Artificial Selection In Corn Snakes

Hi, My name is Hannah Hunt and im a junior at Olathe North. Im involved with Student Naturlist and im in two 21st century programs. I am currently in Geoscience and Ecomm. However I am dropping out of geoscience because it's lame. Alot of people know me because i do the daily announcements almost every morning and it makes me feel like a celebrity. My passion is animals and theatre which is why I want to be a wildlife documentrist and/or a wildlife technician.

Artificial Selection is when living organisms whether it be plants or animals, are breed for specicfic traits. For example in corn snakes they could be artificially selected for breeding to grasp a certain trait like color, length, markings, or any other trait. Artificial selection has been around for a long time. One suprinsgly quite common part of artificial selection is inbreeding. Sometimes when people are trying to get a certain trait they will inbreed the animal; in other words breed an animal with a sibling or blood relative. The problem with this is that it then creates health issues, although you don't have to inbreed just to get health issues with artificial selection; let's say you were breeding a dog of some sort and you wanted it to have a short, flat, squared in snout. Sure the dog may look how you want it to but it may not be able to smell because of its deformity! Artificial Selection is a science and an art. In order for the best results it takes scientific work and research.


Can You Tell The difference from the two on the top and the on below?
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The top picture is two corn snakes, while the bottom picture is a texas rat snake.
The corn snakes have been artificially selected to look just like this snake. It is one example of artificial selection for color and markings in snakes.




This snake right above was artificially selected to show no color pigments therefore leaving the snake completely white.
This is quite common in captivity they are typically reffered to as "Snow Corns" because of there snow white resemblance to the white fluffy weather.



This snake shows the beautiful art of artificial selection. When done right it can create some of the most gorgeous animals. This snake is being called the "Candy Cane Corn" and with the different colors its breathless.




All in all corn are beautiful snakes and artificial selection can be seen in any kind of animal.