I don't like any dog with OODLE in its name unless its a POODLE either but again that's just me :shock: .As Australians we tend to be a bit defensive of our pure breds for several reasons , Most are VERY unique
You won't be seeing any poodles in the wild LOL. Guess what all domesticated dogs are? Morphs haha.
Different morphs are often still pure bred, and things like a black jungle, can exist in the wild with no ill health at all. As someone said, it isn't magic (or radioactive leakages) that makes these traits pop up in captive breeding programs, they occur *naturally*, just like they can occur naturally in the wild. A difference in colour and pattern that would arise in a pairing of same locality animals, doesn't mean an animal is guaranteed to be any less healthy or functional. If you noticed that was the case, I would agree that it would be unethical to breed them, and I in no way agree that it is OK to reproduce a reptile with impaired functionality or ill health, so I am purely discussing visual traits that have no negative effects on health. However, if the animal is capable of being healthy and functional in captivity (how it would fare in the wild in terms of being easily spotted by predators etc is irrelevant), then there is no cruelty involved.
I personally prefer locality specific critters, but it isn't really possible to maintain locality specific breeding programs of particular species and sub species, without inbreeding to some degree, knowingly or unknowingly. If you like *pure bred* animals for your collections, then you must be OK with inbreeding, as there is not much opportunity to avoid it. Whether you pair together two individuals with a similar pattern/colour, in the hope of getting more of the same because you like them like that, or you pair them to something that is randomly different in appearance and gives you a more *natural* experience because it is random like in the wild, you are still likely breeding relatives to some degree, and the experience of the offspring produced, is going to be the same. People can say they like things one way or the other, but if the animal is still happy, healthy and fully functional, all arguments on whether it is immoral, disgusting, fabulous or indifferent, are completely self serving and have nothing to do with the quality of experience for each individual reptile produced. The baby is hatched, it finds a good home, and lives life oblivious to it's colour or pattern, eating, shedding and pooping like any other reptile.
There simply is not a never ending source of unrelated locality specific lineages for people to keep outcrossing with. Many captive species and sub species stem from a very few individuals, and you have no choice but to breed relatives, or to go back to the wild for more! Even species/sub species where there are a lot of individuals available from oodles of different breeders around the country, jungle carpets for example, have largely stemmed from a few different popular captive lineages, which would have originally come from a very small number of individuals collected from a particular area for each lineage, and will all be genetically very closely matched to many of the other individuals around the country that you assume they are genetically distant from. I guess you would have to start cross breeding localities and sub species, to actually increase genetic diversity for sure LOL. Catch 22 for purists who hate inbreeding!
Genetic diversity is useful in the wild so that there is always a diversity of different traits that may or may not suit a changing environment, and allow the species to survive and adapt. However, not much changes in captive husbandry, so things that may have an animal killed in the wild (eg an outrageous colour), have absolutely no negative implications for a pet snake in a safe enclosure. Inbreeding can also be used to select for health and other positive traits, and to breed out negative traits.