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Posted by dudifusmaximus on October 22, 2002 at 00:24:45:
In Reply to: Please give me your thoughts/rants/raves/arguments, etc.... posted by leonard on October 17, 2002 at 01:07:52:
Most of the "locale specific" cal-kings such as Mendota, Davis, Newport, Long Beach etc., look like regular, Yellow and Dark Brown, Banded Cal-kings. Although these areas will produce occasional mutants they are not nearly as common in the wild as you would find at your local snake show or pet shop. The same holds true for Striped Phase desert Cal-Kings from Scissors Crossing locale. It’s not nearly as common in the wild to find a striper as one might be led to believe. The banded pattern is much more common, period.
Personally, I think it would be more interesting to try and simulate, through captive breeding what might be more likely to happen in the wild, which is probably why I would never be a successful breeder, as far as profits are concerned.
I’ll use an example: I have an aberrant Cal-king from Coastal Los Angeles County, which I plan to breed to a regular Banded Calking from the same area. I will breed her with a regular Banded for the following reasons.
1) I could care less whether the offspring are aberrant or not, as I am more curious to see what kind of patterns will manifest.
2) To try and simulate what I think would be more likely to happen in the wild.
3) It might take a long time to find another aberrant like this one, LOL.
4) I am not in it for the money.
To me, it’s borderline misleading to say, “This is a Davis King”, or this is a Newport or Mendota. One might think that all Davis and Mendota kings are melanistic, or that all Newport’s are Striped with high yellow. When in fact, most of the snakes from these areas are just plain old Banded yellow and brown King snakes. I think it would be more accurate to represent such snakes as an aberrant form from their respective locality, selectively bred over the years to bring about the desired pattern.
I have heard people say, “ I’m only into locale specific snakes”, but they finish up by saying, “as long as they’re aberrant or weird looking”. It’s like they’re talking out of the side of their neck.
Bottom Line: the whole “local specific” craze is a joke. If these so-called connoisseur’s were really into “local specific” in the truest sense of the word, then they would breed some Regular looking snakes from that respective locale (either wild caught or captive bred) back with some of their Irregular snakes more often.
I'm not knocking all of the breeding community. I really like to look at some of the Freaky Designer snakes being bred nowadays. At least, these snakes are properly represented. You know what you’re getting, a hybrid. And, although I wouldn’t buy this one myself, I can respect the consumer for wanting this type of snake. My daughter likes the designer snakes and hybrids.
I just don't like the whole "local specific attitude when some of these breeder's are just breeding for the effect, not locality at all.
Leonard, I also found it interesting when you wrote:
(.”In the wild, snakes within a certain small geographic area or locale, will usually have some
:sort of pheromone/scent recognition of their siblings/parents which turns them "off" so to
:speak, but even so, their instincts make them disperse so that as long as the population
:stays large enough, the chances of excess "inbreeding" is small.”)
I found this interesting because I had 2 snakes I caught some years ago from the same hillside (50 feet away from one another). They were also found on the same day.
That same year and a year later I tried to breed them. They showed no interest in each other at all. These same snakes however did show interest in other snakes from slightly different localities. I don't know if they were siblings. Just thought it was interesting.
As far as that marathon, track racing Rosy, traveling 20 miles. Hmm, lets just say I' not convinced.
