Spider x Spider??

[OhhWatALoser]

A buddy of mine paired Spinnerblast to spider this year got 6 eggs. 5 babies were deformed or died through incubation and he hatched one normal. It may have been temp related issues but personally I stay away from spider to spider pairings. Myth or not....its take a long time to produce hatchlings and I would hate to lose a clutch trying to figure out if it is a myth or not.

Chance of those 5 out of 6 eggs being homozygous spider would be quite slim, obviously it could happen but sounds like another issue.

Spider x Spider is just plain not a good idea. Advice from many breeders will be to avoid that pairing.

Spiders alone have enough neurological deficits. We don't really need "Super" forms of them floating around to further muck up the gene pool.

Where do these other breeder draw their conclusions from? If the spider is a dominant trait, how would the super "muck" up anything worse than the heterozygous?

[CD CONSTRICTORS]

Where do these other breeder draw their conclusions from? If the spider is a dominant trait, how would the super "muck" up anything worse than the heterozygous?

I believe "they" are drawing their conclusions from breeding BP's for 20+ years, and doing so with Spiders when there were only a handful of them known to be around.

Not everything that happens in this business is publicly advertised information, so just because you don't see a Harvard study on it doesnt mean anything one way or another, but I like and trust the information I have heard first hand.

Next we'll be breeding for Super Desert females.....

[OhhWatALoser]

I ask because it seems like everyone proof is the absence of evidence. What information did they come across in the last 20 years? I don't need a study I need something that says someone actually tried because that doesn't exist publicly.

[OctagonGecko729]

Not that this matters to the thread but I'm just curious. OWAL have you planned to do any on mass experiments with spider x spider? If I had the resources I might try to do it but that won't be for another 2-4 years.

[Neal]

Thats kind of what I'm hoping for: homo spders. But I'd still be more comfortable hearing a personal account of someone breeding spider x spider??

Man it's not nice to want gay things, lol!! Completely out of context

[OhhWatALoser]

Not that this matters to the thread but I'm just curious. OWAL have you planned to do any on mass experiments with spider x spider? If I had the resources I might try to do it but that won't be for another 2-4 years.

I don't plan on it but, I know of 1 person that claims to be in the process of trying to prove out some offspring form a spider x spider clutch and another that seems to have serious plans of doing it also. However I may have some pin x pin eggs in a couple weeks .

[SMDminnesota]

Spider seems to be linked to some form of head wobble. The head wobble, as I understand it, is on a spectrum from non-noticeable to quite the wobble. If the homozygous form the spider gene is lethal then you wouldn't see that portion of the punnet square show up at all. It would appear that you'd get 66% spiders and 33% normals statistically. In reality you'd be getting 50% spiders, 25% normals, and 25% (super) spiders that never made it to the egg stage. Being a homozygous (super) spider would mean that the embryo is non-viable and would stop in development early. If a spiderXspider cross was done then all the spiders would be het spider (visual) and the homozygous (super) spiders wouldn't have made it that far.

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Keep in mind I'm far from a ball python expert but I do study genetics. I'd love to study lethal/wonky BP genes in depth to fully understand what the root causes for some of the issues are.

[PweEzy]

I think at this point, with spiders being valued what they are, why would anyone still consider this pairing? I mean, everyone is aware of the spider wobble and a spider to spider will only produce a spider at best, I have to imagine any other pairing would be more worth the time? Why risk losing a season of eggs from a spider female only to be the first to hatch ONLY a spider from that pairing. Just saying...

[Marrissa]

I think at this point, with spiders being valued what they are, why would anyone still consider this pairing? I mean, everyone is aware of the spider wobble and a spider to spider will only produce a spider at best, I have to imagine any other pairing would be more worth the time? Why risk losing a season of eggs from a spider female only to be the first to hatch ONLY a spider from that pairing. Just saying...

Spider combo X spider combo? Doesn't have to be plain spider to plain spider.

I was thinking about this the other day and wondering the same as you SMDminnesota if it's 66% spider and 33% normal or if it's still 50/50 from a spider pairing. I wish someone would crack the case on the whole homozygous spider/pin debate. I'm very curious.

[SMDminnesota]

They did. Some guy did a breeding project with spider. It's on these forums from at least a month ago if not more. He had a sample size of an absurd number of spider breedings. I want to say ~1000. Plus if homozygous of either weren't lethal then they would be up on the classifieds with more popularity than the heterozygous counterparts.