Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I read an article that one breeder wrote about cornsnakes.They went on to say every albino they ever had died sooner then most.
I wonder if anyone else has experienced this and do other species also have this problem.

I wonder what other health problems are being seen in "morphs".I know many wont know what will happen until the animal is much older and with the recent boom in fancy morphs there is bound to be some problems down the road.I would guess most people wont care if their ball pythons live 20yrs instead of 40 anyway(by then there will such a glut of BPS they will be wanting them to die off)...Sorry I guess Im a pessimist.But it just seems "everyone" is breeding ball pythons in particular right now.

i personally havent noticed albinos dying young.

I have a male albino corn that was bought as an old large breeder 12 years ago and he's in great condition.

I worked at a pet store as a kid and the lady that owned the store had a pair of Black rats... one het/ one albino. both were 15 years old and still producing clutches every year.

I have seen some of the wilder ball morphs having problems with balance and kinks (personally i think they shouldn't be bred since it produces a screwed up snake). I've also seen a lot of granite burms that have "anger" issues.

There really is no correlation of longevity between normal and albino (amelanistic) morphs per se, but there can always be undesirable "tandem" traits that go along with any bloodline that is line-bred for a good while (i.e. in-breeding). Some gene combinations can of course be lethal right from the begining and they don't even hatch because of whatever it is that went wrong while it was developing. It can be any bloodline or morph whatsoever. The bug-eyed leucistic Texas rats would be a good example of this. One-eyed (or no eyed) albino Burmese pythons, Stargazer sunkissed corns.

Anyway, there are TONS of things that can cause shorter life spans in snakes, but albinism itself is not an issue. It really depends on what other weak or malfunctioning traits might be in their genetic code. There are countless millions of genetic codes within any individual snake. When hobbyists constantly pair the same recessive like traits to make a certain morph, you also pair up any other bad OR good genes as well from each parent.
This is also why it is generally a good idea to introduce "new" blood every now and then to line breeding programs. However, to get a certain phenotype(outward look), a certain amount of in-breeding is inevitable and quite necessary.

~Doug
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

serpentinespecialties.webs.com

Just pay attention to what Dmong said,,,,