Some years ago a bizarre rumour started to go around the reptile world and its traders. When people put this rumour to me I lambasted it and called it utterly ridiculous, preposterous and totally impossible!
I was WRONG!
Now the rumour in question was over that which we know today as the Jungle Corn which was a hybrid between a Corn Snake, of the Elaphe family, and a Californian Kingsnake, belonging to the Lampropeltis family.
These two families could not be further apart and I adored those belonging to Lampropeltis while turned my admittedly snobby nose up to the Elaphe family. IN fact even within Lampropeltis it was actually made up of FOUR, count them FOUR, separate types of snakes!! Not FOUR species of snakes FOUR TYPES of snakes...AT THE TIME....
1) King Snakes:
Lampropeltis getula (13 types apprx)
Lampropeltis nigra
Lampropeltis calligaster (3 tyoes apprx)
2) Milk Snakes
Lampropeltis trangulum (24 types)
Lampropeltis zonata (7 types apprx) LISTED AS KING SNAKE (MOUNTAIN)
Lampropeltis pyromelana (3 types apprx) LISTED AS KING SNAKE (MOUNTAIN)
Lampropeltis triangulum hondurensis (oops a traingulum lol)
3) Scarlet Kingsnake
Lampropeltis elapsoides (cannot believe I always remember that name?!)
4) Grey Banded Kingsnakes
Lampropeltis alterna
Now in all honesty this family is a mess. First off I would say of the traingulum, all of which I am pretty much un-familar with bar a few, there are two that I always thought were separate species in their own right and they are the Honduran Milk Snake and the Mexican Milk Snake, hondurensis and annulata respectively.
Many of these I would wager would not breed in a million years (metaphorically speaking) so you can imagine my laughing when someone tells me that a Californian Kingsnake, Lampropeltis getula, breeds with a Corn Snake, Elaphe gutatta, both are North American species of snakes. Elaphe are found around the word too.
It was a shock. But then nothing for years until a couple of years back I was hearing all kinds of crazy things happening and could not understand what was going on. Then an old friend of mine suddenly had these baby snakes running around and yet he only had a Green Anaconda and a Boa constrictor!
The next thing I see these pictures coming through of these snakes with round black blotches arranged in rows along the body, it was crazy stuff.
Now yest there are loads of colour morphs and they sprang up out of the blue but I was hearing of more inter-generic breeding.
What made people think is when I asked the following....;Why now?' to which the say 'What?' and I then said 'Well yes, OK we had that Jungle Corn a few years back but there has been nothing else since then until very recently and even a friend of ours suddenly breeds two large snakes from different families you would bet you house on was not possible?! They just did it and no one was more shocked than he was!!'
I keep asking myself that same thing and why this sudden tendency to cross breed between two different genera?! I am 45 and at 5 years of age I was running around my father's shop full of Reptiles, Amphibians and Fish! This shop appeared on TV several times over several years. Finally it closed down and my father remained as a laboratory technician at a local school for years until he decided with a friend of his to do some wholesaling and eventually we became importers with vans and delivery runs. Eventually that died down in an economic slow down no ones wants to talk about, well either that or because I walked away from it to attend university?! Eventually and with one of my brothers they, and he, got back into retail again until, well that bit is not so ancient history whereby my father was setup to look the fool, but they tried for guilty shady dealings, by the BBC and was dead within a year.
In other words I have been in this for forty years easy and nothing. Then that jungle Corn and then another big gap and all of a sudden all this inter-genera breeding goes into overdrive. I wonder if the ANIMAL KINGDOM has more to tell us than we care to look for?!
For me I do not understand why you would do it?! Myself and many old hat others are into species animals and not colour morphs and hybrids. Even though my hybrid Phalaenopsis Orchids are stunningly beautiful there is still that nagging 'but they are only hybrids' thought in my head. I know others think the same way too.
Maybe it is that conservation and mothering side of use that loves and adores these things and keep being told they are in trouble of becoming extinct and we feel we are helping?!
I am pretty sure that is how it is for me and that the beauty in it is that nature created this and not 'MAN'?!
I could type out a whole length other post about how the laws and regulations protecting species will actually and eventually be the main cause for wiping those species out completely.
Why? Because they are stupid and laid out by stupid old people with no understanding whatsoever and these over the top laws and regulations will stay in place until someone realises it was all wrong and when it is too late too.
Probably because they are not huge, big and cuddly as well as draws masses of attention from the naive public like say that of ummmm GIANT PANDAS?!
I call it the Giant Panda Syndrome of Society, lol.
Now them breeding with RED PANDAS??? Now THAT I would like to see?!?!
Good luck with that and let me know how it turns out!
LMAO!
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