Reptile & Amphibian Forums

There are a lot of morphs that have been around now for going on 10 years give or take but why do we never see a 10 year old morph? Least I haven't. I was recently looking thru various breeders pages trying to decide on what morph I wanted to aim at picking up next year and I noticed that many of them that have proven morphs say things like "we were lucky to pick up our original breeder (enter morph name here) and got a couple of good clutches out of it before it died". Or they "hatched out several new (whatever) but the one surving male was bred back to the female" ... etc. etc. It just seemed odd to me that it happens alot with the professional breeders losing morphs - whereas - the biker guy down the street has a normal ball he lets roam his house -looses it quite frequently and feeds every three months or so and its 15 years old and as healthy as a horse. I think the oldest morph I've seen is 5 years old - are they all in some retirement home somewhere? LOL - honestly - I'm just starting to worry I had 20-25 good years with my normals but should I not expect that from my morphs?
-----
Tosha

Quote " " End Quote

7.33.0 Ball Python (Harry and Fluffy and gang)
1.0.0 Angolan Python (Anakin Skywalker)
0.0.1 Green Tree Python
0.2.0 Feline (Pippen and Pandora)
0.0.1 Dessert Tortoise (Pope John Paul aka JP )
2.2.1 Fish (1,2,3,4)
0.0.2 frogs rescued from pool skimmer

Great question, I know what you mean I have a 12 yr old male that I adopted that wasn't fed more than a mouse or two a month for 10 yrs and he is fantastic now and weighs 2600g. Come on guys what is the oldest morph?? There should be some 10 yr old albinos around right? I would think albino's would be the oldest since they were the first proven weren't they?
-----
Nita Hamilton
--------------
Ball Pythons

Tosha, this is just a guess, but I think the morphs genitic changes have caused them to be shorter lived, have weaker immune systems and probably many other glitches in their system....spins,kinks and wobbles, that 'moving from the norm' has caused in many other animals. As much as I like the different morphs, reptile and mammal (I keep Manx cats), it's the price we pay for playin' with mother nature.

Just my 'non genic trained' opinion.

Quig

what you are saying is not impossible... however, I would think it has more to do with heavy breeding and heavy feeding more than anything else (if the statement that morphs live shorter lives is actually true - which is not confirmed correct?)... The "biker down the street" doesn't breed his animals, and keeps them cooler (everything is in slow motion), light feedings, etc... it's been proven more than once in labs that mice WILL live much longer when just fed lightly than over-stuffed ones... I think that rule also would prove true in humans as well... so I think the first question to ask is: if it is true that breeder animals live shorter lives, is it at all related to the fact they are morphs or some other factors?

just some stuff to think about I guess...

Bristen.

>>Tosha, this is just a guess, but I think the morphs genitic changes have caused them to be shorter lived, have weaker immune systems and probably many other glitches in their system....spins,kinks and wobbles, that 'moving from the norm' has caused in many other animals. As much as I like the different morphs, reptile and mammal (I keep Manx cats), it's the price we pay for playin' with mother nature.
>>
>>Just my 'non genic trained' opinion.
>>
>>Quig

I also forgot to add stress.. breeder animals are in high-stress situations all the time... I'm sure the Daytona show stressed out more than the arrested vendors... especially in Ball Pythons, such "outings" adds a lot of stress for the animal.. then you have breeding which can be stressful both for the male and female... if they are a prized animal, they may get handled and photographed more often than the "biker down the street" that lost his normal BP which was hiding under the fridge for a month or two...

just a few more thoughts...

Bristen.

Bristen, I agree that over feeding will probably have more of a life shortening effect that genitics. Maybe I should scratch that froim my previous reply

Quig

I don't have proof or anything but i don't buy that most of the morphs are somehow weaker than normals. There may be a couple, but i don't think it is an acurate generalization. Remember that the breeders who say there were fortunate to bring in a morph only to have it die in a few years, may well have imported the animal as an adult already well into its life. Besides that, the importation process is extremely stressful as we all know.
I would not doubt that lifespans are also affected by heavy feeding and the pressure to breed, anyone who actually breeds bps know that it is extremely costly to the female (as far as body weight and resources go.) but it also is costly for the male.When a prized morph male is studded out to 6 or more females, his weight takes an amazing toll as well each year.

