cross breeding.

sezra

Arachnosquire
Joined
Apr 23, 2012
Messages
62
I was in my local exotic pets shop earlier this week, just chatting to the guy about T's and I asked if he would ever consider getting some rarer species. He told me that it's really hard to sell T's here and because of that he only ever orders what he knows he can sell. Fair enough I suppose, the guy is an independent dealer and needs to make money.

He then went on to tell me he had this big plan to expand his business online, and cross breed different species to sell for high prices because they would be "rare". It actually shocked me that someone who is in the business of exotic pets, and who must have a half decent knowledge on how these animals live could be that irresponsible. anyway, I told him straight that it would be hard to even get different species to mate, let alone sell the slings to people in the hobby.

His response was that he would sell them to people who didnt know anything about T's. I was furious! He is obviously only in it for the money, and has no passion for the hobby at all. I wish there was some governing body I could report him to, to get what ever trade license he has revoked.

I've never bought anything from the guy but tend to check his store every few months just in case he gets something nice in.

I was just wondering what your views on cross breeding are. I'm sure we have all fantasized about having the ultimate T hybrid, but its (in my eyes at least) morally wrong.
 
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goodyt

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Jul 26, 2011
Messages
143
The biggest thing is that this place will not be of use to them.

Owners of these new cross pretties will be approaching and asking questions and we won't really be able to have the answers for them. No one will have owned them before


-AJ
 

cold blood

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13,223
Post his store name wherever and whenever you can to educate as many people about it as possible. Don't ever shop there again and make sure he knows exactly why. This guy is despicable, and I can only hope he was "just spewing words" without any real intention or motivation to actually follow through on his, what I consider, threats to the hobby.
 

sezra

Arachnosquire
Joined
Apr 23, 2012
Messages
62
Post his store name wherever and whenever you can to educate as many people about it as possible. Don't ever shop there again and make sure he knows exactly why. This guy is despicable, and I can only hope he was "just spewing words" without any real intention or motivation to actually follow through on his, what I consider, threats to the hobby.
Thankfully, as yet he has no online store. He is a small local dealer and i've told people I know who are into the hobby to steer clear!
 

ratluvr76

Arachnodemon
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Jul 12, 2014
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759
I guess my question would be "why?". Honestly Tarantula's have been around for millennia and I don't see how human intervention in their evolution could possibly improve them. They are beautiful each in their own right. sheesh some people!
 

Beary Strange

Arachnodemon
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Aug 30, 2013
Messages
670
Thankfully, as yet he has no online store. He is a small local dealer and i've told people I know who are into the hobby to steer clear!
He doesn't need to have an online presence; there's a section specifically for brick and mortar stores and also for dealers. The good news is, he's very unlikely to be successful but I would actively keep an eye on him.

And you would be surprised how ignorant LPS owners/workers can be. My personal experience with exotic pet shops is that they know little to nothing about the tarantulas they carry and any info they pass on or profess to know is usually myth or weird things they seem to have made up off the top of their heads. For just how uninformed they are, I refer you to this thread. It's good for a laugh but also pretty horrifying.

---------- Post added 08-24-2014 at 08:19 AM ----------

I guess my question would be "why?". Honestly Tarantula's have been around for millennia and I don't see how human intervention in their evolution could possibly improve them. They are beautiful each in their own right. sheesh some people!
I think it comes from having a background in herps. With snakes and the like, cross-breeding and such seem to be looked at as a good thing-to make "new and interesting" specimens (correct me if I'm wrong herp people-this is just the impression I've gotten, I am not a herp keeper). They don't seem to realize that tarantulas are not like this and that in the case of Ts, the purer, the better. We already have such an issue with vague taxonomy and unintentional cross-breeding-to do something to confuse what you may have further is just crazy.
 

