# Keeping Tesoros Lehmanni from Illegal Stock



## hypostatic (Apr 25, 2011)

So this was recently posted on Tesoro's facebook page:



> Our webmaster Christophe Bellec just finished to develop the "legal oophaga database system" for Tesoros.
> If we finally get the export permits, each exported frog will have a unique number and with this number you will be able to check on tesoros website the name of the owner, city, country, 4 pictures of the frogs, description of the pattern and the status (dead or alive).
> Each buyer will also be able to register their froglets for them to be legal and they will be stored inside the database with a unique number after verification that they really come from legal parents.


I think this is a very good idea, but someone brought up this important point:



> And how will you prevent the old "problem" that breeders of illegal oophaga will buy a couple of yours and then will register all the offspring of a similar pair they already had and which was of illegal origin? I really appreciate what you guys doing, but I fear it will change nothing in the end. I rather have the fear that the availibility of legal oophaga will raise the interest in having these species and also ease the market for smuggled frogs since there will be papers around to get these legalized. I really hope it will work out but I think it will rather increase the pressure on the last wild populations. I doubt that you finally can make a competitive price for your frogs and also "produce" enough frogs. Lets hope I´m wrong and we soon are all happy watching our personal lehmannis jumping legally through our tanks with the good feeling that with the money we paid their habitats have been preserved...


Is there any way to prevent the "laundering" of froglets from illegal parents?

I mean, if it were me, I'd just export one gender of the frogs, or sterilize the frogs somehow, so that they wouldn't breed, and so that there would be no possibility of claiming that someone's illegal frogs were legit. I'm not sure how people in the hobby would feel about something so extreme however....

Anyone have any other ideas about what could be done to prevent offspring from being laundered?? It would be a real shame and detriment if after all this effort from Tesoros, this is what the outcome will be.


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## Coqui (Jan 17, 2013)

I love the idea on the Database, I think shipping one sex or sterilization is extreme and the amount of frogs that will be purchase will be limited. Some of the forum members that can appreciate having this particular frog will jump at the opportunity to own one. However; In my opinion I believe a lot of members would like the chance to breed them and hopefully lessen the amount smuggled in. I am not sure how many will successfully breed and let alone raise the tads to froglets, I'm assuming it will take a while. I guess the members have to be vingelent and be on the look out for someone always selling offsprings. It's a difficult delima. I agree, that it will be a shame to have smugglers rewarded by giving them the opportunity to unload their stock.


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## FroggyKnight (Mar 14, 2013)

Sterilize the frogs from Tesoros? I though the point of bringing in these frogs was to establish legal O. lehmanni in the hobby! I would rather not rely on Tesoros existence to maintain a supply of these to the hobby. If Tesoros went out of business, illegal stock would quickly fill it's place. 

If they were sterilized, they would only belong to a select few and honestly, not nearly as many people would be interested in purchasing Tesoros stock. I think it would more likely drive people to buy illegal stock since some would see no point in buying a sterile frog when you have a breedable one available, even if illegal. 

I don't think there is a truly right answer to this problem. No matter what Tesoros de Colombia does to separate their frogs from their illegal counterparts, someone will find a way to label their smuggled stock as legal. 

John


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## hypostatic (Apr 25, 2011)

Yeah, I recognize sterilization isn't the best idea (I don't even know if doing it would be POSSIBLE lol).

But yeah, there are a lot of people out there that are simply interested in adding a frog to their collection, and not breeding them.

Also having frogs being bred and sold by anyone besides Tesoros really undermines the operation.

I honestly recognize that this is probably not the best solution; I'm trying to start a conversation and see if anyone has any better ideas. I certainly haven't been in the hobby super long, so maybe someone else who is more knowledgeable can come up with a better idea/plan?


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## oldlady25715 (Nov 17, 2007)

Each frog's pattern is like a fingerprint. They should include photos in the database.


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## Brian317 (Feb 11, 2011)

What bugs me is that people would falsely represent their frogs like that when Tesoros is doing such a fantastic job with bringing these frogs legally to the people. I don't think there is much to be done in the theory of John Doe with illegal lehmanni then buying legal Tesoros lehmanni. It would be obvious if he was claiming all their adult lehmanni were legal, as you could access the records and see they only bought one pair....but then you have the problem of offspring and if they came from pure legal stock or the female was legal, but the male wasn't. What a mess.

I guess you just need to be aware, do your homework, and buy from reputable people. Some people will buy from whomever just to have that rare frog, but I think we need to steer away from that and support the people who support Tesoros by owning these frogs legally.


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## hypostatic (Apr 25, 2011)

oldlady25715 said:


> Each frog's pattern is like a fingerprint. They should include photos in the database.


Yeah, I believe Tesoros plans on including 4 pictures of each frog they sell in the database.

The worry is that unscrupulous individuals with illegal frogs and offspring will buy like, one legal pair from Tesoros, and then have their illegal frogs pumping out dozens of offspring, which he would then have papers to claim that the offsping are of legal origin.


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## ZookeeperDoug (Jun 5, 2011)

This is a step in the right direction. I don't think there is any 100% foolproof way to prevent people laundering smuggled frogs. 

The old, buy from someone you trust rules applies.


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## Celtic Aaron (Jun 12, 2013)

I am not sure there is a way to prevent the buying and selling of illegally imported frogs. However, if there is such a way to ensure that your frogs are legal, the only foolproof way (if there is such a thing) that I can conjure up is a DNA database. Each frog sold legally would have to have a DNA fingerprint registered into a database. Every time you want to register a legal froglet, the DNA would have to be verified to the parents that you own and have a unique DNA fingerprint registered...the feasibility and cost of such a program is well beyond my knowledge at this point. Just a thought.


