Dahlas
Well-Known Member
That is simply awful....what is wrong with people???
DoodleTails? This is Horrible!
- Thread starter lilspaz68
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lilspaz68
Well-Known Member
There must'vebeen something severely wrong with them if even the AFRMA didn't continue breeding these rats...there's been no mention of anything since then. *whew*
Moon
Well-Known Member
I had been trying to find the thread on Goose yesterday to no avail, so I am glad you posted the picture, Shelagh. God, even all the responses from before didn't prepare me for that! It is grotesque! What is wrong with people?!
lilspaz68
Well-Known Member
crumbilina
Well-Known Member
Who had the theory of BYB's having terrible grammar and spelling? That ad made me cringe, and I am not super good at grammar/spelling (lol read that sentence! haha)
Wow, what a terrible ad.
No URI or tumors? I find that VERY hard to believe.
*shudders*
Glad that nothing has been heard from them in a few years. I wonder what happened to those poor rats... actually nm, it might be best that I don't know...
Wow, what a terrible ad.
No URI or tumors? I find that VERY hard to believe.
*shudders*
Glad that nothing has been heard from them in a few years. I wonder what happened to those poor rats... actually nm, it might be best that I don't know...
WELL THEY ARE BACK. :sad3:
I just stumbled onto this thread now, followed the first link, and saw that they re-opened this past April.
I was so disgusted and horrified at all the pictures of "doodle tails" on their site. Like pictures from a medical book documenting extreme deformities. How can they think it's a GOOD thing? And she's proud of it! Those poor, poor rats. The discomfort, poor circulation, infection... A picture of the father shows some nasty infected-looking tail-tip.
What i thought of was, she says they start curling at a few days old. Well, what's to say they won't keep curling and trying to curl tighter and tighter, causing severe pain! Not the mention, as someone previously posted, if the spine starts, and keeps curling too!
This is from a tailless line, obviously a tailless line gone horrible bad, and in all good sense would be stopped, as one hopefully would if fused pelvics showed up in a tailless line. It's a mutation OF a mutation!
Also in the pics of her set-up, did i see glass tanks (aquariums)?!? No air circulation! Why would you even need those? Not to mention all those tubs! They're only in there for 3 days, she says. Only 3 days of torture, that's ok, right? SO much like 'snake food' breeders. I felt panicky at the sight of that set-up.
I just stumbled onto this thread now, followed the first link, and saw that they re-opened this past April.
I was so disgusted and horrified at all the pictures of "doodle tails" on their site. Like pictures from a medical book documenting extreme deformities. How can they think it's a GOOD thing? And she's proud of it! Those poor, poor rats. The discomfort, poor circulation, infection... A picture of the father shows some nasty infected-looking tail-tip.
What i thought of was, she says they start curling at a few days old. Well, what's to say they won't keep curling and trying to curl tighter and tighter, causing severe pain! Not the mention, as someone previously posted, if the spine starts, and keeps curling too!
This is from a tailless line, obviously a tailless line gone horrible bad, and in all good sense would be stopped, as one hopefully would if fused pelvics showed up in a tailless line. It's a mutation OF a mutation!
Also in the pics of her set-up, did i see glass tanks (aquariums)?!? No air circulation! Why would you even need those? Not to mention all those tubs! They're only in there for 3 days, she says. Only 3 days of torture, that's ok, right? SO much like 'snake food' breeders. I felt panicky at the sight of that set-up.
Godmother
Well-Known Member
Sickening and sad. I could not bring myself to go to the site.
Sharlees rattakisses
Well-Known Member
It's awful. :shock:
Like foot binding.
Both cause pain and misery.
Poor sweetie's.
Like foot binding.
Both cause pain and misery.
Poor sweetie's.
I don't understand how anyone could even think of doing this. If you own rats in the first place you can see how much they use their tails in everyday life... surely the curls would hinder this? Deary me :emb: :wallbang: :rant: some people.
This is awful. I can't believe people are interested in having such deformed rats! (There's obviously someone interested in the rats she is breeding, or she wouldn't keep at it). The poor rats, it looks so painful and unpleasant. How on earth did she breed them to have tails like that!? They must be so inbred! And to say they will have amazing health. Ugh I've never seen anything like this.
dogsnbears
Well-Known Member
:sick2:
What i can't seem to get over, is that she compares it to other alterations like rex, dumbo, hairless and tailless. I see rex, dumbos and hairless as variations, like different colours or paterns. But tailless and "doodle" tails are a mutation of the rat's structure, its skeletal system! It's nothing like fur variations! It's deforming or eliminating part of the skeleton! Why can't she see that!!
