Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have been wondering if there is more of an attitude problem with morphs. I have a 0.1 Tiger and she is full of vinegar. I know that snakes that come from a large breeding colony are not going to have the same personal attention that might come from a very small breeder/pet shop. I have a 0.1 that I call a partial reduced pattern that I got from the Sacramento reptile show and she came from a small pet shop ans she was a bit dehydrated and a on the skinny side but she has PERSONALITY!! She is so sweet and loves to be "free". I swear she has a sad look on her face when it's time to go in.
I know that constant handling with the tiger will help her temperment, but it's hard when she is striking periocically. She will be calm in my hand and then out of no where she will jerk back or strike.
I have seen some ad's offering different morphs and some will admit that the snake is "nippy". Could it just be attitude, or could it actually have something to do with the genes?

Sometimes I wonder if some breeders have actually selected for breeders with bad attitudes. I've heard it said that aggressive snakes are better feeders and breeders. I don't know if this is true but just from the antidotal information it does seem that for a laid back snake species there are a disproportional number of ill tempered animals in ball morph lines. It would be a shame if the only way we can break the stereotype of ball pythons as poor feeders is to also break the stereotype of them as nice handleable snakes.

I've heard of "piebald attitude", again, not sure if it exists as I haven't even been around any piebalds or for sure piebald gene carriers. However, I wonder if it could be related to the perception that piebalds go off feed. Maybe that line is prone to be high strung and needs a hide when other lines don't. If there is really a difference in personality, it would be interesting if it actually had something to do with the piebald gene or if it was due to other genes that just happened to be in the founder piebalds or the original normal females picked to kick the project off.

Regardless of how attitude is or is not directly associated with morph genes I have seen it passed down to half the offspring through three generations in my albino ball python project. My sample size is very small so I'm not ready to say for sure that there is a single dominant aggressive gene here but there sure was a difference in the attitude of the litter mates. Exactly half of them where “normal laidback” ball pythons and half where hissy and prone to strike.

What is the age of the animal? Many times youngsters of numerous different species will have attitude. At that size they are considered food to most other animals in the wild so who can blame them? They will usually grow out of it within a year or two. Although I also think that Randy is on the right track with thinking that nippy babies are being selected for because they have a better feeding response. Only time will tell.

VOT

As far as her age I wasn't told,she looks to be about 2-3 months old,she is a great feeder as well. I am trying to find someone with a dig. camera so I can post her pic. as well as my other female.

Perhaps this will get me shot but I do genetics stuff so I'm going to postulate that perhaps in some lines inbreeding has lead to abberant mental conditions (ie physical mechanisms in the brain NOT snake psychology!), maybe some neurosis. I also like Randy's hypothesis. It made me think about certain breeds of dogs that have been specialized for certain things such as herding, gaurding, and hunting and some of the attitudes they show as a breed. Recently a friend who is involved with veterinary science told me that a certain breed of dog typically used as a gaurd dog can actually become neurotic and dangerous due to some problems with the breed. I'd like to qualify that I'm not knocking this breed of dog and it is actually one of my favorites which is why I'm not being specific so that I won't get attacked by the usually more aggressive owners of such animals.

I'm sure it could happen that inbreeding might result in psycho balls but what little I've seen so far is rather outbred and I'm actually wondering if there is a single gene for aggression.

My albino project started with a single het male from a large breeder. I was told that he was from an albino male to a normal female. I have no details about the personality of either. He was well started (I'm thinking 6 months to a year) when I got him and when he bit me I put it off on probably rarely getting handled in the large collection he came from. He calmed down after a few months of growing in my small collection and I didn't really think much about his initial bad attitude.

I bred him to a very nice female and kept the 4 female 50% chance het albinos in that clutch. Two of them where strikers right off the bat and two where not. The two strikers eventually stopped biting but would hiss every time you opened the cage even up to 2 years of age. Incidentally, I did prove one of the nice ones (and the best eater) to be het albino and one of the hissers produced two normals bred to a nice tempered het albino male from another source. With only two babies from the hissy 50% het I can't be sure if she is a het or not yet. However, one of her babies is very nice and the other strikes and hisses all the time (both eat well but the hissy one eats great). In this case I've seen bad attitude passed through 3 generations and it doesn't necessarily seem to be following the albino gene, just mixed up in my particular line.

