Quote Originally Posted by Serpent_Nirvana View Post
I've been thinking of posting something like this for awhile, but this thread really got me thinking ...

How far do we go as far as the artificial manipulation of ball pythons in a captive breeding situation?

... By that I mean:

Morphs are now commonly accepted and embraced, but I believe there was a time when even they were viewed as "unnatural." Many of those who kept reptiles did so for the joy of seeing something very natural, very unchanged by man, in a captive setting, and of reproducing that animal in a manner as close to nature as possible. Deliberate propagation of a mutation that would be unlikely to survive in the wild would be viewed by such keepers as an anathema to their goals. ... To my knowledge, many raptor breeders still feel this way.

Now, clearly the modern tide of reptile keeping is towards "morphs, morphs, morphs," and as much artificial selection for the BEST quality of said morphs as possible. We are trending more towards what domestic animal breeders do, with setting an end-goal with self imposed standards and breeding towards that. There is no external artificial manipulation on a molecular level, but we certainly do artificially select. It's survival of the prettiest.

... My question is, how artificial do we get with all of this? What level of manipulation do we as reptile keepers tolerate, and at what point do we say, "Nope, this is just too weird?" (Or "wrong," if that's your feeling?)

We have no problem manipulating the environment of the animals to get them to cycle; that's just mimicking their natural habitat. ... What about direct hormonal manipulations? Would you be willing to use hormone injections to cycle your females? ... It's par for the course in cattle. (I think it might be commonplace in frog breeding, too ..?)

If you're okay with that, what about artificial insemination? (Or maybe you're okay with AI, but not hormone cycling.) It's probably never going to happen, but if you could go onto NERD's website and buy a straw of banana Enchi soul sucker semen ... Would you? What about just for your own collection, to ensure adequate mating? (Note, live cover is actually usually more effective than AI )

... Then what about on a molecular level? Would you do a DNA test to see if your 50% possible het female actually carried the gene? Or is that "cheating?"

Would you buy a GFP (green flourescent protein), glow in the dark ball python? (... I finally put a blacklight on my GFP axolotl's tank -- I gotta say, it IS pretty cool!)

Or, do you think we've reached the pinnacle of our artificial manipulation, and any more is overkill?
I don't think there's anything wrong with the things you mention above. The one thing I worry about is BP's becoming weak from excessive line breeding and inbreeding. This happened with Angel Fish back in, I think it was the 1980's. I remember there being a big die off, wiping out many different Morphs.

From what I've seen of PB breeders, they seem very responsible in their breeding choices. I think the genetic pool we have for PB's is varied enough to make strong, healthy animals. We've only just begun though. As the chain of Morphs in a BP's genetic make up becomes longer, inbreeding will become more attractive as a quick way to pair up genes.

The rule of thumb I learned long ago is to outcross after two line breedings or after one inbreeding.