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have a pet yellow collar male and a pet noble female that have bonded pretty tight.My question is this,can these two mini macaws cross breed and have fertile eggs to hatch??

Please read this recent discussion of the same issue: viewtopic.php?t=70922&start=0

If you value macaws -- and your screen name certainly implies you do -- the responsible thing is to pull eggs this pair might produce so no chick will form.

Paca

actually i respect them just as much as i do people.So if they were to decide to go to nest,and have fertile eggs then that is what they would choose and they would be allowed to hatch them.
I am not one to put macaw pairs together to get hybrids on purpose as i have B&G,Millitary,Hahns,noble and Yellow collar pairs that are all great pairs,but if mother nature doesnt want a cross to happen then it wont. Look at all of us,we are ALL human MUTS of all different degrees.
So please keep any and all OPINIONS to yourself if you cant answer the question,dont look dumb on here with jibber jabber!!!!

This is a place where you asked a question. People are going to give there opinions, and just because you don't like them doesn't mean they are jibber'ing.


Just so NO to cross breeding its wrong on alot of levels

"QUESTION" , Not "OPINION". Aparently you know the difference but yet you too give an opinion and not an answer. This i believe is "JIBBERING". if you have an answer to the question then great let me hear it,but on the other hand if you have a "hollier than thou" opinion to make yourself sound good,lets not hear it!!!!
Thought this site was different and didnt have the opinionated argumenative people as the other sites,guess i was wrong because the last two replies showed "THEY" are everywhere!!!!

macawman75 wrote:... "THEY" are everywhere!!!!

You're making me so happy Hope you have a nice day too

macawman75 wrote:if mother nature doesnt want a cross to happen then it wont.

Nature is not a thing with a will. In nature, hybrids may happen; but then, in "nature red in tooth and claw" there is suffering, death, malformed or stillborn young, sickness, and sterility. I am not nearly so set against hybridising as I am against supporting any position (whether I agree with it or not) with weak arguments and flawed analogies, but you may want to look around the board for the recent discussion on the behavioural problems associated with nesting lovebird hybrids.

Look at all of us,we are ALL human MUTS of all different degrees.

We are all members of the same species, Homo sapiens, and a fairly genetically uniform one at that, with a genetic bottleneck in our recent evolutionary history (there is as much human genetic diversity in a small corner of Africa as there is in the world). The parrots are members of different species -- which, by definition, means that in a natural state they wouldn't interbreed. To adapt your analogy to more closely align with the facts, consider if you were to mate with a chimpanzee.

macawman75 wrote:,but if mother nature doesnt want a cross to happen then it wont.

I don't think Mother Nature threw them together, though, is what the others, I believe, are saying.

macawman75 wrote: I am not one to put macaw pairs together to get hybrids on purpose !!!!

A couple points of interest here, the first being scientific.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haldane%27s_rule

This is called Haldane's Rule. This was discovered many years ago and is scientific evidence "not to pair" two different species. So to answer your question do not pair them. Responsible husbandry tells us not to do this. We have all this evidence that says the results will not be something you will like or be kind to their off spring. Then to go further and say these are two TINY Macaws, and historically only the larger ones have managed to put together any type of DNA chain to wit a baby that might survive. Even with these they stand large risks of feather problems, reproductive problems, mannerism problems... the list is endless.

You owe it to your birds to keep them apart.

Secondly, (now that scientific is answered) we must delve into the morality issue. You are the guardian of these beautiful and rare works of God's earth. They have survived for over 80 million years because they have a brain, yours is larger so therefore your in charge. Use it! Keep their Noble Blood line secure and find appropriate mates for them if you so choose or keep them apart.

I am not here to judge you, just remind you of your stewardship. Act appropriately so we don't all get a bad name. I have in the past purchased pairs like these and "intentionally separated them" and used my appropriate husbandry techniques to further the species not interject emotions into all this.

As a breeder we know they do NOT FALL IN LOVE, this is a human emotion and not yet relegated to our birds. This is purely hormonal in their action. You must rise above the emotional decision and do what is best for your companions.

