never breeding causing early death?

[Alicia]

Jay from the reptile zoo/ prehistoric pets states that his large retic twinkie died at an early age possibly due to never breeding her early on. He claims in the breeding season she would go off food, swell, etc. and would go back to normal. Also that when her swell would come down her follicles possibly would not go back to normal size and kept growing each year causing problems in the long run and premature death. I was wondering your takes on it and if true, could this carry over in theory to all pythons in the pet trade? would you think everyones "pet" ball python would suffer a shorter lifespan?

Yeah . . . I don't believe that even for a second. Maybe I'm being waaay too skeptical. There are enough very long-lived pythons (and other types of snake) that have never been bred or only bred late in life for me to discount the generalities of that idea on anecdote alone. It's vaguely possible for an individual snake to have a weird ovarian defect. It's more likely for a captive snake to become obese and die of complications. . . . And obesity does, of course, also have the potential to lead to reproductive complications.