Genetics of Poor Temperaments

I'm pretty new to snake genetics and have yet to breed my own, though I'm looking to in the near future. However, I'm pretty competitive in the horse industry, and am very familiar with equine traits. I know that for horses, a general temperment can CERTAINLY be genetic. There are whole lines that tend to throw fits in the show ring and flip over. We ended up with one of them, and while you can work with a personality and compromise with them, some things are just inherited. It took us three YEARS of hard work every day to find something he would put up with, and eventually put him in harness. While he loves it, he still gets a wild hair every once in a while and wants to take the buggy off. I completely agree with some of the earlier posts in that you can work with just about anything and tone down a generally agressive nature, and if no one is willing to do that, it will just get worse.

In my experience though, temperments can definately be passed on.

personality is a non heritable trait a snakes life and thoughts (If there is any) determine how the animal will think as an adult for instance if we cloned hitler we could end up with the most socially tolerant person on earth the only reason he was filled with so much hatred was because something happend during his childhood that triggered a part of his personality that was truly evil. it is totally NURTURE OVER NATURE.

Plus every animal has a certain percent of its mind devoted to learning and thinking and the rest is instinct and its the instinct that is heritable not the personality. P.S. snakes have a very high percentage of their brain devoted to this and if its in the snakes instinct to react violently to human contact it has nothing to do with its personality so it is possible to teach it to accept you.

Personality is inherent in every other species. I cannot imagine why people would think it isn't heritable in snakes. Breeding animals for docility and calmness is what what leads to domestication. This was proven with the fox farm experiments. You can breed animals to be aggressive or docile. These traits aren't learned behaviors.

Basic personality is innate, even in humans. Anyone who is a parent is aware of this (or desperately should be).
You may be able to tame an aggressive animal, with patience, but that doesn't change its personality. It will remain much more unpredictable, nervous, and untrustworthy than an animal with an inherently calm and docile personality.
Different personalities in snakes are apparent right out of the egg. How an animal reacts to human contact when it has never had such contact before has EVERYTHING to do with its inherent personality. A docile animal may hide, while an aggressive animal strikes. Both instincts are there, but personality dictates which behaviors the animal will engage in.

Hitler was probably a sociopath, by the way--which is a defect that can be seen in brain scans. So he was never going to be a great guy, even if he hadn't turned into a serial killer. Nuture can dampen some aspects of inherent personality, because we (like most other creatures) are very flexible, mentally. The amount of work that's required to reach the desired goal is telling, though. Some snakes are docile without ever having been handled, while others remain untrustworthy after years of gentle handling. This is inherent. All things are not born equal.

There was a guy I worked for who bred birds for temperament as well as looks.

He set up a breeding set of evil/evil, nervous/nervous, nervous/evil, nervous/social, evil/social and social/social with quakers and parakeets to prove his point once. It wasn't very large (only two per each) but even with just one gen there were obvious differences. I had to help with the handfeeding and it was Not fun.

He didn't have them labeled but I accurately picked the evil/evil, nervous/nervous, evil/social and social/social batches on both quakers and the budgies. And I am most definitely not a bird person.

I highly doubt it is genetic in snakes but it is in some animals especially dogs like the golden retriver VS a pitbull

That made absolutely no sense--first off, snakes aren't mysteriously different from other animals. They have personalities, and their personalities are affected by the same things that mammalian personalities are. Genetics is a big factor. Why would you doubt that temperament is genetic in snakes, but acknowledge that it is in other animals? I'm curious as to your reasoning.

Second, Golden Retrievers and Pit Bulls may have exactly the same temperament in many cases, though overall Goldies are one of the most docile breeds. On breed temperament tests, Pits score similarly to Border Collies and Great Danes. It depends on their lineage. There are nasty Goldies, and plenty of very nice Pits out there. There's a reason Pits were considered the ideal family dog back in the 50s. Any animal can BECOME aggressive if it's mistreated. That isn't the same as inherent temperament. Pits are prone to be inherently dog-aggressive, but not people-aggressive. There are many breeders working to eliminate that trait as well (successfully--there are many lines of Pit Bulls now that are not dog aggressive at all). Pits were NEVER bred to be aggressive toward humans--that only happens when they are badly mistreated and mishandled, or come from a very bad lineage instead of a decent breeder--and that is true for any breed, not just Pits.

Know what the current most aggressive dog breed is? The Dachshund. Cocker Spaniels actually have a genetic flaw cropping up in the breed called 'rage syndrome', which causes them to flip out and attack their owners.
If you're going to use them as an example, at least make sure you know what you're talking about. Comparing a Dachshund to a Golden Retriever would have been a better comparison, as there is a far more vast temperament difference there. People tend not to be as cautious when breeding small dogs--small dogs that attack cannot do as much damage, and their behavior is likely to elicit laughs rather than fear. As a result, there are quite a few small breeds that are prone to be downright vicious.

The variability in temperament among different dog and cat breeds is clear evidence that temperament is linked strongly to genetics.

I believe its non genetic in snakes because They are not born tame they must learn to be tame by figuring out that humans pose no threat to them. Although many animals do not posses this level of reasoning so ill admit that dogs were a poor example because the can learn almost anything.

Nothing is born tame, not even humans. Everything has to learn how to appropriately interact with it's environment.

Exactley