I do have spider as it was one of the first morphs I purchased and personally I’ve never experienced any issues with this one.
However I completely understand that it is unpredictable and can’t be controlled through breeding as to if a hatchling will have a severe wobble or not.
It’s all a case of personal opinion ultimately as Im not breeding this male as it does not fit the direction of my projects however i am 100% not against breeding them providing you’re prepared for the potential risk and care for the animals correctly.
@dragoonbuster You are certainly entitled to your opinion. Are you against the breeding of animals with all known defects (neurological, physical, etc.), just all “neurological” issues, or only spider ball pythons?
if i’m being honest, the spider is one of the morphs that i find the most endearing, i know I will get a lot of crap about this, but spider behaviour is just cute most of the time. but there are cases that are serious and we should treat it as such.
Hello! I’m new.
If you had to guesstimate, out of 100 Spiders, how many would display severe signs/symptoms (impacting their quality of life).
Thank you!
There is no study on the matter, I can tell you I produced a fair number of Spider and none were exhibiting severe wobble under my care, which is not to say they did not later on. While they all wobble to a degree (the majority being mild) it can change over time but in my experience most of it is directly linked to husbandr (stress and temperature being main factors that will exacerbate the behaviour)
their was a point where i swore off spider (beforr owning one myself) and then i ended up rescuing a big female who i immediately fell in love with. She was pretty wobbly the first month i had her but now its hard to believe she has any issues she acts like all my other balls stress is a huge factor with the wobble from what ive personally seen
Of the 100s of spiders I’ve produced over the last 15 years, I’d say less than 1% show severe wobble. I would say 60% show very little to no wobble except when feeding or excited. I’m personally not a fan of most spider combos but I can say in my experience they eat great, grow fast, and breed aggressively.
Keep and breed what you like and everything will be fine.
Hang on - clarification. I know spider is one of the neuro genes, but I’ve never heard of pinstripe having any issues whatsoever. Do you dislike pinstripe because of the way it looks, or is there a genetic issue with pins I’ve never heard of?
Okay, great, that’s what I thought. Was really confused when ryan79 was talking about spider and pin pairings and pin being worse than spider. Didn’t think pin had any issues whatsoever.
While I realize this is an older thread, I found a research paper on spider ball pythons’ wobble and the affects that it has on the snake. It is a bit worse than people realize, I myself am on the fence about them. Just thought some of you might find it an interesting read!
This “paper” makes the rounds now and again every time the argument of Spider “ethics” comes up.
Short version of the reply I have given too many times: Do your research on the background of the authors before standing firmly behind what they say. In this case, the authors are known animal rights individuals. Further, there is no real science in this paper. It is a bunch of flashy graphs made off of a very limited and poorly put together survey that was distributed in a haphazard way to a non-random group of people. You cannot make a scientifically valid statistical argument off of statements like “Even severely affected adults eat great, breed and will lay good eggs.” yet that is exactly what this paper is trying to do