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## ZookeeperDoug (Jun 5, 2011)

Celtic Aaron said:


> I am not sure there is a way to prevent the buying and selling of illegally imported frogs. However, if there is such a way to ensure that your frogs are legal, the only foolproof way (if there is such a thing) that I can conjure up is a DNA database. Each frog sold legally would have to have a DNA fingerprint registered into a database. Every time you want to register a legal froglet, the DNA would have to be verified to the parents that you own and have a unique DNA fingerprint registered...the feasibility and cost of such a program is well beyond my knowledge at this point. Just a thought.


There are ways to DNA "Tag" animals, but I think that would be beyond the economic scope of what Tesoros is able to do.


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## epiphytes etc. (Nov 22, 2010)

I don't think there's a lot of people out there with lehmannii at all right now, much less successfully breeding them. Seriously, if you had to guess, how many people do you think have breeding lehmannii in the US?


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## Celtic Aaron (Jun 12, 2013)

ZookeeperDoug said:


> There are ways to DNA "Tag" animals, but I think that would be beyond the economic scope of what Tesoros is able to do.


I figured as much. Just dreaming...maybe one day .


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## hypostatic (Apr 25, 2011)

ZookeeperDoug said:


> There are ways to DNA "Tag" animals, but I think that would be beyond the economic scope of what Tesoros is able to do.


ACTUALLY, you could relatively cheaply/easily do something like this. If they kept some DNA from all of the frogs they sell, it would be easy to confirm if any offspring are related to the original frogs. You know, with the same technology that they use in courts to determine who the baby daddy is.












epiphytes etc. said:


> I don't think there's a lot of people out there with lehmannii at all right now, much less successfully breeding them. Seriously, if you had to guess, how many people do you think have breeding lehmannii in the US?


Eh, there's no way to know. But on a bigger scale, there are a lot of lehmanni in germany for example. Here's a translation of a german person's comment to the Tesoros post:



> very good news...ich would like to clarify something here: the assertion that all hist/lehmanni which are in private hands, were illegal, is simply wrong! These animals are already in the 1970s, usually with ornamental fish imported quite legally to Europe. Until 1989, the animals on the list of the Washington Convention were annex II. Besides me, there are some growers who are unfortunately not publicly present themselves, which keep some histrionicus morph of O. and breed here in Germany. Nevertheless I find it amazing what is Tesoro. I look forward to be able to share my offspring with the offspring of these animals in one or two years.I would therefore like to clarify something: the claim that all the hist / lehmanni are in private hands, are illegal, is simply wrong! These animals are usually come back in the 70s with the ornamental fish imported legally into Europe. Only in 1989 did the animals were on the list not present themselves in public Appendix II of CITES besides me, there is in Germany a few swoopoclone.com who unfortunately do, which some morphing O. histrionicus and culture.


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## Judy S (Aug 29, 2010)

In the field I am more familiar with: thoroughbreds for racing. They are blood typed very early in life, registered with pictures from four angles and paperwork with descriptions of sex,color, markings which are drawn, identified as to parents which have been registered of course...and when eligible to race they are tattooed on in the inside of their upper lip...think they have a handle on it???


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## Dev30ils (May 1, 2012)

hypostatic said:


> Eh, there's no way to know. But on a bigger scale, there are a lot of lehmanni in germany for example. Here's a translation of a german person's comment to the Tesoros post:


I find it amusing that the German has no concept of the fact that those frogs are retroactively illegal, and would be considered as such by UFWS if he lived here.


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## Pubfiction (Feb 3, 2013)

I think this is more valuable from the perspective of reducing line breeding than stopping smuggling. 

That said the only possible way to tell if your frogs are legit would be genetic testing. This really isn't that expensive but I realize most wont do it and I have no idea if any decent systems have thus far been worked out for frogs. The catch would be if a few people or a collaboration would be ready and willing to spot test. At that point if they proved someone was selling non tesoros animals you could file a law suit as the person has now likely moved from being bad to committing fraud and could even be turned in to authorities since you would now have proof the authorities could use to show they have illegal animals. (I am sure just like police work many cases are ignored simply because the authorities know it wont hold up in court). I don't really know much about genetic testing in frogs so I think people might also be opposed to the most common sample collection technique I have seen which is chopping off their little toes. 

Also if Tesoros is truly transparent with their database clues could be unveiled from the database itself. IE lets say I buy 2 tesoros frogs and 10 illegal frogs. Now everyone wants their frogs they aquire from me to have an entry in the tesoros database right? So I generate them and say all my offspring come from the 2 tesoros frogs. At some point people are going to notice my single pair is pumping out 5x the offspring of other reputable breeders.


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## epiphytes etc. (Nov 22, 2010)

Yes, but ....

You aren't going to be buying any illegal lehmannii at all, unless you have some insane connections, so the idea of somebody having them to launder as Tesoros offspring is pretty much null. Once these frogs become available, they will be so much easier to come by than illegal specimens.


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## Spaff (Jan 8, 2011)

hypostatic said:


> Eh, there's no way to know. But on a bigger scale, there are a lot of lehmanni in germany for example. Here's a translation of a german person's comment to the Tesoros post:


I'm not really sure how this comment supports that there are a lot of lehmanni in Germany. I'm fairly certain there aren't "a lot" of lehmanni anywhere, even Colombia. 



Dev30ils said:


> I find it amusing that the German has no concept of the fact that those frogs are retroactively illegal, and would be considered as such by UFWS if he lived here.


I don't think species or their offspring that came in prior to CITES (when exports out of Ecuador/Colombia were legal) would be retroactively considered illegal by USFWS.


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## hypostatic (Apr 25, 2011)

Dev30ils said:


> I find it amusing that the German has no concept of the fact that those frogs are retroactively illegal, and would be considered as such by UFWS if he lived here.