UhHuhHer
Well-Known Member
I don't know if I want to cry or puke more? I don't know why people think that they can do things like this to animals.
So I was actually caught a bit off guard by the email I got from her.. I emailed just saying how cruel I though it was etcetera, how I couldn't believe what she was doing. This is the email I got back...
"Doodles showed up in my tailless line almost 4 years ago. I waited a year before I even published them online for public eyes. I have done a tremendous amount of studying rats I have sought out help in several directions. Carmen Booth at Yale has been a tremendous help. She is one of the head geneticist at the university and a key component to Karen over at the AFRAMA.
I do appreciate you taking the time to email me, however before assuming that I am letting these rats go to anyone or breeding them without concern for any consequences or their over all health that is not the case. This trait is also found in mice http://mousemutant.jax.org/articles/mmrmutantctl.html as shown here. These traits do not effect rats the same way as mice, but it is similar.
Females showing curled tails have never been bred. I refuse to breed them and the few people who have requested these rats to attempt it have been turned down. I can not state that a female rat showing this trait will have complications delivering offspring but it is not a risk I am willing to take. This trait in the nearly 30 litters I have bred over the past 4 years have NEVER had any spinal issues or pain caused from the curls in their tails. In fact Snicker Doodle the original male that brought this trait to public awareness is alive and great his numerous offspring have all also developed into "normal" happy rats that love to snuggle play and climb like any other rats except they have kinks in their tails.
With this trait there is a tremendous amount of extra care (more like precautions) that we take for their overall safety. They are a little extra work compared to a standard rat, but nothing that concerns their health.
I do not mind emails I encourage people to ask questions and learn as much as they can about this trait or any trait they are interested in. I am not sure how long you have been interested in rats or what brought you to my web page, but I have grown up in a home of showing rats and breeding rats. If you think there was no controversy over the mutations or rats available on the market today you are incorrect. For every new trait that shows up there are always people who think it is terrible and horrible. Nothing over the last 4 years has given me any reason to worry that these rats are in pain or being affected negatively. All rats with a large number of tight kinks in their tails get X-rays, and in the beginning all the offspring had X-rays done to check spines. I am not a back yard rat mill breeder trying to show off the next crazy trend. I have thousands of dollars and uncountable hours of time invested into this project to ensure the safety and health of these rats.
Thank you for your email and if you have any direct questions please feel free to contact me again I would love to help answer any other concerns. If you are from a forum out to get a rise out of me please share accurate information and not false nonsense about how I do not care about these rats or my animals.
Brittany Weimert"
"Doodles showed up in my tailless line almost 4 years ago. I waited a year before I even published them online for public eyes. I have done a tremendous amount of studying rats I have sought out help in several directions. Carmen Booth at Yale has been a tremendous help. She is one of the head geneticist at the university and a key component to Karen over at the AFRAMA.
I do appreciate you taking the time to email me, however before assuming that I am letting these rats go to anyone or breeding them without concern for any consequences or their over all health that is not the case. This trait is also found in mice http://mousemutant.jax.org/articles/mmrmutantctl.html as shown here. These traits do not effect rats the same way as mice, but it is similar.
Females showing curled tails have never been bred. I refuse to breed them and the few people who have requested these rats to attempt it have been turned down. I can not state that a female rat showing this trait will have complications delivering offspring but it is not a risk I am willing to take. This trait in the nearly 30 litters I have bred over the past 4 years have NEVER had any spinal issues or pain caused from the curls in their tails. In fact Snicker Doodle the original male that brought this trait to public awareness is alive and great his numerous offspring have all also developed into "normal" happy rats that love to snuggle play and climb like any other rats except they have kinks in their tails.
With this trait there is a tremendous amount of extra care (more like precautions) that we take for their overall safety. They are a little extra work compared to a standard rat, but nothing that concerns their health.
