Quote Originally Posted by darkbloodwyvern View Post
I bet high white pieds get eaten a lot faster in the wild than their low white sibs. So are the low whites defective too, or just less defective? I'm kidding, but also curious... They're both pied, obviously.
This speaks to the heart of the question. Nature selects mutations for success or failure based on their ability to survive and procreate - in the wild. Man chooses to remove the environmental pressures inherent in the predator/prey relationship, thus allowing certain mutations to continue because he deems them desirable. Thus, man becomes the arbiter of evolution - to a degree.

Unfortunately, it has been proven throughout history that man is a rotten arbiter of such things, and that unforeseen (and damaging) genetic traits can and do occur in those species that he has genetically manipulated.

The idea that wobbling and the spider morphology are somehow 'natural' is a red herring. It occurs in the wild, but who here really knows whether nature would select it out? I suspect that a neurologic disorder like this in a snake would increase the chance of predation, and reduce the chance that the spider morph would continue as a sub-type. But what do I know.