Spaff said:


> I don't think species or their offspring that came in prior to CITES (when exports out of Ecuador/Colombia were legal) would be retroactively considered illegal by USFWS.


Eh different countries, different laws.




Spaff said:


> I'm not really sure how this comment supports that there are a lot of lehmanni in Germany. I'm fairly certain there aren't "a lot" of lehmanni anywhere, even Colombia.


Yes, this doesn't support that. There certainly aren't a lot of lehmanni out there in general.

I don't get out much, so I don't know what people have in their collections. But I do know that I've read on DB of people who have lehmanni and/or histos, have bred them, and are awaiting legal frogs to come in so they can finally sell their offspring.

Like, isn't this what happened with vanzos? Understory started selling them, and then there was suddenly an influx of questionable frogs into the hobby? And now it's STILL pretty unclear whether or not some vanzos come from Understory or not?

Tesoros has been working really hard to bring these frogs in. It would be a real shame if the same thing happened with their frogs.


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## ZookeeperDoug (Jun 5, 2011)

I doubt the same thing will happen with O. lehmani as happened with R. vanzolini. Vanzos breed like rabbits. My pair would produce 4-8 eggs every week if I let them and raised 4-5 froglets ever couple months if I didn't pull. All the information I've gathered, suggests that O. lehmani are as challenging if not more so, to breed as other large obligates. Basically what I'm getting at is that, with most frogs of questionable origins that have flooded the market, they have been easy to breed, and this won't be the case here.


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## hypostatic (Apr 25, 2011)

Hmmm good point. Maybe I'm making a mountain out of a mole hill


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## pa.walt (Feb 16, 2004)

......I mean, if it were me, I'd just export one gender of the frogs, or sterilize the frogs somehow, so that they wouldn't breed.... 
I know this seems nasty but who here would buy these expensive frogs and only get one sex. the majority will want a male female ratio so they can breed them to make money. and they wouldn't be buying just a pair. it would be several pairs.


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## Pubfiction (Feb 3, 2013)

With the renewed interest in Large obligates and the admission of surrogate egg feeding by Tesoros I am more confident this time around someone will get around the obligate egg feeding.


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## FroggyKnight (Mar 14, 2013)

Pubfiction said:


> With the renewed interest in Large obligates and the admission of surrogate egg feeding by Tesoros I am more confident this time around someone will get around the obligate egg feeding.


When did they "admit" to that? 


John


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## ZookeeperDoug (Jun 5, 2011)

Pubfiction said:


> With the renewed interest in Large obligates and the admission of surrogate egg feeding by Tesoros I am more confident this time around someone will get around the obligate egg feeding.


We will see. I hope you are right, because it would be an awesome advancement for the hobby.


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## hypostatic (Apr 25, 2011)

pa.walt said:


> ......I mean, if it were me, I'd just export one gender of the frogs, or sterilize the frogs somehow, so that they wouldn't breed....
> I know this seems nasty but who here would buy these expensive frogs and only get one sex. the majority will want a male female ratio so they can breed them to make money. and they wouldn't be buying just a pair. it would be several pairs.


If I had a lot money, I would buy the frogs and not care about if they bred.

A lot of people actually do this. They buy pets, and they enjoy their pets without breeding them. They buy pets for the pure enjoyment of having them  lol


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## ZookeeperDoug (Jun 5, 2011)

FroggyKnight said:


> When did they "admit" to that?
> 
> 
> John


Here is what they said. Basically they're feeding Oophaga eggs of the same species. To say they "admitted" suggests that they were hiding something at some point. Ivan has always been strait forward about what they're doing.


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## pdfCrazy (Feb 28, 2012)

Spaff said:


> I don't think species or their offspring that came in prior to CITES (when exports out of Ecuador/Colombia were legal) would be retroactively considered illegal by USFWS.


That is correct. offspring from previous imports, regardless of them being 20 years ago, are still legal. 

I think what he was maybe thinking of, is say mysteriosus, or Casties, or even EU Vanzos for that matter, they were never legal, therefore neither are their offspring


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## Dev30ils (May 1, 2012)

pdfCrazy said:


> That is correct. offspring from previous imports, regardless of them being 20 years ago, are still legal.
> 
> I think what he was maybe thinking of, is say mysteriosus, or Casties, or even EU Vanzos for that matter, they were never legal, therefore neither are their offspring


But how would you prove their legality with no paperwork?

Were the frogs ever actually legally exported or were they lumped under some other legal name and exported that way? It seems unlikely that Colombia would consider those frogs legal.


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## pdfCrazy (Feb 28, 2012)

Yes, there were many legal imports of lehmanni and histrionicus throughout the late 70's into the early/mid nineties. Not so with casti's or mysteriosus.


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## Dev30ils (May 1, 2012)

pdfCrazy said:


> Yes, there were many legal imports of lehmanni and histrionicus throughout the late 70's into the early/mid nineties. Not so with casti's or mysteriosus.


There were also many legal imports of elephant ivory, try selling an old piano with ivory keys now.


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## pdfCrazy (Feb 28, 2012)

Actually, pre-ban ivory is legal as well. Its a little legal theory call _ex post facto_


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## Dev30ils (May 1, 2012)

pdfCrazy said:


> Actually, pre-ban ivory is legal as well. Its a little legal theory call _ex post facto_


Here is some information about selling ivory within the US via PBS:

SALE & EXPORT

Items consisting of African-elephant ivory that are already in the United States can be sold within the country or exported *only if they are accompanied by documentation attesting* either that:

The ivory was harvested prior to 1976; OR
It was imported prior to 1976, before relevant CITES regulations had been enacted.

My point, just as with the O. lehmanni is that you need documentation to prove that the animals/ivory originated from before CITES. If you can't produce that documentation then it is considered illegal. This is much easier to do with something like antiques because it can be appraised by a professional, but there's no such thing with the frogs. So unless someone can magically produce documentation that they received their frogs before CITES existed their frogs will be considered illegal stock by USFWS.


