Inbreeding?

Is it important not to inbreed ball pythons? Or is it ok to let siblings or parents and children breed?

People do it all the time. I personaly think you should stay away from it if possible. Its not a good thing to do with other animals, why would snakes be any different?

There so far hasn't been any proof that it is necessarily bad, i do it and will continue to do so, but only to a limited extent, sooner or later if you keep inbreeding generations back to their parents and never get different genes in there something will have to go wrong..at least thats what i think. But who knows maybe it doesn't have an affect on snakes.

Inbreeding is ok, but I personally will be avoiding it if possible. If I have het pieds from my pied male and normal female, and I have another pied male, why breed them to their father when I could breed them to the other pied. Just my personal belief. I don't have a problem with it ever being done though

I think a lot of people think it's okay in moderation, i.e. half sib or daughter to father, etc... But the thing is you never know how much inbreeding went on in the ancestors of that snake. I personally don't plan on doing it.
JonV

BP breeders do it all the time. It is not like, say, human inbreeding; which has bad social and economic consequences.

Inbreeding with ball pythons has been done heavily with mutations, a few generations will not hurt and any outcrossing afterwards is a plus with any project.

No scientific proof has ever been done, some species of snake on insular islands are very very inbred and have been doing so for many generations and these fare very well.

We still have so much to learn :)

Marc

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Originally Posted by Royalherper

People do it all the time. I personaly think you should stay away from it if possible. Its not a good thing to do with other animals, why would snakes be any different?

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Have you seen any deformities (besides carmel albino balls) in aything other then mammals from inbreeding?