Quote Originally Posted by MrLang View Post
This is a pretty cool scenario in the human population. I come from a school of thought where people considered humans to have stopped being selected for a long time ago, so forgive me if I came off as not being on board with what you're saying. I don't disagree with you, but I don't have enough specific knowledge on it to really say much else about it. I think you agree with me on the larger point I was trying to draw attention to, which is about dumb luck. What makes the spider gene different from other evolutionary adaptations is that it hasn't 'proven' itself as superior and most likely never will. Based on what we know about why BPs act and are colored the way they are, it seems unlikely to be able to safely speculate that they WOULD have an advantage that would be considered evolutionary in their native habitat .

@Mike - Sorry, I mentioned in my first post that I only care enough to point out that your theory is less than rational and unsupported, to be polite. You're the one carrying the burden of proof and took it on with your opening post.

The last thing I'll throw out there to consider is whether or not we'd even be having this discussion if the color pattern on the spider morph looked like a normal bp color. Would you breed wobbly normals and market them as such? Do you think people would buy them? Come on...

Going to respectfully dip out at this time, as this is going nowhere fast. Domepiece- cool stuff. I'm going to check out more about sickle cell. I'm curious to know how high the percent of sickle carriers can get in the most highly selected community.
Good point. I dont believe the spider gene to be superior by any means. Only that even mutations that are nolonger exhibited can be carried along dormant within the genomes of living creatures and can present themselves later down the evolutionary chain and alot of species exhibit very strange survival tactics that would be considered dysfunctional to humans only because we dont understand the reason for them. I guess my point of speculation is that the spider gene may simply be a throwback to an early existence where it may have been useful for a period of time when there were different environmental, prey, and predatory conditions. I dont know exactly how far back the fossil records go for ball pythons and their ancestors but I'm sure they have been around long enough for many different mutations to occur. There is just so many variables and lack of research on this subject this type of speculation could go on for ever. I do know what you are saying and am inclined to agree with you, I'm just covering the other end.