Quote Originally Posted by sungmina View Post
So... I'm new here and can't say I know a lot about breeding Ball Pythons, but I know about breeding ethics especially with dogs (German Shepherds in particular.)

While I may be biased, I think spiders are an amazing morph of ball python (I currently only own one BP and it is a spider.) I understand that spiders are notorious for having a wobble to some degree, I also understand that in the VAST majority of spiders, this wobble does not affect the quality of life in the animal in any way.

Now I'm not saying that it should just be overlooked, but I think that the spider morph is one that is important enough (to the creation of other morphs) and beautiful enough on its own to be valued by the BP community. I simply do not see the point in bashing those who choose to breed the morph to the point of demonizing these people.

German Shepherds were brought up in an earlier post as having hip displasia and then someone else remarked that the dogs with the 'hip displasia gene' were not bred. This is simply not true, not because there are irresponsible breeders breeding animals with hip displasia, but because they don't know exactly what causes it. While they try to place dogs together with healthy hips, it does not always result in puppies with healthy hips and vice versa.
There may be an enviromental factor that coincides with a genetic pre-disposition that can agrevate the underlying genetic disease. There are two enviromental factors that have in the past been considered a contributor to causing the disease to progress. Overfeeding and allowing the use of stairs when the animals are still growing. The latter usually was only a factor in large breeds like Mastiffs.

All effort should be taken to avoid breeding animals who are known to have the issue since you cannot say for sure how much of it was caused by poor genetics and how much was caused by enviroment. Sometimes this cannot be avoided as dogs may not show the disease until after they have already had offspring. So in some sense it is not entirely avoidable. But one should try.

I do not have a problem with people breeding spyders. I accept the testimony of those who have when they say the snake does not suffer for it.

However....

Do we know that there are no long term, linked affects of snakes that have the wobble? Could some other disease manifest itself that would affect the snakes longevity? How long before we know the long term affects of this genetic defect? Can we make any definitive conclusions without studying the snakes for their entire life cycle?

Do we even know what the wobble is? Is it neurological? Is it a muscle defect? Combo of both?