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## oldlady25715 (Nov 17, 2007)

Dev30ils said:


> Here is some information about selling ivory within the US via PBS:
> 
> SALE & EXPORT
> 
> ...


By this line of logic any large obligate would need paperwork. How is one supposed to show paperwork for F5 offspring?


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

oldlady25715 said:


> Each frog's pattern is like a fingerprint. They should include photos in the database.


The patterning on many species of anurans can shift over time; someone would have to determine that the pattern was stable enough to identify the frog over the course of its life span. As this could take more than 10 years to determine, it is not a very practical method for this purpose. 

There are a number of alternate methods to identify the frog such as implanting PIT tags see (http://www.rzsnsw.org.au/Volumes of... without anaesthetic in free-living frogs.pdf) as these frogs are easily big enough to safely PIT tag them. 

Some comments 

Ed


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## Dev30ils (May 1, 2012)

oldlady25715 said:


> By this line of logic any large obligate would need paperwork. How is one supposed to show paperwork for F5 offspring?


The burden of proof is on the seller. Otherwise how would you differntiate between animals and their offspring that were imported pre-CITES with those that have been smuggled since then?


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Dev30ils said:


> I find it amusing that the German has no concept of the fact that those frogs are retroactively illegal, and would be considered as such by UFWS if he lived here.


If they were exported before the listing by CITES then they are most likely legal. All that would be required would be legal passage through customs.

In addition, it was not required to identify them down to species to export them, they could easily have been exported under the generic Dendrobates sp as shown in the CITES tradedatabase regarding later exports. This has been discussed in some marathon threads but the relevent data can be found in this post http://www.dendroboard.com/forum/ge...-would-you-buy-wc-lehmanni-18.html#post491117. The links to the other posts don't seem to work for me but the relevent posts are identified by their numbers and should be easy to run down for those interested in the data. 

Some comments 

Ed


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Dev30ils said:


> The burden of proof is on the seller. Otherwise how would you differntiate between animals and their offspring that were imported pre-CITES with those that have been smuggled since then?


If they were exported pre-CITEs and then obtained through the pet trade then there wouldn't be any paperwork. In addition, even after listing as CITES II, there wouldn't likely be paperwork for the breeder to use as proof. Just like any number of other CITES II listed species. There isn't a required papertrail like that seen for CITES I or ESA listed species. 

Some comments 

Ed


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Dev30ils said:


> Here is some information about selling ivory within the US via PBS:
> 
> SALE & EXPORT
> 
> ...


This is because 1) Elephants are CITES I listing 
2) and a special law known as the Elephant Conservation Act was passed for the elephants to support our interest in the treaty and ESA act (where they are listed as threatened). 

It is highly unlikely that you will be able to get congress to pass a special law regulating trade in frog imported pre-Tesoros

Some comments 

Ed


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Dev30ils said:


> The burden of proof is on the seller. Otherwise how would you differntiate between animals and their offspring that were imported pre-CITES with those that have been smuggled since then?


And how does a seller provide proof when none exists or has existed for decades? 

Some comments 

Ed


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## Dev30ils (May 1, 2012)

Ed said:


> And how does a seller provide proof when none exists or has existed for decades?
> 
> Some comments
> 
> Ed


Thanks for the reading list Ed, I will have to dig through that later today.

I have no idea how someone would provide proof if they don't still have their original import documents. 

I wouldn't purchase a notoriously rare frog from someone who couldn't prove to me that the animal was not of smuggled origins. 

How are we supposed to differentiate those animals that are legal from ones of smuggled origins?


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## stu&shaz (Nov 19, 2009)

Ed said:


> The patterning on many species of anurans can shift over time; someone would have to determine that the pattern was stable enough to identify the frog over the course of its life span. As this could take more than 10 years to determine, it is not a very practical method for this purpose.
> 
> There are a number of alternate methods to identify the frog such as implanting PIT tags see (http://www.rzsnsw.org.au/Volumes of... without anaesthetic in free-living frogs.pdf) as these frogs are easily big enough to safely PIT tag them.
> 
> ...


Ed,regarding the PIT tags,is there a global standard for this type of tagging. I'm curious as to what would happen if a holder of some genuine Tesoros frogs is fortunate and rears the next generation. I would presume these offspring would need tagging. Hopefully,in time. Tesoros will be spread out through out the world. So for example I buy some frogs from Tesoros,a year plus later dreams come true,they breed. Would I take the offspring to my vet and they tag the young stock, then these would be registered,with Teseros. I'm trying to get my head around how this could be done without any risk of smuggled stock being involved. It seems incredibly feasible for the generation of frogs,sold by Teseros, but the next stage seems far more difficult to impliment with complete,'erm honesty,maybe integrity is better.
The tags themselves seem ,for a layman,ie me to be really quite cheep and certainly cost effective,certainly doable for a frog that I would assume will be of some value. The scanner,much more expensive. This is why I asked if there might be a global standard for these tags as finding folks who have the necessary scanner and expertise,might be more tricky,unless of course these tags are similar to the ones used say to tag dogs to hopefully prevent loss or ID after theft
Ed when we test our frogs for RV we take swabs which pick up the DNA of the virus,does this also pick up the frogs DNA is there some potential for this to be used. Can you also identify other methods that might be applicable to this senario please Ed,above hints at more, you have my curiosity peaked. Fascinating posts Ed thank you as always (HNY)




Dan thanks for posting this,I think many would want to breed,certainly the money side of selling offspring to make profits wouldn't be as important or really even thought about for me,and I suspect many others. The primary reason for me would be watching all this,the breeding behaviours etc. It really is captivating Dan. Sure I'm soft and struggle to articulate why watching large oophaga breed captivates me so much,but I would think many others in our hobby would be of a like mind.

