should a kinked caramel be bred?

[champ641]

If I produce any caramels with kinks, spiders with bad wobbles, or albino boas with one eye, not only will the babies be put down, but that adult will not be bred again. I'm certainly not going to try to breed the actual deformed offspring!!! Putting it out into the breeder pool for people with no ethics/morals that WILL breed it no matter how much you label it "PET ONLY" is no better than just breeding it yourself, either. Just my $.02

 

[ReptileJay]

Personally I feel that any of these defects can be easily avoided simply by selective breeding over time. The people looking to make a quick buck by selling defective animals, and continuing to breed defective animals simply keep the problems we see going strong.

I don't feel that it is unethical to breed caramels. I feel it is 100% unethical to breed a kinked caramel, or continuing to use a pairing which produces kinked offspring (even if it is only once in a while). Genetic predisposition for a defect allows for selective breeding against it.

Selling this snake as an animal that will "have no issues breeding" not only shows TERRIBLE ethics on the part of the seller, but promotes terrible ethics for whoever buys this animal in the hopes to make a quick buck with a "Superior bloodline to the domestics"... Personally I feel that it's a terrible business practice.

If EVERYONE stopped breeding and selling defective animals, despite the possibility of making a quick profit, (or not taking a loss), we will see an overall increase in the quality of animals available in the hobby.

 

[RJK890]

The animal that lead to this thread being posted does raise some questions.

It is an Adult Male Caramel, with a kink.
This animal thrived in the wild, and may have been breeding in the wild for the last season or two ? (Unless it was actually farmed, and not harvested.)

How many blood lines of Caramel are there in the U.S. ?

Out of those lines, How many, and which ones started with an imported Caramel that had a kink itself, and how many, and which ones started with a Caramel that did not display a kink ?

How many of those lines have produced kinked offspring ?

How many lines have been kept pure ?
(meaning that they were bred to females that were 100% NOT het for any other line of Caramel, and then line bred back to the hets produced.)

 

[ReptileJay]

If ANYONE can accurately answer any of those questions I'd be absolutely amazed...

Without genotyping, there is absolutely no way to be 100% certain of such things.

 

[TripleMoonsExotic]

Without genotyping, there is absolutely no way to be 100% certain of such things.

That's not true. If the originators of each line were honest answering the questions, their is no need for genotyping. Every single one of those questions could be answered by the original breeder(s).

 

[garweft]

Is it ethical to continue breeding Caramels knowing that there is a defect in the mutation that does produce kinked hatchlings ?

If you can breed an unkinked Caramel male to an unkinked female het Caramel, and produce kinked animals, i don't see how allowing a kinked hatchling to live and breed is any less ethical then knowing that there is a defect in the Caramel gene and continuing to breed them.

Simply freezing the undesired offspring, selling the rest of the clutch, and continuing to breed that stock the following season is not a road of higher ethics in my opinion.

If you are aware of the kinking in Caramels, and are still willing to work with the mutation, then let me ask you;
Are you more likely to produce kinked hatchlings if you use a kinked male Caramel as a breeder ?

Same goes for the Spider gene.

If you can breed a "Non Wobbling" Spider male to a non Spider female that does not wobble, and produce hatchlings that wobble, then I do not see how it would be any less ethical to breed Spiders that exhibit the wobble then it is to breed Spiders that do not (seem to) exhibit the wobble.

Caramels have the potential to kink and Spiders have the potential to wobble.

I really like this post for a few reasons. First let me saw that I do not think it's ethical to breed kinked animals or to use them as a founding animal in a breeding project. But....

This post does bring up the question on whether or not kinking can be bred out of caramels? I'm sure almost everyone finally realizes that the spider wobble can not and will not ever be bred out of the gene.

Obviously whatever causes the aberration in the spider pattern is also effecting the nervous / sensory system as well. Maybe it's because the signals controlling pattern early on in development are also responsible for directing key parts of the nervous system as well.

So can kinking be bred out of caramels?

Before you jump up and say ABSOLUTELY!, think about this for a second. Melanosomes do way more than make dark pigment. There is more and more research coming forward every day that points to melanin serving functions in many biochemical pathways including calcium homeostasis. Here is one example:

Calcium regulation in melanocytes affects numerous biological pathways including protecting the redox balance in the cell and regulating the supply of substrate, l-tyrosine, for melanogenesis. The pigment contained in the melanocytes, melanin, has been implicated in maintaining calcium homeostasis in the cell and is known to be involved with calcium ion regulation in the inner ear. Herein, the association constant for Ca2+ binding to Sepia melanin is determined by isothermal titration calorimetry to be 3.3 (±0.2) × 103/M. This value is comparable with other well-established intracellular calcium-binding proteins that serve to buffer calcium concentrations, lending further support to the hypothesis that melanosomes serve as intracellular mediators of calcium homeostasis in melanocytes. Using this binding constant and the data from a fluorescent Ca2+ displacement assay, the pKa of the carboxyl group coordinated to Ca2+ is determined to be 3.1 ± 0.1.

Bush, W. D. and Simon, J. D. (2007), Quantification of Ca2+ binding to melanin supports the hypothesis that melanosomes serve a functional role in regulating calcium homeostasis. Pigment Cell Research, 20: 134–139. doi: 10.1111/j.1600-0749.2007.00362.x

So if the mutation that causes the lack of melanin in the caramel mutation is also having effects on the overall calcium balance in the snakes body you can see where trying to out breed it may not happen. So why don't other t+ albino snakes have this problem? I guess it's cause life's not fair. Same reason you can breed albino to albino in corns for generations without issues while in boas it's asking for snakes with eye problems.

