Super Morphs

[Eric Alan]

At some point in the future "super fires" will saturate the market and will retail at PetCo/PetsMart for <$100. "Super-duper fires" will then be all the rage and will sell on FaunaClassifieds for >$500.

Only not. Super Fire is the most complete example of the Fire morph. There will be other genes, yes, but the Fire gene itself is leveled up as far as it can go.

Professional reptile breeders are in a race against each other to produce colors/patterns which are rare or non-existent.

Perhaps. However, I like to think that we're all in this together.

Re "a good snake to breed" ... for what purpose? To turn a profit? Probably yes. However, I think we should first educate ourselves more on the unintended consequences of inbreeding, genetic erosion, etc. Spider morphs, for example, exhibit a very obvious and physical flaw. How many other morphs have flaws which are less obvious and/or not physical?

The behaviors linked with the Spider morph are not a result of "inbreeding, genetic erosion, etc". The Spider morph has been out-crossed probably more than any other morph, yet the behaviors still exist. Said traits are genetically linked to the mutation itself - nothing more. In regards to your comment on the larger "unintended consequences of inbreeding, genetic erosion, etc", the color and pattern morphs that are desirable in this hobby are largely unaffected by out-crossing, making it a regular practice. A Pastel looks like a Pastel because that's its phenotype - not because it's been line-bred to look like a Pastel. To make a correlation, it's not like we're trying to line breed mixed-breed dogs together in order to eventually end up with one purebred animal. Also, it's important to point out that inbreeding itself does not cause issues. It only brings out underlying issues that had been present the entire time.

The healthiest breeders are probably normals, but try turning a profit (or even breaking even) with normals.

I don't even know where to begin. That's like saying the healthiest humans have straight, thick hair and broad noses because that's what the Neanderthals looked like. It's just not true. For the most part, the mutations which we are so fond of in this hobby have zero impact on our animal's quality of life in captivity.