Aussie Pythons & Snakes Forum

Help Support Aussie Pythons & Snakes Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Status
Not open for further replies.
Red Eyed albinos are born with their first health problem their eyes

What is healthy enough?

Its not the heat it is the light Most albinos have serious vision difficulties ncredibly sensitive to bright lights as ! too much enters their eye.

and with the cross breeding unique color morphs lines are generally created from a single aberrant individual, which is then bred back to a parent or sibling to get the line started. Animals from inbred lines frequently have specific problems that lead to a shortened life span.

and it will only get worse till the fad dies out.

My bad, i didn't realise melamine like enclosures get too bright :rolleyes:. Who mentioned cross breeding thought we talking about albino's (Yeah the threads about crossbreeding but i won't give any arguement against that :p)? Unless ofcourse you mean inbreeding, which i was under the impression that reptiles are different to mammals etc that they can inbreed without too much trouble (Obviously after a long time the gene pool might get a bit bad)?

The 'fad' will not die out, does everyone just own a plain old terrier dog? A budgie? A goldfish? No, people like things that are different each person is attracted to their own likes.

And pure breed dogs can have a lot of problems such as hips and could even have eye problems too :eek: all depends on the breed, but your not against that?
 
My bad, i didn't realise melamine like enclosures get too bright :rolleyes:. Who mentioned cross breeding thought we talking about albino's (Yeah the threads about crossbreeding but i won't give any arguement against that :p)? Unless ofcourse you mean inbreeding, which i was under the impression that reptiles are different to mammals etc that they can inbreed without too much trouble (Obviously after a long time the gene pool might get a bit bad)? WRONG are you talking inbreeding or line breeding? in breeding can cause all sorts of problems health mental apperance etc.

and with the cross breeding unique color morphs lines are generally created from a single aberrant(
aberrant a-BERR-unt; AB-ur-unt, adjective:
Markedly different from an accepted norm; Deviating from the ordinary or natural type; abnormal.) individual, which is then bred back to a parent or sibling to get the line started. Animals from inbred lines frequently have specific problems that lead to a shortened life span. Same species

The 'fad' will not die out, does everyone just own a plain old terrier dog? A budgie? A goldfish? No, people like things that are different each person is attracted to their own likes.

And pure breed dogs can have a lot of problems such as hips and could even have eye problems too :eek: all depends on the breed, but your not against that?
Hip displasia is checked very early in the piece again these animals are mostly culled.

They also have strict controls and the so called pure breeds you are talking about would not have Pedigree papers

let Albinos live but dont set out to populate breed and pass off as special it is an abberation
 
Back to the topic. It's funny that in Victoria, I was under the impression you can't even house two different speices together and that cross breeding was illegal. Yet, my first snake was a Hybrid Jungle X Diamond. It looks basically like a 9 foot dark Jungle with rosette patterning. A big and healthy snake untill it unfortuantly developed cancer... As big a fuss everyone makes about hybrids, if my guy was still alive he'd still be my favourite snake and I'd post pics of him all the time. He had some fantastic markings and colours! Would I buy a Hybrid again? Don't know, guess I'd have to see the snake. Would I breed to make Hybrids or breed a bought Hybrid? Not a chance.
 
You are right you cant house to different species together

Personally I have nothing against cross breeds intergrades etc have a problem with mutations that weaken the animal in inbreeding.

The differance between the Reptile World and the rest of the breeding world with their Pure Breeds they can prove it.

YOU could spend thousands on a "Pure Bred" reptile to find out somewhere in the history thing werent Kosher soon as your offspring from it emerged.

Until we have some system of balance checks pedigrre papers who really knows whats pure bred!!

Its the Mutations the abberations I cant handle!!
Hybrid: Genetics. The offspring of genetically dissimilar parents or stock, especially the offspring produced by breeding plants or animals of different varieties, species, or races.

