Reptales from the show...

[NateTheChops]

I had at least 3 fathers with little boys come up and ask me if there were any "poisonous" snakes at the show.

no, your kid can't hold one.

Wow. Some guys will do anything to get out of paying child support.

[tamezin]

Wow. Some guys will do anything to get out of paying child support.

nice, very nice, though to be honest this would be the first person to play the 'sue' song once precious got upclose interveneously with the cutie wittle snakies.

[tamezin]

So...can you?

I freely admit I don't know how snake genetics work, but I do know that crossing a brown tabby with a straight silver cat gets you a silver tabby at least once in a while. (Of course, mixing a brown tabby with a gay silver cat just gets you strange looks. ...I can't tell you how often my gay friends make that joke when I refer to one-tone cats as "straight X color." Curse my colorful Southern terminology.)

I was wondering the same thing myself. While I know this isn't the correct forum for this discussion, would you please provide the answer, then we can get off the topic, curiousity is killing me.

[Pagan]

Coral snakes DO fart when they're threatened. Oddly they have an anus that can inhale.

So, if they had the ability, they would be able to talk out their asses? Much like a lot of our customers....

And am I the only one thinking of Jim Carrey here?

[repsac]

I'm reminded of a reptile show they gave at my high school. During this they had a number of snakes up on show in cages, from one HUGE docile indigo snake, to this copperhead in a sealed container. The ranger doing the show was talking about how indigo snakes often will go out of their way to kill and eat venomous snakes.

As he's doing this, we happen to look up and see the indigo snake has managed to get the lid off the copper head's cage, and is inside the tank with the copper head. It made short work of the venomous snake. (This was all unplanned.) We expected it to eat the thing, but oddly once the copper head was dead, the indigo was quite content to go back to its own cage.

[TheSnakeLady]

So...can you?

The answer is, it depends. Some morphs are due to recessive genes (meaning no, but you could breed the babies together to possibly get a combined morph), some due to dominant genes (in which case yes, some could show it in the first generation), and some traits are polymorphic, which means it will vary tremendously.

Technically, you CAN breed different snake species together, if they're closely related enough on the evolutionary tree, but it involves tricking both participants and sometimes one would rather make a meal out of the other.

[NateTheChops]

Most hybrids tend to be sterile anyway so I'd have to wonder what the point is in crossbreading. I guess if you just wanted the one animal it would work out but in the case of animals that breed multiple litters it just seems like a waste.

[TheSnakeLady]

Actually no. Most snake hybrids are fertile. Not quite as fertile as the "pure" varieties in some cases, but they ARE fertile.