Having dabbled with a morph (of histrionica) for a while now and done some surrogacy,seen how many eggs can be laid,by one female. I don't think it could be that easy to tell how many in number of offspring could be produced,in a season,if some form of artificial method is employed. Naturally this statement is somewhat hypothetical as the thread is primarily regarding lehmannii (no experience what so ever) and I see all the points about how few are around. But if one doesn't rule out the use of other frogs eggs,say histrionica for example,then one guy producing far more than he should,might not just be down to him having several pairs of smuggled frogs in a back room somewhere. 

Beyond all this I think each and every step Ivan tries to implement towards keeping these amazing frogs he is producing identifiable is a good thing,all positive for me. I'm not knowledgeable to have a clear view of just how to achieve this hence asking Ed above, but for me at least this is another step forwards,by this amazing man. 

take care

Stu


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## hypostatic (Apr 25, 2011)

Ed said:


> The patterning on many species of anurans can shift over time; someone would have to determine that the pattern was stable enough to identify the frog over the course of its life span. As this could take more than 10 years to determine, it is not a very practical method for this purpose.


Yeah, I was thinking this too. Also, for some of the banded frogs for example, the patterns can be almost identical.

ALSO, back on the genetic testing thing, I think it can be done, and I'm fairly secure it might use the same markers as for humans. You can even do a Parentage/Genetic Marker Report on bison for $40:
https://www.vgl.ucdavis.edu/services/bison.php


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## Dendro Dave (Aug 2, 2005)

You might be able to use testing/tags for the initial imports and maybe most of their offspring, but I doubt most individual hobbyists will pony up for that. Unless you poo poo everyone who can't/won't do it after that, only making tagged/tracked frogs accepted in the community a lot of them (if not most) will be "off the books", in a few generations.

I'm all for tracking the genetics to increase diversity, but I think the practical difficulty in genetic testing/tagging is to much. We will probably just have to rely on the honor system and tracking the frogs back to the original origins. Also relying on peer pressure and whatever to keep smuggled frogs from being openly accepted like in some other countries. 

I doubt there are enough old frogs left (many of which are legal) or new ones being smuggled now, that this will legitimize a bunch already hiding in the shadows (unless I'm more out of the loop then I realize). Now whether or not we get an influx of newly smuggled frogs trying to ride in on these frogs coat tails, not sure... but that is where knowing and trusting your vendor comes into play.

Anyways I'm all for doing what we can as long as it is practical, but I think mostly we'll just have to hope the American market for smuggled frogs stays small and in the shadows, and that the legal frogs fill most of the demand, and eventually that we get a nice captive breeding pop going that (hopefully) keeps it from being worth the smugglers time/risk... on this side of the pond at least.


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## hypostatic (Apr 25, 2011)

Dendro Dave said:


> I'm all for tracking the genetics to increase diversity, but I think the practical difficulty in genetic testing/tagging is to much. We will probably just have to rely on the honor system and tracking the frogs back to the original origins. Also relying on peer pressure and whatever to keep smuggled frogs from being openly accepted like in some other countries.


Is it? Is it _REALLY_? I don't think it's too hard. Swab a frog and mail it to a company is probably all you'd have to do. This is done ALL THE TIME with animals like dogs and horses. Why can't we start doing this with our frogs?

There's been SO MUCH talk about what we can do to make the hobby better recently; this seems like a "no brainer" that we should do to start catching up to other better established hobbies.


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## srrrio (May 12, 2007)

Dendro Dave said:


> We will probably just have to rely on the honor system and tracking the frogs back to the original origins.


What honor system would you be speaking of?


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## whitethumb (Feb 5, 2011)

Does anybody actually know how close they are to getting the permits to export them?


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## chuckpowell (May 12, 2004)

Is there really all that many wild caught O. lehmanni coming into the country? I doubt it. They are not all that common in the wild anymore and although not impossible I think it would be an expensive endeavor with lots that could go wrong. Europe may be another matter but I don't hear of any O. lehmanni coming in from there either. So how many O. lehmanni, or frogs in general are illegally imported into the US? And how many of those get into the hobby? 

Best,

Chuck


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## hypostatic (Apr 25, 2011)

chuckpowell said:


> Is there really all that many wild caught O. lehmanni coming into the country? I doubt it. They are not all that common in the wild anymore and although not impossible I think it would be an expensive endeavor with lots that could go wrong. Europe may be another matter but I don't hear of any O. lehmanni coming in from there either. So how many O. lehmanni, or frogs in general are illegally imported into the US? And how many of those get into the hobby?
> 
> Best,
> 
> Chuck


To me, not having a lot of frogs around is just emphasizes how much these frogs (and the hobby in general) needs genetic testing.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

hypostatic said:


> To me, not having a lot of frogs around is just emphasizes how much these frogs (and the hobby in general) needs genetic testing.


To what purpose? Without dna from populations that supposedly have never been exported into the pet trade, you can't prove that any frogs are illegal. All you could do is seperate pre-Tesoros animals from Tesoros exports. Currently all anyone has to do to launder the frogs is to claim that they came in legally in the old shipments or were descended from those animals. So there wouldn't really be any value in claiming the offspring are from Tesoros (and that assumes they have the same "morph" that would be exported from Tesoros). Virtually all of the old populations and smuggled frogs are lacking in locality data so there isn't any purpose in claiming descent from Tesoros as that would then result in potentially mixed locality frogs. 

It is more likely that those populations from which the Tesoros frogs originated that would be at most risk as smuggled frogs from those populations could be deemed to be descended from legal frogs and in this scenario DNA isn't really going to help as the frogs are going to be from the same population. 

