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If every morph of any given type in the pet trade is related then that's due to man's poor ethics, lack of patience and greed. If it happend once, chances are it happened before and will again. There is no excuse for inbreeding. These defects that people think are a cool trait (and some actually are pretty cool) first occur because when the DNA Helix splits and copies it's self to pass on traits to offspring, now and again they don't copy exact and mutations occur...sort of a genetic typo. Unfortunatly when this happens it very often also miscopies other things and causes other genetic traits to tag along with the "cool" trait that may not be so cool. If you breed 2 naturally occuring but unrelated similar morphed animals with the same cool genetic code, then the chances any of the same unfavorable/health related consequences would be much lower. By inbreeding them, you INSURE that any defects are also passed to all offspring. But sometimes we can't find another one...well woopidy do. Pain and suffering of countless animals isn't worth propegating any cool morph. The world will be no better off because you put out some pink and purple polkadotted boa constrictors. It will however be worse off if you cause the future suffering of thousands of heartbreaking mutants that weren't meant to be and won't live full healthy lives often if at all.
a few examples of captive inbreeding depression that we never would have even heard of if the original breeders practiced a little ethics. These examples are all widespread and very common. There are of course other inbreeding related malformities that never get propegated due to either early deaths, small isolated breeding projects that don't ever become mainstream, or breeders at least having enough morals to quit when they see it and cull rather than sugar coat it with deception.
Green burmese pythons. (BD)
One eyed albino boas
Bug eyed -mentally challanged leucistic texas rat snakes
Bobble head neurologically diseased spinning spider ball pythons
Same as above for bumblebee ball pythons
Kinked carmel ball pythons
Fuse toed leopard geckos
I can't speak for everyone I guess but I would waaaaay rather have never seen a spider ball python than to see all these poor wobbly sickly bobbleheads. Albinism is a diease in and of it's self but that's for another debate I guess so I find it a compounded ethical travesty to inbreed for that trait. I've heard many breeders admit that they will breed known problematic morphs that suffer from inbreeding depression because there's a good chance that SOME of the babies will come out unsymptomatic. Wow...all the others that suffer and die are worth it so a few MIGHT make it?
Another issue I have with inbreeding is even in the cases where it doesn't show outward signs of problems, the word YET becomes ever important. Once it starts, where does it end? The high prices of these animals commonly inbred are sold to other people that want to cash in too. The easiest way is to inbreed an already inbred who knows how many generations line...but they were told that a couple of generations don't matter and few people seem to realize that if you inbreed an already inbred line, you ARE NOT starting at ONE! Family trees don't reset at zero because of change of ownership.
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