Because it may have already happened with certain lines that have been in captivity awhile.

I know two breeders that worked with pyros, and kept back their best feeding babies, and bred them. Over many years, both breeders produce pyros that eat pinks readily. With at least one of those breeders, his snake room setup has not changed, so cage conditions remained the same, but more and more of the pyro babies come out feeding on unscented pinks.

Not saying it works in all cases, but from the above I would gather it is possible that feed response can be selected for with at least some results.

But I think most people breed for color/pattern, so there isn't alot of data for feed response.

Honduran milks - the hobby Hondurans - seem to have gotten smaller over time. Could be because smaller females need less food to reproduce successfully, which fits with captive feed schedules. Also smaller individuals fit better in sweaterboxes and tiny lay boxes. So perhaps, slightly smaller size has been selected for in captivity with the use of rack systems.

I remember seeing Honduran milks in captivity in the 80s, and they were freakin monsters compared to any I see now. I remember seeing Amealco ruthveni that were offspring of the Lloyd Lemke ruthveni wild-caughts. Those things were enormous as well. In fact, those were the first ruthveni I saw in my life, and I went away thinking ruthveni were big fat tricolor kingsnakes. Years later I got some generic ruthveni, and they grew up to be much smaller than those fat Lemke pig ruthveni. Could be a locality difference or a captive breeding trend towards smaller animals.
-----
Mark

[ Show Entire Thread ]