Intergrade: To merge into each other

crossbreed:eek: produce (an organism) by the mating of individuals of different breeds, varieties, or species; hybridize. v.intr. To mate so as to produce a hybrid; interbreed.
n. An organism produced by mating of individuals of different varieties or breeds.

Linebreed: the interbreeding of individuals within a particular line of descent usually to perpetuate desirable characters


Hybrid: Genetics. The offspring of genetically dissimilar parents or stock, especially the offspring produced by breeding plants or animals of different varieties, species, or races.

Intergrade: To merge into each other

crossbreed:eek: produce (an organism) by the mating of individuals of different breeds, varieties, or species; hybridize. v.intr. To mate so as to produce a hybrid; interbreed.
n. An organism produced by mating of individuals of different varieties or breeds.

Linebreed: the interbreeding of individuals within a particular line of descent usually to perpetuate desirable characters
 
In Victoria all carpets are classified under one Genus and Specie. taxonomy is unstable and changes all the time, that is why it reduces paperwork to class them as one. I assure you there is more than one clutch of darwin Albino hybrids around and there is more on the way. Not just in Victoria but in other parts of Australia too.
 
But that's absurd.... so anyone can just "Accidently" house a male and a female snake together at breeding season and breeding age after being accidently cooled and they can sell the offspring? Law is a very strange thing...

Secondly - what's illegal? the whole kit and kaboodle or just interspecies (morelia x liasis)

I have coastals, they were housed together, no cooling involved, I got babies...
so yea, they don't "have" to be cooled...

but yea, to house different species int he same enclosure?? that's pretty dodgey

and no, I didn't cross breed, this is just to show "accidents" can happen, I didn't even know I had a male and a female.. :lol:
 
In Victoria all carpets are classified under one Genus and Specie. taxonomy is unstable and changes all the time, that is why it reduces paperwork to class them as one. I assure you there is more than one clutch of darwin Albino hybrids around and there is more on the way. Not just in Victoria but in other parts of Australia too.


Until our reptiles come with a pedigree and we have a national standard, none of us really knows what we are buying its just an educated gamble
 
As with everything, there appears to be a clear line between 'healthy' and 'healthy enough'.
 
You read my mind:shock:
I try my best.;)
It actually came up during a sign-up for a 4X4 comp recently while I was talking to some mates. The rules of entry stated that for a vehicle to be eligable, it must either have a hardtop or roll-cage. Now a proper roll cage will protect the occupants if the vehicle rolls, yes? One of the vehiles had a 'hard top' custom made from tin with no supports/internal roll cage, which would offer absolutley no protection in a roll (this was a short course comp, btw, there's always a few cars that get upsidedown :lol:). Despits this, it was deemed 'safe' to participate, even though the driver would have been, at the very minimum, severly injured had the car gone over, especially considering the terrain (hard packed clay and granite country).

'Safe' and 'Safe enough to participate' were clearly 2 different things. :rolleyes:
 
Inkslinger all those eye problems you stated are related to humans, while some may be present in snakes, others don't apply. Plus human albino's survive and we rely on eyesight much more then snakes do, so I don't see a problem in that regard.

Also once the albino mutation is established it is very easy to outcross individuals and inbreeding isn't an issue. Even if it is, there is very little evidence if any that inbreeding in reptiles is a problem anyway.
 
Inkslinger all those eye problems you stated are related to humans, while some may be present in snakes, others don't apply. Plus human albino's survive and we rely on eyesight much more then snakes do, so I don't see a problem in that regard.

Also once the albino mutation is established it is very easy to outcross individuals and inbreeding isn't an issue. Even if it is, there is very little evidence if any that inbreeding in reptiles is a problem anyway.

Read away do we learn from the Overseas mistakes or just blindly bleat!!



