I still haven't really made up my mind when it comes to spiders, as I own one myself, and her wobbling is very limited and hardly even there. Can go months before I see any wobbling at all.. so it seems that the degree of it varies a lot from spider to spider.

However, the question to breeding morphs that shows defects connected with that gene should be debated. Is it right to keep on breeding animals with defects, just because they are beautiful? And I'm not thinking mainly about spiders, but also other animals who suffers from humans aggressive ways of breeding beyond all common sense when it comes to their pets appearances. The English Bulldog and similar breeds are just a few of the examples where selective breeding has gone way too far and animals are suffering badly.

But, I'm gonna stay to the reptile-part for now.
This year, I've been testing out the morph enigma with Leopard geckos. I got 3 enigmas from Denmark, 1 female who seems perfectly fine, 1 male that seems a little delusional, and the last male who's really out trippin' and being crazy.
Enigmas have something called "circling", which makes them walk around in circles, some more than others. Everybody in the leopardgecko business told me not to worry about it. (I had never heard of it until I actually saw it in my own geckos and asked wth they were doing)
so, I bred the males to my females, and the babies started to hatch for about 1 month ago, and I still have 5 eggs left in the incubator from one of my enigmas.
About 2 months ago I tried to breed my albino female to one of the enigmas, as she was ready for some love. This was when I started to really worry and think twice if breeding this trait is a good idea after all... The male was circling, biting into the substrate (paper towels), trying to mount her the wrong way, and completely making an ass outta himself while he was struggling insanely. After 15 minutes I separated them and gave up. The male was still biting into the paper towels and trying to hump them..
His circling gets worse when he's excited, just like the spider morph..

Now, I know it may seem funny, but to me, it was devastating. This is not a healthy animal. He didn't know what was what, was completely deranged, not acting like a normal, healthy leopardgecko at all, even during a sexy-time try.

So the babies started to hatch out last month, all of them are very pretty and I have about 5 enigmas.. All except 1 have the circling part. And 2 of them seems to have a trouble with balancing overall, they hardly eat, and they are completely terrified of me even though I'm handling them very gentle. The normal gecko babies both this year and last calmed down pretty fast, but these enigmas are a :cens0r: to tame, and I'm really worried that they are eating so poorly.


So, my bottom line is that from now on, I won't support gene defects from a morph, no matter how pretty it is. I think as animal owners and as animal breeders, we should firstly think of the health of these animals. Seeing the enigma alone is a proof that many within the reptile business surely doesn't focus on the overall health at all, and that really worries me. We have let that go so far with the dog and cat breeds, and it will kill me to see that the reptile hobby seems to be going the same way. The selfishness that some people have, the obsession that completely overruns all common sense, is just disgusting.

I love morphs, as long as they are healthy! I haven't seen a very badly spider-wobbling just yet, as my spider shows almost little or none symptoms.. and compared to the enigmas, that wobbling is 100% possible to live with and still have a normal life. Circling, on the other hand, is animal cruelty without a doubt, and from my point of view shouldn't be bred on at all.