Reptile & Amphibian Forums

lets say the parents would eat only live hamsters, is it extremly likely that any offspring would eat only live hamsters too?

thanks

Extremely
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Jay A. Martin

i am not exactly asking if they are genetic. but is it possible that the offspring of a pair who only eat live food to be adapted to eating frozen thawed rats? how likely is it from your experince?

Since mom and pop do not care for their young after birth, any "learned" traits are not passed on. Therefore, all you have left are genetics and evolutionary blue prints. I have a female this year that ate anything from hamsters, to mice, to rats. Her offspring so far have eaten mice and rat pups. I really don't believe that the parents eating habits have any weight to their offsprings.
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Jay A. Martin

i can get a good deal for a nice ball python from a friend of mine. its a common bp, no fancy colours etc, but for me that will do for now. the only problems is that the parents eat only live hamsters. i breed mice and rats and i am not at ease feeding anything that i do not raise. thnaks for the reply

( other replies are welcomed too )))

...to be a leanred trait. Just because a mom or dad Ball doesn't teach its babies how to feed, does not mean that the babies are immune to learning things. Yes they have blue-prints and yes they are innate/hereditary traits, but a baby ball learns from its surroundings and its unlikely that F/T eaters parents produce F/T eater offspring.
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Correct. And exactly what I'm saying. This person does not have to worry about what mom and dad are eating. Just because mom and dad eat hamsters does not mean junior has to eat hamsters.
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Jay A. Martin

So we're on the same page then. I agree completely.

I've got to think that ball pythons that are good eaters are more likely to have offspring that are good eaters and ones that are picky eaters are more likely to have picky offspring.

That being said, I don't think it's very predictable. An individual snake’s feeding preference may be mainly based on past experience (imprinting) and not genetics. So, I don't think you are going to see a line of ball pythons that only eats black and white spotted mice or anything nearly that specific. I have a picky eating baby from a great eating parents so you never know for sure, I just would expect the parents general feeding characteristics to bias the offspring’s characteristics slightly one way or the other.

There are certain lines of cornsnakes that at one time where notoriously picky feeders. Many bloodred corn snakes where hard to get feeding at all (I think most have this problem bred out of them by now) and Miami Phase where reported to often want to start on lizards. The bloodred example may have been inbreeding depression but in the case of the Miami phase it may have been a genetic predisposition in food preference for a certain population of corns.