Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I haven't got a ball python, but I certainly enjoy reading the threads here and looking at the photos everyone shares. What with all the copulation photos, I started wondering about... inbreeding. I've seen some photos where the two snakes breeding are immediate relatives to one another.

I wouldn't be surprised if this is a controversial issue, and I really don't mean to start a heated debate, but my curiosity has the best of me.

Generally incest/inbreeding causes genetic problems in future offspring, and I'm assuming it's the same with snakes. I'm just wondering if breeders have experienced any negative effects or if they limit the inbreeding allowed to prevent any consqeuences? Basically, what's the standard views/opinions/experience when it comes to inbreeding snakes? Does it even happen that often?

Again, not looking to start a flame war or angry battle of opinions. I'm just genuinely curious as to what standards people use, how common inbreeding is, and if it has any noticeable effects.
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0.0.1 Okeetee corn snake "Apollo"
DeviantART Gallery

Well, me being a hillbilly I happen to know a lil' 'bout inbreeding. Ya see, my aunt, who's also my cousin, married another cousin of mine that happens to also be her uncle. There ain't but 5 different last names in the whole county. LOL!!!

Seriously, though, inbreeding in animals is considered acceptable by most as long as its not generations upon generations. Third generation inbreeding is pushing it. This is usually when repeating genetic disorders begin to show.

Don't be embarassed or feel silly for asking, I did the same thing several years ago. My female German Shepherd got pregnant by her son when I let him out of his pen for exercise. In less than a minute it was too late.

When she had the puppies I knew for sure her son was the father and I was heartsick, thinking I was going to have to put 'em all down. I called a friend that's a Vet and told her what happened and she said, "So, what's the problem?"

I've bred them 4 times and she's due any day now with the 4th litter. Beautiful, healthy, full-blooded German Shepherds that I have a waiting list for. They're all cross-eyed and meow instead of bark, but heck, that ain't no problem. (Just kidding!)

I've got a half-brother/half-sister pair of Burmese Pythons that mated last month so I'll let ya know how that turns out in a few months.

My feeder rats are all inbreeds, too.

Personally, I'm none to wild about inbreeding, even though I've allowed some of my animals to do so. But I think a lot of that has to do with my morals.

Take care!
Mike
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It is said that 1 out of every 4 people are mentally unbalanced. Think of your 3 closest friends, if they're normal, then it's you.

Inbreeding is used by breeders of domestic animals to fix desirable genetic traits within a population. This is often called line breeding. For instance an animal with a desirable color is bred back to siblings or parents, on the understanding they may carry the genes for the color without expressing them.
Breeders try to out-breed to increase the level of genetic diversity.
Purebred animals are often inbred; some critics argue the practice is unhealthy. Many dog breeds have genetic diseases associated with their breed from this practice.
Inbreeding is also deliberately induced in laboratory mice in order to guarantee a consistent and uniform animal model for experimental purposes.
Fortunately reptiles have been around for a lot longer then mammals, and you don't have to worry a lot about genetic disorders from line breeding, as you would with say, humans, who have only been around for about 10,000 years...
However, if you have a snake that produces genetic flaws such as spinal kinks, one eyed offspring, scale-less babies, and bobble-heads... one might want to strongly consider out breeding more often then inbreeding...

The first two posters were right on. Usually in dogs it is ok to breed back 3 generations for desirable triats. Inbreeding causing a gentic problem is largely a myth, it brings out the recesive traits which are often undesirable, but the gene was there to start.

With all the new morphs in the BP world, I plan to line breed every one of my regular females to be sure there are no "hidden" or recesive traits. It'll take time but I'm in no rush.
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Jesse Jeffcoat
Gopher Hill Herps
http://mysite.verizon.net/resuyda8/

just to clarify, bobble-heads is not always caused by inbreeding. within the spider trait the bobble head trait is still there even through tons of outbreeding, it is there and always will be more than likely.
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Josh & Krysty Hutto
J&K Reptiles

Various Ball Pythons:::

1.0 striped vanilla
1.0 spider
1.2 Citrus Ghost and hets
1.2 Albino and hets
2.3 het Pied
0.6 50% poss het pied
1.1 Pastel (male has additional gene going on with him)
a bunch of normal female breeders
a bunch of normal female holdbacks and several rescued normal males

0.1 columbian boa, she's a feeding monster, controls my
over production of rats, lol
0.1 brazilian rainbow boa, another rat eating monster
1.1 corns

a BAD dog is MADE not bred, support the American Pit Bull Terrier as the greatest breed of dogs on Earth!!!!!