pyro fiend

Arachnoprince
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Dec 29, 2013
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1,216
i think your more or less right.. i mean look we have alota intentional hybrids in the herps to increse attractivness.. which ofcourse someone would rather have a pretty snake then a normal black and brown. typically anywho. so we get the woma hybrids, even a burmese ball python hybrid [which was supposedly an accident from a person who kept a burm and ball male in same enclosure, which makes no sence why a reptipable breeder would do this and the ball sired half the clutch..] and they go for buku bux... however you can typically id a herp within seconds if you know your thing.. so long as its not a hybrid you can just id it.. i can id most in the in the trade around my area tho iv worked with all at one time or another.. but even after creeping on here for many many years.. i still have a hard time ID'ing half the T's like avic, aphonopelma, theraphosa and even some pokies and lasidoras.. but i can see a snake slither acrost the road and ID it but somone shows an unkown id and im stumped.. but i think less is known about arachnid reproduction then it is about herps.. because its just been studdied so much more.. i woudlnt be surprized if someones lurking in the shadows trying to breed a avic and brachy to get a "prettier T"
 

Oumriel

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Joined
Mar 4, 2014
Messages
89
I volunteered in parrot rescue for a number of years and they have the hybrids too. All of it for the sake of aesthetics, with out any thought as to what it did to behaviour. Scarlet x greenwing macaws were huge for a while back in the 80s and 90s. All the ones I ever saw were not quite right in the head, highly skittish and slow to trust. Their behaviour was not in line with either parent and they were very unpredictable but they were beautiful.
 

Smokehound714

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Mar 23, 2013
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screw morality. get me a mature male Aphonopelma moorei and my females are all his! >=D (just kidding, but DANG that'd be crazy!)
 

pyro fiend

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screw morality. get me a mature male Aphonopelma moorei and my females are all his! >=D (just kidding, but DANG that'd be crazy!)
bahahahaha that is the prettiest aphonopelma there is XD i almost believed for for -0.00001 seconds about hybridizing XD hopefully you dont give anyone a crazy idea hound lol
 

bobusboy

Arachnoknight
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Jul 31, 2010
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287
Not gonna lie, I'd be tempted.

There was a thread a long time ago about a guy who cross bred and posted pictures of the "new" colour forms from his project. He crossed Psalmopoeus cambridgei with something IIRC



I've always considered doing it my self just to see what happens and only keep a few just for me. (Breed within a Genera, but two sp. with vibrant and complimenting colours take notes and stuff; make it a psudo-scientific project).

PS: I know I'll get flamed for this but it'd just be for my personal collection not for sales.
 

Gpappy31

Arachnopeon
Joined
Jul 17, 2014
Messages
14
Keep close to him, find out the name of the website, then warn everyone. The Internet is bigger than ever and the best "word of mouth"
 

ratluvr76

Arachnodemon
Active Member
Joined
Jul 12, 2014
Messages
759
I think it comes from having a background in herps. With snakes and the like, cross-breeding and such seem to be looked at as a good thing-to make "new and interesting" specimens (correct me if I'm wrong herp people-this is just the impression I've gotten, I am not a herp keeper). They don't seem to realize that tarantulas are not like this and that in the case of Ts, the purer, the better. We already have such an issue with vague taxonomy and unintentional cross-breeding-to do something to confuse what you may have further is just crazy.
I love the color morphs in the herp world also, but I do appreciate natural color morphs more. And breeding "jungle" species like Corn X King and that sort of thing, I'm kind of a purist in that way too.
 

Poec54

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Mar 26, 2013
Messages
4,745
Not gonna lie, I'd be tempted. I've always considered doing it my self just to see what happens and only keep a few just for me. (Breed within a Genera, but two sp. with vibrant and complimenting colours take notes and stuff; make it a psudo-scientific project).

PS: I know I'll get flamed for this but it'd just be for my personal collection not for sales.

Well that's the justification spider hybridizers usually use: just for your own purposes, not for the public. But initial good intentions aren't enough, especially when someone leaves the hobby (as many do); the ones with hybrids don't care any longer and sell them off to get some cash, whether identified as such or not. Nice of them to drop by and crap up our hobby.

