Posted by:
Paul Hollander
at Wed Jun 18 18:32:03 2003 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by Paul Hollander ]
Does this have any mental effects on the snakes? Im just
curious if anyones seen a mentally challenged snake from all
the breeding back to one another for morphs. I was about to
start an albino project with a hets and I don't exactly want a
snake with down syndrome(not trying to be funny). It would
kind of suck to have a snake that does circles all day long and
keeps falling off his climb branches. I know it has a larger
effect in well, larger, more complex animals(humans). Does it
show any with snakes? Thanks in advance for answers!
Down's Syndrome is caused by an extra chromosome from improper cell division during production of the sperm or egg. This sort of thing is as likely in randomly bred animals as in inbred animals.
Inbreeding isn't necessarily bad. Race horse pedigrees all trace back to four stallions around 400 years ago. But they do a lot of selection for performance in race horses. Lack of selection for good quality is what produces bad rsults from inbreeding.
IMHO, albino ball pythons have been both inbred to keep the mutant gene and outbred to increase the number of heterozygotes to increase production. To minimize the inbreeding effects, try to get heterozygotes from different breeders rather than mating brother to sister.
Good luck.
Paul Hollander
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RE: Effects of inbreeding on snakes.....(questions) - Paul Hollander, Wed Jun 18 18:32:03 2003