Some comments 

Ed


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

stu&shaz said:


> Ed,regarding the PIT tags,is there a global standard for this type of tagging. I'm curious as to what would happen if a holder of some genuine Tesoros frogs is fortunate and rears the next generation. I would presume these offspring would need tagging.


In general most unencrypted PIT tags can be read by multiple readers. It is really a problem if one uses encrypted tags as those can only be read by the brand sold with the encryption keys. The only other problem is that the tags should be in a commonly used frequency. 



stu&shaz said:


> Ed when we test our frogs for RV we take swabs which pick up the DNA of the virus,does this also pick up the frogs DNA is there some potential for this to be used. Can you also identify other methods that might be applicable to this senario please Ed,above hints at more, you have my curiosity peaked. Fascinating posts Ed thank you as always (HNY)


For DNA to be a viable tool, you would need reference DNA from the population to be tested. Otherwise your just confirming that those markers are present in the frogs and not whether or not they are from a specific group of frogs. 

There are also plastic elastomers that are used for marking anurans in the field using a combination of colors in locations. I'm not sure that this method would be as viable given the theoretical numbers of frogs. If people want to go this route, then pit tagging is probably going to be the best demonstration that frog is or isn't from Tesoros. 

Some comments 

Ed


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## Baltimore Bryan (Sep 6, 2006)

Ed Brings up a good point that I hadn't considered- what would necessarily be the motivation for theoretically illegal frogs in the shadows to be falsely labeled as Tesoros frogs when legal ones are imported, because that simply isn't necessary to do. I would think anyone with lehmanni now (legal or not) could claim they descended from the old legal shipments, so they wouldn't need to be hidden. 
With vanzolini, for example, it was a different situation because there had not been legal previous exports from Peru, so it was known that all vanzos in Europe descended from illegal shipments; lehmanni, however, were legally imported in the past and therefore couldn't any current lehmanni in the hobby be claimed as legal descendents (whether or not they actually are), with or without a legal Tesoros import? Am I missing something?
Bryan


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Baltimore Bryan said:


> Europe descended from illegal shipments; lehmanni, however, were legally imported in the past and therefore couldn't any current lehmanni in the hobby be claimed as legal descendents (whether or not they actually are), with or without a legal Tesoros import? Am I missing something?
> Bryan


Nope, you have it correct. Unlike some other species like you properly note with the vanzolini, there isn't anything to stop someone from claiming that their frogs are from the old imports. 

Some comments 

Ed


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## hypostatic (Apr 25, 2011)

Ed said:


> To what purpose? Without dna from populations that supposedly have never been exported into the pet trade, you can't prove that any frogs are illegal. All you could do is seperate pre-Tesoros animals from Tesoros exports. Currently all anyone has to do to launder the frogs is to claim that they came in legally in the old shipments or were descended from those animals. So there wouldn't really be any value in claiming the offspring are from Tesoros (and that assumes they have the same "morph" that would be exported from Tesoros). Virtually all of the old populations and smuggled frogs are lacking in locality data so there isn't any purpose in claiming descent from Tesoros as that would then result in potentially mixed locality frogs.
> 
> It is more likely that those populations from which the Tesoros frogs originated that would be at most risk as smuggled frogs from those populations could be deemed to be descended from legal frogs and in this scenario DNA isn't really going to help as the frogs are going to be from the same population.
> 
> ...


Ed, do you really not see any purpose/value to genetic testing?

As everybody keeps mentioning, there aren't a lot of these frogs around (even in the wild). Don't we want something in place so that we can assess how related our frogs are, and so that we can maximize the genetic diversity of the captive population?

I'll draw a parallel with the captive bred vanzolini population. Just like the incoming Tesoros frogs, they had a very small founder population. Because of this, there was heavy inbreeding in the population, as evidenced by the abnormally high appearance of albinism, which is a recessive trait. How inbred are our vanzos? How related are they? What does the genetic diversity in the captive population look like? No one knows. No one's bothered to look.

If the frogs from Tesoros get imported, don't you thing that the same thing would happen? A few breeders would get them at first, and the frogs would very inbred by the time most hobbyists were to get their hands on them. The breeders would most likely sell groups of siblings, which would then be bred and their offspring sold, and so on and so forth. Testing would be an invaluable tool for assessing their relatedness, and the overall genetic diversity of the frogs.

And in case I didn't mention it, this would also be a good thing for the other frogs in the hobby. If you're super serious about your breeding, you could quickly assess whether or not frogs that you want to breed together are related, or share many of the same genes. Further down the road, you might even be able to test your frogs, see that they have markers X, Y, and Z, and be able to say that they're resistant to chytrid because they have those markers.

This isn't some far-out crazy concept. Serious dog breeders routinely do genetic testing. Heck, you can even get a Parentage/Genetic Marker Report for your llama!


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## Dendro Dave (Aug 2, 2005)

hypostatic said:


> Is it? Is it _REALLY_? I don't think it's too hard. Swab a frog and mail it to a company is probably all you'd have to do. This is done ALL THE TIME with animals like dogs and horses. Why can't we start doing this with our frogs?
> 
> There's been SO MUCH talk about what we can do to make the hobby better recently; this seems like a "no brainer" that we should do to start catching up to other better established hobbies.


Don't get me wrong, I support the sentiment. I also hate to rain on the parade, but I just don't see how it will actually accomplish what you want it to, and if it won't then that needs to be pointed out even if we'd rather it weren't true.

Chuck's, Ed's and some of the other posts underscore the reality of the situation, and the facts seem to limit the usefulness for your goal to not make black/grey animals legit. Now as an extra layer of management/tracking to help insure diversity, and offer reassurance to people who have it or can get it for their animals, great... I'll take the free reassurance! ...but as far as the stated goal it reminds me more of when I delt Blackjack... As insurance (against legitimizing other frogs), it is a sucker's bet.