Look, there's several hundred tarantula species currently in the hobby, more coming in every year, and hundreds more to be introduced. That's not enough? There's incredible colors and patterns now if you take the time to look. It's pure ego and arrogance for anyone to think they can 'experiment' and come up with something 'better', something with 'vibrant and complimenting colours'. Adding the brilliant: 'take notes and stuff, make it a pseudo-scientific project' shows just how 'intellectual' your goals really are.
 

cold blood

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Look, there's several hundred tarantula species currently in the hobby, more coming in every year, and hundreds more to be introduced. That's not enough? There's incredible colors and patterns now if you take the time to look. It's pure ego and arrogance for anyone to think they can 'experiment' and come up with something 'better', something with 'vibrant and complimenting colours'. Adding the brilliant: 'take notes and stuff, make it a pseudo-scientific project' shows just how 'intellectual' your goals really are.
Exactly, there's so much variety, and so much of that variety has yet to even make it to the hobby that there's no good reason to want to create something better, when something better already exists in spades, it just hasn't made it to the hobby....yet.
 

timisimaginary

Arachnosquire
Joined
Apr 22, 2014
Messages
81
1st thing to do is create a review thread for this store in the reviews section where you can give the place's and owner's names and warn people off of them. the hybridization is bad enough, but add to that the fact this guy plans to intentionally deceive customers in order to sell them takes it to another level. even if this hare-brained scheme is never attempted, i wouldn't want to buy anything from this person. how could you trust such a person or place to correctly identify the species or sexes of any other animals they are selling, if they're willing to lie about this? sounds like the same kind of person who would sell someone a "female" sling, and then in a year or two when it molts into a mature male, would give them some kind of BS about spiders being able to switch sexes as they grow.

luckily this scheme is doomed to failure. first, this person is obviously too ignorant about T's to be able to successfully breed anything, and probably would be trying dumb pairings like mating a B smithi and an A avic, in hopes of creating a tree-climbing spider with bright orange bands on its legs. most hybridization takes place between closely related members of the same genus and results in muddled-looking offspring, rather than some spectacular new T species. second, the idea of selling them at high price to people with little T knowledge is pretty dumb. to the average T newb, there's no difference between the rare species and the $10 rosie being sold at the petstore; they're both just big hairy spiders, and few people with no T knowledge or experience are going to drop hundreds of dollars on a spider. the people who would spend that kind of money would also have the knowledge to not be fooled by this guy. i'd almost be tempted to let this guy waste his money trying to breed his hybrids, except he'd end up with half of his spiders dead and the other half becoming really fat. so for the spiders' sake, i'd let him know just how stupid his plan is and how likely he would be to lose money trying it.
 

gumby

Arachnoprince
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Feb 15, 2006
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1,659
Im a little old school but I see cross breeding as an abomination in the tarantula world. I feel it is not only stupid because it is messing with mother nature but that it makes little to no business sense. Here are the reasons cross breeding is dumb:
1. You sacrifice far to many Ts trying to get it to work. Many will say I can stop them from hurting each other but even when both are of the same species there are losses.
2. From what I've read cross breeding only works within the same genus. Therefore there is not going to be a ton of variance.
3. Even if you got an amazing looking tarantula it would be hard to repeat and the offspring is often sterile. So good luck
 

TarantulasWorld

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Jun 12, 2014
Messages
98
In my opinion we have issues already with certain shops/people selling inbreds. Even tarantulas that for no reason die overnight (that we still have no explanation for). Should cross breeding occur, you will end up having infertile species or even if they do grow as nature has shown us with other cross breeds (something as simple as maybe dogs) they end up having all sorts of side effects and complications throughout their lives. Its already hard to differentiate certain spiderlings from others and there are taxonomies that need a clean revamp as is. Now imagine telling crossbreeds apart from others? Sure you might end up creating one cool unique looking tarantula and I wont lie and say it wouldnt be cool to have a pokie looking as great as it currently does but be as calm and nice as your typical rosehair. But in the end it would ruin the hobby tremendously and simply not be worth it.
 
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