Male or female?Does it matter?

Fullrace, I've never heard people "say" the offspring of a spider to spider breeding don't make it and you should never breed two spider morphs together. The ONLY thing that happens in a spider to spider breeding is that you get spiders and normals. (more if you have other genes thrown in) There is just no spider super, as with most other heterozygous animals. You may have just heard not to breed spider to spider because its "not worth it" meaning, if all you are getting is spiders and normals, you might as well breed them to other things because you'll get those anyway.

Just for poops and giggles, at some point I will be breeding spiders to spiders. Just on the OFF chance I produce a super one day. (Not to mention...I LOVE spiders)

To the OP:

As others have said, the only reason male vs female matters is if you are planning on breeding. Purchasing your females first allows you to raise them up. Females need 2-3 years to grow for breeding. Males can breed (technically) in less than a year. So if breeding is what you plan on doing, then I'd start off with a few females, raise them up and once they are 2 years old or so, buy your males you plan to breed to them. Raise them up for a year, and you are good to go for your first breeding season.

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Originally Posted by fullrace2

go ahead then most people "say" a spider to spider in any way even a bee to a spider the babies dont make it ect ect...

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I think at the heart of this is that there is anecdotal evidence that a double dose of spider might be lethal. As in "kinda looks that way to a lot of people." A lot of things suggest this. Many have reported that spider x spider clutches either have fewer fertile eggs or more eggs that fail than average. And no one has produced, to my knowledge, a spider which produces 100% spider offspring consistantly. As nearly as anyone can tell, all spiders prove out to be hets. So that suggests that spider is either a dominant that is lethal as a homogyous dominant, or a codom that is lethal as a homozygous super.

fullrace, if you want to breed bees to spiders, or spiders to spiders, go for it. You will get spiders and/or spider based morphs over the long run, but you'll get fewer of them if spider is, as expected to be by most, lethal in it's homozygous form.

What you should end up when breeding spider or its combos is roughly 1/4 without the spider, but possibly expressing other present codoms such as pastel or lesser. 2/4 (half) should be spider, with or without other codoms. 1/4 (the homozygous spiders) die in an embryonic stage and present as either infertile or failed eggs. But you will still get baby snakes if you breed spider to spider.

Lethal genes aren't unique to snakes. Horses carry them. (SCID, lethal overo, lavendar foals) Dogs carry them. (genetic bobtail boxers) Humans carry them. (Tay-Sachs disease) Lethal genes don't always result in embryonic death, in some cases the offspring can survive for a short time but they do not live long enough to reach maturity--they die early in their develoment. Lethal genes can be dominant or recessive or codoms, such as the lethal white overo. They've been seen so often in so many animals that we have a good feeling for how they operate.

So while no one has gone and done the research to prove spider as a lethal gene. (AFAICT) it acts that way. Snakes generally have multiple eggs in a clutch. It's your decision as to whether you're willing to accept the trade off of fewer eggs for the payoff of breeding two particular snakes that both carry spider. I mean if you have a bumble bee het pied and want to breed it to a lesser bee het pied to go for the spied babies, you might be willing to accept fewer hatchlings for the chance to make what you really want.

Warning! What follows is strictly my own opinion, AKA BS.

I think that spider is a dominant and lethal in it's homozygous form. Spider comes with associated neurological defects, AKA "the wobble." It's my own belief that in most cases the defects caused by a double dose of spider are inconsistant with life. I don't think that it is a codom because most of the codominant lethal genes in other animals produce an offspring which survives fetal life and dies shortly thereafter, such as the lethal white overo foal in horses. But like I said, that is just my own opinion formed from what I've seen in the genetics of other animals.

Unfortunately this is why people think that spider x spider is wrong. Because people give there opinions on the matter saying that "they think" it is a lethal combo. Now every one thinks it is a lethal combo.


On a side note to my knowledge there is no lethal genetic bobtail boxers. I have not seen any such findings. This is a rather new study(creating a genetic bob tailed boxer) and has just been started around 1996 or so. It is most commonly done by introducing Corgy's into the bloodline.

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Originally Posted by TessadasExotics

Unfortunately this is why people think that spider x spider is wrong. Because people give there opinions on the matter saying that "they think" it is a lethal combo. Now every one thinks it is a lethal combo.


On a side note to my knowledge there is no lethal genetic bobtail boxers. I have not seen any such findings. This is a rather new study(creating a genetic bob tailed boxer) and has just been started around 1996 or so. It is most commonly done by introducing Corgy's into the bloodline.

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The breeding for bobtailed boxers seems to be more of an Aussie thing. Here's a link to where it's discussed.

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Whatever the correct interpretation of the discordant evidence, the molecular data establish that the homozygous Corgi bob-tail is a lethal condition. The term, lethal, has an ominous ring to it. It suggests something totally undesirable. Yet, having pondered the issue at length I have to conclude that while the evidence of lethality is disappointing, it is not an ethical problem. Without any detectable ill-effects, the only undesirable feature of the bob-tail condition is that it will not breed true. There will always be a 25% expectation of long tailed pups appearing (see Fig 12 of Part 5). That we now know why this occurs simply means that, in a sense, we now know too much.

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Source: http://www.steynmere.com/ARTICLES6.html found on 2nd page, after discussion.

Dog genetics is a little off the path in discussing snake genetics except in that it can illustrate how gene combinations can work. That is why I used the bobtailed boxers, and because they've done the testing to determine that the living bobtailed boxers are heterozygous for the trait.