Morphs and snake personalities - are they related?

[Jim Smith]

I have a question that I thought I'd post to see if there may be something to what I've noticed, albeit with very little actual data. The back drop of this question relates to a silver fox breeding program that has been conducted in Siberia for the past 70 years. The government run fox farm has been running a breeding program for about 70 years where they only bred aggressive foxes to aggressive foxes and friendly foxes to friendly foxes. They continued this for a number of generations and they got the expected side effect of hyper aggressiveness in one population and the very friendly, affectionate behavior from the other population in the study. They also however noted an unexpected strange side effect. The friendly, affectionate foxes started to change the coloration and had spots show up on their coats and their tails started to curl up over their back like a domesticated dog. They were not breeding for the color changes, but rather it appears that the friendly personality traits also carried genes that led to changes in the color and the shape of the tails.

Now, to my part of the story. I have Honduran Milks Snakes. I recently bought an Extreme Hypo male to breed to my Ghost female and the new Extreme Hypo has a very different personality than my Ghost Milk Snake. My Ghost female snake is rather shy and usually spends the day curled up in her hide or under the substrate. The extreme hypo male however is extremely curious and interested in what is going on outside of his tank. I have him in my computer room and about half the time if I look over at his tank, he’s at the glass with his head about an inch off the substrate watching me. My sister who has been keeping Honduran Milk snakes for about 15 years also has a Hypo morph and she has similar experiences. Her hypo is an adult and he’s her favorite of all the snakes she’s ever owned because of his personality. My question is this: Could there be genetic personality traits associated with the different color morphs that people are breeding? For example, could albino snakes be more laid back or another morph extremely shy or aggressive? I thought I’d toss this question out to the community to see if others had noticed common “personalities” based on the color morph of their snakes. I think this would be a very interesting study if people wanted to share their observations and experiences.

Jim Smith