Sad

[RXLReptiles]

***I apologize now, word vomit ahead. TL;DR on morphs at the bottom***

I don't want to push the idea that there aren't bad breeders, and I definitely can't say that certain morphs don't have issues.

That being said, I don't feel as though spiders, or champagnes, or any other morphs shouldn't be reproduced. I've seen plenty of people bash breeders who work with these genes, and there are some bad apples that produce some horrible clutches, but I personally own 2 different snakes with the spider gene, one has absolutely zero detectable wobble, the other has a very mild wobble but it has in no way effected her ability to reach adulthood without any special accommodation, and both of them are some of the sweetest snakes I own.




As for Matt at Olympus Reptiles, I can't say he is perfect, but he is attempting to see if incubation temperature and time has an effect on the outcome of Super Black Pastels. It's something he has decided to do based on scientific research that he has done to see if that alleviates the issue, and if it doesn't he has plainly stated that he will not try the pairing again. I feel that is a fair judgement call, if he is able to produce Super Black Pastels successfully and it is repeatable, then the issues of that morph have been solved and there will be a way to produce these beautiful animals without causing undue suffering. Just the fact that Super Black Pastels exist proves that there is a way to produce them successfully and this may show a way.

And from what I've seen any spider morphs he has ever produced have little to no discernible wobble, so if he has good breeding stock that continues to make snakes with very little wobble, go for it, maybe we can eventually breed most of the wobble out of spiders.

Lastly, as far as having to join his Patreon to buy a snake from him, essentially he started offering the snakes he produced to his Patreon members first as a thank you for supporting his videos. The problem is that very few snakes made it past his Patreon supporters to be sold to the general public, so naturally more people joined his Patreon so that they could buy one of his animals instead of hoping it made it through the Patreon crowd. It's a vicious cycle that has snowballed as his channel and business has grown, and I don't see it as him taking advantage of people so much as people being impatient and unwilling to wait until his production numbers surpassed his Patreon supporter buying potential.




The other thing is this, there are over 300 base morphs for the ball python listed on the World of Ball Pythons "Morph List", and over 6600 "Designer" morphs, meaning 2 gene or greater combos. If out of all of those listed morphs, we can only list 10-12 morphs that have issues, and only a fraction of specimens that are produced actually show true detriments to the animals health or well being. Then why are morphs, in general, an issue?

In fact let's go a step further and consider the normals that are born with defects, either due to odd eggs or some sort of incubational issue. Should we stop breeding normals? Because with ANY captive bred animal there are TONS of possible reasons for deformities that can be just as bad, if not worse than, the worst spider wobbles out there.

We could say the exact same thing about bulldogs and their breathing problems, or labs and golden retrievers for their notorious hip issues as they get older, but most of those animals live long, healthy, happy lives without needing any help whatsoever. The same goes for the vast majority of snakes produced.


TL;DR : The number of spiders and similar wobble afflicted morphs that actually have a wobble bad enough to negatively effect the animals life are not nearly as high as it seems, because for every video of one badly effected snake there are hundreds, if not thousands that are perfectly fine, healthy, and happy. The owners of those animals just don't feel the need to advertise that their animal is healthy. Any captive bred species will have issues when being bred, whether producing genetic variants or not.