Inbreeding taking a toll on albinos?

From a strictly economical perspective, introducing new genes in the pool will set the breeder back 3-4 years before being able to produce albinos again from the hetero offspring.

That in a nutshell is the problem. One of the largest inhibitors of eliminating such undesirable mutations from the gene pool is the bottom line. If they are originating the strain, they are in a hurry to cash in. If they are entering the market early, they want to make their money before everyone is breeding them and the prices crash.

In this day and age, we as breeders can safely assume that most every snake we sell will at some point be bred, or at least the attempt be made, either by the purchaser or by someone else down the line. It seems that everyone who owns two leopard geckos feels they have to hatch some more.

This leaves it up to the breeders to do the culling, something which far too few are willing to do, especially with the valuable morphs. The fact that you see so many one eyed albinos etc. is testament to the fact.
Rather than put the snake down, many will merely discount it and sell it anyway. This almost assures that its genes will remain in the collective pool. The more valuable the morph, the higher that assurance. Someone who really wants an albino boa, but can't afford it will see the one eyed specimen as a cost effective way to get into the morph market.
To me this is simply unethical. Maybe not in the classical sense of right and wrong, but definately in the big picture of furthering our hobby.
Breeders are not responsible for just hatching eggs so the rest of the people can have a snake. They also bear a certain degree of responsibility of improving the bloodlines, or at least not degrading them, whether they accept that responsibility or not.

Snakes with physical deformities from birth, even if they will not affect the snake's ability to breed or quality of life should be culled. They should be, by some method, removed from the gene pool entirely. While all deformities are not genetic, who is to say which are and which are a result of environmental factors during incubation?
The problem is when someone is looking at a $2000 snake with one eye, they choose to price it for a grand and sell it rather than take the "loss" entirely.
Unfortunately breeding ethics are something that cannot be taught or enforced, it is up to the breeder himself to set his own standards in that area, and the consumers to choose what standards he will require from a breeder he chooses to buy a snake from.
As long as there are high dollar morphs though, there will be those with one eye, or a kinked back making up part of the breeding pool.
While my opinion matters little, I do lose respect for people I see selling such snakes. It tells me they hold little concern for the genetic integrity of the snakes they profess to love so much. If that integrity is lost though, what's the point in producing them?

Clay,

What's even more frightening though is the scenario Joe was describing. Breeder "A" has one anomaly in the clutch. Was just that snake or are several other sibblings carriers of that genetic deffect? Even if he culled that animal he can never be 100% sure he got rid of the flaw and you as a buyer will never be assured you are safe. But of course, you might never know...

Snakes with physical deformities from birth, even if they will not affect the snake's ability to breed or quality of life should be culled. They should be, by some method, removed from the gene pool entirely. While all deformities are not genetic, who is to say which are and which are a result of environmental factors during incubation?

Now there's something I agree with 100%

I've gotten into the argument a few times here before but...

I feel that anyone keeping any captive animal has a responsibility to maintain their individual animals in a manner that is good for the hoibby, good for the business and good for the species as a whole... This means everything from making sure they keep animals legally, to making sure they keep them healthy, to having at least a basic understanding of some of these simple genetics issues and working to actively ensure that their animals and their practices are positive for themselves and the industry as a whole.

It means culling animals with obvious defects to ensure that there isn't even the possibility of contamination of the larger gene pool with negative traits... selling it to someone "Just as a pet" doesn't work... humane euthanasia does.

It means making sure that your animals are maintained in a naturally viable way to a great degree... Hybrids are pure garbage that do nothing but pollute the species... even subspecific intergrades that don't occur in nature are negative.

I personally see most morphs as being a negative trait to begin with... being an albino lowers natural survival rates and thus is not a positive mutation, I also preffer the natural color patterns and the reasons they evolved but I reccognize the fact that many do not feel similarly (and I'm not as fanatical about that one as I am hybridization)... Anyone breeding morphs has a responsibility to represent their animals honestly, to plan out their breeding projects and to keep the strains true... There should not be amel corn to amel corn breedings that produce a variety pack of offspring because the patterns were bred by ignorant people who "thought they would make something new" or just wanted to breed the first two animals they could obtain.

Culling via either humane euthanasia, chemical/surgical castration (very dangerous to attempt with herps) or by simply keeping any offspring showing undesireable traits in your private collection and NEVER offering them for sale are only responsible things to do... There are too many casual hobbiests who, while often well intentioned, will cause a lot of damage through their ignorance... there is no valid reason for enabling them to do it faster.