Bobble-heads... that sounds terrible. I can use my imagination, but what exactly does that entail?
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0.0.1 Okeetee corn snake "Apollo"
DeviantART Gallery

My point of, one might want to strongly consider out breeding more often then inbreeding:
is breeders choose what they want to breed...
Kinked caramels... bobble heads..
There are so many.
But what can you do??
Outbreeding... will it cut back on them?
Maybe...
But in the end, it IS genetic.
I have an awesome spider and it doesn't exhibit ANY bobble head characteristics.
Will it's babies?
You have to imagione, they all came from one imported snake.
If that snake looked cool, but was Het. for "retarded," one has a choice of whether to continue breeding if all the babies come out, and I'll quote the famous philosopher Carlos Mencia: "DE DE DE!"

You have to respect the opinion of a guy that quote's Carlos Mencia! Ha, no, but seriously, what you said is the absolute truth in my eyes.

I certainly hope I'm not Het for retarded...

Anyways, that picture just makes my day. Do the cat and the snake get along?

-John

That's as close as they get.

Heheh... gorgeous cat, though. I'm curious to see how mine reacts when I go home for Christmas break and she meets the new snake.
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0.0.1 Okeetee corn snake "Apollo"
DeviantART Gallery

to say that kinked caramels is directly linked to inbreeding is crazy and spiders have been sooooo outcrossed if the bobble-head trait was inherited seperately it would be gone by now. Why do I say this? First with caramels, there has been several brought in from africa over the last few years. When bred all lines have been shown to have the possiblility to produce kinks. outcrossing with other lines has shown to decrease the amount of kinks that show up but not eliminate them. If inbreeding is what causes the kinks to appear how did every caramel that came from AFRICA carry the same trait if it is not directly linked to the caramel trait. The same principal goes for spiders. When we were looking to buy our spider we loooked HARD for a spider that didn't show the wobbling trait but with very little success (one animal didn't but it was ugly). Some of the spiders were described as not being wobblers but after seeing them in person all of them did (some so minor it took several minutes of constant staring to notice a small shake). Spiders grow out of the wobble if they have a minor one as hatchlings and the ones that are bad wobblers still eat, breed and thrive in captivity so what is the problem with them?
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Josh & Krysty Hutto
J&K Reptiles

Various Ball Pythons:::

1.0 striped vanilla
1.0 spider
1.2 Citrus Ghost and hets
1.2 Albino and hets
2.3 het Pied
0.6 50% poss het pied
1.1 Pastel (male has additional gene going on with him)
a bunch of normal female breeders
a bunch of normal female holdbacks and several rescued normal males

0.1 columbian boa, she's a feeding monster, controls my
over production of rats, lol
0.1 brazilian rainbow boa, another rat eating monster
1.1 corns

a BAD dog is MADE not bred, support the American Pit Bull Terrier as the greatest breed of dogs on Earth!!!!!

Who said kinked caramels and bobble head spiders were a result of inbreeding???
Again, I'll quote the famous philosopher Carlos Mencia:
"DEE DU DEEEE!"

Well, we know they are gentic conditions. You see boble-head in almost all spiders. As I understand it, the more inbreeding you do with the Lav albino more of the babies come out kinked.

Conclusion: Inbreeding causes worsening of boble head and increased kinks in the respective morphs.

Unless a genetesis isolatates the specfic gene or genes that causes it we'll never no how the trait is passed ie. co-dom, sex linked, heterzygous, etc. But we do know they're genetic traits and inbreeding makes them occur more frequently and in higher incidents.
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Jesse Jeffcoat
Gopher Hill Herps
http://mysite.verizon.net/resuyda8/

You said this, "Conclusion: Inbreeding causes worsening of boble head and increased kinks in the respective morphs"

While I understand what you are trying to say, but you are incorrect at the roots of your argument.

Line breeding/inbreeding could just as easily improve these traits, if you have the right stock to work with. But you are also correct that inbreeding tends to make it worse, but this does not mean that the inbreeding is at fault only the originating stock. There is a saying amongst the ganja growers out here in Cali, "Your bud is only as good the seeds you grow it from". Same goes for this argument.

Line breeding is a means of boiling off the undesirable traits within a population, lowering diversity and creating a stable strain which will breed true. In order to achieve full homozygosity I believe it takes 21 generations or so(don't quote me on this, didn't look it up, just going off memory) and this is what inbreeding does and is the reason it is so helpful in regards to breeding projects.

Outcrossing on the other hand has the goal of heterosis in mind, otherwise known as hybrid vigour(hybrid vigour doesn't necessarily mean an interspecies hybrid, usually in biology it just means crossing two lines that have been inbred seperately together). The goal with heterosis, is the widest amount of diversity and unlike pairings possible.

Hope this helps,
Dan

You must be a member of the catholic church or a member of mancia's de de dee club...