When I say "difficulty", I mostly mean the expense. I might be able to save or blow some credit on a group of frogs like this, and keep them in fruitflies, even have some basic meds on hand, but $20-$40+ adds up over 4+ frogs. Not everyone tests for cytrid/etc... because it adds up and there is some hassle in the effort beyond just the expense.

Now in fairness people willing and able to spend $200+ per frog, are likely going to be able to, and more motivated to spend extra if it accomplishes something. But I see this being just like the extra management we do or want tondo, great when we have it... but we can't always have it, without declaring legit frogs with origin info less valid then others.

Unless we as a community basically make this required for all of these frogs, I think 50% or more of them within a few generations will have to be considered "void/invalid". 

Do we know Tesoros will succeed, and endure for years? ...Do we want to shoot ourselves in the foot and take a large number of legit frogs out of play over the next few years because the owners didn't test/tag them for whatever reason? ...Even when the frogs come from a respectable breeder and have as good if/not better origin info then most in the hobby? 

I can see it as a selling point if an owner has that info, but unless required and enforced it doesn't accomplish the stated goal. At best it becomes just a deeper level of tracking to help manage the CB population, not something that does much if anything to stop smuggling or prevent legitimizing other frogs.

If I have a 20 yo Lehmanni what stops me from getting it tested, and then going "Yep it's Tesoros!"?

...Tesoros would have had to pay (or services donated) to have all their frogs tested and tagged, so we could tell if the old frog had the same markers. Do we even know if there are separate populations of red lehmanni and others that would show enough deviations from Tesoros frogs that they could be safely declared as different and thus void? Barring donation of services and crazy profits how likely is it Tesoros can afford this?

It might be enough that we do it with every frog that we initially get from them if someone can provide us all with some other proof for the direct imports that they are Tesoros. Then we can assume our frogs match the Tesoros breeding groups, but again any frogs/owners that fail to do this, or loose the papers or pay for testing will have to have their frogs declared invalid/void and be removed/barred from our management plan. Worse yet there is the potential for innocent people to be labeled owners of smuggled frogs or grey frogs if they don't hop on board... even if they are doing as much or more tracking then is currently expected. You are talking about taking the current system to a whole new level of harshness if it is to be effective.

...but wait, how do we stop someone from buying one tesoros frog and using the certificate or whatever with any other frog? Unless the proof is very specific and everyone is willing to share it, and we have the reference genetic markers, and continually retest for them in every frog that changes hands and all its offspring... our insurance rapidly looses its value for the stated goal.

It is a nice sentiment and I support the goal, but I don't see this actually accomplishing that goal... especially as time goes on and more frogs come in, breed, change hands a few times, and/or people come and go from the hobby.

As part of an overall management plan for diversity, it may have some use. I don't see how it prevents legitimizing other frogs much, especially in the long term. It delays the inevitable at best... which might be enough for some, maybe me if I get some of these (unlikely), but will that be enough to motivate others? Once a few don't do it, stop doing it, or don't bother to retest frogs down the line, do we declare the frogs invalid? Are we willing to be that harsh to people with legit frogs who are willing to do the standard level of tracking we accept from most people now? ...Does that accomplish the goal? ...All, doubtful at best (IMO)

We are talking about a system that will need to be harsher then anything we have now, because it will have to be harsh even towards legit frogs and legit owners (even if they track their frogs as well as anyone is now), just to have a shot at putting a dent in the goal.

*I'm playing devil's advocate here. If anyone can shoot those arguments full of holes and/or has practical solutions to offer, please do... I'd really love to be wrong, but don't think I am.* 



srrrio said:


> What honor system would you be speaking of?


The imperfect one that has existed since the start of the hobby. The one that will probably ask that these frogs aren't mixed with any other source, and that would be at the foundations of the implementation and enforcement of this, or probably any other management plan.

Again great sentiment, and if there is a practical way to not risk legitimizing some black or grey frogs and still have our fresh imports I hope we find it, as I'll likely be all for it... But the situation now is what it is. If we we are to have new animals in the hobby this risk is so far unavoidable.

Hell the smugglers risk it anyways, so better laws and enforcement of all laws is our best bet... that and keeping our black market black, and our standard accepted practices clear and enforcing them as best we can, and hope our captive breeding and the culture surrounding it make smuggled animals more of a pain/risk so they aren't worth it for most.

I just don't see this happening when we can't even get a majority to do more in depth tracking then what is currently accepted as standard... and that is free at least. Large scale genetic testing/tagging? ...I'd love to see it just out if curiosity, and maybe as a shot in the dark towards the stated goal...but I doubt I ever will. 

*But like any other management plan, if I have the frogs and something is actually happening with it... I'll get on board if it isn't utterly impractical *


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## Pubfiction (Feb 3, 2013)

No one knows unless we try, I agree with hypostatic in that it should be possible to trace the lineage of a frog by similar genetic tests that are done for parental id in other animals. The problem is there does not appear to be a clear anuran model for this as there are with some other pets. So it would probably require some work to set one up.

The other problem is will anyone care? You can't even get most people to test their animals by qPCR in the hobby, we cant even get most people to avoid inbreeding brothers and sisters. Will the hobby place value in legal large obligates? 

Also another point just because paper work doesn't not exist previously to prove something does not mean you cannot request it and try to work something up. Just get the person I bought frogs from to sign an affidavit saying they obtained and bred them legally and whom they obtained them from. Then that person gets the same from their source. Eventually you have a line of people whom all swear by that fact that leads back to a known importer. Here comes the catch, if one of them lies or makes things up and it ever comes to light, now you have a chain of proof on a bunch of frogs, worse for them if they lied they could be prosecuted for fraud or smuggling as the evidence train may now be public. I am no attorney but one of the main reasons people would force you to send certain documents through the mail is to try to set a higher bar for penalties if you lie, same reason you are forced to sign various documents, because mail fraud and signatures increases the severity of an issue. There are lots of situations where things become more legitimate and more soft criminals are pushed away when they are pressed to put something in writing and sign it and so on. I think if someone did talk to a lawyer they would probably have a decent frame work for how to achieve this.


