Surprise Birth

[ConcinusMan]

just because their range overlaps and intergrades do happen, once a snake is captive one cannot tell what part of their range they came from unless there is documentation which in most cases there isn't
so you really cannot say with any certainty that these animals would have met and mated in the wild.

Your point escapes me.

I've noticed that you'd like to stretch that intergrade term to apply even to matings between sirtalis subspecies that could have never met in the wild
methinks you must either love the word, or it's something about not wanting to label something a hybrid when most other people would

Didn't mean to give that impression. I know it sounds a bit like a contradiction, but certainly, I wouldn't call a T.sirtalis sirtalis X t.sirtalis concinnus an intergrade. For obvious reasons, that would never happen in the wild.

I have already listed some western sirtalis subspecies that do intergrade in the wild. To say that the same thing happening in captivity is NOT an intergrade seems a bit ridiculous. All these western subspecies of sirtalis share common genes and ancestry from very recent (geologically speaking) times. Like I said before, as you travel from concinnus to infernalis range, or concinnus to fitchii, or concinnus to pickeringii range, the snakes slowly transition from one form to the other.

It's like you an extraterrestrial intelligence right now debating over whether or not a human from India breeding with a human from northern Africa is a hybrid. Of course they aren't.

But when it comes to something like T. radix breeding with T. ordinoides, that would be like homo sapiens breeding with homo erectus. NOT the same thing!

[MasSalvaje]

It's like you an extraterrestrial intelligence right now debating over whether or not a human from India breeding with a human from northern Africa is a hybrid. Of course they aren't.

That may be the case if humans had sub-species.

The example you gave would be like us debating if an anery concinnus that breeds with a "normal" concinnus would be a hybrid or an integrade.

-Thomas