Star Gazing: Testing the Myth

There is a thread in the Insiders Offerings sections concerning star gazers. I would like to bring this condition/gene to the forefront of our minds. This is something that should be discussed.

Star gazing is a recessive gene that is inherited and can be predicted in simple Mendelian form. Star gazing originated in Kathy Love's lines of "hypo okeetees" later called sunkissed. Some would argue that any and all corns that can be traced to sunkissed should be "tested" for star gazing. Some would also argue that any and all corns that cannot be traced to non-sunkissed lines should be tested.

So what is the problem? What is so bad with star gazing? From what I know, star gazing appears to be a neurological defect. It has no effect on the spine of the animal. Star gazers have been raised to adults and have successfully breed. If this is the case, is star gazing all that bad? They can obviously live a "full" life. Rich himself said, the reason he started breeding corns, was to check to see if he was properly caring for them. The idea was if they breed, then they are healthy and happy. Can this idea/concept not be applied to star gazers?

Like I said, some want to test nearly every corn for star gazing, there are inherent problems with this.
1. Not everyone has the means to "test" their collection. Some have collections that are much to large to test every animal. Others have no corns even remotely related to sunkissed and thus see no reason to test.
2.Using "hets" to test is a very long and tedious way to go about things. With hets you have a much smaller chance to producing a homozygous animal. And, you are producing more possible hets.
3. If you were to test a female with a known heterozygous male, and she proved to not be a "carrier", how many years would one have to euthanize all hatchlings from that female? (sperm retention can happen for 1 or more years)
4. Is someone who is "testing" willing to euthanize any and all ofspring produced? Not are you willing to disseminate to only "trusted" individuals, but are you willing to euthanize all offspring? People simply cannot be "trusted".

Drizzt80 said:

Also, once any snake leaves your possession you have zero, zilch, zip, nada, none control over it's life, health, and future usage. No matter how much you (think) you trust someone. :shrugs: Even with the best of intentions, histories get lost with the passing of time. (ie. Ultra?!)

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5. I got it, we will catalog and "register" all of our corns. What about the 10s of 1000's produced by Mice Direct and BHB?

These are all some questions to be considered, there are more questions, but this should start the ball rolling on some actual discussion, not just agreeing with everyone.

From the man himself:

Rich Z said:

Seriously, testing males will be easy to do, but how many people are going to be testing their females? I doubt most people will want to waste a year's production from their females just to do this test. And even doing one test will not be conclusive iron-clad evidence. How many times have you bred animals together het for a single recessive trait and not have it show up in a clutch? So to be CERTAIN, how many clutches would be a reasonable test? Three? Anyone willing to allocate three seasons for this kind of test? And what do you do with the first two seasons when the results can only be considered as inconclusive?

Quite frankly, to reduce the probability of the stargazer trait showing up, simply outcross as much as possible.

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In my opinion, animals that are produced in captivity that have genetic defects (whether physical or neurological) should be culled. It is the responsibility of every breeder to produce the best, healthiest animals for our buyers. I do not feel that animals with defects are the best or the healthiest. Yes, it's harsh...But what good does continuing to weaken the genetics of the captive bred do?

I have never tested any of my animals for Star Gazing but, if I determined a clutch produced Star Gazing, they would be culled and the parents would be retired. I retired a beautiful pair of Lavender Motleys in '07 because they produced clutches of kinked offspring two seasons in a row.

Now, some know that I do have a boa here that has neurological problems...She was not born with it, she was improperly shipped and her brain got fried. What she has, if I had chosen to breed her (I have not), is not inheritable. She is kept strictly as a pet and will not be leaving my hands.

Couple points...

mike17l said:

Some would also argue that any and all corns that cannot be traced to non-sunkissed lines should be tested.

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and...

Others have no corns even remotely related to sunkissed and thus see no reason to test.

