Inbreeding?

[Derrick]

Whats the 411 on breeding related snakes. Does the human inbreeding taboo apply? What possibe problems come up if any? How prevalent is it in the industry?

thx

[mark129er]

It is done. It is one way to prove out hets from a litter, that is breed them back to their parent. As with all creatures excessive inbreeding can be bad due to the possibility of producing defects. However I just saw a documentary on pit vipers on an island off the coast of Brazil. the snakes are completely isolated from new genes and they have survived for thousands of years through evolution and inbreeding.

[reptilez]

I heard that it could cause spinal cord injuries, and other bad defects. But i also heard that when inbreeding you may get albinos.
-Reptilez

[Jeff_Favelle]

I heard that it could cause spinal cord injuries, and other bad defects. But i also heard that when inbreeding you may get albinos.

Then you gotta stop listening to the people who are talking then.

[NiagaraReptiles]

Deformaties are primarily a result of too high incubation temps or a spike in incubation temps in the final weeks of developement. I have never seen anything negative come from inbreeding reptiles, nor heard of anything that can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

[JDouglas]

LOL at Favelle!

I have never seen anything negative come from inbreeding reptiles, nor heard of anything that can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

Back when I had corn snakes my creamsicle corns were extremely inbred. This caused a lot of the babies to have stumped heads, and most did not live long.

You can also see the effects of inbreeding in albino boas. Inbreeding doesn't cause albinism but all Kahl albino boas originated from one female. A lot of albino boas are born blind, one eyed, or still born because of this. Keep in mind every time someone breeds an albino to a normal or het the bloodline gets stronger. Two of our albinos are from Albino to het breedings and one is from a het to het breeding making their genetics very strong, so hopefully when we eventually breed albino to albino we don't get one eyed monsters!

[eyespy]

A lot of vets I know are beginning to wonder if the increased levels of viruses they are seeing lately is the result of weakened immune systems due to inbreeding, but it's just a theory. I never read that a definitive study has been done.

Snakes carrying recessive genes do tend towards developing adenovirus, paramyxovirus or iridovirus at a much higher rate than normal phases.

The only definitive study I've read is that benign tumor growth in green sea turtles has been linked to breaks in genes from inbreeding.