How Much Wobble Is Too Much In Spiders?

If you think your spiders dont have it , just give it time. Audlts several years old can start showing symptoms. So all anyone can really say is that their spiders dont show symptoms YET.

How many people have 5 year old spiders that have never shown any symptoms?

As for ethics, i wonht work with them at all for this reason.

Nick

Whats wrong with caramels? I heard someone say they wouldnt work with them for similar reasons?

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Originally Posted by Nick Mutton

Its the equivilent to parkinsons disease in humans

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How do you figure? You do realize that Parkinsons is a little more than just shaking, right? giggity giggity...

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Originally Posted by LizardofOzz

Whats wrong with caramels? I heard someone say they wouldnt work with them for similar reasons?

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What's wrong with Caramels? If you want to produce snakes that have a great propensity towards spinal kinking, which also may or may not live due to the severity of said kinking, then go right ahead. I, myself, don't want to work with genes like that. Sure, everyone gets Caramels that don't have problems(or at least unnoticeable problems), but there's always that potential.

What if a not-so-honest seller hatches a caramel, who, say, has a small kink at the end of its tail. The breeder can easily amputate the end of the tail and sell it as a perfectly healthy, non-kinked Caramel.

I've been reading that some breeders have been experimenting with wetness levels and temperatures with Caramel clutches. For me, and this is just in my humble, honest opinion, if such great measures need to be taken to ensure the survival of this morph, and discourage spinal deformities in the snakes, then they really aren't meant to survive. Out in a burrow in Ghana, Togo or wherever, the eggs aren't going to get any special treatment, and any deformed hatchlings will easily get picked off or their deformities may hinder them in some way(constricting, eating, breathing). Also, how do we know that the kinked animals don't have internal deformities related to their spinal problems? I'm kind of attributing it to scoliosis, where the disease can get worse as the animal/person ages. Breathing becomes difficult, the chest cavity becomes compressed in severe cases, and the animal/person eventually suffocates from the disease progression.

OKAY! Too much soap box for me tonight ;) But that, in a nutshell, is why I choose to work with some morphs and not others. Maybe, quite a few years down the line, if Caramels become MUCH less inbred, and kinking is a thing of the past, I would feel comfortable about it. I'm okay with working with 1-2 Spiders because they all have the problem, and they are about as outcrossed as a morph can get(plus, I love Honeybees, Spinners, and Albino Spiders). Even with their problems, Spiders just seem slightly higher on the totem pole right now.

Wow Becky, that was a mouthful!

I think sometimes we forget that these are "mutations", put more bluntly, these are FREAKS OF NATURE we are talking about. Not all of these freaks or mutations were meant to survive in the wild...but we select for them because we find them "pretty".

JonV

For the record I am aware that there is a difference between the siper issue and human parkinsons disease, I made the comparison to help make my point. Nobody would intentionally try to make a child with parkinsons, why is it acceptable or even desirable to produce similar results in ball pythons?

On the Caramels, there is a second type of caramel that does not kink. This second line was actually the very first caramel lineage to be imported, and the line pre-dates almost every other ball morph. This lineage nearly was lost but they are now being produced in very small numbers. This line is acutally a little nicer looking on average and is NOT compatable with all the other caramel lines. So you can work with caramels at some point in the future without dealing with the kinking issue.

Nick

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Originally Posted by Nick Mutton

On the Caramels, there is a second type of caramel that does not kink. This second line was actually the very first caramel lineage to be imported, and the line pre-dates almost every other ball morph. This lineage nearly was lost but they are now being produced in very small numbers. This line is acutally a little nicer looking on average and is NOT compatable with all the other caramel lines. So you can work with caramels at some point in the future without dealing with the kinking issue.

Nick

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Do you know who's working with them off hand?

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Originally Posted by Nick Mutton

For the record I am aware that there is a difference between the siper issue and human parkinsons disease, I made the comparison to help make my point. Nobody would intentionally try to make a child with parkinsons, why is it acceptable or even desirable to produce similar results in ball pythons?

On the Caramels, there is a second type of caramel that does not kink. This second line was actually the very first caramel lineage to be imported, and the line pre-dates almost every other ball morph. This lineage nearly was lost but they are now being produced in very small numbers. This line is acutally a little nicer looking on average and is NOT compatable with all the other caramel lines. So you can work with caramels at some point in the future without dealing with the kinking issue.

Nick

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Interesting I'm curious to know who is working with them and how if they are being produced in such small number can they certain they don't have a kinking problem. It would be very exciting to learn more about this.

The line has been around since at least the early 90s, in fact this in was the original line that the "caramel " name was given to. The original WC founder provend very difficult to breed and it took many years to get the project going. in those years the other type of caramels started popping up in africa and very quickly became established. This original line was first owned by Ernie Wagner and the name "caramel" was first coined for it in about 1995.

I know the guy that breeds them , but he is a bit of a recluse and may not want his name mentioned.
GHI reptiles has one from this line pictured on their website if anyone wants to see it.

Nick

I think too much wobble would be when it affects eating or anything like that negatively! Otherwise i like the wobbling spiders it gives them some character!:gj: