Hey y’all! I just wanted to know if anybody else has any animals with the mentioned conditions in the title, I’ve noticed recently in my collection I’ve had quite a few animals, especially snakes, with eye problems or conditions, obviously blindness is a pretty common one but I wanted to know if anybody else owns any reptiles, especially snakes, with a lazy eye or aniscoria. I have a juvenile KSB I got at an expo with aniscoria (it does not affect his health too badly, he’s just a bit bad with depth perception) and a BP who I believe as of giving him an inspection tonight to have a lazy eye. Unfortunately I don’t have pictures since my KSB it’s pretty hard to get pictures and my BP is in blue but I just wanted to know if things like this is a common occurrence in the hobby or if I supposed I (un)lucked out?
Deformities are definitely seen frequently in the reptile trade. Opinions differ regarding the whole heritable defect versus incubator issue, with people on both sides willing to swear they are 100% sure what the etiology is for a given case. I’m willing to bet this is the case for specifically ocular abnormalities too.
My guess is that inbreeding, incubation issues, other heritable (or not) congenital conditions, and acknowledged morph-related issues or conditions probably account for most cases of eye abnormalities not caused by external factors. There could also be a medical issue(s) going on, e.g., crystallized corneal deposits in the later stages of chronic kidney disease, brain damage, fatty deposits, corneal scarring, etc.
I have a leopard gecko with one eye, but with a very unusual cause. She had a diet-induced ocular cholesteoma and needed an enucleation. Now she’s doing great, and turned 20 years old this year!
I also have several leopard geckos with an ocular morph called ‘Eclipse,’ which affects the appearance of the eye without causing blindness. It is generally considered desirable for the effects it has on eye pigmentation and the pattern of the body. There are quite a lot of ocular morphs in leos, Eclipse, Marble-Eye, the effect commonly linked with Blizzard, Noir Desir Black Eye (NDBE), and BAE (Blue Amber Eye) come to mind.
Edit- forgot to add that reptiles (in general) often do extremely well without vision, especially if helpful enclosure modifications are made if called for.