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How remote? Take a look at Rich Z's list. He has sunkissed lavenders, sunkissed caramels, sunkissed ultra stuff and the list goes on. To create any of those projects he had to create some sort of hets. Those hets most likely followed mendelian genetics and the target "good" stuff was 1 in 16 or 1 in 64. My guess is most byproducts...normals, caramels, lavendrs, anerys, etc. were bulked out. And Rich is not the only person who operates this way. Joe P (when he was around), Don S, myself and others who all work with sunkissed probably bulk out some of the common morphs as well. Those could all be potential carreis for stargazer. So...feasably, many of the "other" morphs out there could be potential gene carriers. Since it most likely originated with Kathy's lines anyone who had a sunkissed may have had the stargazer gene as well.....

Good luck testing everything.....

I got it, we will catalog and "register" all of our corns. What about the 10s of 1000's produced by Mice Direct and BHB?

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Very similar to my comment above.....what about these people? Also, let it be noted the Mice Direct is in Georgia. They cannot have cornsnakes so I really don't think they have 10's of 1000's of corns. I've been to their facility and I sure didn't see any corns. Now Gourmet Rodent...that is a different story.



One last can of worms....

People have said before that one should be warned of the possibility of stargazer. I.e. if you haven't proven your lines clean then maybe a warning label should be added....my problem with this is it might be similar to picky eater hatchlings that people use all sorts of tricks to get them eating. We have not found concrete evidence that shows it is genetically inherited but we haven't seen evidence to say it is not either. And I have never purchased a snake that came with the warning that some of his/her siblings didn't like to eat....

I think this is a great discussion. I don't claim to know much about the star gazing gene, so any new information is always helpful.

mike17l said:

3. If you were to test a female with a known heterozygous male, and she proved to not be a "carrier", how many years would one have to euthanize all hatchlings from that female? (sperm retention can happen for 1 or more years)

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Though I completely see where you are coming from with this, I'd like to know how often it happens that a female retains sperm for a year. This is what I am thinking:
If you breed your female to a male this year. And then breed it to a male of a different morph and hets next year...can you then ethically sell all the babies as homo this or het that or possible het something or other if it is a possibility that the female retained sperm from the previous year.

The stargazing thing is what has kind of made me steer clear of the sunkisseds. While they are pretty, if I had to do a test breeding and then sell the offspring only if the parent stock proved free of the stargazer gene (and if so would the whole clutch have to be euthanized if it tested positive?) that's a whole year to test them out. And a whole lot of rehoming "as pets only" if you don't want to euthanize. I do agree that they seem to make it to adulthood OK and lead as good a life as possible despite the crawling around with the head upside down.

MohrSnakes said:

How remote? Take a look at Rich Z's list. He has sunkissed lavenders, sunkissed caramels, sunkissed ultra stuff and the list goes on. To create any of those projects he had to create some sort of hets. Those hets most likely followed mendelian genetics and the target "good" stuff was 1 in 16 or 1 in 64. My guess is most byproducts...normals, caramels, lavendrs, anerys, etc. were bulked out. And Rich is not the only person who operates this way. Joe P (when he was around), Don S, myself and others who all work with sunkissed probably bulk out some of the common morphs as well. Those could all be potential carreis for stargazer. So...feasably, many of the "other" morphs out there could be potential gene carriers. Since it most likely originated with Kathy's lines anyone who had a sunkissed may have had the stargazer gene as well.....

Good luck testing everything.....

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The situation runs much deeper than that. The Sunkissed line originated from Kathy's Okeetee stock. Just follow that thought through to a logical conclusion....

Personally, I have seen possible evidence of animals that could have been "star gazers" from some lines related to the Sunkissed. But for that matter, I have seen animals that act like what is described as "star gazing" from lines that have NEVER had any relation whatsoever with the Sunkissed or Okeetee lines. I just euthanize them all. Problem is, there is more than one type of problem in hatchlings that can cause them to exhibit anomalous behavior. Some of those may be genetically transmitted as well. I would have never considered that as a project worth pursuing.

