philosophical tought about Darwin's theory

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Originally Posted by thomasK

Myself, I think it would be possible. If you see the progress in some of the nippy little bastards. Most of the time when they grow (especially when treated right and handled regularly) they kinda get used to getting handled. Could this, over a whole lot of time (i'm really talking about 100 years minimum), also change there insticts like it has done with dogs (check wild dogs vs. labrador).

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First of all, I believe that snake domestication is possible (obviously to a lesser extent than naturally social animals), but I don't think it's something that is going to happen.

Your point that I boldfaced is completely irrelevant. A nippy snake that has calmed down with lots of handling is not a domesticated snake; its offspring will start out just as nippy. The way to go about domesticating snakes would be to breed ONLY the snakes that are completely docile from the get go; selective breeding for temperament.

There are two reasons why I don't think this will ever happen:

1) There is no demand for snakes to be domesticated. "Mean" snakes are manageable (even big ones, if you know what you're doing), and breeders don't hesitate to breed them. Aggressive dogs are usually put down, and even if not, they are not bred (with some disgusting exceptions in recent history). To put it simply, wild snakes make good pets, whereas wild dogs and cats do not.

2) At least right now, breeders are focusing entirely on visual genetics. Very few keepers breed for temperament. And like I said, there's no reason they should; there is no demand for more docile snakes because many are already docile to begin with.

IMO the training of animals is more Pavlov then Darwin. Also brain function and capacity would be a big issue. You are born with instincts they are not learned over time. I think the present captive bred and born ball pythons are as good as it's going to get.

Training animals has nothing to do with Darwin or evolution. That's trained behaviors vs genetics. You cannot affect genetics by doing anything to behaviors or surgical alterations.

I.E. cropping a dobermans' ears generation after generation does not lead to shorter ears on puppies. Likewise, training dobermans generation after generation doesn't cause puppies to be born smarter.

Choosing the animals that learn fastest, or have the shortest ears would result in changing the genetics of the breed. So choosing the tamest of the ball pythons hatched to breed would lead to more placid babies being hatched. But ball pythons(especially) are already so very placid, I don't know that you could really affect their nature through selective breeding.

If someone was going to try it, they should probably choose a bitey type of snake like some of the tree pythons/boas that are snippy in nature. Breeding the most placid of those only might lead to an eventual 'line' of nice ones that allow themselves to be handled without fuss.

Rattlesnakes in some areas have begun to not rattle in warning, because rattlesnakes who do rattle are sought out and killed. That will eventually lead to non-rattling snakes being the only ones surviving and breeding, and passing on the lack of instinct to rattle when threatened. (Assuming the non-rattling behavior is true and not a myth).

Interesting thread! I think we are seeing evidence of this in Florida. Early explorers in Florida documented the extremely aggressive behavior of alligators they encountered, very different from alligator behavior we see today. William Bartram wrote of being attacked repeatedly, with alligators attacking his boat when he explored the St Johns river in the 1790s, and described them as "terrible monsters". The human population in Florida kept increasing, with agressive alligators being killed as settlers spread across the state. Almost 200 years after Bartram's expedition, herpetologist Archie Carr speculated that the widespread eradication of alligators over a period of two centuries had left a small gene pool that is more docile. Only the shy survived - the ones that hid, that kept well away from humans. There are many, many alligators in Florida today, but they survive only if humans are unaware of their presence. We are still "selecting for shy" by capturing and killing "nuisance" gators.