This one is the worst as a german shepherd lover. I hate seeing these pictures of beautiful german shepherds but with the shortest back legs and a terrible back. It’s just awful.
I love how certain spider morphs and combinations look but imo it’s just not worth putting they animals through all the neurological issues just because they look pretty.
Only jumping in here real quick just to to correct what I think is a pretty common misconception about folks who are against spider breeding (as a person who is against breeding neuro morphs, believes it is inherently unethical and advocates against it)
I think a lot of folks somehow get the impression that folks who are against breeding spiders just ignore other aesthetically-bred species, and this is mostly incorrect. I very vocally believe that intentionally breeding neuro morph animals (or any BPs with genes that have an increased risk of negative QOL) and one of the arguments I get thrown all the time is “well, look at pugs! Look at munchkin cats! Look at x/y/z!” And this is always confusing to me because of course I am also against those things. I don’t think people should continue breeding pugs, bulldogs, frenchies, etc. that have inherent issues that come with the breed, and I consider anyone breeding who is NOT doing full breed genetic testing, hip/eye/elbow/etc. evaluations even for species where they’re less common is incredibly irresponsible. Yes, I also believe we shouldn’t continue breeding munchkin cats. Yes, I also advocate against breeding German shepherds with lower backs. So it is something that applies across the board.
The other reaction I always get when folks talk about spider specifically is “well there are other neuro morph complex genes/there are other genetic defect morphs, I suppose you don’t have any of those in your collection?” No, I don’t. One of the first things I did when I started breeding was learn to identify all of the defect morphs to make sure I never bought one on accident. I don’t and never will have spider, champagne, woma, hgw, or Spotnose. I do have chocolate and blackhead because neither have ever been reported with wobble syndrome in the single gene form, so I will never produce supers and if new evidence comes to light that they can suffer wobble syndrome as single gene, I will remove them from my collection. I work with black pastel/cinnamon but again, only in the single gene form, I will never ever do a pairing that could produce a super. I don’t work with scaleless or scaleless head. I don’t work with any of the genes with fertility issues or higher risk of egg binding.
All of this to say, I just wanted to gently correct what I feel is a pretty common misinterpretation about those of us who do openly advocate against breeding spider (and other defect genes that have the potential to affect QOL). Ultimately I just don’t feel it’s ethical to intentionally bring animals into the world knowing they’re likely to experience suffering or discomfort and I believe animal health and well-being should always come before human aesthetic preferences. And that goes for any species that humans domestically or captively breed - snakes, livestock, domestic pets, etc.
That is all! 
It makes me wonder how these morphs ever evolved at all. How was it they were found or were they bred to become these morphs? My understanding is that all ball pythons originated from wild caught animals. Why didn’t nature cull the morphs with QOL problems? You would think with such issues that they would have never evolved for thousands of years in the wilds of Africa.
Should we as hobbyists cull those animals that show any QOL issues?
Forgive my ignorance but breeding any morph that has a severe wobble is irresponsible. Selective breeding of a Spotnose , spider , woman, hgw or champagne that show no sign of any QOL issues is just that , selective. You take the best of the best and try to produce an animal that has those same inherited traits.
Oh totally understand. But I have seen far too many people though that target only spiders. I had to actually tell someone at a reptile show yesterday that there were multiple genes that caused wobble and they had no idea. The misinformation kills me.
I was also a bit aggressive and bounced a bit too off topic with my post. I think because I had a busy weekend and was probably not a good idea to look at forum posts. -_-
I’m very much with inspirationexotics on this one, and think she worded it perfectly. Most people I know who are agains the breeding of spider ball pythons are also against other morphs that have QOL issues including scaleless and super cinnamon/black pastel breeding, and are against the selective breeding of dogs/cats with health issues as well as backyard breeding of dogs. They are usually very consistent.
I personally do not work with spider, champagne, HGW, Woma, etc as well as scaleless because I do believe they have a diminished quality of life, and don’t want to be a participant in their breeding. It wouldn’t stop me from rescuing one if it needed a home or veterinary care, but I won’t breed them. I do have spotnose, which is fine in the heterozygous form, and I will not be making supers. I also don’t support the breeding of breeds of dogs or cats with severe issues or backyard breeding of dogs (doodles, those mutant meatball pit things). My Great Dane is adopted, and I will likely continue adopting Danes, but should I ever go to a breeder, you can guarantee I will only be supporting those that do the highest standard of health testing (OFA hips and elbows, thyroid, echocardiograms, DNA panel, no spot-to-spot breeding) and breed for longevity. I’d like to think I’m at least somewhat consistent with my standards, and ackowledge that they are MY personal standards and I can’t force them on others.
