IHS - FBH - Spider Morph Ban & others

[Regius_049]

I will join those on saying this is a good thing and I think will help the community moving forward, and here is why -

1. This "ban" is coming from the IHS and FBH, which are organizations made up of reptile keepers and advocate for the responsible keeping of reptiles and amphibians. They are similar to USARK in the United States as I understand it. They are not AR organizations, which as most know, would rather we didn't have animals of any kind. With that in mind, this, from my perspective, is an example of the community policing its own against potentially problematic practices.

(A) Whether you agree with this particular move or not, I think most can agree the ideal is to have the community police its own and not someone else (government, AR, etc.).

(B) If the community (reptile keepers) do come under attack in the public eye for whatever reason, it seems to me, moves like this would help instill confidence among the general populace that keepers are trying to do the right thing.

2. The "ban" is not really a ban. People are still allowed to keep, sell, and breed spider ball pythons in the UK, just not at these sponsored events. If you want a spider, you can still easily get one.

3. As others have noted, the spider morph is the most well-known defect seen in morph breeding and thus comes under the most scrutiny, generally speaking. It may be a "starting point" for banning morphs at IHS/FBH events and it may not. I think the "slippery slope" argument is a bit misplaced here due to, as noted above, (A) this is coming from reptile keeper organizations, and (B) If they had banned all 'deleterious' morphs, i.e. spider, champagne, woma, etc., would that have been an improvement to those against the move or have changed your mind? While perhaps more consistent, I am guessing it would not have changed the opinion of the 'pro-spider' crowd.

Personally, I have never thought the morphs with known problematic abnormalities coupled to the morph trait should be bred and would be happy to see the community collectively decide - "hey, lets stick to morphs that don't have known problematic side effects". There are still a ton to choose from. I have seen discussions go on about the pros and cons of morphs within the reptile hobby, and propagation of morphs like the spider is usually #1 on my list of cons. The general defense of the spider is some permutation of: "In captivity, my spider morph eats and does just fine.". While this is generally true, I have an extremely hard time personally resolving these same people saying (essentially) "I have the best interests of the animals at heart", without viewing it as somewhat hypocritical. I wish I had a more elegant way of wording this, so I will try and clarify - This is not meant as an attack, I understand and believe that people who possess spiders love their animals. These animals already exist and I am happy to see people giving them good homes. However, I can only see propagating more of them as a vehicle for either profit or valuing aesthetics over the health of the animal. If I remove the "paint job" from the equation, no one is going to select an animal with a neurological problem over one without one.

I'll throw out an example: let us say I breed a clutch of morph X ball pythons and if I use a certain biological agent on the babies at birth, it will turn them a unique blue color, but at the cost of creating a neurological wobble. I can almost guarantee that I would be lambasted for such a practice due to the side effects...but this agent was required to turn the babies blue and if they feed and do OK in captivity, then it should be fine based on the above. I am happy to hear counter-arguments to an of the above, but at the moment, I am unable to morally rationalize the breeding of these morphs.