in here with the baity title, lets get down to business.

This thread isn’t to discuss the ethics/reasons/thoughts behind hybrids, you can do that here.

This thread is geared towards knowing that, whether or not you agree, hybrids exist and discussing their history and features in beneficial to the community as a whole.

A few questions to start, across any species:

  1. What Hybrids have been produced.
  2. Are they viable health wise
  3. History of it coming to be
  4. Features/Description
    …

Extra Reading:

@banereptiles picture below is for the thumbnail.
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@t_h_wyman @solarserpents @thebeardedherper @warren_booth @westridge

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For corns, they’ve been hybridized with other rat snakes, gopher snakes, king snakes, and milk snakes. I don’t work with hybrids, so no personal experience, but as far as I’m aware, all of those hybrids can reproduce.

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Able to reproduce and living a healthy life are different things. Also, low success in hatching/birth should be noted.

My personal opinion, I think it should expanded to more questions.

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I have produced some clutches of jungle corns. My male albino cal king x amel corn.

Lumps was right in my 5-6 clutch experience of jungle corns, there was a very significant drop in viable eggs. Average around half the amount of eggs were slugs to begin with. On the other side, all viable eggs hatched fine and on there own, and any of my holdbacks were quite hardy and healthy, all grew larger then both king or corn parents!

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I pretty much consider all corns in the hobby to be hybrids at this point, unless it is an actually lineage traced animal (e.g., @pcexotics locality corns)… Same can probably be said for many/most milk snakes and N. Am. rat and king snakes… Also, a huge portion of the chondros in the hobby and a fair number of the carpets would likely fall under this umbrella

As far as what hybrids have been produced… I think that is going to be tough because of situations like my above mentioned - it is pretty much known that there is hybrid blood but we all just “pretend” that they are not and so people will mentally gloss over them.

You will also run in to cases like the “Albino alterna” which, historically, are known to be hybrid in origin but a huge portion of the hobby is not familiar with that history so they refuse to believe that they are hybrids
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With regard to “viability” and “health”, Riley touched on this but I will add in what kind of “viable” are you talking about?

Ability to live a healthy captive life is one kind of “viability”. Ability to breed another generation is a different kind of “viability”. That latter also opens another door - is only one sex reproductively viable (e.g., are the males sterile while the females are fertile)?

Also add in, are the reports of viability actually valid? I know for years people used to say that ETB x ATB hybrids never made it to a year but @warren_booth has one that is, I think, approaching three years of age
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So lots to unpack there

A (very incomplete) list of hybrids that I am aware of:

CalKing/Desert king/MBK
CalKing/milk
CalKing/corn
CalKing/Pit
Pueblan/Honduran/Sinaloan/black/all the other milks
Corn/Emory
Corn/Western rat
Corn/Eastern rat
Corn/TX rat
Corn/Pit
East rat/West rat/TX rat
Rat/Pit

Bull/pine/gopher/fox

alterna/ruthveni
alterna/pyro
alterna/leonis
alterna/mexicana
alterna/thayeri
ruthveni/thayeri
ruthveni/mexicana

Ball/Burm
Ball/retic
Ball/carpet
Ball/chondro
Ball/carpondro
Ball/Angolan
Ball/woma
Ball/blood
Ball/Borneo
Ball/“Bloodball”
Ball/“Superball”
“Superball”/“Bloodball”

Blood/Borneo/STP

Carpet/chondro
Carpet/carpondro
Chondro/carpondro
Carpet/rough scale
Carpet/bredli
Carpet/inland
Carpet/diamond
Carpet/Boelen
Carpet/“Coelen”
Carpet/macklot
Chondro/rough scale
Bredli/inland
Bredli/diamond

Burm/Indian
Burm/AfRock
Burm/retic
BatEater/retic
BatEater/Burm
Mainland/dwarf/superdwarf retics
Timor/retic

Olive/water

Blackhead/woma

BCI/BCC
BCI/yellow anaconda
Yellow anaconda/green anaconda
ATB/ETB
ETB/Basin

Dumeril/MadGround
Green Sanzinia/Mandarin Sanzinia

Copperhead/Cottonmouth
SoPac Rattlesnake/Mojave

Gaboon/rhino

I know Thamnophis and Neroida hybrids exist, both wild and captive generated
I know there is a Bothrops hybrid out there but I do not know what species make it up

That is all the snakes I can remember at the moment

I am not as well versed in lizards but I know hybrids exist for

Beardies are all hybrids. ALL of them
Leopard geckos are pretty much all hybrids
Crested/Garg/Chewie/Leachie
Various Coleonyx
Anoles
Iguanas
Basilisks
Chameleons
Cave geckos

I am sure there are more I am unaware of

There are hybrid Sulcatta/leopard tortoise, RES/YES, and box turtles

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As @t_h_wyman mentioned, corns are basically all hybrids unless they’re traceable. Specific genes came from other rat snake species, such as Ultra & Scaleless.

