Hello everyone,

IBD is a scarry topic and disease/virus/protein or whatever it is right now according to the leading research. Please remember that most evidence thus far points to one word... ASYMPTOMATIC! This term refers to an affliction that does not show ANY symptoms other than those that MAY be verified through testing.

Man... is that scarry. Just think that you may have some IBD symptoms in your collection so you take the proactive approach and you euthanize the animals with the symptoms, meanwhile there is a perfectly healthy boa (or it seems that way) in your collection that is spreading this affliction through several different methods... defication, breeding contact and drinking from the same water bowl. In a perfect world this affliction may work itself out through captive evolution if there were no commercial breeding trade on these afflicted species. As breeders, we have to keep the animals together. They WILL deficate in the same enclosure, they WILL have blood contact through coitus and they WILL drink from the same bowl. I think the air-born thing has been mostly ruled out but I'm not 100% sure.

Here is another question... Does anyone have any verfiable data that a percentage of wild collected Boas that test positive for IBD from a brain biopsy exists? I ask because I have heard from many sources that there have been tests done on imported Boas that show that a signifigant percentage of them have been infected.

This will be a long conversation that will be looked at from every different angle. Opinions will be formed, arguments made, friendships damaged and business relationships broken. All of this MAY happen while we discuss an issue that, as PGOSS stated perfectly... "when the so-called experts want to throw it around, that bothers me!" We are dealing with a problem that NO ONE really knows much about.

Should we accept IBD as a form of natural selection in the species that it affects or should we blame ourselves for the problem and take the proactive measure to kill all the animals that we have?

I find myself in the same spot as I was in 1995 when I first read some studies on IBD. Heck... most people don't know this but there has been a few colubrids that have suffered from a Inclusion Body affliction. There is even a scientific paper on the subject.

I'm eargerly awaiting more posts to this thread as I think everyone will have a unique opinion on what is going on and what we should all do about it.

Thanks...
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Sean Bradley
Owner : EbN
www.ExoticsByNature.com
www.BallPythonMorphs.com
www.BoaConstrictorMorphs.com
www.CornSnakeMorphs.com

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