Inbreeding. Is it ok with snakes?

[asplundii]

Okay, I am going to buck the system a little here...

Cold blooded animals are very different from warm blooded animals,

"Bloodedness" has nothing to do with susceptibility/resistance to inbreeding. Inbreeding is about genetics and the genetics of snakes is no different than the genetics of dog. Genetics is genetics is genetics.

However, in the wild isolated population generally interbreed without issue,

No, no they do not. This is a flawed argument that is used to justify inbreeding in captivity. Wild populations are not commonly inbreeding unless they are genetically isolate (island populations, geographic trap, etc.)

I had a very long explanation of this on another forum but, unfortunately, that forum is no longer accessible. The short version though is that no animal is so sedentary that it and its offspring are likely to frequently encounter one another.

Ball pythons can, and do, travel around. Especially males and especially during the breeding season. I cannot remember the exact back of envelope calculations in my old post but if you assume 1.1 survivors from a given clutch reach adulthood to breed and account for just a fraction of the potential travel of that 1.1 and both of their parents then you end up with something like an estimated 5-15km of distance between any possible pairing of sibling/parent. So the actual likelihood of inbreeding it much lower in the wild than people claim.

so line breeding is fine of course it's only fine if you have genetically sound animals, common sense would tell you that is some animals with issues are produced you would not want to line breed those specific animals.

This, however, I can support. However, take note that the bolded part is the catch... How do you know your animals are 100% genetically sound??


Now, with all of that said... Can you inbreed? Sure. Can it cause problems? Absolutely. Will those problems necessarily show up immediately? No. Will they show up eventually? Most likely. As long as you are fully aware of all of these points then you can make the decision as to whether you want to inbreed or not. Personally, I do not see 1-2 generations of inbreeding being too terrible, but if I can avoid them by outcrossing (like by buying an unrelated mate of the same morph) then I am going to opt for outcrossing every time.