Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi,

I was at the NARBC show this past weekend at Tinley Park and noticed somthing strange. My wife and I noticed several different sunglows from different breeders that had missing eyes, or deformaties of the eye. I am wondering if this is a normal occurance among these morphs, or if it were just coincidence? What I mean by deformaties is this... One specimen we saw had two perfectly shaped eyes, but one eye was missing the pupil. Some had one eye completely missing, and most others had one eye that was sunken into the skull and the skull was of-course mishaped. I have been to lots of shows and not really noticed this before, but there again I tend to not look at things in detail that I cant afford. There were so few boas at the show this year that I looked at them a bit more than usual, because the show was bombarded with ball pythons.

chris

Hi,
The eye issue with albinos has been brought up many times on this and other forums (do a search). There are many hypothesis. One is that inbreeding has weakened the bloodline and hence outbreeding is required to reduce the likelihood of this occuring. The other is that the eyes heamorage easily due to the melanine reduction. Hence, when exposed to bright light they can damage easily.

I am lucky in that I have a male from a new wild caught bloodline that is compatable with Pete Kahl's line. I have produced hets from this and hope that in future the eye issue will not be a problem with my collection.
As I say, do a search for other peoples experiences and opinions.

Warren

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Dr Warren Booth
North Carolina State University
Department of Entomology
3309 Gardner Hall
Raleigh, NC 27695-7613

I've been trying to find info on the same subject. I've done searches for albino, eye, problem, deformity... in this and the morph forum and come up with ziltch, nodda, and nothing.

Can you give a link or key word that will connect with some hits?

Thanks, Chris

Do a google search. Should come up with a few examples.

Warren
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Dr Warren Booth
North Carolina State University
Department of Entomology
3309 Gardner Hall
Raleigh, NC 27695-7613

There was a thread about albino boa constrictor eye problems on the fauna classifieds dot com boa forum two years or so ago. There were a lot of ideas but nothing conclusive. For what it's worth, I've seen defective/missing eyes in normally-colored timber rattlesnakes and gopher snakes and read about them in turtles. A vitamin A deficiency causes congenital eye problems in swine, but whether this is a factor for snakes is anybody's guess.

Paul Hollander