These loaded questions, and I think it’s important to consider that there’s a solid difference between not bringing them into the word vs culling. If I thought an animal was seriously suffering, I would absolutely persue humane euthanasia.
As for the child question, that is an incredibly subjective and personal topic. As someone in genetics, I definitely do have some opinions on it, but am not sure this is really the right venue for them
I will counter your gentle correction with another. Arguing that keeping those genes in your collection and will just not make supers is absolutely hypercritical because you are, knowingly and with complete knowledge, perpetuating problematic genes in the gene pool. This is no different than a person with German shepherd that they know carries the degenerative back gene that only breeds it to animals that do not carry the gene. You are still spreading the gene through the population. You sell those animals to other people and they may decide to use them to make supers. So you are just as guilty.
All of this is why I still stand by my post over here:
Tl;DR:
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Morphs do not “evolve”. They are mistakes that happen because of the imperfect nature of DNA replication. That same process can sometimes give rise to “helpful” mistakes as well, and under selective pressure those mistakes can perpetuate and act as drivers for speciation/evolution
In the wild, most of these morphs would not be perpetuated because there is a selective pressure against them. However, our racks and tubs are not the wild and there is a very clear and profound fitness to morph animals that leads to their continued perpetuation. I would posit that 85% of this hobby is driven by the “designer snake” pyramid scheme, and unless that changes then we will continue to see people breed for morphs
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To quote Jeff Goldblum - “Life… Uhhhh… Finds a way…”
Sometimes, mutations are not so traumatic that the animal carrying it is immediately picked off. This is why we see things like Scaleless and Albino pop up as adults in the wild. Most of them do get nabbed up, but every now and then one makes it long enough and breeds and passes the gene back into the gene pool.
That said, the other side of the matter is that the majority of our morphs were popped out in farms and not “in the wild”. Trappers go out and hunt down gravid females and wait for them to drop their eggs and then they incubate the eggs and pull aside anything that is different. This has been standard for probably thirty or so years. So the morphs that permeate the hobby never had to “fight for their lives” in the cruel cold jungle
Never meant to cause problems.
I will say first that there is a point of clarification here - there’s a big difference between intentionally producing animals with negative effect to their QOL, and producing animals that carry a defective gene that is completely harmless outside of a very specific set of circumstances. I would put forward that this is not hypocritical at all, because the former cannot be done responsibly, while the latter can, and in this scenario you’re assuming that like the German shepherd backyard breeder, I do nothing to manage that defect. I am not a breeder who sells animals to anyone who wants to buy them. I frequently turn down sales for many reasons, and one of those is breeding plans. If I’m selling an animal with any gene that potentially carries a defect and a person contacts me wanting to add that gene to their collection, I ask lots of questions and if the person is interested in combining that gene with other harmful ones, I will simply turn down the sale. With pet keepers, I do a lot of education and make sure they fully understand what other morphs that gene should never be combined with if they were to ever decide to breed. This still falls firmly within my ethical standards. Golden retrievers are prone to hip dysplasia and one could argue that by breeding goldens, you are perpetuating that bad defect gene. But in practice, good breeders test their dogs, don’t sell dogs that carry the defect to breeder homes, and require contracts to carefully control the perpetuation of the gene pool and education around responsible breeding. This is the exact same thing that I do. So yes, in some ways you could argue that this is just as bad breeding the supers themselves, but in practice that’s a slippery slope fallacy that isn’t actually based in fact. That’s like saying that nicking a candy bar from a Walmart is just as bad as robbing a bank at gunpoint. I think we can all acknowledge there’s a distinct difference in severity here. At the end of the day, I don’t believe it’s ethical to produce animals with reduced QOL. I abide by this completely, and for those genes that could still have issues, I am as responsible a breeder as I can possibly be.
I always tend to get in these discussions/arguments because I am vocal about being against the production of neuro morphs especially, and lots of people will never agree with me, and that’s fine. I just wanted to correct the perspective that folks such as myself cherry pick which genes we’re for or against, when in reality we are generally remarkably consistent across the board. That’s all!
I don’t shame breeders who breed neuro morphs or refuse to work with them. I’m never rude to them. I just am vocal about providing a different perspective on the ethics behind it and advocate for education and consideration around it. The hobby will never change without that kind of gentle advocacy, and it may never change anyway, but if I help change even one person’s mind about producing them, then I’ve helped the hobby.
Hilary made a really good point about this. There’s a huge difference between culling every animal with and issue and not producing them in the first place. I’ve never met anyone who believed that all spiders alive today should be culled. Those of us vocally against it just advocate against the continued breeding to bring more into the world.