Sincerely,
Dutch

Dutch, To you i owe a Thank You.You answered my question and backed up reasons to find mates for these two little characters of the same species.You backed up what you were saying with evidence and with Grace you gave your opinion after answering the question.
My only issue now is finding a noble male and a yellow collar female of breeding age to put with them.
Again Thank you.

PurpleHeart wrote:A couple points of interest here, the first being scientific.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haldane%27s_rule

This is called Haldane's Rule. This was discovered many years ago and is scientific evidence "not to pair" two different species.

What do you mean by this last sentence? If I interpret your grammar correctly, in reading it as "This is scientific evidence that you shouldn't do so", then I must point out that science does no such thing. Science, in and of itself, is with a method of acquiring knowledge. Prescriptive and descriptive laws are inherently different, and science deals with the discovery of the latter. There is no "should" in science, except insofar as it can help us predict the consequences of our actions. It does not go on to tell us whether the consequences are desirable, and so whether we should perform the actions.

Haldane's Rule, as cited in the article, is "When in the offspring of two different animal races one sex is absent, rare, or sterile, that sex is the heterozygous (heterogametic) sex". What this law does tell us is that if different animals breed, and if they produce offspring at all, it is more likely to be inviable (in some fashion) if they are of the heterozygous sex. It doesn't say anything about how viable hybrids tend to be -- it only talks about what usually goes wrong when something goes wrong.


Hybrids in general are, of course, less viable than monospecific offspring. The reason for this is that the gene pool of a species tends to conform to a set of mutually of compatible genes -- any genes that are likely to result in offspring that aren't viable, will be weeded out from that gene pool. Two distinct gene pools, as seen in hybrids, do not operate under these evolutionary constraints -- they will thus be fairly similar (or they couldn't hybridise), but not quite that similar (they lack that selective pressure towards conformity). As with mutations, then, hybridisation will lead to deviations from normal genetic traits.

As is often pointed out in the case of mutations, the vast majority of deviations from normal genetic traits are deleterious, if only for the reason that (as Richard Dawkins likes to say) there are many more ways of being dead than being alive; mutations are undirected, but precisely because they are random, most of them are bad. Some will be good. So it is with hybrids. Hybrids may very well be spectacularly successful, but just as with mutants, this is after natural selection weeds out -- kills -- the unsuccessful majority.

From this we may draw the conclusion that a hybrid pairing is more likely to produce non-viable offspring than an intraspecific pairing (excepting perhaps -- I speculate -- in cases where the species gene pool is so small as to make the dangers of inbreeding even greater). This is a quantitative statement, of course, and I lack the data to say by how much.

Whether you then think it is a good idea depends on what you are trying to do and what odds or chances you are willing to take. For the ethical aspect, it may be well to consider that these are sensitive and intelligent animals, quite capable of suffering.

Responsible husbandry tells us not to do this. We have all this evidence that says the results will not be something you will like or be kind to their off spring. Then to go further and say these are two TINY Macaws, and historically only the larger ones have managed to put together any type of DNA chain to wit a baby that might survive.

I'm not sure what this last sentence means ("only the larger ones have managed to put together any type of DNA chain to wit a baby that might survive"), but I'm intrigued. Can you clarify? What's this about macaw DNA? Do you know of any studies? (I don't mean to sound challenging -- if you do, I'd like to read them!)

As a breeder we know they do NOT FALL IN LOVE, this is a human emotion and not yet relegated to our birds. This is purely hormonal in their action.

Of course it's hormonal, but that's something they have in common with humans, not a differentiating factor. What do you think love is?

Petter wrote:

PurpleHeart wrote: As a breeder we know they do NOT FALL IN LOVE, this is a human emotion and not yet relegated to our birds. This is purely hormonal in their action.

Of course it's hormonal, but that's something they have in common with humans, not a differentiating factor. What do you think love is?

Macawman's first posts on Up at Six and macaw chat were about his hybrid macaws' fertile eggs, so it's highly unlikely that appeals to his ethical responsibility will be understood, much less seriously considered. But your responses are interesting and educational for others of us. Petter, what about the love I might feel for my grandfather and grandson and my birds . . . also hormonal?

Two Issues- Sterility and Viability (mutually exclusive) as stated in the Original Haldane's Law.

