Hybrids

[Westley Price]

Boomfox, personally I feel your argument doesn't hold water.

So if I could mate with a Gorilla and that would be fine? I'm pretty sure the babies would be healthy and not in any discomfort.

To me the risk of hybrids are the fact that certain hybrids which look too much like one parent will be sold as a "pure" animal, contaminating gene pools.

I also feel that guys are too trigger-happy. I promise you, your Black Ratsnake and Yellow Ratsnake will not make anything that you intend to keep; so why do it?

I have no problem with trying to create something cool and unique, using hybridization, but my problem is people wanting to create hybrids for the sake of creating hybrids.

To a small extent, one can predict the outcome of a pairing, so why pair something that won't produce nice babies?

To answer your other question, yes hybrids have been paired with other hybrids of the same type, and it seems to enhance any features of the hybrid, making second generation (f2) more sought after. Plus by pairing siblings of the same hybrid breeding you can get morphs into play.

[uncutdiamonds]

There are some serious genetic problems, why you can't cross breed Gorillas and Homo Sapiens. Through cross breeding one can get the "hybrid vigour" effects as genetic defects are "written over", but this diminishes with any subsequent generation.

[Westley Price]

How do you know about these "genetic problems?" Have they tried breeding humans to Gorillas?

[Bushviper]

The human X chimpanzee was done in the 1960's if I am not mistaken but the "child" did not live very long.

Some crosses do not do well (burmese x rock python) and others dont have a problem Ball python x Angolan dwarf python.

[uncutdiamonds]

How do you know about these "genetic problems?" Have they tried breeding humans to Gorillas?

From articles in scientific journals and it was tried a couple of times with no effect. One genetic problem would be different number of chromosomes, another one the different sequence of potentially compatible genes on the genome. Chimp Y-chromosome and Human Y chromosome are for example totally different.
There was no interbreeding human x chimp, despite attempts being made; otherwise this would have been noted in the literature.

[Bushviper]

The chimp hybrids were supposedly done in Japan and these were possibly also attempted by Stalin (via the Soviet biologist Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov) and obviously in China as well. There are numerous human hybrid embryos in labs in the UK which have never been allowed to develop. A 2008 experiment in which British researchers created a human-animal embryo sparked considerable controversy, with religious groups condemning the experiment. British scientists have created over 150 human-animal hybrid embryos, in secret experiments conducted over the last three years, according to English publication the Daily Mail. Chinese scientists have already introduced human stem cells into goat fetuses and U.S. researchers have studied the idea of creating a mouse with human brain cells -- though they have not actually done so.

Now we are still playing with hybrids what will happen if some scientist decides to start doing this on a completely new level and crosses reptiles that would normally never do so in the wild. Where do we draw the line in designer reptiles? If they can do human goat crosses whats wrong with a chameleon cobra cross?

[Westley Price]

Now we have to start distinguishing between hybrids and chimeras.

A hybrid is the offspring of the sperm of one species and the egg of another, whereas a chimera is is made up of a combination of cells from two (or more) organisms, pumped into the egg cell of another and forced to reproduce.

Hybrids will be a mix of the two parents whereas a chimera will have certain parts from from the one organism and other parts of the other organism.

Most of the human crosses are chimeras rather than hybrids in the true sense of the word, so it's no wonder they are dying young and malformed.

With hybridisation, the parents need to be at least genetically similar, whereas with chimeras, you can cross a frog and a human (I'm actually sure this has been done).

[F1refly]

Correct. There have been a few Chimeras developed over the last few years, most noticeably a Goat x Sheep Chimera which lived a full life with no adverse health defects. Just some more info on the Gorrila x Human Hybrid thingy:

Stalin had scientists toying with the idea of creating Super Soldiers, with the intelligence and wit of a man and the strength of a gorrila. Many attempts were made, no known offspring were born. They then went on to try Orangutans which they said were the closest (Genetically speaking) to humans. It has not been revealed if any successes were made with this combo but apparently there was a circus which had a genuine (allegedly) "Yeti" which bred to a human and there was (allegedly) offspring from this combo, a rather large, human looking male who lived a full life and died of old age. It is believed that this "Yeti" was merely a Wild Woman who had overgrown hair and was mentally challenged. Make of this what you will.

I do see some benefits from research like this however.
Imagine someone isolates the genes from a Crocodile that prevent them from getting sick?
Or the genes from skinks that allow us to regrow lost limbs?
But where do we draw the line? I can see it now, China developing Armadillo x Human Chimeras, humans with bulletproof skin, or Duck x Human chimeras with the ability to annoy the hell out of you with their incessant quaking.

I'm all for Hybrids, and have no problem with people doing the kind of research mentioned above, as I would love to be able to live life without getting sick or living a long life, just don't start doing pointless things like Duck x Turtle Chimeras :P

[uncutdiamonds]

The chimp hybrids were supposedly done in Japan and these were possibly also attempted by Stalin (via the Soviet biologist Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov) and obviously in China as well. There are numerous human hybrid embryos in labs in the UK which have never been allowed to develop. A 2008 experiment in which British researchers created a human-animal embryo sparked considerable controversy, with religious groups condemning the experiment. British scientists have created over 150 human-animal hybrid embryos, in secret experiments conducted over the last three years, according to English publication the Daily Mail. Chinese scientists have already introduced human stem cells into goat fetuses and U.S. researchers have studied the idea of creating a mouse with human brain cells -- though they have not actually done so.....