I don't have any for sure het piebalds but I have noticed some from my 50% chance het founder group to be particularly shy and prone to remain rigid in your hands and occasionally hiss or strike. Several went on feeding fasts this spring but then started again about the time I put hid pots back in the sweater boxes (I don't usually need those for young adult snakes in a closed rack system). With all the possible hets sold right from the start (only 1997 for pieds) I have to think that piebald is a fairly outbred line. Could the actual piebald gene being effecting attitude or is it other genes that are still associated with the line as might be the case with albino?

I wasn't thinking necessarily about a specific gene but a number of recessive genes coming together to mess with the nuerological hardwiring in "hissy" snakes. I like that term by the way Anyway with the piebalds perhaps the piebald gene is on the same chromosome as genes that might influence hissy behavior? All of this is postulated by the way but follows the accepted rules of genetics. What do you think?

I guess I was just thinking that from what I've seen aggressive ball pythons seem to show up in lines without inbreeding so while perhaps bad attitudes can be caused by inbreeding I'm thinking that the ones we are seeing now are due to some other genetically inheritable condition. Remember that ball pythons have only very recently been captive bred in any numbers and only 10 years ago hardly anyone was bothering to breed them.

My baby keeper possible possible het piebald girls appear to have been outbred for 3 consecutive generations since their piebald great grandfather (Piebald – Het – 50% het – 25% het). If it turns out that the rumored markers for het piebald are reliable then it might explain why so many possible hets where made in the first place and of course such a situation would lend it's self to lots and lots of outbreeding (which I think is what has happened). If you can pick out some of the hets by sight you can keep outbreeding as long as it takes to get the number and quality of hets you want before inbreeding to get homozygous animals again. If there are still some undesirable traits in piebald ball pythons after that much outbreeding (even if it's only been 6 years or so for that morph) then I’ve got to wonder if it is somehow tied to the piebald gene. I like your idea of it being different gene(s) somewhere nearby on the same chromosome. A classic case where we need just the right crossover to produce a chromosome WITH the piebald gene but WITHOUT the extra baggage.

Another theory is that only the streaky feeding is associated with the piebald gene but that the aggressive attitude lines have consistently been breed into the piebald ones to try to overcome that problem.

Probably way to much speculation for something I'm not even sure exists, just a few random comments I've heard about piebalds having bad attitudes and being streaky feeders.

Can somebody clarify inbreeding, out breeding, and line breeding in reference to snakes for me? I think maybe my fish frame of reference might be confusing me a little. Also let's go back and look at the previous conversation about selective pressures; breeders prefer animals that feed agressively and grow fast while hobbyists prefer animals that feed well and are even tempered. Maybe the genes that could contribute to hissy behavior are coming from animals closer to imports? There still could be multiple hissy genes that are recessive that could still pop up in outbred animals. What do you guys think?

Oh I forgot a random hissy mutation.

I believe inbreeding and line breeding are loose synonyms - you breed offspring either back to the parents (line breeding) or to each other (inbreeding). Outbreeding is anything else, i.e. breeding two animals from diverse gene pools.

Regards,

Neil

Makes um irritable.
Speaking of brains,are we comparing the large brained warm blooded clan that are all genetically mastered from the wolf to the smaller less complex brain of the cold blooded ball python? Because I can't see a comparison.
I've been told that wild caught ball pythons are not the lovable easily handled kids that our domesticated captive bred balls have become. So if animals are showing a level of aggressive behavior it is actually in their genetic make-up.
A thought on breeders keeping more agressive animals for better feeding responses,the Darwin survival of the fittist theory could apply.
As for pet store animals, they could act mean because they are often abused and their natural needs neglected.