There is a possibility that the tendency towards kinks and dips in the spines of Lavenders may be genetic as well. Quite frankly, if you are working with genetically controlled traits, you have to do inbreeding, and you may tend to produce animals that have the potential for more undesirable traits then what you would experience otherwise. Which means, you can either do this or not depending on how you feel about those negative results here and there. They come with the package, and you can't have the good parts without the bad. Even with social taboos in human beings against inbreeding (in most parts of the world, anyway) and tests for known genetic problems and other types of incompatibilities, human beings will have babies that are defective here and there, regardless. Does that mean the human race should just stop breeding? There are cases where even though there are bad aspects of something optional to do, the good overweighs the bad.

Best thing to do is to try to keep everything in perspective. Yes, you WILL get defective babies now and again when you breed your animals. It is probably a miracle that it doesn't happen more often then it does. But all you can do is keep a stiff upper lip, stick your chin out, and just deal with it as just one of the challenges you face trying to do this in the first place.

As has been said before, if this were easy and foolproof, then everyone would be doing it.

Rich Z said:

The situation runs much deeper than that. The Sunkissed line originated from Kathy's Okeetee stock. Just follow that thought through to a logical conclusion....

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Exactly!!! That's my point...you have original sunkissed stuff from Kathy. I do as well. And when Joe P. was around he did too. I'm guessing Don S does and I'm sure there are many, many, many others...and some of those could feasibly have normal offspring that are carriers that could've been used to start a totally non-sunkissed project.

So...how do we test all of those? We don't.

Those that want to and have the ability to do it can test and report their findings. Perhaps having a 'clean' line will be worth more money even than a dirty line, I don't know. What I do know is I cannot test every animal in my collection so I'll have to do what I can to see if it is around here. And like Rich said, a lot of things can point to star gazing symptoms....and only one such thing has been shown to be genetic.

It is a naturally occurring condition. It didn’t grow into existence at Kathy’s house. So that means it could exist in any snake that can trace it’s existence back to a wild caught snake. That would include them all.

MohrSnakes said:

Very similar to my comment above.....what about these people? Also, let it be noted the Mice Direct is in Georgia. They cannot have cornsnakes so I really don't think they have 10's of 1000's of corns. I've been to their facility and I sure didn't see any corns. Now Gourmet Rodent...that is a different story.

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Sorry, I meant Gourmet Rodent. I knew the business name had something to do with rats/mice.

mike17l said:

Sorry, I meant Gourmet Rodent. I knew the business name had something to do with rats/mats.

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I live about eight miles from them, BTW. Sometimes I buy mice there.

Here is a few links on SG.

http://www.cornsnakes.com/forums/showthread.php?t=51315

http://www.cornsnakes.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39329&page=1&highlight=stargazing

Dusty Jones

stargazing

Ok, I have read both the threads, and the one from Hurley ended in 06 and did not finish the story of the 3 baby stargazers and the siblings, so what happened? I guess it was proved non-fatal and an inheritable recessive trait? It seems like everyone talks like that is now the case, but did she prove it or someone else or has it been proven inheritable and non-fatal beyond any doubt?

Have you tried to hold a stargazer? These are not the easiest animals to handle.. I don't even try to handle mine because their erratic movements tend to be a horrible trashing, and very likely self injury will happen at some point.. Why would I want to be responsible for passing a trait onwards that could create more hamr to the animal by its own thrashing about? Who would want a flaw that can cause harm to the animal to be passed on? Not me..

Stargazers...





Do these animals seem to have discomfort.. I don't know.. IMHO, does the movements look painful? I don't know, but I can relate their movements to feldgling babies that have the fight or flight symdrome, where the babies sometimes kink themselves up, because the vertabray is still soft..

I will go the effort next year ( providing the females keep growing decently ) to test the big sunkissed male for sure..



Regards... Tim of T and J