Inbreeding

I have a question out of curiosity
i know nothing bout breeding but have been looking for a strain to purchase and noticed theres alot of inbreeding to acheive certain colorations and or designs.
does anyone know if this inbreeding has any ill effects on the snakes , such as shorter life spans or health probblems.
in short when humans inbreed the offspring have a good chance of retardation and whatnot , is it possible for snakes to run the same risks?

Inbreeding in snakes is like inbreeding in humans. If there are no bad genes, there will be no problems. If there ARE bad genes, they will start to show. Inbreeding simply increases the chance that any bad genes that exist will surface. There have been instances (highlighted in an issue of 'Discover' magazine a few months ago) of human inbreeding which were actually beneficial.

The whole idea between outcrossing is to reduce the odds of bad genes surfacing.

So... to answer your question, yes, SOME strains of snakes have problems due to inbreeding. Some do not. Rainwater strains of corns (in every instance I've heard mention) are extremely poor and prone to early death and reproductive problems, due to heavy inbreeding (and likely due to not culling the instances of bad genes surfacing).

It all depends on how it's done.

-Kat

so when i finaklly get to buy a snake is it just luck of the draw or are there ways to know if its a bad breed?

Well, if the snake looks and acts healthy, feeds fine, and doesn't give you any problems, etc. then it's probably fine. If you have problems down the road (like in 2-3 years time), about the only thing you can do is just not buy from that breeder again.

Piebald is the only corn morph that all members have been shown to have bad health... the piebalding was literally caused by blistering on the skin, and the snakes died in 2-3 years.

Beyond that, there's really not alot of data, but I'd imagine that if there was a huge number of any particular morph dying young, people would start complaining... so you're probably safe as long as the snake looks healthy.

-Kat

Kat

Do you have a Piebald Corn pic? I tried looking it up but the only thing that I found were alot of talk about them w/o pics.

Just Wondering
Joel