I do not mind emails I encourage people to ask questions and learn as much as they can about this trait or any trait they are interested in. I am not sure how long you have been interested in rats or what brought you to my web page, but I have grown up in a home of showing rats and breeding rats. If you think there was no controversy over the mutations or rats available on the market today you are incorrect. For every new trait that shows up there are always people who think it is terrible and horrible. Nothing over the last 4 years has given me any reason to worry that these rats are in pain or being affected negatively. All rats with a large number of tight kinks in their tails get X-rays, and in the beginning all the offspring had X-rays done to check spines. I am not a back yard rat mill breeder trying to show off the next crazy trend. I have thousands of dollars and uncountable hours of time invested into this project to ensure the safety and health of these rats.
Thank you for your email and if you have any direct questions please feel free to contact me again I would love to help answer any other concerns. If you are from a forum out to get a rise out of me please share accurate information and not false nonsense about how I do not care about these rats or my animals.
Brittany Weimert"
Bamboo
Well-Known Member
Interesting! Does she have the xrays published anywhere...I looked through her site and couldn't find anything. Not necessarily doubting her but I fail to see how the spines would not be affected. Tails are an extension of the spine, they're not separate -so how would one potion of the same thing be so, so distorted while the other portion remains unaffected. It doesn't make sense to me.
Also, let's say for the sake of discussion, that this is true. Genetically, the spines are normal and the tails are kinked. How would that fare over time? Since they are so reliant on their tails for balance, the body must find some other way to attempt to maintain balance, if it no longer has the tail. So how would this affect the body as a whole. Would straining, jerking and other movements attempting to keep balance cause other injuries or, at least, make the animals prone to injury? Would something like this perhaps cause spinal problems (I mean like, the unnatural positions and movements of the rats compensating for the lack of tail being similar to how many people these days are starting to have back problems from the sheer amount of time we spend hunched over phones and computers.) How would you look for something like that in rats. They're so good at hiding pain and discomfort, how would we ever really now how it feels for rats to be doodle tailed. They would likely never show any signs of a constant, omnipresent discomfort such as back pain.
While I do agree with her that there is always resistance to 'new things', just because we grow accustomed to them over time, doesn't necessarily mean that they become acceptable -it just means that the metaphorical ship has sailed and there isn't much point in discussing whether or not it ever should have been.
And this isn't even the case: I mean, look at hairless rats. They've been around for ages but it's still fairly common knowledge that they shouldn't really be purposefully bred.
I see this discussion all the time on reptile forums because there are 2 types of breeders. There are people who breed for health and there are people who breed for morphs (different shapes, sizes colours etc.) There is a constant battle amongst morph breeders who are always taking advantage of the slightest mutation and trying to turn it into the next, big morph. However, doing this always involves inbreeding, which in never a good thing.
Inbreeding may produce 'cool' mutations but these mutations never ever benefit the health of the animals. There hasn't been enough time for these negative effects to show up within reptiles yet (morph breeding has always been around but it only really exploded in popularity about 15-20 years ago. There haven't been enough generations of snakes to really see what's going wrong inside, but something definitely is.
Proof: Look at dogs. Every single breed has been inbred to show certain traits. Purebred = inbred. Bulldogs are the best example. Horrible respiratory system, faces prone to infection and fungus because of all the folds of skin, skeletal deformities such as bowleggedness and the characteristic underbite, ridiculously oversize skulls, so much so that they essentially cannot be born naturally any more, the list goes on! Yes, Bulldogs are freaking adorable but that's not the point!
I guess the point I was trying to make, before I went off on a tangent about breeding was, while I am not against change and progress, I fail to see how purposefully breeding for mutations is anything other then selfish curiosity. As I said, it has been proven over and over and over again that mutations do not ever benefit the animals, they just make them different. I know it all comes down to opinion but if I was a breeder and any of my offspring showed mutations, I would question my ability as a breeder.
That being said, I would be interested in seeing any of this research she's done. It sounds intriguing, at least.
Also, let's say for the sake of discussion, that this is true. Genetically, the spines are normal and the tails are kinked. How would that fare over time? Since they are so reliant on their tails for balance, the body must find some other way to attempt to maintain balance, if it no longer has the tail. So how would this affect the body as a whole. Would straining, jerking and other movements attempting to keep balance cause other injuries or, at least, make the animals prone to injury? Would something like this perhaps cause spinal problems (I mean like, the unnatural positions and movements of the rats compensating for the lack of tail being similar to how many people these days are starting to have back problems from the sheer amount of time we spend hunched over phones and computers.) How would you look for something like that in rats. They're so good at hiding pain and discomfort, how would we ever really now how it feels for rats to be doodle tailed. They would likely never show any signs of a constant, omnipresent discomfort such as back pain.