A couple more corn hybrids to add:
Corn/Grey rat
Corn/Slowinski’s rat

A couple of the Thamnophis hybrids I know of:
Plains/Checkered
Plains/Eastern

I should also mention that Thamnophis are known hybridize & intergrade in the wild as well, notably in the Midwest.

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Ball x Retic has not been done.

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Yes it has, by Kevin McCurley around 2012.

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Care to re-evaluate that assertion?

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Someone fairly recently claimed to have produced a ball python x GTP
Most of the clutch died in incubation it seems but 3 had hatched. So I feel like the viability on this may be low? I honestly was not familiar with many other ball x chondro hybrids.

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Interesting. I haven’t kept up with corn snakes for over 20 years but back then I didn’t worry about any of mine maybe being hybrids but could see how the crosses then could get us to where you can now assume all are hybridized.

So, I probably shouldn’t open this can of worms but is that where ball pythons are headed? Are any ball morphs now available genes that were ported in from another species? How feasible would it be to identify hybrids through genetic testing?

Also, with the huge base population of imported ball pythons could you effectively wash the hybrid out? I know that the descendants would never be pure ball pythons but if say a codominant mutation was introduced to ball pythons from another species there would be a tendency to outbreed with pure balls and after say a dozen generations of that is it really still a hybrid?

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I’m very interested in this topic, as coming from boas what have always been thought as sub species becoming seperate species, interbreeding/“hybrids” are basically commonplace, tho there also are locality boas that seems to be very in between 2 species (Paraguana Pennisula boas is a stand out) All of them reproduce and have healthy, maybe even healthier offspring afaik.

I will say I don’t think having babies that can’t reproduce but are perfectly healthy in every other way isn’t terrible, since they can make perfectly fine pets, but obviously disclosure becomes a small issue there.

It seems with most snakes, intra-genus breeding is pretty normal somewhat often. (Within one genus, not between multiple) and ends up with offspring that can even reproduce. Which also makes genetically squaring away species difficult, but it’s all made up anyway lol.

Hell the study that made B. constrictor and imperator seperate and added sigma had like 75 specimens, half from single captive collection and the other half randomly in the wild. Hopefully as time goes on and much larger samples sizes are used, we can learn more about the various sub/species that seem combinations or in betweens naturally breeding in the wild. (B. Constrictor Amarali from Brazil and BCCs from Brazil seem also to be that way, but I’m not as familiar)

K rambling over! I’m no expert so I just want to know what some think about boas regarding this - if that’s not in line with the OP I apologize, but I think pseudo-hybrids are def an under discussed topic, especially in boas etc.

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There are tons of BP morphs from the wild, especially certain areas. There’s even known groups of wild Pies. Same place has tons of albino humans, so idk.

Aliens, probly.

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Yes, I’ve always assumed the huge wild sample size provided all the ball morphs. But now that I see all the ball hybrids that are proven possible I wonder if some might have been tempted to import a few more morphs from other species.

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Maybe but other than Angolan pythons, I think the physiology would be so different someone would notice - BPs are quite unique in their size and shape. Tho they also do vary somewhat by locality, which is why we have the Voltas and stuff. Tho I think now any exported are from a pretty small range, tho most of my African export knowledge as far as BPs is from Dav Kaufmans video/documentary on the BPs in the Wild and second stuff from a variety of OGs in the scene.

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This is very interesting. I never knew there was so many hybrids, especially in corn/rat. Back in the 80’s I never heard of this happening. Is this something that has been fairly recent? (let’s say since the 80’s)

Question, when making hybrid, does it matter what sex is what? Let’s say ball/boa. (Does ball have to be male and boa female. corn/rat/king, does it matter?)

I think part of this comes back to people saying to keep your normals before they disappear. Same goes with keeping non hybrid so we have normals.

Please don’t get me wrong, I am in no way against it, as long as we cane keep normals of each line. But this is a very interesting and informative discussion.

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Interesting discussion. I don’t intentionally work with hybrids. It’s not a choice about ethics, it’s just a choice. Many of my corns came/ were produced here from old school breeders and old lines. I’m pretty confident they’re not carrying intentional hybrid blood. I definitely accept that any purchases over the past 5 years likely have some.

There are naturally occurring hybrids or intergrades of a lot of snakes. Pantherophis and Emoryi share a lot of range and sometimes they share other things, lol. Just wanted to note for accuracy that the Slowinski’s corn snake was recognized as a subspecies rather than an intergrade a few years back.

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I am seriously loving everyone’s input on this!

Thank you guys!

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https://web.archive.org/web/20120320015841/http://www.hybridhaven.net/index.php

A dead forum to necromance with string at a later date

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