i have a predisposition to never want any spiders or morphs

[Seven-Thirty]

If I could find the blogpost about it i'd post it but it seems to have disappeared from the realm of the internet. The all white snake is, what is believed to be, the super spider. A little background, it has been more or less accepted that the spider mutation has occured twice in two types of pythons. The carpet python and the ball python being the jaguar and spider morphs respectively. The jaguar carpet python has the same tendency to wobble just like the spider and the super jaguar carpet is a homozygous lethal which results in a dead leucistic snake. From what I remember, the dead white snake fails to develop lungs and as a result dies. There are no known living super jaguars. Now there has been cases of white snakes occuring from spider x spider but it is extremely rare for the embryo to even hit that stage it seems.

As for that report, I haven't read it in a while but from what I remember the conclusion is inconclusive and that it doesn't not create a controlled enviornment to determine which spiders are affected by the wobble. i.e. A default environment that all the tested snakes will be kept in and monitored. It also just takes people's account of their spiders not taking into account how those spiders are kept and the individual keeper's hunsbandry practices. I mean, they asked 100 people and only 13 responded and who knows how they keep their snakes. It is known that environment is a big factor in how bad the wobble manifests in that a spider that shows virtually no wobble can have the worst wobble ever if the husbandry isn't to the T. Imo that report should
be thrown out and not taken as fact due to the lack of the scientific method. It is based of a questionaire with no real evidence being presented.

Again, spiders do great, have no problems thriving and, if anything, it is a visual indicator of stress imo. I have yet to hear of a spider actually dying from the wobble alone. Most of the time when I hear a spider can't, it's either the ownrr just being impatient to let the spider figure out where the rat is after it constricts. A spider isn't dumb and still knows how to eat, even though it looks wonky or takes it a bit longer than the rest. My spider does the little wobble while it attempts to swallow but it still eats faster than some of my non-wobblers who lose track of the rat and spend like half an hour trying to find it.

To reiterate, there's nothing inheritly wrong with the spider from a thriving and quality of life standpoint. Non-wobblers that have a wobble tend to do a lot worse than the mutations that have wobbles.

[BBotteron]

I love the response Seven-Thirty! I just wish there was more scientific evidence to kind of...put it to rest I should say? Maybe in 10 years we'll have an "official" answer to the homozygous spider. I guess we shall see lol


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[Seven-Thirty]

I love the response Seven-Thirty! I just wish there was more scientific evidence to kind of...put it to rest I should say? Maybe in 10 years we'll have an "official" answer to the homozygous spider. I guess we shall see lol


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The problem with that is that the ball python genome isn't mapped and everything about the genetic side is all from anecdotal evidence seen from breedings. In theory the super spider should exist and the only logical explanaition at this point is that it is a homozygous lethal that fails to even develop to fetal stage 99% of the time. The other theory is that it is dominant like pinstripe but there hasn't been a proven super spider ever in the history of the hobby so yeah...

[BBotteron]

So technically how do we even know if the spider is co or dom?


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[Seven-Thirty]

So technically how do we even know if the spider is co or dom?


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Well dominant just means that the homozygous (super) form looks the same as the heterozygous and since here hasn't been a proven super spider that looks like a regular spider and there hasn't been something that has hatched from a spider x spider clutch that isn't a spider or
normal, it is safe to assume that the super spider is a homozygous lethal and therefore a co-dominant trait.

No matter what the allele is, it has to fall under a locus that has two pairs of alleles. So no matter what the mutation is there will always be some sort of homozygous form whether it is a dominant, co-dominante/incomplete dominant or a homozygous lethal.

ALSO: spider does have an allelic combo in the form of black head in that black head x spider can produce an allelic snake that looks almost normal and has no wobble either. It's a weird complex.

[cchardwick]

Well despite the defects I have to say that the spider gene is one of the most beautiful out there. Here's a photo of my Jungle Woma spider female, I paired her with a Spider Pied male. Hopefully in the next month or two she will lay eggs. It will be interesting to see if I produce a white super spider!

[Trisnake]

Honestly, it's so insanely rare to produce an animal with problems thriving because of a wobble that it's practically a non-issue. The neuro associated with the wobble only really affect the animals ability to tell up from down, an issue more with their balance, and usually only becomes apparent when the animal is stressed, suddenly flipped upside down, placed in non-shallow water, etc. I've personally NEVER known anyone with (nor heard any true stories of) animals who's wobble was so severe that it affected their quality of life. There are definitely some animals out there with severe wobble but like I said I've never known one to not eat specifically because of the wobble, and anyone who had ever claimed to have a snake die because their wobble preventing eating never had any evidence to prove it.

Any breeder I've talked to and know would never sell an animal with a significant wobble without full disclosure, and honestly a lot just give them away to experienced homes or keep them as pets themselves.

[Trisnake]

It will be interesting to see if I produce a white super spider!

Sorry to say the super spider is a lethal combo Seven-Thirty did a good job explaining it, the spider gene in ball pythons is analogous to the jaguar gene in carpet pythons and both are lethal in the homozygous form.

[AntTheDestroyer]

Well dominant just means that the homozygous (super) form looks the same as the heterozygous and since here hasn't been a proven super spider that looks like a regular spider and there hasn't been something that has hatched from a spider x spider clutch that isn't a spider or
normal, it is safe to assume that the super spider is a homozygous lethal and therefore a co-dominant trait.

No matter what the allele is, it has to fall under a locus that has two pairs of alleles. So no matter what the mutation is there will always be some sort of homozygous form whether it is a dominant, co-dominante/incomplete dominant or a homozygous lethal.

ALSO: spider does have an allelic combo in the form of black head in that black head x spider can produce an allelic snake that looks almost normal and has no wobble either. It's a weird complex.

This is not entirely correct. First complete dominant is to incomplete dominant as poisonous is to venomous.

Dominance is not only that the heterozygous from looks just like a homozygous form, but more importantly you will have a homozygous which is phenotypicaly identical to a heterozygous that will produce 100 percent heterozygous animals when bred to an animal not carrying that gene. In this case if spider is a dominant morph you should be able to produce an animal that appears to be a spider but will produce no non spider offspring. Following if the homozygous is in fact lethal there is no way to prove Dominance short of finding and preforming genetic testing on a dead homozygous embryo.

[cchardwick]

Sorry to say the super spider is a lethal combo Seven-Thirty did a good job explaining it, the spider gene in ball pythons is analogous to the jaguar gene in carpet pythons and both are lethal in the homozygous form.

So if you produce a 'super spider' will that result in a slug, an infertile egg that looks good, or does it develop into a white snake and just perish before it hatches?