Should You Buy Morph Ball Pythons? скачать в хорошем качестве

Should You Buy Morph Ball Pythons?

Is morph breeding bad? The selective breeding of certain phenotypic traits in reptiles, otherwise known as morphs, is common practice. Humans are attracted to mutations, even though some of these mutations rarely survive long in the wild. Morphs have been bred to increase the occurrence of mutations in order to increase wealth and fame, as new bloodlines are given names. But does this pushing of natural boundaries come with negative consequences? Or even alter the function of a species? Is what we are doing regarding morph breeding ethical? Animals at home:    / @animalsathomepodcast   Rare mutations in wildlife have always fascinated humans, just look at the pied birds kept in museums, or the many different budgerigar strains in aviculture. In fact, ever since the first canaries were imported into Spain and Portugal in the early 1400s, different varieties were bred and proliferated into many different forms. Mutations of course occur naturally, some are beneficial to survival and do well and are perpetuated in the wild population while some are detrimental to survival and are selected against via natural selection. Morphs are just any phenotype that differs from the population norm, and some of these are not detrimental at all they are simply variation. But what we as a hobby have done is NOT work with these natural variations, to protect and enjoy natural variation that is both aesthetically pleasing and of no welfare consequence to the animal. What we have done is inbred these animals irresponsibly to in order to perpetuate different mutations that throw up negative welfare consequences and alter the very function of an animal in some cases. Apart from the obvious consequence of morph popularity being the rise in use of racking systems and the negative welfare issues that go along with that. Even if every morph was housed in elaborate and adequate enclosures, there is a much more complicated issue at hand here. But id like for us to get a bit of perspective on the origins of morphs. Some of the most popular morphs projects occur in royal pythons, with imports from western African countries like Tongo, Ghana and Benin originally supplying royal pythons with phenotypes typical of the wild population. Reptile hobbyists, were for the most part, keeping wild caught, wild type individuals up until the 80s where captive farmed royals took their place for the most part. With particularly prettier snakes with a bit of variation being sold at a raised price, ie mutations such as yellow belly, stripe, pied and spot etc. In 1992, the first captive bred albino specimens began circulating for thousands of dollars. And the cheap price of wild caught/captive farmed specimens meant that few breeding projects of wild type royals were done. As it wasn’t deemed financially viable. Since then, there has been a race for who can produce the rarest morph, the next big thing, the next big seller, the trophy snake. And for that to happen, wild caught/Captive farmed specimens with any sort of colouration variation was sought to breed and prove out genes in the pursuit of new morphs. Now here is where the issues lie, those individuals that expressed those desired morph traits were bred, in the ideal situation producing heterozygous offspring. But, for the phenotype to show in recessive traits, heterozygous individuals need to be bred to another heterozygous individual to get the phenotype to show. And if there aren’t other heterozygous animals available out there. These animals were bred, sibling to sibling, father to daughter, Mother to son, whatever combination required to maintain and perpetuate the morph. This is called line breeding. The imbreeding of these animals, narrows an already narrow gene pool. This happens across all the domestic species. We know a genetically fit population of animals requires genetics to mix and flow allowing the issues related to inbreeding to be avoided. When animals are inbred on a continual basis, it can lead to a decreased fitness of a population. This is called a genetic bottleneck, this may occur in the wild for numerous reasons, either through a sudden event that removed large numbers of individuals from the gene pool such as natural disasters or the over hunting from humans, to the fragmentation of habitats cutting off gene flow between different populations etc. In essence, what we are doing with linebreeding morphs is essentially replicating a intentional genetic bottleneck in captivity. It could be argued that the practice is working directly against conservation. Inbred, morphs created though use of heavy line breeding are genetically weaker than wild caught or carefully managed captive stock, from being inbred left right and centre. Is Morph Breeding Unethical?