Sources? I think Westley is correct in pointing out differences between hybrids and chimeras. So it wasn't human x animal hybrids, but attempted combinations of cells.

[RJG]

Just a random add on to the hybrid debate.There is no such thing as morals or ethics.If you look at the victorian era women where inferior and could not own ANYTHING not even there own child.Now days woman are viewed as equal to men in most of the world.No one can argue that hitting a woman was immoral in victorian times,due to the fact that that was normal and ethical at the time.Ethics change all the time,whats wrong now could be right in the future.

Hybrids and morphs are one of the same,man messing with nature to produce what MAN desires,not nature.A spider ball cross spider ball will not produce babies(how is that natural to create something that cant reproduce,I may be wrong)

Snakes are pets and are "home made creatures".every generation that is produced in captivity is one step away from nature.whether a snake escapes or is released into sa bush it will have the same effect if its a burm or bateater

(sorry if I am repeating what others have previously said)

[tranzoid]

How did I miss weighing in here. OMG what a mixed up thread, and yes a month old but I am going to post anyhow, sometime sub-forums go like that. I have two terms to throw in: inbreeding depression and outbreeding depression. Basics of genetics implies to a certain extent that line breeding/morph building may be potentially more deleterious to a wild population than hybridising if the genes actually ever made it back to the wild. The potential damage from a hybrid requires firstly reintroduction to a wild population of a huge number of hybrids, furthermore the hybrids would need to be reproductively active in the populace, not only able to reproduce with the populace (The exact same reason why hybrids do not naturally occur may actually prevent this.) secondly a large amount of time would be required for depression to occur, if it ever did, the genes may just disappear, which is actually what happened in the case of Homo sapiens interbreeding with neanderthal man and denisovians in asia and europe (yes modern humans are resultant to an extent from 'mongrel' hybrids). In short hybrids are awesome, and could be a major benefit to managing both inbreeding and outbreeding depression in our captive populations. No its not playing god, its playing scientist!!!

[uncutdiamonds]

Just a few remarks:
- Humans aren't the result from interbreeding between different of different species. Neanderthal etc. are all fully human just like Blacks or Chinese are. They are all classified Homo sapiens. (Of course I know there are different classification schemes and one can certainly argue about that)
- The problems of inbreeding stem from mutations, which affect any species. So you actually just accumulate different mutations without noticing that first, which is just postponing the problem.
- Given that almost all pythons of a specific genus can interbred having fertile offspring, I just wonder if they aren't just one species as well, just a regional variant. Not sure how this applies to the Boas i.e. can red tail boas and dumeril boas interbreed or even have fertile offspring.

[tranzoid]

In terms of neanderthals etc being the same species as modern man, the argument comes down to a discussion of evolutionary significant units (ESU's), where does one draw the line between species, do we base the distinction on percent genetic difference, or on morphological uniqueness like it was done in the past and the list of possibilities could go on and the argument is then further complicated by asking should we use the same measure for all the higher level taxa (which is not really possible unless we do arbitrary things for example we say that arthropods should be this percent different, whilst vertebrates should be this percent different which would also not really work and we would land up with a complete mess of a phylogeny, wait most phylogenies are a bit of a mess, hence why people like me are still trying to sort them out). It also starts to eat at the concept of the sub-species, an idea which is refuted by many phylogenetic systematists like myself and serves to just further complicate systematics. The mutations resultant of inbreeding and their accumulation are the root of inbreeding depression, yes outbreeding depression does occur but in order to manage inbreeding depression one has to outbreed, and to manage outbreeding depression one has to balance inbreeding and outbreeding through molecular analysis.
In terms of the pythons being the same species, once again it turns to a debate of ESU's the biological species concept based on the ability to interbreed and produce viable offspring is a little outdated and has been proven inadequate repeatedly by phenomena such as the hybrid offspring of congeneric pythons or within the family colubridae. It seems more likely to me that they diverged from a common ancestor but still share enough of their reproductive control (genetic) and mechanics to be able to interbreed successfully (so they are significantly different in other aspects just not in reproduction), as is also evident and documented in many species of amphibians. Amphibians as a result have been used by researchers to show that the phylogenetic species concept, based on genetic distance from a common ancestor is probably more viable/correct than many of the other concepts which have been utilised in the past.

[croteseeker]

This is sickening!!! Breeding morphs is cool and as far as it should go! Different species, i mean its like breeding humans with chimps or dogs for that matter! Its wrong!

Sorry to revive an old thread, but I'm just catching up on some of these threads and this doesn't make sense. Breeding morphs often means breeding family members. How is that any better? Animals are animals. Humans have bred them to suit their own purposes since....well....ever.

[croteseeker]

I realized, only after writing my last post, that this thread has gone on for thirteen pages. I've now read up to page 6, but I'm getting tired. I'll finish reading it later, but I wanted to apologize for posting a comment that has already been beaten to death.

I still say there's no difference, though. Natural hybrids occur in rattlesnake species. As does inbreeding. Our pets, diet, medicines --and, yes, even the natural world around us-- would be very different without hybridization.