I can see your point with the culling thing, but my deformed BRB is one of my favorite pets. But I would never breed her, and someone who was just looking for cheap breeding stock might have (I bought her at a show). It's sort of a quandary.

It never occured to me that behavioral differences in amels might account for deformities in their offspring, that's an interesting idea. Might account for why burrowing amels like KSB's don't have so many deformities (I have one that's a little psycho, but that's not statistically valid). KSB's are T+ too, don't know if that would make a difference. They still have pink eyes.

I once saw a guy at the Ohio show selling a deli-cup full of what he was calling 'designer' burms. All four or five of them had NO eyes. Kinda scary, I guess.

I always assumed that the bug-eyed gene in Texas rats was linked on the same chromosome as the leucistic gene, and that's why you almost never see one without the other. Linkage really messes with genetics, and pretty much gives me a headache.

Erin Benner

Seamus,

You brought up an interesting point but didn't go into much detail. The first thing I thought of when I started reading this thread was "why can't they sterilize the ones with defects so they can't reproduce" you mention that it is dangerous in herps but how so. Can you or anyone else elaborate a little. I realize that it may not be an option for every low dollar snake but for someone with an albino ball or boa it may be a way to ethically be able make a little bit on the snake.

By the way, in the tropical fish hobby the same thing happens. Some people are out for every dollar they can get and I am sometimes amazed at the junk that comes in with some of the shipments. Clown fish and cichlids with deformed faces, angelfish with only one pectoral fin, hunched backs etc. And then they get mad at you when you point the probelms out.

Steve Schindler

You brought up an interesting point but didn't go into much detail. The first thing I thought of when I started reading this thread was "why can't they sterilize the ones with defects so they can't reproduce" you mention that it is dangerous in herps but how so. Can you or anyone else elaborate a little

In thinking about it a bit more after reading your post while formulating my intended reply...

Not so much...

I'm not a vet, not a vet tech and while I've got a decent grasp on reptile biology, not much of it covers outside chemical/surgical procedures...

It's one of those things that "everybody knows" but nobody can specify where or why they know it...

Reptiles are pretty chemically sensitive, so the process of putting one under to perform surgery of any kind is a pretty risky procedure as I understand it... The same might apply to any drug introduced to cause sterility... Finding a vet qualified and willing to undertake the process would be another huge hurdle.

I know at least a few vets peruse this board on occasion... any of them care to comment on reptile related surgery and why I (and I'm pretty sure most others) have the impression that it's difficult and riskier than surgery on other types of animals?

One thing I would be inclined to wonder is if it was just a body mass thing in some cases, I think operating on a four ounce chameleon would be very different from operating on a 150 pound burm.

The fish issue is really the basis of why I feel euthanasia is the correct thing to do with animals born displaying an undesireable, unhealthy trait... there ARE way too many people on every production level who just don't seem to care about the quality of the animals they send out and unfortunately we're living in a society that seems to have a large population which cherishes the underdog to levels that foster the tendency of many breeders to just not care... The "Ooh, I want the little one with the twisted tail, poor little guy looks like he needs a friend." little orphan annie mentality some customers will take sometimes makes it seem like deformed animals sell better than healthy ones.

I've mucked around with aquarium fish even longer than I've mucked around with herps... I did occasionally get fry that had deformities, most of which seemed to be gestation condition issues where one out of an entire clutch would have some problems and not recurrent with subsequent clutches from the same adluts... and a few, very few but a few, where entire clutches hatched out with physical deformities of some kind. The animals were euthanized humanely (Massachusetts allows individuals to euthanize fish under certain guidelines and in certain manners without animal cruelty issues being brought up... although legally, you're not allowed to break a rat's neck to use as a feeder) to prevent them from ever entering the breeding population, either mine or someone elses... You just can't trust someone else not to breed something and it's only responsible to eradicate obviously unhealthy mutations.

If you (General "You", not Steve "You), as an individual, produce mutated offspring and do not wish to euthanize them, that's fine... but you need to have an understanding of the larger issues of genetic contamination of the general population and ensure, by keeping that animal for it's entire life, that it never is used to produce any offspring. And if you have a pair of breeders that regularly throws deformed babies and your incubation methods are correct (and have been checked for things like the albino light avoidance possibility mentioned earlier), you need to break up the pair and keep them BOTH out of the breeding population just in case it does have a genetic cause.

