Thread: Hybrids
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Old 12-10-2018, 01:17 PM  
souffle
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Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: Yorkshire, UK but my heart lies in Scotland!
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Default Re: Hybrids

Human intervention. In the wild they are separated geographically and have evolved to slightly different shapes and lifestyles. They would never meet in the wild. WW and campbells have evolved some different colours so humans thought it would be good to combine these to get the characteristics of both species in one hamster however you don't just combine the good but also the bad genes and these tend to amplify and cause issues in the hybrids. Once it is in there you can never remove the hybrid genes from a line. Now there are so many hybrids and people care more about the colours than the health. Disease often develops long after the hybrids have been already bred and the pet shops don't keep records of how the lines health is. So it goes on an on with glaucoma, diabetes, birthing problems etc in the lines.
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