Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Here is a fresh hatched, just shed, captive born East of Sanderson grayband that I thought people would enjoy seeing. This snake was produced from a F1 female bred back to her WC father.

John Fraser Captive Bred Snakes

Way to go John! That snake's very cool. I love it!

Damon

Damon,
Thanks for the reply, its a quite nice snake, its grandmother, coined the "Busy" cut snake, wc in 1993 by Aaron Puckett & I is pictured here, so who knows what all it could produce. JF

With all the alterna in captivity, Why would you breed a snake back to it's own father??????????????

The male snake was found off the exact same cut as grandmother snake was as well, I guess its whats called keeping the genes tight within a single cut? lol I do think its quite reasonable to assume that most snakes, not just alterna would not sense incest and that its quite probabal that in alterna populations that brothers have bred sisters, as well as fathers to daughters & so on, just a theory, but I am sure it has happened some....JF

Horse apples!! The only two sides to the coin is, if it works, it is line breeding and if it does not, it is inbreeding. The only scientific proof of a positive effect of inbreeding is financial. Nobody knows if snakes from the same cut inbreed or not. In fact, we don't know if the snake you caught on that cut is from that cut. Lots of animals live in the same range as their parents or offspring and do not inbreed, so why would snakes? If I am right or wrong, I ask you again, with all the alterna in captivity, why breed an alterna to it's father??????????

> "The only two sides to the coin is, if it works, it is line breeding and if it does not, it is inbreeding.

No, regardless of whether it "works" or not, its still "inbreeding". Inbreeding, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing - in other words, inbreeding can be positive, neutral, or negative, depending on the genes involved. If inbreeding (natural or domestic) produces a successful phenotype (be that success measured by natural selection or humanocentric artificial selection), then it can be regarded as positive. If it produces a mix of results, then neutral. If it reinforces deleterious alleles, then we apply the term "inbreeding depression" and call it bad.

What you are doing is confusing "inbreeding" (neutral term) with "inbreeding depression" - a potential negative consequence of simple inbreeding. Notably, inbreeding depression is only a problem IF there are deleterious alleles to reinforce. If, through selection, the deleterious alleles have been removed from the gene pool, then there can be no inbreeding depression. For example, there are "lines" of mice which are extensively inbred but are still thriving with no effects of inbreeding depression - all the mice in those "lines" that had deleterious alleles were "weeded out" long ago.

> The only scientific proof of a positive effect of inbreeding is financial.

Not necessarily so . . . you like to eat Corn, I presume . . . corn (like most of our agricultural crops) have been extensively modified through artificial selection - of which inbreeding was an extensive component. The same is true for the domestication of most of our livestock, dogs, etc.

Aside from the agricultural models mentioned above, there is quite a bit of evidence that inbreeding, in small populations (especially on islands) tends to allow selection to proceed at a fairly rapid rate - any successful allele will have a much greater influence on future generations in smaller populations, and can lead to the development of new species (e.g. Hawaiian Honeycreepers, Galapagos Finches). In these small populations, inbreeding (to at least a small degree) is inevitable.

Also of note is that mild inbreeding can have selective advantages by reinforcing phenotypes adapted to local conditions. In other words, inbreeding at a level unlikely to reinforce the deleterious alleles, but at a close enough level to still reinforce successful alleles.

In some situations, out-breeding can be deleterious. For example, mouth size and number of teeth are independent traits in humans. Mild inbreeding (with 2nd/3rd Cousins, in local populations) would be more likely to reiforce these traits (small mouth, no wisdom teeth) than outbreeding (small mouth, wisdom teeth). If you think that's a fanciful example, pretend we don't have modern antibiotics, and you get a higher death rate for folks with too many teeth in their small mouths (like my wife - Irish/German/Polish). That's one example of how outbreeding can be bad news.

The point is, don't get tied up on "inbreeding" = bad. It really all depends on the genes that are present whether or not you end up with "inbreeding depression".