A herper has a number of responsibilities, a responsibility to their animals, to take care of them properly and keep them healthy, a responsibility to the herping community to make sure all actions taken are legal and foster a better attitude towards reptiles (still often misunderstood, makes me wonder if snakes or spiders are more hated/feared) in general and a responsibility that is taken on when one attempts to breed anything covers the importance of only taking actions that are good for the species as a whole, your animals, the remainder of the animals in captivity and wild populations (I'm for legal collection of animals, I'm against releasing baby iguanas that don't sell because some dink thought his male needed "a girlfriend" to get it to stop going after his wife's leg).

In my opinion the cost involved on a surgical procedure of that nature (as well as the risks for the animal) will negate any of the benefits that we are after. We are talking of an animal that will sell for less to start with because of a potentially inheritable defect, and on top of that the breeder has to add the cost of the surgical procedure? In my opinion it's not going to happen.

Regards.

I ran across a relevant quote in 'What's Wrong With My Snake' by John Rossi and Roxanne Rossi, 1996. From page 64:

One last interesting point: Neither of us has ever seen an old albino snake. Is this purely a coincidence or is there some connectino between albinism and shortened life span in these animals? Funk (1992) suggests that fatty tumors are much more common in albino corn snakes (Elaphe guttata) than in other corn snakes. This may be an a efect of intensive cpative breeding, whereby adults are maintained on a high food-intake regime, or it may be a propensity associated with that particular morph.

So maybe some of the problems are related to people treating albino snakes differently. Causality is a tough thing to figure out. I guess that's why they say peanuts and eggs are bad for you every other year and then change their minds.

Erin B.

I had a pair of these not to long agoi, and due to an economic downturn in my life i was forced to sell them. Unhapply, I may add......VERY unhappily...

But, the thought ALWAYS crossed through my mind about the gene being weak, or as an earlier poster described it"Albinism is a freak of nature and not meant to be a trait that is carried on" I think thats how he put it. I have beeen offered one eyed albinos over th last 5 years, have always passed on them just on the principles of an animals physical integrity. I wouldnt buy them.
I only noticed a few one eyed albinos offered for sale at the time I got my albino boas. It seems there are a LOT more NOW. This truly worries me, it is reminiscent of the albino hognose, a snake that has definite problems associated with inbreeding. Weak sick young that wont feed from a snake(Hognose) that usually is VERY HARDY. Same thing with the boa, standard colombians are very hardy snakes. I hope that the current trend doesnt continue, spiraling downward ,producing weaker and weaker albino bci, with more deformities.

Nowadays, it seems that people do not have the patience required to raise three and four sucesive generations of snakes up, introducing new bloodlines to strengthen them. I breed eastern indigos, and am on my third generation. You learn alot from keeping a group of animals over a 8 year period. But people want to realize a quick ,immediate return, or the closest thing to it. I think that when this hobby changes to the degree that people dont jump on the neext new thing, but stick with one or two things and REFINE the offspring, both in color and more importantly, by outcrossing, then and only then will we have truly strong and defect free snakes to sell. Just a thought. Albino boas are beautifull,I love em' but maybe the one eyed ones should be sterilized, or perhaps only albinos can be soild with unrelated non albino mates. this would require the custome to raise them up and then buy an het to breed with the ofspring. I dont know,i dont have the answer, its just a shame thats all.

sincerely,
Fred Albury

It seems there are a LOT more NOW. This truly worries me, it is reminiscent of the albino hognose, a snake that has definite problems associated with inbreeding. Weak sick young that wont feed from a snake(Hognose) that usually is VERY HARDY. Same thing with the boa, standard colombians are very hardy snakes. I hope that the current trend doesnt continue, spiraling downward ,producing weaker and weaker albino bci, with more deformities.

There is no doubt the number has increased. This year alone I saw six for sale, and the bulk of 2003 births have not started yet. Will probably see a lot more for sale soon.

Nowadays, it seems that people do not have the patience required to raise three and four sucesive generations of snakes up, introducing new bloodlines to strengthen them.

It's not only that. Those that want to do it strictly for the money are faced with the dilema that if they introduce new blood, by the time they will be able to offer albinos they will sell for far less. I'm surprised at some ads for babies of the Kahl strain currently being sold for over $1,000 while Kahl himself has them right now for $900 (even less from other reputable breeders). How much will they go for three to four years from now?

Regards.