Anyway, just food for thought. Very often when you are breeding for a mutation you may just find it effects more that the pattern and color of an animal. IMHO it would have been nice if these problems would have been realized early in the development of each morph and the project was ended and not released. But we all no that's not going to ever happen, in the past, present, or future.

 

[R. Eventide]

I have a rather controversial opinion to all this....

I do not believe that obviously-defective animals should be bred or sold as breeders. However, I do not believe this means (1) they cannot be sold as pets or (2) they should be culled.

(1) Yes, there's the possibility they'll be re-sold to a breeder. This is where the seller can be scrupulous as to whom s/he sells the defective snake, if s/he is worried about that sort of thing. However, killing the snake because of a "what if" is not right, in my book. Unscrupulous breeders are going to continue to be unscrupulous no matter how many defective snakes are or are not put in the pet market.

(2) I believe if the snake is able to maintain a reasonably normal life (without obvious suffering) even with its defect, it deserves a chance to live. If the breeder believes the snake should not be sold as a pet, then the breeder will have to keep it. That, to me, is the risk of breeding Spiders and Caramels (and whatever other morphs have genetic defects). I feel that the breeder's responsibility is to the animals, first and foremost. If you don't want to keep defective animals, then don't work with those genetics. Plain and simple. Yes, defects will pop up here and there at random anyway, but that is the risk of breeding. It's gonna happen some time or another.

The reason I believe this is because culling a snake you don't like or that will not produce offspring (profit) for you is not putting the welfare of the animals first--it's putting profit first, the breeder first. Yes, it costs to feed that defective snake. Again, that's the risk breeders take. I've heard whispers about some breeders culling normal males. How is that worse than culling defective snakes that can live normal lives? Who are we to say who lives and who dies? Who are we to say, "Oh, that's just a normal, so it doesn't matter"? Who are we to say, "Oh, I can't breed this snake, so it has to die"?

And no, I am not all talk and no walk. I purchased a Woma female with the intent of breeding her. A couple months later, I noticed an extremely faint wobble--one that most people would probably miss unless they knew what to look for. (I know I would've missed it had I not seen videos of it.) The wobble got increasingly worse, and now she corkscrews, hangs upside down, and does all manner of wacky things. She's over two years old and just broke 400 grams for the first time last month. There is no way I would put her down. She doesn't get handled much, and she has a tendency to bite, but she's still a little life. (She's awfully cute, too.) Plus, other than the wobble, she acts like a normal snake. She's not the best feeder ever, but she still seems just as content as the rest of my snakes. Why should she not get the same chance at life...just because I can't breed her?

 

[ReptileJay]

I have a rather controversial opinion to all this....

I do not believe that obviously-defective animals should be bred or sold as breeders. However, I do not believe this means (1) they cannot be sold as pets or (2) they should be culled.

I agree that culling an animal that would otherwise have an opportunity to live a healthy life is not something feel should be done. However, it does become extremely difficult when you get into selling an animal like that as a pet. As you mentioned, there is no way to determine whether or not that person will at some point sell that "pet animal" to someone looking to breed. There is also no real way to know whether or not the person getting the pet won't eventually decide to give breeding a shot, without taking the defect into account.

I know this may not be a popular notion, but has anyone ever considered surgical sterilization of defective snakes as a method to prevent propagation?

Of course that involves a Vet bill, but if it's between culling the snake, and getting it sterilized for a price and then selling it as a pet (Ideally for the price of the vet bill) I would definitely consider that as an option.

Back to the culling topic for a moment: If the animal is clearly suffering, and shows no signs of recovery, it would in my opinion be inhumane to keep the animal alive. In the case of a mild kink, or a wobble, culling seems a bit extreme, but if a snake is so badly kinked that it struggles every time it is fed, or wobbles so bad that it's basically rolling around the cage, would culling not be the better option even though they could technically survive?

 

[TripleMoonsExotic]

If you want to humanize them, then please explain how to tell if the defective snake is or is not in pain. Do you know for a fact your Woma does not experience pain or nausea from the wobbling problem?

A breeder does have responsibility for the animals however, leaving an animal to suffer when it will never have a normal life is selfish (no matter how much you want to believe it will leave a normal life, it won't). It's also the breeders responsibility to provide the healthiest, highest quality reptile to a customer and if that means culling, then that's what needs done.

No one's saying a breeder shouldn't keep the problem animals if that is their choice. But in no way should those animals ever leave their hands. You can't guarantee what happens at that point and you are only contributing to the problem.

 

[TripleMoonsExotic]

I know this may not be a popular notion, but has anyone ever considered surgical sterilization of defective snakes as a method to prevent propagation?

Of course that involves a Vet bill, but if it's between culling the snake, and getting it sterilized for a price and then selling it as a pet (Ideally for the price of the vet bill) I would definitely consider that as an option.

I remember reading something like this years ago. Something about because of how tied together snake's reproductive and waste systems are that it's not possible. Would be a nice alternative for those that aren't too bad off.

 

[ReptileJay]

I remember reading something like this years ago. Something about because of how tied together snake's reproductive and waste systems are that it's not possible. Would be a nice alternative for those that aren't too bad off.

That's rather unfortunate... There are always ways to make things like that work, regardless of how close the systems are tied into each other... I mean, if reproductive pathways for organisms as simple as C.elegans can be manipulated independently of other systems, then I see no reason why the reproductive pathways in something more complex can't eventually be singled out as a target.

Then again, research money really doesn't go toward working out the factors required for reproduction of reptiles... so I don't see THAT problem getting solved anytime in the near future...