Troy

Horse Apples!!!! All the examples you mentioned, corn, livestock, dogs, ect. are all financial.
It is still ilegal to breed a father to a daughter, even in Hawaii, no matter how bad their teeth are(LOL). I ask you again, with all the alterna in captivity, why breed a daughter to its father???????
I ain't real smart but it seems to me that once you start, good or bad, the damage is done. You may tell your buddy that it was linebred but maybe your buddy or his Buddy or his Buddy might just forget to tell the dude he sold it to that it was inbred and now I bought a local animal that is more local than maybe I wanted. For Dogs, Livestock and even CORN they have registries so if I want line bred or not, at least I will know what I am getting.
Later
Rick
PS. Sorry for all the Big Words. I hate to learn them and then not use them.

You've got your opinion, you're welcome to stick to it. But you're wrong (at least in part) and I've already told you why.

Inbreeding does not equal inbreeding depression - you've got to have deleterious alleles present in the gene pool before you can get inbreeding depression.

Inbreeding does occur in nature at least to some extent (usually not with sibs or parent/offspring, but with cousins). And its still legal to marry 2nd cousins in most places, and first cousins in some.

Troy

Thanks for sharing your education with us. The question was a simple one and so was the answer, it was the only male John had from that local.
You are correct, I am entitled to my opinion and since we are not talking about second cousins or even first cousins my opinion is that it might have been better to wait for another male from that area. People do it all the time.
Later
Rick

the chances of deleterious alleles being reinforced with John's mating are higher than with unrelateds, true. But we aren't talking humans here, so its not that important. And if you were going to decry what John did here, and not decry breeding to produce the various breeds of dogs in existence . . .

And why is it that people tend to get sarcastic about "sharing education"? Funny, here I thought these forum were about sharing information. I guess not. BTW, most of what I discussed here wasn't taught in any of my "classroom" educational settings - its all around in print, etc, should you care to educate yourself on the matter . . . or, if you'd rather, just stick with your opinions . . . doing so is easier, and you don't have to let any inconvenient facts get in your way.

Troy

Hey Troy, that education remark was a cheap shot and I apologize for that. Your explanation is a good one and I am sure it is correct. We seem to be arguing two different issues. I don't neccessarily think John is going to have problems with this breeding, in fact this discussion is not about John at all, but those types of breeding experiments happen all the time and the offspring are introduced to the retail market as locality babies with the buyer having no idea what he has gotten. If he purposely or accidently crosses those with related animals, well surely you see my point. For the same reasons I do not agree with it in dogs or horses or anything else. Registries have been set up so that people can keep track of bloodlines, even zoos are keeping a close eye on most of its bloodlines especially those with small numbers, to avoid inbreeding.
Once again, I agree with nearly everything you have said, but for other reasons, I still do not think it is in the best interest of the captive populations. Not being human doesn't make it less important.
Later
Rick

I agree that we may have been arguing two different things - I've been arguing definitions . . .

Anyway, I agree that I don't particularly like line-breeding or inbreeding much. In part for the increased risk of inbreeding depression . . . but to a greater degree because doing so really does reduce heterozygousity and diversity in the bloodlines - which is one of the things I value most about alterna (and, incidentally, why I have virtually no interest in U.S. captive populations of thayeri or mex-mex - I've seen a few wild snakes and photos of wild snakes that display much higher degrees of diversity than US captive bloodlines do).

Troy

Saddleman,
Answers, then I am done responding:
"The only scientific proof of a positive effect of inbreeding is financial"
I didnt breed the related snakes to make big $$$, in fact, if you look at my website, there were only 3 snakes hatched from that inbreeding, SO???? Troy answered the rest of the finacial part good enough.

"Nobody knows if snakes from the same cut inbreed or not."
Thats true, I stated it was quite possible, didnt say it happened on a "regular basis"

"In fact, we don't know if the snake you caught on that cut is from that cut."
Your free to beleive whatever you want, those that truely know me as a person will attest to my character, so thats no issue to me or the people that really know me.