Excerpts from Forum dedicated to Albinos
Bad eye albino - Genetics, Taxonomy, Hybridization


An anomaly every now and then is possible, as with any other species. The problem is when it shows-up consistently in one particular strain of that species. The lack of melanin in albinos does not protect the retina. That’s probably why they may be more susceptible to turn blind even when born with normal eyesight. A different issue altogether is congenital eye deformities or even animals born without one or both eyes. A similar problem using rats as an animal model is called inherited retinal degeneration. It’s also an hereditary trait that affects humans as well. The only solution we seem to have with albino pythons is to avoid inbreeding as much as possible and never use animals with notorious eye defects in our breeding projects.
But how do we convince someone who has produced such animals not to sell them at a discounted price? How do we convince the brokers not to sell in turn? We all have seen ads where the animal is advertised as having had a trauma in the eye early in life..."a rat bit him in the eye". We always ask ourselves why so many nigerian scams keep showing up. The answer is because there is people that still fall for them. Why do albinos with eye deformities show-up in the ads? Simply because there is a market for them.

As time goes on, the results of breeding these animals multiplies exponentially.
However, the larger problem here is the passing on of the genetics through siblings that probably carry this defective gene, but do not display it.
The problem is that the eye abnormalities have shown 99% in albinos.

I can't comment on other morphs, but yes albino are now off my wishlist. After hearing some of these practices I'll now opt out of the albino thing. I was familiar with the eye deformities in albinos but somehow thought breeders of the past had learn't from their mistakes--Breeding a deformity over won't make it go away, deforms should be culled!

It seems if it was recessive genetic like suggested, there would be a whole lot of eye defective hets, albinos on the market. I just don't see them, or here about many litters that show the trait.

Having had a litter of albinos recently, and some defective eyes appeared. (of which all died naturally.) Diagnosed as eyes being "bulphthalmic, and hemorhagatic" by the necropsy reports and died of Yolk coelomitis. My Vet who bred his way through college, seems to think it was because of the lower temps she was kept at during most of her gestation.

Development can be affected by all sorts of things, such as chemicals, maternal nutrient supplies, diseases, etc, and with ectotherms, temperature fluctuations become a factor too. This is why you can and do see birth defects in wild snakes as well as captives: lots of things can go wrong, especially in the uncontrolled environment of the wild.

The key, though, is that the rate at which things go wrong appears, from what's been said in this thread, to differ between albino-line animals and normal run-of-the-mill pythons. Since I doubt keepers are providing substantially different care for normals and albinos, the difference is likely genetic. Others have pointed out it's nothing like simple recessive, which isn't surprising; development is a complicated process involving lots of genes interacting spatially and temporally. It's possible it's a combination of several genes, or that the genes involved in eye formation have mutated to become especially sensitive to some aspect of the environment.

Regardless of the precse eitiology and mechanisms, it's Not Good with nice big capital letters. Developmental defects of this type should be culled out of lines and IMHO, indicate that line is showing signs of significant inbreeding depression.

Misinformation to the fullest. I was on the same boat until I spoke with Doug M. The only albinos he deals with are sharp strain. He says that the eye deformites are tied up somewhere in the albino strain and pop up randomly. He has them in his sharp strain and any large albino python breeder has them. Rich Ihle whole sales his to bob clark to sweep them under the rug as if they don't exist. The one eyed thing isn't simple recessive and if you breed enough albinos of either line you will produce them. A few large breeders even have one eyed and no eyed pythons as breeders.
 
Why breed hybrids? If they are protected species, why mess about with the gene pool? Shouldn't we be looking at PRESERVING the species?
 
Inkslinger all those eye problems you stated are related to humans, while some may be present in snakes, others don't apply. Plus human albino's survive and we rely on eyesight much more then snakes do, so I don't see a problem in that regard.

