Scale-less BP photo!

[Mike41793]

I'm not really a fan of it personally but i wont tell someone else not to do something because i wouldn't want them telling me not to do something. If you're gunna freak out over this then you have to freak out over previous scaleless snakes that have been made, hybrids that couldnt occur naturally, spiders wobbling and every other defect that has a chance of occuring in balls... Also you should branch out and be sure to get your panties in a bunch over other stuff like all the dumb AKC standards that have gotten dogs to be bred to look so deformed. I'm sure i could find stuff in EVERY animal hobby that people could freak out over. But honestly, whats the point? If you don't like it, just don't pay any attention to it... Simple as that.

[Pythonfriend]

uuuuuh.... since i last checked the thread, lots of strawmans are coming up. in some cases people exaggerate and distort what other people say.

here a statement i fully agree with:

The whole thing about dogs that was brought up, well with some breeds the point of no return has been reached, and it should be illegal, were at the point where the only way they can reproduce is by cutting them open because they can no longer give birth naturally, its sick. And thats where were headed with ball pythons, and corns and all of these other 'designer' snakes.

We have already gone this far, its here, its here to stay, I just hope it stops here. And maybe its not all that bad, maybe I just have an extremist view here, I dont know, but it will be interesting to see how the rest of the herp community reacts to this. I just hope that these animals are anatomically correct, minus the scales, and as we all can see by the picture, it doesn't have heat pits so were already screwing with that. It will be interesting to see how the animal develops.

100% agreed


The thing with Spider is: We breed them for the optics, and we justify it because in most cases the wobble is very slight. like the occasional head tilt. many show only a slight wobble when excited about food. But most importantly: noone tries to breed spiders that wobble and corcscrew like crazy.

or, super cinnamon / super black pastel: yes they have a duckbill rather often, and very rare spine kinks. Now the duckbill would be something that probarbly can be line-bred into larger and more extreme duckbills. a bit like the flat-faced pekinese dogs or the tiny legged dachshund. We could go down that road and make a shovelhead breed of BPs. We dont. instead people are proud when they have super cinnys that show no duckbill at all.

so its MAINLY about the optics, and we accept some health issues / anatomic issues because they only occur infrequently and most animals are not affected by it. When we do a risky morph or combo, we HOPE for the 90%+ of cases where the BP is totally fine and accept a few percentage points of risk that come with it.

Even then, many breeders avoid the issues alltogether, even if they want the optics. To go for patternless black, they save up for mahogany or GHI instead of doing a super black pastel. To go for a BEL, they go for lesser mojave or russo white diamond to avoid super lessers. Some avoid spider, and instead go for high-white calico, or pinstripe.

and all is fine. some people avoid a risk of 5% of getting a deformity, others dont and hope for the best and that is acceptable.


The key difference, the fundamental game-changer, and i think also the reason for the controversy is that with scaleless, we now have a form that has a 100% chance for not one, but two serious defects.

100% chance that the heat pits are gone and 100% chance that the belly scales are gone. many people argue "all morphs are defects, this is no different from any other morph". that argument does not work, there is a real difference: there are many spiders that are virtually free of wobble, and we do not breed them for the wobble. and we do not breed super cinnys for the duckbill, and many dont have one.

that is the core difference between scaleless and any other BP morph. Scaleless BPs do not have a morph issue like: "sometimes diminished heat-pits; and a few of them also have reduced or partially missing belly scales". its much more drastic: all heat pits gone in 100% of the cases, all belly scales gone in 100% of the cases.

This is where scaleless crosses the line and becomes a singularity, a morph more extreme than any other morph with possible defects. And a morph that cannot be compared in a meaningful way to any other morph with possible defects known so far.

if scaleless BPs would have belly scales and heat pits, it would be a totally different story. thats why it also cannot be compared to scaleless corn snakes and scaleless texas rats in a meaningful way. they keep their belly scales and also some scales around their mouth, and they do not have heat pits anyway. they do not have the issues that we have with this line of scaleless BPs.

i like the discussion and i think the discussion is needed, but some statements and arguments are not helpful.

"all morphs are defects, this is no different!" <-- not helpful.
"its just like scaleless corns or hairless rats" <-- not particularly helpful, because... no.
"if you dont like scaleless, stop breeding alltogether" <-- wooot? no.
"we breed morphs with defects all the time" <-- true to a degree, but when we do, we dont AIM for the defect, we accept a certain risk but hope for the best, so its not the same.
"BPs often die in the egg or shortly after hatching" <-- again, not helpful, because that cannot be avoided. we dont do it intentionally.
"its unnatural, wouldnt survive in the wild" <-- also not helpful, its about pets, a white snake would also have problems.
"all morphs are natural and come from Africa and occasionally occur in nature" <-- doesnt help to decide what to do with the most extreme BP morph ever discovered.


this one is not like any other morph, its very very VERY different. i dont think truisms and blanket statements and pointing to the spider morph will be helpful in figuring it out.