Unfortunately in the case of neuro genes there is still a misconception that selective breeding is possible. Folks have been trying to breed the wobble out for decades and no progress has been made whatsoever because we’ve figured out that the phenotype/genotype itself is directly paired with the neuro issues and can’t be bred out.
I totally get this.
I have one snake currently in my collection with spider and I’m not looking to pick up any more or any other wobble morphs myself.
I’ve just seen way too many people arguing this in a way that makes it frustratingly selective to spider only. There are people such as you who do specifically mention ALL the morphs involved which is great. But when you look up something like the article put out by some student at Berkley? No mention of any other wobble. Only spider cause it was the hot topic at the time. I can’t tell you how many champagnes I saw at a show yesterday. Thankfully I did hear one vender mention possible wobble in them when someone was asking about one.
Selective information like that is just a pet peeve of mine and that’s why I also bring up the issues in dog or cat breeding. Standard poodles, Aussie shepherds, English bulldogs, pugs and beagles are known to have higher prevalence of seizure disorders. But those are still some of the top breeds people own.
It is a pet peeve of mine as well, which is why I’m such a vocal advocate about all of the genes. I genuinely think a lot of the reason that so many articles/people seem to only mention spider is because there’s so little widespread education about the other genes and that’s just the one that happened to get traction. So I’m bringing up all of the genes, hopefully I and others like me increase the visibility of them. I love breeding ball pythons, but BP breeders are not particularly great about transparency, especially with things that could affect a sale. It’s extremely common practice to sell neuro genes (and other defect morphs) at shows especially without any mention whatsoever of the issues. Therefore, when I vend shows, I have care guides on my table available for anyone to take that also include a page with all of the known defect genes and their affects. I’ve had people get grumpy or outright nasty with me for this, but at the end of the day, it’s nothing but information for a potential buyer, and none of us should be against. If you (general you) have to rely on a buyer’s lack of knowledge to sell an animal, that’s incredibly underhanded.
This is an incredibly illuminating conversation to read as a new keeper. Thank you guys for such a thoughtful and civil discussion.
One of the very first things my partner and I did upon deciding we were going to look into getting a BP was to learn all the morphs with issues. (The number of times one of us went “look at this cool snake! Puma!” only to have the other go “oh that’s another name for champagne” “DAMN!”) My brother had a german shepherd he loved dearly, and watching her slowly lose mobility and be in more and more pain as she aged because of known issues with the breed was devastating. We didn’t want to accidentally go home with a special needs snake that we might not be equipped to manage, and I’m glad we did because neuro morphs were ABSOLUTELY NOT labeled as such at the expo where we bought our girl. As someone new to the community it surprises me that there’s no apparent culture around warning people about special needs morphs. That would seem like a basic quality-of-life thing to ensure the snakes you’re selling will be competently cared for.
I don’t know if we’ll breed down the road, but if we decide to, for our part I think we’ll be staying strictly away from any neuro morphs (possibly including single-genes with bad supers like spotnose and black pastel, which is too bad because albino black pastels are insanely pretty). I’ve been against breeding mammalian pets with known defects for as long as I’ve known people were doing it. This would be a natural extension of that ethos for me.
I do think it’s strange that the hobby does seem to orbit around the question of spider, when there are plenty of other high-profile known neuro morphs. That must be incredibly frustrating for those who love spiders. Why do you guys think things like champ and woma get a pass when spider doesn’t? Is it just a matter of spider having been around the longest, so it’s the most established locus of debate when it comes to the ethicality of breeding neuro morphs?
You can vet potential buyers/people as much as you want, provide great information but unfortunately at the end of the day or sale in this case NO breeder can control or have any type of knowledge of after the sale of what the buyer does with any animal in terms of breeding practices, or even sadly basic care. I think that was some of the position @t_h_wyman was taking. It can’t really be questioned, once out of your possession you can’t control the outcome of the snake. True for everyone.
It’s largely just related to how much visibility spider got primarily with pet keepers - it’s a gorgeous morph and became very well known outside of just the folks that breed them, and because of that a lot more people know about it (and a lot more breeders are forced to acknowledge the issues because people do know that one by name, whereas your average casual keeper isn’t going to recognize a HGW or champagne the same way).
This is absolutely true, and I’m not denying that - just pointing out that there is absolutely a difference severity or intensity between those two things. Ultimately, my own ethical standard is just that I will not intentionally produce animals with defects that can impact their quality of life, and I don’t - and I do everything I can to make sure that educate and advocate as well. Folks can take an all-or-nothing approach to it, but believe me, I’m very accustomed to people disagreeing with me. 
