Posted by:
zefdin
at Sat Apr 14 16:53:55 2007 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by zefdin ]
The reality is that each year the wild Ball Python popuations in Ghana, Togo and Benin are harvested for tens, even hundreds of thousands of wild caught babies, eggs, gravid females, large adults and wild morphs that are imported from Africa to the USA and elsewhere in the world to support the pet trade.
I understand that the people who do this importing / exporting make the claim that, even after the yearly Ball Python harvest, there are still huge numbers of snakes left, per square acre, in the wild.
I tend to believe that, for the most part, the people who are doing the importing here to the USA believe this claim and are negotiating and buying in good faith. I am a bit more sceptical if the facts of the matter support this contention. I do not believe you can remove this many animals from the natural ecosystem and have no ill effects or unintended consequences. Furthermore, I am very sceptical that the poor African countries involved wouldnt exaggerate the wild population totals for their own benifit. It wouldnt be the first time a poor country has sqaundered its natural resources and heritage for money and the enrichment of a few.
Even if the large harvesting that goes on every year does not significantly deplete the wild population, how could it not change the direction in which these snakes are evolving? Evolution is like throwing a small pebble into a pond. It only makes a small splash, but it ripples outwards in every larger rings from there.. Some of these "Morphs" that are taken may be genetic anamolies, but how can we be certain that the species isnt evolving through natural selection and that, by taking the aberrant trait from the mix, we are not unalterably changing the evoluntion of Ball Pythons?
It may seem silly, but what if 20 million years ago some "collector" had said "cool a reptile with no legs, it must be a new Morph" and he removed it from the wild a brought it home for his collection. Maybe the first snake wouldnt have evolved at all and there wouldnt even be Ball Pythons today...think abot it.
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 The morph that never was.... - zefdin, Sat Apr 14 16:53:55 2007
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