What's the deal with scaleless snakes?

[jjhill001]

Originally Posted by scales.jp

I certainly agree when the animal has unfortunately been born like this naturally, but strongly disagree when it's purposefully done to produce something 'unique'. This is just my opinion, but all designer morphs have something missing (I mean animals that have been repeatedly inbred to achieve a desired look). Not to go on a rant, but it makes me laugh when breeders post their latest offerings on this or that SNS saying that they have 'created' or 'produced' a new morph/combo as if they've improved on something designed by millennia of evolution.

To be fair, basically any commonly available reptile that is commonly captive bred is a result of at minimum line breeding. The carpet pythons, corn snakes and other various commonly kept species have been over time selected for the best looking individuals.

For example this corn snake, while definitely pretty in it's own right, is a far more common example of the species:




Than for example this amazing piece of art:



Now, those do occur in the wild. But we got them and bred them together to create various lines. Sort of what you see with keeping "locality" animals pure (something the carpet python people could learn from lol).

Kathy Love who was one of the very first people, along with her husband to be major players in the snake breeding and morph industry said it best in regards to the criticisms of morphs (paraphrasing) "The snakes you're buying are nothing close to the snakes we first started with, even the most "normal" captive bred corn snake looks vastly better than the average wild specimen due to generations of selecting the best of the best snakes"

Like I said, morphs aren't really my thing. But I know for a fact that my Baird's Rat Snakes that everyone on the forums likes so much are a result of Tim Gebhard keeping his line pure and only breeding the best of the best over years and years, only introducing new animals from that same area.

That's not really THAT much different than a morph which is why I sort of softened my opinion of them over the years to be honest.

The same goes for basically any other species we keep regularly.