While I do agree with her that there is always resistance to 'new things', just because we grow accustomed to them over time, doesn't necessarily mean that they become acceptable -it just means that the metaphorical ship has sailed and there isn't much point in discussing whether or not it ever should have been.
And this isn't even the case: I mean, look at hairless rats. They've been around for ages but it's still fairly common knowledge that they shouldn't really be purposefully bred.
I see this discussion all the time on reptile forums because there are 2 types of breeders. There are people who breed for health and there are people who breed for morphs (different shapes, sizes colours etc.) There is a constant battle amongst morph breeders who are always taking advantage of the slightest mutation and trying to turn it into the next, big morph. However, doing this always involves inbreeding, which in never a good thing.
Inbreeding may produce 'cool' mutations but these mutations never ever benefit the health of the animals. There hasn't been enough time for these negative effects to show up within reptiles yet (morph breeding has always been around but it only really exploded in popularity about 15-20 years ago. There haven't been enough generations of snakes to really see what's going wrong inside, but something definitely is.
Proof: Look at dogs. Every single breed has been inbred to show certain traits. Purebred = inbred. Bulldogs are the best example. Horrible respiratory system, faces prone to infection and fungus because of all the folds of skin, skeletal deformities such as bowleggedness and the characteristic underbite, ridiculously oversize skulls, so much so that they essentially cannot be born naturally any more, the list goes on! Yes, Bulldogs are freaking adorable but that's not the point!
I guess the point I was trying to make, before I went off on a tangent about breeding was, while I am not against change and progress, I fail to see how purposefully breeding for mutations is anything other then selfish curiosity. As I said, it has been proven over and over and over again that mutations do not ever benefit the animals, they just make them different. I know it all comes down to opinion but if I was a breeder and any of my offspring showed mutations, I would question my ability as a breeder.
That being said, I would be interested in seeing any of this research she's done. It sounds intriguing, at least.
I completely agree with you. Honestly, I didnt bother responding because I didnt know where to start or what to say. It surprises me that her email was so professional and she gave so much information, yet none of it was provided on her website - which I found very minimalistic. I dont like that she has a history of breeding and showing rats, makes me feel hopeless in getting through to her.
clmntine, i received the exact same email from her. Maybe so many of us wrote her she just decided to copy and paste to save time. Thanks for posting it. She would sound convincing to someone who doesn't truly think or care about rats, to someone who is trying to tell themselves they are being ethical by questioning it but really just wants something 'freaky' to impress their friends. All one has to do is THINK. A mutation does not improve the species. That's why natural breeding automatically tries to get rid of a mutation (such as that animal being infertile, or other members of that species killing the one with the mutation. Even mother rats will sometimes kill their newborn if there is something wrong with it). And only by going around mother nature, such as inbreeding mutated animals, is a human sometimes able to bring out that mutation again. It's barbaric. Only humans...
Other rat traits like fur and ear variations are like different traits in other animals and humans (curly hair, blue eyes, olive skin...) It's simply a gene, recessive or dominant. It doesn't 'change' the animal. This woman is trying to change her rats' skeletons! It's like, as was mentioned earlier, purposefully trying to have children with a club foot, because, :roll: it doesn't affect his spine, and it's different and it's cool'. :shock: Actually, you don't even have to be a rat lover to figure that out. You just need to be candid with yourself. She's deluding herself. She's ignoring good sence.
Other rat traits like fur and ear variations are like different traits in other animals and humans (curly hair, blue eyes, olive skin...) It's simply a gene, recessive or dominant. It doesn't 'change' the animal. This woman is trying to change her rats' skeletons! It's like, as was mentioned earlier, purposefully trying to have children with a club foot, because, :roll: it doesn't affect his spine, and it's different and it's cool'. :shock: Actually, you don't even have to be a rat lover to figure that out. You just need to be candid with yourself. She's deluding herself. She's ignoring good sence.
Ha that's too funny she sent you the same email!! I didn't even respond because I didn't know where to start.
A physical mutation doesn't improve any species. Dogs are. Great example of how many breeds got very messed up because of people breeding for the wrong traits, and not to strengthen their overall health.
A physical mutation doesn't improve any species. Dogs are. Great example of how many breeds got very messed up because of people breeding for the wrong traits, and not to strengthen their overall health.