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## chuckpowell (May 12, 2004)

Just a point of clarification Ed. I imported a few in the late 80's and I did it legally for the time. They were not transported well and we're nearly frozen before they got to me. They revived but I had to get rid of them. 

Best,

Chuck



Ed said:


> To what purpose? Without dna from populations that supposedly have never been exported into the pet trade, you can't prove that any frogs are illegal. All you could do is seperate pre-Tesoros animals from Tesoros exports. Currently all anyone has to do to launder the frogs is to claim that they came in legally in the old shipments or were descended from those animals. So there wouldn't really be any value in claiming the offspring are from Tesoros (and that assumes they have the same "morph" that would be exported from Tesoros). Virtually all of the old populations and smuggled frogs are lacking in locality data so there isn't any purpose in claiming descent from Tesoros as that would then result in potentially mixed locality frogs.
> 
> It is more likely that those populations from which the Tesoros frogs originated that would be at most risk as smuggled frogs from those populations could be deemed to be descended from legal frogs and in this scenario DNA isn't really going to help as the frogs are going to be from the same population.
> 
> ...


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

chuckpowell said:


> Just a point of clarification Ed. I imported a few in the late 80's and I did it legally for the time. They were not transported well and we're nearly frozen before they got to me. They revived but I had to get rid of them.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Chuck


Hi Chuck,

I thought I had been clear that these frogs have been imported legally in the past in the above thread. The point I was making is that people (at least in the US) don't have to claim that there frogs are from Tesoros if the frogs they have are illegal. All that is needed is to reference that they were descended from one of the old imports. 

Some comments 

Ed


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

hypostatic said:


> Ed, do you really not see any purpose/value to genetic testing?


I don't see any value that would not be achieved by database tracking the frogs without DNA testing. In fact DNA testing won't tell you how often frog x was involved as an ancestor which is something that a registered database can tell you. 



hypostatic said:


> As everybody keeps mentioning, there aren't a lot of these frogs around (even in the wild). Don't we want something in place so that we can assess how related our frogs are, and so that we can maximize the genetic diversity of the captive population?


So how do you address that genetic similarity isn't necessarily the same as inbred without knowing degrees of kinship? For example how many major histocompatability markers are there to track to ensure maximal immunological diversity in the frogs? Tracking simple kinship like determining parentage isn't sufficient. A registry would accomplish the same thing more efficiently if there was interest in participation. 



hypostatic said:


> I'll draw a parallel with the captive bred vanzolini population. Just like the incoming Tesoros frogs, they had a very small founder population. Because of this, there was heavy inbreeding in the population, as evidenced by the abnormally high appearance of albinism, which is a recessive trait. How inbred are our vanzos? How related are they? What does the genetic diversity in the captive population look like? No one knows. No one's bothered to look.


Your making an assumption... A small population does not automatically mean that it is inbred nor does it automatically mean that the inbreeding is detrimental to that population through the reduction of fitness. It is well established in anurans that local adaptation through inbreeding can improve local fitness which is why outbreeding depression is a risk between even relatively close populations of frogs. 
The frequency of albinism in the captive population may not be equal to that of the wild population as captivity mucks up the recruitment of offspring numbers. 
How do you know that the albinism gene isn't linked or close to one that promotes survival in the wild for heterozygous animals? Would you consider those afflicted with sickle cell of being inbred? 



hypostatic said:


> If the frogs from Tesoros get imported, don't you thing that the same thing would happen? A few breeders would get them at first, and the frogs would very inbred by the time most hobbyists were to get their hands on them. The breeders would most likely sell groups of siblings, which would then be bred and their offspring sold, and so on and so forth. Testing would be an invaluable tool for assessing their relatedness, and the overall genetic diversity of the frogs.


I fail to see how it would be more advantageous than tracking the population an degrees of kinship through a registry. In fact you would have to figure out which markers would most appropriately indicate diversity and as a test, it still has issues with determining how often one parent or another constitute an ancestral contribution. 



hypostatic said:


> And in case I didn't mention it, this would also be a good thing for the other frogs in the hobby. If you're super serious about your breeding, you could quickly assess whether or not frogs that you want to breed together are related, or share many of the same genes. Further down the road, you might even be able to test your frogs, see that they have markers X, Y, and Z, and be able to say that they're resistant to chytrid because they have those markers.
> 
> This isn't some far-out crazy concept. Serious dog breeders routinely do genetic testing. Heck, you can even get a Parentage/Genetic Marker Report for your llama!


And the parentage marker report for llamas is to determine if there are hybrids in the ancestral stock due to indiscriminate outcrossings with alpacas for increased production of fleece at a reduced cost (as the value isn't on the quality but due to the weight provided). We're not talking about the same thing here. With respect to the dogs, they are looking for specific negative mutations which aren't necessarily linked to degree of kinship (see my comments above on the albinism). 

I've yet to see you make a benefit argument that wouldn't be better managed by a registry. In fact when looking for genetic aberrations, one of the first things they do is take down a detailed geneology as to who in the family was similarly affected. 

Some comments 

Ed


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Pubfiction said:


> .
> 
> 
> Also another point just because paper work doesn't not exist previously to prove something does not mean you cannot request it and try to work something up. Just get the person I bought frogs from to sign an affidavit saying they obtained and bred them legally and whom they obtained them from. Then that person gets the same from their source. Eventually you have a line of people whom all swear by that fact that leads back to a known importer.


That is pretty much what the people working with TWI's program tried to do... and we can see how far that went. 

Some comments 

Ed


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