iHerp_Australia_-_March-April_2018

started to think more and more about the animals I had
held onto over the years of breeding; animals that fed
better, seemed calmer, had brighter colours or different
patterns. The inescapable conclusion was that I was
altering these ‘pure’ or ‘natural’ animals in the same
way that morph breeders might! Sure, I was only
working at a polygenic level, and not with dramatic
mutations with proven modes of inheritance, but none-
theless, animals were being selected and therefore
modified by human intervention. There was nothing
natural or pure about it.

I also started thinking over my many years of selling

snakes; no one had ever contacted me asking for a dull

and boring looking animal. Even if they wanted a wild

type, they would always ask for the one with the best

colours – and it had to be feeding well on an artificial

diet of captive-bred rodents, plus possess a calm

demeanour.

A few months later I decided to compare the hold-backs

from my clutch of Gosford Diamond Pythons to the

original pair that founded this line. One was wild caught

and the other a first generation captive, as pure as you

could get. The offspring I held in my hand were five

generations removed from these animals and looked

Below: Axanthic Zebra Carpet Python.

nothing like them. I hadn’t realized that all along,

through all those years of breeding pythons, I had been

selecting for what I deemed to be the best-looking

snakes – nature no longer had a say in it!

It was from that moment that I started to investigate the

other side of the hobby; the ‘dark side’ had me in its

grip! It became clear to me that I was also turning away

from the world of genetics, not just because I thought I

was a purist, but because I didn’t understand it. I

decided to take the plunge and went and purchased my

first albino Darwin Carpet Python (Morelia spilota

variegata) at a time when they still cost an arm and a leg

and a left testicle! Once I had that animal in my

collection it didn't take me long to get my head around

how the recessive mode of inheritance worked, and it all

snowballed from there.

Morphs are not going anywhere and will always be a

permanent part of the hobby, but you still hear the

purists condemn them with cries of, “It’s not natural,"

"It’s a threat to our native populations," "I wouldn't

breed anything that didn't come from the wild," etc.

The reality is that there is nothing natural about what

we do in the reptile hobby. We keep reptiles in boxes,

heat them with electricity, use artificial lights and feed

them prepackaged food. Humans have been modifying

captive animals for literally thousands of years, so why

the outrage when we do it with reptiles? You don't see

people walking wolves down the street. Furthermore,

humans, cats, dogs and foxes, to name a few, pose far

bigger threats to our native species than the occasional,

escaped, brightly-coloured snake that will stand out so

vividly in the natural environment that it will stand little

chance of survival, even if climatic conditions are

favourable.

With the advent of these brightly-coloured animals

entering the hobby we have seen an explosion in the

popularity of keeping reptiles as pets, and that in itself

can only be a good thing. There’s no doubt that many

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