I just try to be as responsible and ethical of a breeder as I can be, and ultimately we can debate that all day because ethics is inherently an individual moral debate. I feel that intentionally producing defect genes is unethical and that producing harmless versions of those genes and responsibly rehoming them is significantly less unethical, whereas other folks here obviously have different opinions on that, and that’s fine.
But I really did not intend to have this be a whole discussion again, lol. Those who’ve talked to me in the forums are probably well aware that I am vocally against breeding defect morphs. My only intention was to correct a misunderstanding about advocates like myself cherry picking across different morphs and species, and I’ve done that. 
I just aim to be an example of an “anti-defect” advocate whose ethical and personal standards are consistent across the board, since there are a lot of fallacies and quick-reaction “but x, y, x” arguments that are often used to try to discredit the position that advocates like myself take.
And for the record, I am always open to change. I would absolutely consider removing black pastel and cinnamon from my breeding projects after discussion and enlightenment. I’m already considering the removal of chocolate from my collection for this exact reason, even though I really love its phenotype and have plans based around it. So just trying to say I absolutely, unequivocally practice what I preach. That’s all! 
You can manage the defect only as long as it is in your hands, once it is gone then you have exactly zero control. Sure, you say you vet your buyers… But you you vet your buyers buyers? And your buyers buyers buyers? No, you do not. You do not have that level of control. You know that the gene, under certain circumstances, can lead to QoL issues and yet you continue to propagate it and maintain it in the hobby. Like it or not, you are perpetuating the problem. This is in contrast to the ethical dog breeders that will stop breeding any animal that carries the problematic gene so as to stop its maintenance and spread through the gene pool. I will also put out that dog breeders have the luxury of being able to spay/neuter animals that carry the defect genes and sell those as ‘pet only’. The herp hobby has no such practice. Sure, people sell animals as ‘pet quality’ but that means literally nothing in a hobby that measures credibility on whether and how much you breed. The animal that you sold as ‘pet only’ eventually ends up on Craigslist where someone sees it as a cheap animal for their breeding project
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This is not even close to accurate.
Remove the breed/species and the argument I am making is the same across the board:
I have an animal that I know carries a gene that I know for a fact can lead to QoL issues. Even though I will not produce QoL issue animals, I am going to continue to breed that animal and spread the gene in the population thereby guaranteeing that others can make animals that suffer from QoL issues
It does not matter is it is German shepherds or munchkin cats or BlkPastel balls
Now contrast that to your analogy which, in the simplest of terms, you are saying that the petty larceny of a inconsequential, low-value item in a manner that has negligible consequences and puts no one at risk of any real harm is exactly the same as the major theft of something significant and high-value in a violent manner that puts the lives of others at risk
You are comparing two things that are not even remotely similar - shoplifting versus bank robbery - whereas I am talking about the exact same thing in all situations - problematic genes being perpetuated in the gene pool
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But you are cherry-picking. You say you are against genes that cause QoL issues, but really, you are only against those genes that do it in a heterozygous state. You openly acknowledge that you work with, and are fine with the perpetuation in the hobby of, genes that cause QoL issues under homozygous conditions. That is cherry-picking; some QoL genes are “unacceptable” while others are “acceptable”
Just to clarify in case anyone else is reading this… Puma and champagne aren’t related. Puma is spark + yellowbelly, not another name for Champagne or a champagne combo.
This. This and Travis’s most recent response sum up how i feel about it. You only have direct control of who yours goes to, nothing from there, nor do you have control of where that one ends up once it’s in their hands. At some level if someone is keeping ANY of the morphs that can have a negative QOL (spider complex, 8 ball complex, etc) even if it’s a black pastel, then condemning spider complex animals is to some extend, hypocritical.
I understand the passion and wanting to stand by what you believe in, and I’m glad that others are aware and not just focusing on spiders. But at the end of the day - it’s each persons choice, and we’re all hypocrites about something.
Puma actually was one of the early nicknames for champagne. You can see it reflected in the listing on WOB.
Spark/YB Puma took over the name when it became the more popular snake. If only listed as puma with no other names for the genetics listed, it’s always good to check.
Oh this is really good to know, thank you. I must have read an older listing of morph names sometime during my research and it lodged in my brain.
If anyone ever needed more proof that morphs can be intensely confusing to new newcomers, lol
Spider is unique and beautiful and tempting. I have been tempted often. I almost went for them.
The cheaper prices for combination morphs including spider are also tempting.
But for me I decided to avoid it.
The only morph with issues i am willing to go for are super lessers with potential bug eyes as it does not seem to always affect all hatchlings and if it does its not a real problem.
Just my opinion. No judgement on others decisions.
Maybe one day a similar looking morph will be discovered with out the problems. I would go for that.