Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was driving to school yesterday when I heard an interesting piece on the local (El Paso, Tx) NPR affiliate about a Russian experiment that essentially reenacted the domestication of dogs. I'll paste the text I got from the show's website:

"Dogs were apparently the earliest domesticated animal, and although well represented in Chihuahuan Desert archaeological sites, the change from wolf to dog is known to have taken place thousands of years earlier. Although there is little direct evidence concerning the nature of the process, modern studies carried out in Russia seemingly throw considerable light on domestication.

The silver fox is an animal that normally fears man and becomes aggressive if cornered. Starting some 40 years ago, this animal was selected on the basis of a single trait: tamability. Each generation, the most tame 5% of the males and 20% of the females were chosen for breeding. The result after 30 to 35 generations? Not only what one might expect as a result of taming, such as seeking human attention, but display of many of the traits we see in dogs, including floppy ears, an upturned tail, pelts with patches of white, and a number of physiological traits, such as earlier sexual maturity. We can doubt that wolves were domesticated that fast, but the potential for evolutionary change is clearly displayed."

What I'm wondering is- could snakes be chosen for breeding based on good feeding records or handleability rather than colors and patterns with effects similar to those seen with the foxes? I wouldn't expect them to ever "seek out" human contact or anything, but stronger feeding and tameness characteristics would make for an even better beginner snake than your average Corn or King.
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0.1.1 Corn Snakes
1.0 Western hognose
0.0.1 Ball Python

One of the reasons captive-bred animals thrive compared to wild-caughts (aside from not having been subjected to the stress of importation) is that they are by definition decended from animals that thrived in captivity. So yes, they can be bred for being good eaters -- in fact to a large extend it's completely unavoidable. Animals that don't eat don't reproduce.

That's true, but I think people are often too preoccupied with the color or pattern of their animals. I'm just wondering if anyone else places more importance on personality traits.
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0.1.1 Corn Snakes
1.0 Western hognose
0.0.1 Ball Python

there was an article similar to this in Reptiles Mag. a few months back.
Green Anacondas were known as one of the "not so socialable" snakes.
These two guys teamed up and bred the most tame male and female they had. All of the babies turned out tame as well.

It was a very interesting article.

I can't see it happening for little naturally colorful and docile animals like corns and kings.
But for racers, scrubs, and so on, critters that are often wild caught, have bad reputations, are innately attractive with few to no morphs, (so that the obsession with "this color or that color" doesn't come into play) breeding for docility and easy keeping would be awesome!
Besides the obvious attraction of having a mild tempered animal, with the less popular more hot tempered species, it would create a demand for definitely CB animals which would be good for herper and herp alike.
By the way, I want one of those foxes...
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0.2 chickens (Falcon & Condor)
0.2 dog mutts (half ownership, only mine when they misbehave, Lucy & Amy)
0.1 Halflinger horse (Crissy)
0.0 Arizona Mountain Kingsnake (coming soon)
1.1 parents
Still searching for 1.0 WC human