When the creator of the video said that yellow belly was a better morph to breed because it would survive in the wild (supper YB, supper inconspicuous), I kind of figured he is a really smart person when it comes to biology but he doesn’t really understand morph breeding. Or maybe he was thinking about breeding a few decades ago.

As an aspiring breeder I think morphs can actually add to genetic diversity. I think breeding is about combining morphs in the best way possible to create something awesome. Now, I produced my first clutch this year. Bamboo x citrus pastel fire. I produced two bamboo citrus pastel fire babies. I’ll keep one of them. If I keep a male I would never breed it to the mother and risk super fires, I wouldn’t want white snakes. The same could be said if I keep a female, I would never breed her to the male because I wouldn’t want super bamboo. I would never breed siblings for the same reason. The real reason I won’t line breed them however, is that line breeding here would add nothing. Once a breeder makes an awesome snake many modern breeders automatically think “what can I add?” And “how can I make it better?”. When a new recessive pops up, once it’s proven, everyone wants to start adding traits. JKR didn’t make the Batman by line breeding clown to clown. Look at monsoon and sunset. When I first started keeping you could only get the single gene snake. Now look. Their are all kinds of monsoon+ and sunset+. To make those snakes, you need to add genetic diversity to add the traits.

We also need to realize that nobody breeds ball pythons in order to release them back into the wild. Would you breed chihuahuas to release them back into the wild? For all intensive purposes, ball pythons, bearded dragons, and leopard geckos are domesticated animals. The morphs don’t have to serve any purpose or allow a ball python to survive in the wild, because it will never be returned to the wild.

Now, I do think ethical breeding is a question that can be debated. I think the idea that morph breeding leads to inbred snakes is kind of dated. I would only do it on extremely rare occasions. If you keep a good collection, you really don’t need to line breed.