Lincoln. IMO Its you that obviously doesn't know what you are talking about. Talk about 'mouthing off'? You should engage your brain before operating your mouth.
I am in touch with major vendors and fishermen and researchers in Brazil probably 4 or 5 times a week. I probably know what Mike will pay before he does. I know much about what is shipped to Asia and the crazy money some people are paying for defective animals.I have probably had, kept, bred and sold more rays than you have had hot dinners, and I was doing it before you even knew rays existed.
If this ( or any other) batman defective ray was sacrificed to research and was able to produce some answers about the batman DEFECT then it would be worth far more dead than alive, far more than $2k if it could have prevented for instance, the batman defect in the P14 in another thread. The health and understanding of the species should come before any individual ray, especially a defective one that could provide useful information for us all.
It would not have cost Mike $2k to sacrifice the ray, only the money he might have made, he would not actually lose $$s but in the long run might gain a lot. You cannot count the eggs still in the chicken's ass. BTW, MIke is a friend
"Hybridizing' rays also makes a lot of money for some. But...if , for instance, you have customers in the AZA, they probably will NOT buy from you again if you are allowing your rays to hybridize, as immediately you start allowing that everything you have becomes suspect, and the AZA and all Zoos etc around the globe are all about preservation of existing species, NOT creation of new ones. It is only a badly informed hobbyist who wished to remain that way who would take your approach.
As for the cause: I still think that it is possibly a DNA transcription error cause by bad environment. Not genetic per se.( Statistically )
One common denominator for all people breeding their rays and getting this defect is keeping the temp high. Temperature is a known factor in transcription error in other species, A wrong temp of only 5 degrees is known to cause birth defects . The water temperature in the Amazon is lower than most of you keep your rays at ( 72-82 most of the time,) with only occasional rises alive 85, rays caught in high temperature seasonal pools usually die there from lack of oxygen. But of course, if you lower your temperatures to what is a more normal range for your rays they might not breed as often.
All ray exports from Brazil will probably be cut off very soon due to massive quota abuse, ( in fact NO shipments of ANYTHING AT ALL are currently being allowed out of Brazil...ref the big bust mentioned in a recent thread) so if what is now in captivity remains the total stock then surely it is in everyones' best interest to find the cause of this defect through scientific investigation, which often requires sacrifice.
