Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Are you going to substantiate your Spider statement below OR once again dodge the bullet?

Brian Alston

What is there to substantiate? All the responses were from people who had 1 animal or produced very few of them. You didn't see any of the big spider breeders jump in. I stated my opinion that I woulnd't work with spiders. Lots of other people like them and work with them. That is fine. I see down the road lots of complaints from customers........something along the lines of "so and so sold me a spider and it spins like a top when you pick it up........I want my money back". I also don't think you should be breeding defective stock into the gene pool. You can't tell me that if someone just "invested" in a spider male and it turned out to have neurological problems they aren't going to breed it.

A breeder in the USA had a non-spinner spider male and bred him to normal females. He produced 30 spiders of which 13 were spinners. If that's not a problem I don't know what is.

I can't imagine putting years into producing spider/lessers, spider/caramels....etc and the offspring are defective.

Corey Woods

For those of us with only a high school diploma. Actually if someone doesn't mind explaining to me what a spider that's a spinner is too that would be nifty.

It's obviously not good, except I was investing in one possibly two this year and would like to make a further educated decision on it. Maybe I need to rethink my consideration.

Thanks!
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Violette Garcia
www.shakahnsgrove.com

There was a pretty good discussion on the spiders when news of this condition first broke on this forum a few months ago (after what, 7 or so years of breeding them?). However, I can never find old threads with the search engine here anymore. If someone can find and link that thread it was a good one because several people with a fair amount of experience (no slight to Sean who gave a fair amount of real world experience to the more recent thread).

I think both NERD and Jeremy Stone contributed to that older thread. From what I remember of that thread a fair number of spiders do this weird thing where they roll their head back when they are excited while they are young but it doesn't seem to interfere with their eating and they seem to outgrow it and breed fine. Also, it looked like it must be intrinsic to the spider gene because even ones that don't ever exhibit the problem can throw babies that do so it isn't caused by inbreeding and seems to go along with the spider gene.

It does makes me worry about what else I don't know about other morphs I'm working toward. I also just found out about the caramel kinking thing this year. If there was a serious problem with a morph would anyone talk about it? I guess it really only impacts the people who get in early as I don’t imagine I’ll be able to buy anything new before it’s well known by the masses. In this case it really didn't sound like it has a very negative effect on the spiders

Corey is also about the only piebald breeder I've seen who will make a detailed statement regarding the sporadic pied het marker. I don't really care to know what the politics might behind his involvement in the current spider thread but at least he is straight forward with information on subjects that are apparently still being shunned after years under wraps.

Wow, yes this is new to me the CA kinking thing I figured out a little from last year.

Since it doesn't hurt the spider's ability to breed or eat, its what just a major flaw in personality? I guess I'll have to have a nice in dept conversation with people about this.

Hopefully any spiders coming here this year don't spin like tops.

I really appreciate the answer.
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Violette Garcia
www.shakahnsgrove.com

I really really wish I could find the old thread as it would be much better to have the first hand accounts rather than my hazy memory and interpretation of them. I certainly didn't consider it a good thing but it did sound fairly moderate in effect. Maybe like the fainting goats or the tumbler pigeons. The ethics of breeding such morphs is certainly open for debate but I'm tending to think it doesn't sound severe enough to cause me to shy away from obtaining a spider at my first opportunity but of course I’ll hope to get one with the least symptoms I can afford just for good measure.

I remember it too and did a search but kingsnakes search engine is horrible. I remember that Kevin mentioned a 'head flip' and a bit of a 'tremor' but I think he said they grew out of it fairly quickly. I think what Corey is describing sounds worse though, more along the lines of 'waltzing mice' (if anyone knows what those are). I'd like to see the original thread again too if someone could dig it up and post a link. I kind of had my heart set on a spider this year too, now I'm wondering again.

Mark

>>I really really wish I could find the old thread as it would be much better to have the first hand accounts rather than my hazy memory and interpretation of them. I certainly didn't consider it a good thing but it did sound fairly moderate in effect. Maybe like the fainting goats or the tumbler pigeons. The ethics of breeding such morphs is certainly open for debate but I'm tending to think it doesn't sound severe enough to cause me to shy away from obtaining a spider at my first opportunity but of course I’ll hope to get one with the least symptoms I can afford just for good measure.