Plain and simple........ I don't buy it!
Darrin, Wes, Seamus, anyone else who's arguing the kill it, isolate it, scurge of the universe point, (is that general enough Darrin?) Unless you are independently wealthy or just plain bill free, money is ALWAYS a motivator (maybe not the greatest, and certainly not the only, but always there). And that's not necessarily a bad thing. Many great things have come from people's strive towards wealth, or heck even just a paycheck sometimes. So what if he sells it. Any trait that is bred into a gene pool can be bred back out if it needs to be. Again, I seriously doubt eyelessness is a genetic trait. Yes, I know it has been linked to the albino gene in boas, but this is not a boa.
Occasional eyelessness (one eye missing being more common than both) does show up in pythons, I've seen it once in my own breedings. But I know of no study which shows it to be genetic rather than an incubation mistake.
And Darrin you MIGHT, I emphasize might, freeze a two-headed corn, but I doubt you'd do so if you knew it was 100% healthy (other than that whole secong head thing) and you could sell it for literally thousands of dollars.
Someone used a car w/o headlights as example, saying no one would buy it because one could not drive it at night. BS!!! Auto museums are FULL of cars that are not road worthy, and people pay money every single day to see those cars. Nascar's don't have headlights and that's a multibillion dollar sport, so that doesn't wash. No one is saying an eyeless snake would be sucessful in the wild (although there are examples of many creatures, including snakes, which do quite well w/o eyes). But remember, we're not talking about "in nature" here.
Let's take another example, one which some of you might not find so horrible. Let's say someone produces a python with hind legs. Hey, the hip bones are still there, so maybe a few genes get screwed up, a little deletion here, a little inversion there, and whamo! We now have a python with legs. Who in their right mind would be fool enough to freeze that animal? Especially if it ate and grew and was doing just fine. Heck, I'd pay $20 to see that, and I'm about the cheapest SOB on the planet!
Yes, eyelessness and/or blindness are generally considered BAD things. But, eyelessness hasn't stopped this snake from succeeding has it? Maybe that fact, in and of itself, is what makes this scrub python worth more than your everyday garden variety one. Ray Carles and Stevie Wonder were/are certainly more amazing because they can't see aren't they?
Darrin, Wes, Seamus, anyone else who's arguing the kill it, isolate it, scurge of the universe point, (is that general enough Darrin?) Unless you are independently wealthy or just plain bill free, money is ALWAYS a motivator (maybe not the greatest, and certainly not the only, but always there). And that's not necessarily a bad thing. Many great things have come from people's strive towards wealth, or heck even just a paycheck sometimes. So what if he sells it. Any trait that is bred into a gene pool can be bred back out if it needs to be. Again, I seriously doubt eyelessness is a genetic trait. Yes, I know it has been linked to the albino gene in boas, but this is not a boa.
Occasional eyelessness (one eye missing being more common than both) does show up in pythons, I've seen it once in my own breedings. But I know of no study which shows it to be genetic rather than an incubation mistake.
And Darrin you MIGHT, I emphasize might, freeze a two-headed corn, but I doubt you'd do so if you knew it was 100% healthy (other than that whole secong head thing) and you could sell it for literally thousands of dollars.
Someone used a car w/o headlights as example, saying no one would buy it because one could not drive it at night. BS!!! Auto museums are FULL of cars that are not road worthy, and people pay money every single day to see those cars. Nascar's don't have headlights and that's a multibillion dollar sport, so that doesn't wash. No one is saying an eyeless snake would be sucessful in the wild (although there are examples of many creatures, including snakes, which do quite well w/o eyes). But remember, we're not talking about "in nature" here.
Let's take another example, one which some of you might not find so horrible. Let's say someone produces a python with hind legs. Hey, the hip bones are still there, so maybe a few genes get screwed up, a little deletion here, a little inversion there, and whamo! We now have a python with legs. Who in their right mind would be fool enough to freeze that animal? Especially if it ate and grew and was doing just fine. Heck, I'd pay $20 to see that, and I'm about the cheapest SOB on the planet!
Yes, eyelessness and/or blindness are generally considered BAD things. But, eyelessness hasn't stopped this snake from succeeding has it? Maybe that fact, in and of itself, is what makes this scrub python worth more than your everyday garden variety one. Ray Carles and Stevie Wonder were/are certainly more amazing because they can't see aren't they?