Also once the albino mutation is established it is very easy to outcross individuals and inbreeding isn't an issue. Even if it is, there is very little evidence if any that inbreeding in reptiles is a problem anyway.
With the issues of albinos, does that mean that all albino animals, which would all suffer from the potential to have the same problems as each other, should be killed (I don't like the word culled it's killed regardless). Not all of these are killed by breeders, some are actually bred for the albino offspring such as at SR and their albino olive pythons. $15000.00 for a hatchie. I don't know anyone that would pay $15000.00 for an animal they would kill because it is not the same as all of the rest of the olive pythons.
I had a horse with all of the features of albino although it had blue eyes (can't remember the technical name) but the same problems with albinos. He was fine if he had shady spots to go to.
As for them burning.
All snakes have that problem with heat rocks etc. they have a constant heat under them not on top and therefore stay on them longer than they should and can cook from undernieth (from what I have been told).
Cross breeding......as far as wikipedia states on species.

"In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are often used, such as based on similarity of DNA or on the presence of specific locally-adapted traits."

So as far as basic species are concerned all snakes that can produce fertile offspring could be classified as the same species. In saying that we in the herp world have taken to breaking it down to the minutest difference in snake makes a new species.

Where is the line drawn.....Childeren pythons have been declared into a number of species such as the childreni, macci, stimpson and so on.
So if you had a macci and a stimi 15 years ago they were the same snake from different locales. Now it would be illegal to breed them...So what happens to the snakes that have already bred and that line continued with other people breeding them with say a childereni and so on.
 
Inkslinger, was that entire thing an excerpt or did you add in the last bit/ every thing below the top paragraph?
 
That isn't talking about the general eye problems faced by all albino's. It sounds more like a separate problem found in some of the albino's. That is likely related to whatever species they are referring to and doesn't apply to the Australian lines.

It would be interesting to hear from albino breeders in Oz to see what problems if any they have had.
 
Why breed hybrids? If they are protected species, why mess about with the gene pool? Shouldn't we be looking at PRESERVING the species?
I think the other thing to remember is that evolution means genetic change so the original snakes were a lot different to what we have here today and will be different again in another 1000 yrs.
We may even discover something new from this activity (not that I condone) I just don't think that I have the right to say what you can or can't do....we all have our own ideas on what is right or wrong......You make up your mind and I will make up mine so to speak........
If you don't like intergrades or albinos don't buy them it's that simple.
But you should not winge about someone elses decision unless it affects you........
There will always be pure lines just a little harder to find....and we still don't know that what we have today was not intergrades we think are one species......
 
That isn't talking about the general eye problems faced by all albino's. It sounds more like a separate problem found in some of the albino's. That is likely related to whatever species they are referring to and doesn't apply to the Australian lines.

It would be interesting to hear from albino breeders in Oz to see what problems if any they have had.

The point is we haven't been doing it long enough and not found in some in the larger percentage due to the amount of inbreeding

"Inkslinger, was that entire thing an excerpt or did you add in the last bit/ every thing below the top paragraph?"

all excerpts from the forum discussion a week or so ago

"With the issues of albinos, does that mean that all albino animals, which would all suffer from the potential to have the same problems as each other, should be killed (I don't like the word culled it's killed regardless)."

The reason they need to be killed is the god all mighty dollar if they could be sterilized so as not pace on the bad genes great but how may would put down a potentially money making animal.
Few and far between.

In most breeding situations where you can get a pedigree animals if not culled are desexed before sale and sold to the "Pet Market"

In theory I think cross breeding is a good thing done properly not will nillie some of our moder bred were produced that way the Rottweiler for one.

Its the inbreeding that I have the major issue with and then to do that with an animale yhat is an aberration in the first place just compounds, and it will effect maybe not you and I but future buyers.

I will state again until we have pedigrees to check on we are at the mercy of the marketers on go on faith alone, this is the only animal thing I can think of where you pay sometimes huge amounts of money without any guarantee, let alone dare you ask the history or can I see the parents? or where it has been bred living etc. Let alone get a Vet health check prior to sale

Wake up people this is not a hobby it is fast becoming the next puppy farming industry

That my rant but the animal kingdom is something I am very passionate about.
 
I do not think it illegal but highly frowed upon. I was told that national parks rather some crossing of species than having exotics flooding our australian herps. I am not into crossing species at all but accept that accidents happen.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top