Is It Good To Take Your BP Out For A Walk ?

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Originally Posted by Mike41793

Thats not a can of worms bc theres no debate to be had...

Its a fact that without importation we wouldnt have any morphs, or balls in general. Im not aware of any native ball python populations in the US???

Do i think the heavy importation of CH babies being sold to petstores should stop? Absolutely! I dont find it necessary at all. So i agree that mass importation should be stopped, but not importation all together.

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That is more of what I meant -- the mass importation of reptiles in general -- the huge numbers of iguanas, CWDs, and various snakes. Selective importation for breeding purposes is a different thing entirely and I should have been more clear on that. What I am against is the vast numbers of imports thrown into the pet trade and that's really what I meant by importation.

As far as having some defensive/aggressive temperament snakes in a clutch from two calm parents, yes, that is going to happen. I do think, however, that if you breed only the calmest from that group, than after multiple generations you'll have primarily calm animals. This is what I would really like to see done with green iguanas, but I think it applies to most animals. You will always have animals that have some of those traits (dogs have been domesticated millennia and yet we still hear of dogs that have issues). But, I think *overall* over time and generations you would produce predominately calm animals.

I have actually seen this done by 'little ray' Goulet he has been breeding african rock pythons and started with the two calmest he could find and has for a number of years breeding the calmest to calmest and I have handled his and well it is calm. like a burm calm. He uses them for out reach programs.

I'd just slap a really heavy import tax on them. Nobody can complain. We're used to paying more than $500 for a morph, so a cool WC female with a new base morph would well be worth the 200 to import it. The pet stores wouldn't be able to sell the snakes, as they wouldn't be able to pay to replace all the normals that die in their care. And people who want normals can just buy captive breds. The only people who it might hurt are the African snake catchers, but let's not get into that.