[GarterGuy]

Actually a lot of "inbreeding" is done to create a lot of the "designer" morphs of garters. It creates a "pure" line of a certain trait. If you read Felzer's website, you'll hear him saying how he'll have something and then "back breed" it to get a desired morph. Back breeding is breeding offspring back to a parent. So it is done, but while trying to get "pure" genetics of a certain morph, you can also purify some sort of problem or disorder as well. As an example, back when albino burmese python's were first being produced, there were a lot of animals that also were born with out eyes. By purify the gene for albinism, they also brought out another recessive trait. It's since been "bred out" of them, but this is the risk when trying to do such a thing. Also if you do it too much you can also can create weaker, less viable offspring....such is the case that I've heard is happening to the SanFran garters(T.s.tertataenia) over seas. Alan Francis describes this problem on his website, how the population of SanFrans all came from a very small group and over time, inbreeding was almost impossible to avoid. This was creating less viable snakes over time and he has proposed(and I think done) crossing the CaliRedsides(T.s.infernalis) with the SanFrans to "inject" new blood into them. Since they're just a subspecies of each other and at one time would have naturally crossed, this isn't really a bad situation and would be very beneficial to keeping them genetically viable. Well, guess I've rambled on enough about this...LOL. Hope this helps.

Roy