One or the other, you pick...
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when life hands you lemons, make super lemons, bumblebees, etc...

Yeah, humans have actually been around for a great deal MORE than 10,000 years. Some of the earliest art we have from prehistoric civilizations dates back to 22,000 BCE. There are also fossil records that show anatomically "modern" humans existed some 130,000 years ago.
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0.0.1 Okeetee corn snake "Apollo"
DeviantART Gallery

Considering evolutionary timetables modern humans should have been around for many hundreds of thousands of years...twas my point...

unless you believe in creationism...then modern humans were created like 10,000 years ago...
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when life hands you lemons, make super lemons, bumblebees, etc...

Mostly on the way you feel about it. Line breeding done for too many generations will start producing offspring that may show some negative recessive traits (technically in the wild, most of the morphs in BP would be considered negative traits. Especially the albinos).

I am working on a russian tortoise breeding project, and one of the females I bought turned out to be gravid, laid an egg, and 3 weeks ago it hatched. I'm hoping this baby will turn out to be a female just so I can avoid inbreeding (and so that I will have a 1.3 breeding colony/not have to house two males in seperate enclosures). If it turns out to be a male, I won't house him with the females, but when they are outside in their outdoor pen, there isn't much I can do to stop them (besides building a seperate pen for him).

I prefer to try to use unrelated animals simply because you get more genetic diversity, but it depends on what your goals are. I'm probably going to start breeding normal BP's (just for fun), and I want to try my hardest to only use unrelated breeders.

It depends on how you feel about it, but i think anyone here will agree that if your inbreeding produces undesirable traits (unhealthy babies, etc.) you should do some outbreeding instead.

Just thought I'd chime in real quick,

You said this, "Generally incest/inbreeding causes genetic problems in future offspring, and I'm assuming it's the same with snakes."

The problem lies in the assumption above, that inbreeding causes genetic problems. It DOES NOT CAUSE deformities, it only increases the likelihood of the inherent deformities being expressed, since homozygous pairs are much more likely within close breeding populations (Ie Mother X Son, Father X Daughter, Brother X Sister, etc.)

Hope this clears this up for you,

Dan

Yeah, thanks. I blame society as a whole for teaching me that.... Incest equals deformities equals must-be-genetic-mutation-aaaaaarghh! XD

The actual reason makes simple sense, though. Now I can't help but wonder if a teacher mentioned it in a class, but I wasn't paying attention.

Thanks for clarifying!
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0.0.1 Okeetee corn snake "Apollo"
DeviantART Gallery

No problem at all, glad I could help clear it up for you.

Also, just wanted to say, great art over on your site, really was digging the watercolors and inked drawings, as well as the writing.

-Dan

"Also, just wanted to say, great art over on your site, really was digging the watercolors and inked drawings, as well as the writing."

Yes,...very interesting work!
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Charles

Thank you!
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0.0.1 Okeetee corn snake "Apollo"
DeviantART Gallery

Thanks! I'm an Illustration major.

Actually thinking about seeing if anyone would be interested in having art commissions done of their snakes, too. I'm nearly done with this semester, so soon I'll have several weeks to work on things.
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0.0.1 Okeetee corn snake "Apollo"
DeviantART Gallery

In my first post I should have been more clear about my burmese pythons and rats.

My burmese pythons (1/2 brother/sister) had the same "albino labyrinth" father but different "normal burmese" mothers. The 2 I've got are normals but the male has albino labyrinth characteristics. I didn't buy them for breeding purposes, I just wanted two of them. Over the years I decided to try breeding them because I'd like to have an albino.

The rats I started out with I went to extreme measures to ensure good breeding stock by traveling as much as 100 miles, in several directions, to avoid them coming from the same supplier. I've line-bred ever since. Evidently everything has paid off because I've not had the first health problem (genetic, sneezing, mites, etc...) with any of my rats in the 2 yrs. I've been breeding/raising them.

Have a good one!
Mike
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It is said that 1 out of every 4 people are mentally unbalanced. Think of your 3 closest friends, if they're normal, then it's you.

as said.it only raises the chances of a defect showing up....

......only inbred problems I have ever had were like lavender corns / opals....their genes suck already......and bloodred corns.......smaller eggs..bad eggs.low sperm count is bad too.......

as for inbreeding -linebreeding......I am breeding chinese hamsters with sibs for at least 4 generations now......to try for a white one......I got halfway there but cannot get white......all else in them seems fine......

..we all inbreed balls too....they get outbred alot to make hets and double hets so it doesn't hurt ....usually......someday it may.....

............use big balls that eat well and grow well........they will throw the same............
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.......king cobras .......the real cure for overproduction?.
................hurry up and buy a house Chad........LOL