Posted by:
FrankR
at Mon Jun 12 11:51:08 2006 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by FrankR ]
I will assume it's genetic like in leucistic texas rat snakes, I have never even seen a bug-eyed albino boa (please post if you have a pic.) With any line breeding certain undesirable anomalies can become fixed in a population. Morphs in general are a desirable anomaly which are line bred to produce the desired results, certain aberrancies are also genetic, such as kinks, bug-eyes, aberrant patterns (speckling), smaller than normal adult size, reduced fecundity, reduced breeding vigor, and other undesirable traits, these are usually caused by excessive inbreeding, brother to sister, father to daughter, etc.. will not in my opinion usually cause deleterious anomalies in the first few generations, I have personal seen pattern anomalies present in reticulated pythons from breeding son to mother, more speckles in the patterning, but these did not have reduced size, fec, breeding vigor, just a slight change in pattern, which shoed up in 1/3 of snakes produced, they where the nicest ones in the clutch to be honest. In this example the son was sired by two unrelated snakes imported in the 1980's from Malaysia (so the importer said, who was World Wide Reptiles). He was then bred back to the mother and produced noticeable speckling that was not present in either parent nor the son himself, I have not inbred this line any further and will not do so in the future, I now out bred said babies to tigers and ambon yellow heads, and will in future bred back into tiger and albino lines. So I do believe such aberrancies are genetic and can become fixed in a population unless some unrelated blood is bred back into the bloodline. Just my opinion. see photo for speckling I am referring to.
Note: Not all pattern (stripping) and kinking anomlies are genetic, some are caused by improper gestation and or incubation temperatues, I do believe some are also genetic in cause, I think most stripping is caused by suboptimal temps unless genetics prove otherwise.
 ----- Frank Roberts
R&R Herpetological
Roberts'Realm of Reptile Research
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