So in short, i don't think morphs are weaker than any other bps, but they are treated very differently and their owner often demand a lot from them.

When morphs become common enough to be pets instead of investments, then i think we will see really old ones.

I have my original three lemon pastels I made back in 1997.

I have my original caramel albino and ghost from before that too....

Kev
-----
www.newenglandreptile.com

i dont think breeding has anything to do with short life spans....they breed in the wild, and i dont think they only live less than 5 years in the wild. (i realize they probably dont breed to this extent, but females can only breed once a season regardless). im no expert, but i think the fact that there are no "old" morph pictures to really be found says something. where are the old albinos? they are very popular so i would think there would be plenty of pictures of those floating around. if morphs dont live very long, the industry is in trouble, thats where the money is. i think that is why i believe a nice healthy normal is the best you can have.

Deal

p.s. maybe we can play god only so long before it catches up and bites you in the, well, end. (spinning spiders, kinked caramels, etc.)

Pythons in the wild will breed when they're ready, will only breed as many females as they can find. I very much doubt a 2 year old male has EVER bred 6 females in the wild...

Females don't get to powerfeed to gain back the weight they lost, and therefore probably don't breed every year, let alone produce large clutches every year because they were fed well.

I also think that many of the problems from the recessive morphs can be bred out with selective breeding and OUTCROSSING. I think too much linebreeding occurs with any new morph, and outcrosses are very important. As for the spinning spiders... I'm really not sure about those guys, because I'm pretty sure spiders and other dominant morphs aren't line bred as tightly as the recessive animals. Maybe some breeders that keep and raise all the females from clutches they hatch can comment more on just how much linebreeding occurs in any given facility.

I'm not at all sure there is any tendency for the morphs to die young. I think the oldest captive bred morphs would be the first albinos that Bob Clark hatched in 1992. He can't have hatched too many of those the fist year and then most of his albino ball project was stolen in 1994 so even if every albino ball python that was born before 1996 was still alive it probably would not be very many for you to hear about. Of course if they did have a tendency to die young you probably wouldn't have heard of that either unfortunately. However, considering how young even the oldest ball python morph is and the geometric nature of population growth I would expect that the vast majority of the total of all albino ball pythons ever hatched are from the last 5 years.

Thats what I was thinking!!! After albino was piebald in 1997 right? They are recessive, and most of the old ones are in Petes collection I am willing to bet, and over bred to supply the rage... The oldest ones you will really see would be younger than 8, most likely around 5. I just think you dont see a bunch of old ones because they are not that old yet.

I do think the snakes are over bred in captivity and that contributes to their shorter lives... if they get over bred. Seeing as though most people who buy morphs are doing so to breed the life out of them, I would bet a good number die from young. I know some people kill them trying to over feed them to get them bigger faster... some people may be too cheap and not give them enough space because they have too many projects... you could attribute morphs not living long to many different things besides genetics. If all As are Bs and all Bs are Cs, not all As are Cs. You see?

Ben

It would be interesting if we could track down some of the first few albinos to see what % are still around and compare them to a group of normals but that data would be hard to come by. I guess I'm just not sure the perception that morphs don't live as long is based on anything. Even the idea that high feeding and breeding shorten lives might be just a guess. It sounds good and gets repeated a lot but has anyone really checked? Someone was telling me once about wild water pythons growing like crazy and breeding fast and young so maybe it isn't that unnatural. I’d worry more about poor husbandry and unnatural build up of parasites since they can’t get away from them.

Randy, yours and some others opinion on this make good sense. I, at least, tend to forget just how young this hobby is. And considering a normal has the capacity to live up to fifty years, even a twenty year old morph is still a youngster.

Quig