[snakeman13]

The spider was not a big public youtube announcement. After the snake starts eating and shedding, Brian put himself into a position were he will have to own up to all the questions people have.

Allelic genes are now an issue?

Also quite the accusations both you make. The irony of saying "big breeder", just say their name or are you going to keep quite also?

I have no problem naming names.
The breeder I am speaking of is very, very well known.
He has had a few misadventures in the reptile industry.
His name is, Craig Stewart of the "Urban" industry.

[Expensive hobby]

Yeah, but you still keep snakes, who belong in the wild in a snake so your saying sometimes going against nature is okay, but only if you agree with the degree

You are stretching an already weak argument way to thin. To that point, all animals should be let in the wild, because they ALL at some point came from the wild. What's wrong with this kindergarten country and people's inability to reason without jumping to extremes.

My view, it is ok to keep animals, as long as you do so in a manner that keeps quality of life paramount and you do not do things to them or with them that infringes on that quality. Breeding a snake purposefully to be anatomically incomplete is where I draw the line.

I have iterated and reiterated this point time and time again; pretty paint jobs are ok, breeding the snake to be without its most basic anatomical features is not.


Sent From an Enclosure

[Bugmom]

I refuse to knowingly work with any of the morphs that OWAL listed, because I refuse to knowingly breed an animal that could have a neurological problem or physical deformity. That isn't a "Oops, this one has an issue," that's, "I don't care if this one has an issue, it LOOKS good, so breed it." I personally couldn't do it because it would weigh too heavy on my conscious (I also couldn't dock a dog's tail or crop it's ears). That's the same reason I dislike people who have taken the dachshund breed so far from what it should be; a standard doxie doesn't have 3" long legs and the other physical characteristics that people decided they needed to have that did NOT contribute to the health of the animal, but instead caused MORE problems. And maybe I'm a hypocrite because I allowed my daughter to buy a hairless dumbo rat, but in my defense, I thought this was a naturally occurring animal and not one that had been purposefully bred to be this way. I found that out after Pinky became part of our family. But I would not ever breed this species knowing that, even though Pinky has a happy and healthy life and no health issues.

If this scaleless BP proves to have no health problems, then I'll feel a whole lot more comfortable about it existing. Until then, I'm just not comfortable with it. I'm really curious to know how it is going to move without belly scales, cause right now, I imagine it moving about as well as an eel let loose on a greased floor.

[Crotalids]

The spider was not a big public youtube announcement. After the snake starts eating and shedding, Brian put himself into a position were he will have to own up to all the questions people have.

Allelic genes are now an issue?

Also quite the accusations both you make. The irony of saying "big breeder", just say their name or are you going to keep quite also?

I don't have a problem with saying Brian's name, the reason I didn't is because all big breeders at the same. Only care about money and not the animals.

Any individual that bred the spider, and released it to the public is an idiot. The moment where that gene showed head wobbles etc, it should've been stopped, there and then. But no, of course, these guys don't care about the animals like I said, they only care about money.

Who knows what problems these scaleless BP's will have, because they 100% won't be telling you, guess you'll have to find out once they're cheap enough for the public to afford.

[Rockstars]

Barring problems. I personally think it would be a great addition to my collection and look forward to seeing what comes of it.

[Kodieh]

This high horse you guys are riding, with this false sense of morality you have come up with against the scaleless gene I'm appalled at the entire lot of you.

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[trevo]

This high horse you guys are riding, with this false sense of morality you have come up with against the scaleless gene I'm appalled at the entire lot of you.

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I'm happy to see others point of view and I do. The people who say its okay to do somethings that aren't natural but not others are living in the gray because its easier to not take a clear stance. I'm more black and white on this. Either its okay do it all or none of its okay. From keeping snakes as pets, to genetically altering them. Black and white. If taking them out of the wild and putting them in a cage is okay, messing with genes through breeding is okay. If mutating the genes in captivity is bad because its not natural, then keeping them as pets all together is bad because its NOT natural. Everything in between the 2 extremes are just distinctions with out a difference.

Ill say it again, so long as the experimentation isn't for the sole purpose of harming the animal then I'm open.

[4theSNAKElady]

Thank you! He's so surreal. Almost looks like a sculpture.

Moot, we must have the same way of thinking . It definately looks unreal....like either its a 3-D watercolor painting or that its made from clay.

sent from my incubator