mixed breed?

[vwsrcool]

okay i got a female maritime garter a few weeks ago, so i housed her with the 3 easterns we have, there are 2 females and one albino male, yesterday the male wouldnt stop humping the maritime, my question is will they produce babies and what would they be????

[Stefan-A]

Yes, they might produce babies (eastern x maritime hybrids).

[GarterGuy]

Sure they'd produce young. Maritimes and Easterns are just subspecies of the same species Thamnophis sirtalis. You'd end up with T.sirtalis(pallidulus X sirtalis)....basically a hybrid between the two subspecies. Don't know what they'd look like though.

Roy

[abcat1993]

That will be interesting to find out what they will look like. An albino (maybe) pallidus x sirtalis mix. Cool

[MoJo]

I have found that the people on this board are very open minded and helpful. I think unfortunately that many other garter snake keepers are not as open minded. When we were looking for info on what would happen after we saw our checkered male mating with our red sided female people's main concern was that we not sell the babies without being very specific about what they were and many looked down on the fact that the two had mated. It felt like people were more interested in making sure we did not "contaminate" the garter snake world than in helping us out!

I wish you luck with your breeding plans but I thought you should here another side of the story.

Joanna

[Stefan-A]

Well, it's a concern for many, especially serious breeders. Most want to come as close to the naturally occurring form as possible.

I myself have mixed feelings about the whole thing. Hybrids in general don't really bother me, as long as the owner is aware of them being hybrids and is able to keep them from threatening wild populations or messing up work done by serious breeders (buyers always need to be informed). On the other hand, a local (amateur?) breeder mixing two subspecies of Nerodia fasciata kept me from buying a pair. I admit I'm a hypocrite, since I just mated a parietalis with something that may or may not be another parietalis.

[adamanteus]

I agree, as long as the buyer is made fully aware of what they are buying, the choice to buy or not buy is theirs.

[boeh]

Hi there

I'm not a friend of hybrids. If they are declared as that, it's no problem. For the F1 it shouldn't be a Problem as well. But who can assure that they were declared as that in the F4 or F5? If someone cross the hybrids back to a clean line, it's probably not possible to see that this is a hybrid. And then we get to a point, where it is very dangerous for the clean lines. Nobody can control that, and it even don't have to be a bad will, maybe it's just ignorance, someone sell them as clean snakes.

That is how I see it. If it ever should happen to me, i wouldn't sell the offspring to anybody. Just because it is uncontrollable.

Best,
Cyrill

[drache]

hey
my daughter is a hybrid
and I think "very dangerous" is making it sound like the whole bloodline is going to go extinct
while I'm not fond of hybrids (the very word makes me think of garish corns), I also think racial purity is a human concept and not a law of nature

[Stefan-A]

hey
my daughter is a hybrid

Not in the same sense.

and I think "very dangerous" is making it sound like the whole bloodline is going to go extinct

Even if that doesn't happen, it is still dangerous since it can ruin the work that people have done within the hobby. It's pretty much the same as a fake piece within the art community, except that this damage is capable of reproduction.

while I'm not fond of hybrids (the very word makes me think of garish corns), I also think racial purity is a human concept and not a law of nature

I'm not too fond of the term "race" to begin with, but not even species are always clearly defined in nature. It's nevertheless irrelevant. Nature doesn't care, but humans do.

Speaking of corns, I remember somebody complaining about people having unintentionally mixed other species of ratsnake with corns over multiple generations, increasing the average adult size of corn snakes. I don't remember who it was or on which forum, but this discussion just reminded me of it. Anyway, it's off topic.