1)Drosophila melanogaster subgroup, Haldane's rule for fertility apparently arises from a genetic interaction between X and Y chromosomes and not from an imbalance between sex chromosomes and autosomes.

2)Inviability- that homogametic hybrids who carry both X chromosomes from the same species are inviable. These results show that the genetic causes of Haldane's rule differ for hybrid sterility versus inviability.

3)A related group having a "normal" hemizygous X obeys Haldane's rule for both sterility and inviability.

[source] The causes of Haldane's rule. Turelli M. Center for Population Biology, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA. mturelli@ucdavis.edu PMID: 9841436 [end quote]

Sorry my citation was neither MLA or APA, I seemed to have misplaced my Little Brown Compact )

UC-Berkeley catalogue of DNA sequencing has yet to issue a file to a hybrid combination of Noble and Yellow Collar Macaws. If you find one be sure to contact me I will forward the specimen. Our genome library is second to any in the world. And there are many samples of larger Macaw Hybrid combinations even multigenerational characterizations (which are no longer classed any species) in 3+ but what accounts for the absence of these lesser species?

You can make the call on this, that's why I said there is data on larger but not smaller.

Do you really want me to debate an emotional "love" occuring in animals? You should really direct that to the APA... lol

ParrontPlus wrote:Petter, what about the love I might feel for my grandfather and grandson and my birds . . . also hormonal?

When we get to the bottom of it, our thoughts and emotions -- what we term "the mind" -- is the operation of our brains; emotional states are significantly represented by the presence of hormones in our brain chemistry, although of course (like anyone when pressed, I am no reductionist) there is a little more to it -- we should not expect, in a brain comprising billions of neurones, evolved over billions of years, with a plethora of semi-separate modules occasionally hijacked for purposes other than their original ones, anything to be simple or straightforward. (So speaking very strictly it's not the presence of a hormone alone; but then, there's more to it in the brain of a parrot, too.)

I find it a bit odd that people do not hesitate to ascribe certain emotional states to all sorts of animals, such as fear, lust, happiness, and so forth, whereas others, such as love, are supposed to be the exclusive domain of human beings. Why? Obviously, human brains are rather different from bird brains, and among the most sophisticated we've found so far on Earth, and it may be true that we alone have a true Theory of Mind, but by and large I'm inclined to think that if we are to regard 'the mind' as a coherent whole (or rather when, for the sake of convenience, we so simplify it), the difference between a human and another ape, or an ape and another mammal, or a mammal and a bird or other dinosaur, is quantitative rather than qualitative.

Moreover, love isn't exactly a 'sophisticated' emotion, or one that is difficult to explain; it is surely the emotional structure in place to maintain such social ties as produce what biologists call altruism (whether this be kin altruism, reciprocal altruism, etc.). I am no cognitive scientist -- nor indeed a biologist! -- but I would be surprised if any social species didn't experience love. It is easily argued that it isn't love "as humans experience it", but that is not far removed from the tedious old argument about whether your red is my red: If the stimuli are the same, and the outcome is the same, then what does it matter?

Indeed, there is very little about hybrid mini macaws...

Yes, the yellow collared and noble/hahns macaws can hybridize (which is apparent by their scientific name, if they have the same first scientific name then they can). I haven't come across any yellow collared macaw hybrids, but I have come across two hahns macaw hybrids... however, these macaws hybridized with an aratinga conure and a nandayus conure.

I'm sorry if I'm repeating stuff... but hybridization is mostly a moral and ethical subject... The mule (horse/donkey) cross is a good example of what can go wrong with hybrids... 99% of mules are sterile. The 3rd plus generations of hybrid macaws (the large ones) are another good example... for some reason we are seeing a lot of the 3rd generation and on hybrids being sterile... therefore we don't normally see many 4th generation hybrid macaws... and its quite unlikely (but not impossible) to get a 5th generation hybrid.

Another example is the sun conure and green cheek conure hybrids... they have a high mortality rate due to the fact that their parents are not closely enough related. Supposedly they may also suffer from some sort of brain defect/damage? I know of one hybrid who was born missing most of his toes or they were short. However, he's several months old now and still going strong! He's the result of a pairing that have been mating for 9 years??? And he's the first successful offspring to be produced.