"If I am right or wrong, I ask you again, with all the alterna in captivity, why breed an alterna to it's father??????????"
How about just because I could? LOL Actually, I used the father snake in that breeding because it was the only breedable locality alterna that I had from the exact same rockcut & was hoping to produce something similiar to the Mother or Grandmother snake, which I managed to do.

On a final note, with the Ego's that abound on this forum site, I can say proudly from the $$$ standpoint that I personally have NEVER sold a wildcaught alterna that I collected myself to anyone, anywhere. I have been known to give some of my wc alternas away to friends. Theres a number of Ego's on here that couldnt say the same.......JF

We don't know if the snake we collect on that cut is from that cut because we do not know what the range or even the habits of these guys are. I was not referring to the past post of habitat tampering.
Chill.
Later
Rick

What's wrong with selling a wildcaught alterna? Once you take it out of the wild it is dead as far as nature is concerned. It shouldn't matter if you keep it, sell it, or kill it. It is also legal. If you find it immoral then that is your opinion and you are entitled to it, but that doesn't mean it's the right way or the only way.

If you are going to argue that it take the pressure off of the wild population by selling by only selling Captive Born, I would answer that could only be true if you were to stop harvesting alterna from the wild and be truly self sustaining from original founder stock.

Additionally, where do you think every single snake in captivity originated? The answer would be from animals that were at one time collected from the wild and bred.

Forks

>> On a final note, with the Ego's that abound on this forum site, I can say proudly from the $$$ standpoint that I personally have NEVER sold a wildcaught alterna that I collected myself to anyone, anywhere. I have been known to give some of my wc alternas away to friends. Theres a number of Ego's on here that couldnt say the same.......JF

I am going to inbreed everything I find if that is what is necessary to produce desired results.....locality! On the other hand, I will breed two snakes from a close locale to preserve the "look" of the locale, and all of this at the price I ask for or to give away to friends as I please. The snake IS dead as far as nature goes. Not a hybrid guy, just an American! LOL! Viva alterna!
Todd Hughes

If you are an American, why do I detect such a heavy foreign accent? Do you have a little German in you? hehe

Forks

Damned if I do, Damned if I don't! LOL! Do you have a little Irish in you????.....Thanx for everything. Up for some Chinese food?
Todd Hughes

Ok Joe,
I was not meaning to sound like I am against commercially selling a snake, wild-caught or not, but I do look away from the dollar side when I am hunting there, I am there for the search, not the dollars, and you know straight up theres still some people hunting for the money, more than the sport, that was my dig. I hunt, trap & fish & wholeheartdly support the right to harvest wildlife. I understand that the founder stock of ALL the captive herps was caught & sold, I'm not gonna crucify that history either. I apologize for stepping on yours on others toes that took offense to what I said. Did I say apologize, thats a word seldom mentioned on here??? JF

>>>>Did I say apologize, thats a word seldom mentioned on here??? JF

No need. You didn't step on my toes.

Forky

Nor mine.
Todd Hughes

While inbreeding typically has negative connotations amongst snake breeders (in many cases, for good reason), inbreeding can be a useful tool used to reinforce desired phenotypes. Obviously, one has to be careful to avoid such pairings where there are evidence of deleterious alleles (often not seen until you get undesireable traits in an offspring). In short, inbreeding can be used to reinforce desireable traits as well as undesirable ones.

A large number of breeders use inbreeding to reinforce desired traits (e.g. amelanism) in their breeding projects, and unless you take it to an extreme, you usually don't see the deleterious effects of inbreeding until several generations later (e.g. "bug eye" leucistic tx rats took many generations to develop, and were not an immediate problem of the intial inbreeding done to produce leucistic tx rats from the wc adults).

As with almost everything else, there are two sides to this coin. Obviously, there are some out there who don't want snakes that are knowingly inbred in the slightest - but so long as the parentage of the snakes is not hidden from a prospective buyer, no fault, no foul.

Troy

very nice snake john and great web site!!/jon