Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Ive heard many stories about inbreeding in humans and howthe offspring usually come out deformed/retarded.

Because breeders for leos need to selectively breed father-daughter relations and etc. has there ever been an incident resembling humans? Or will there ever be?

Its rare. Usually its a breeder that is carrying a hidden gene for a defect or mutation. All my geckos are non-related. But I bred my male to all of my females and I learned that one of my females carries a hidden gene for an eye defect. It was only her hatchlings. Hidden genes can be spread through inbreeding and only sometimes show up. But defects just from inbreeding alone is fine, problems are rare.
-Cheyenne

heres the other eye. the smaller eye its blind in. Tw other hatchlings had this defect.

oh wow..

hmm thats wierd but if you think about it almost all geckos are related right? Because they can be technically traced back to their original first wild-caught ancestors?

Yes, that is true. But its so far back that the genes are basically nonactive, they've all been bred out. Reptiles don't tend to get mutations from inbreeding. It's one of there safe guards. See, reptiles in the wild tend to stay in one particular area instead f moving long distances so inbreeding in the wild is sometimes common, especially with reptiles who are territorial such as crocs and leopard geckos. Mammals are the only animals who tend not to inbreed, minus cats.

There are two types of morphs, which are simple recessive and line bred. They both deal with inbreeding to some extent.

Simple recessive genes occur by chance. For instance, the blizzard was produced randomly and once the owner produced it, he decided to breed the baby back to it's parents to produce more. Then the babies were bred to each other until more of them were produced.

Line bred geckos are created by trying to improve a desired trait such as size, color, carrotail, or whiteness, boldness, green, etc. For instance, to produce the nicest tangerine, you would take the nicest tangerine male and cross it with the nicest tangerine female hoping that the babies will be even more tangerine. Problem with that is that most of the nicest tangerines come from the same bloodline and people will definitely cross brothers and sisters which have the same exact genetic makeup in order to improve their chances of producing a "better" gecko.

All in all, there are speculations on inbreeding being linked to kinked tails, underdeveloped hatchlings, eye deformities, and blindness, but not enough research has been taken to prove any of these theories. There are too many variables which may have influenced these defects such as incubation methods, diet, early breeding, etc.... We will not know if there is a correlation unless a controlled experiment is taken.
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www.wbgeckos.com

Inbreeding can always bring on problems. A gene pool never benefited from being restrained.

But the worst efforts to breed an "@$$ kicking leo" were, in my personal opinion, those to breed giants. Impressive lizards, but at the cost of the poor animal's shorter life, and lower quality of life because his heart can't pump enough blood for a body larger than it was designed to... So they die younger even in th best conditions.

We see the same issues in human giants. Even giant dogs live much shorter and sickly lives than short-sized ones.