Stargazer Corn Snake

This is a stargazer corn snake. It is a heritable condition. Please see the following links for more information.

http://cccorns.com/SGinfo.php
http://www.cornsnakesource.com/forum/stargazer-discussion/

The snakes do not suffer at all. They are somewhat uncoordinated, and other than that they do everything just fine. As of summer 2009 we have several of these at subadult to small adult size and some have successfully bred, but the male made all duds this year. Being able to use stargazers will double the effectiveness of test breedings designed to remove the gene from a bloodline.

This is a mendelian recessive gene, and we are working on removing it from the gene pool. Since it is recessive it can be carried undetected by normal, non-affected individuals and then passed down through the generations. So it is necessary to perform a bunch of test crosses with known carriers to determine who is and isn't carrying the gene. Once that is determined, the non-carriers can then be used to produce new generations without the stargazer gene.

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• Stargazer
• Stargazing

[feebix]

a "heritable" condition eh...

[serpwidgets]

@feebix Yes, it behaves like a Mendelian recessive gene. Connie Hurley has done a great deal of work in compiling data and doing test crosses to determine this, you can read it at The Source forums. There are a bunch of people who don't get that "stargazing" is a symptom like "abdominal pain" and insist on posting comments that stargazing is caused by IBD, which is like claiming that they know your abdominal pain is caused by lactose intolerance, even when you have an obvious gunshot wound. ;)

[Ragtatter]

Poor little baby. I know that they don't suffer much from it, but it's still painful to watch.

I have to admit, I've always been leery about Sunkissed cornsnakes because of this. I've heard it's more common in Sunkissed (not that the genes are linked necessarily, just that the lines that carry one will often carry the other)

[serpwidgets]

Yep, it is currently more common in sunkissed because that is where it originated. But now that sunkissed has been crossed into everything, the gazer gene is appearing in other morphs. Avoiding sunkisseds isn't as much of a solution anymore, testing and pedigrees are the only way to clear the stargazer gene out of a line.

[khaostim666]

I herd only pythons and boas get IBD, i serched this vidio becuse i thought my corn snake was stargazing, but aperntly not :D, poor little guy..., dose he feed ok? ect?

[serpwidgets]

Ya, I have never heard of corns getting IBD. Stargazing is not a disease it is a symptom, a symptom that can have many different causes. In the case of this gene, they act this way from the time they hatch, it isn't something which develops later on.

If your corn is showing neurological symptoms that is nothing to be relieved about. You should get it checked out and find out why. It seems one of the more common reasons is exposure to toxic chemicals like pesticides.

[lindsayblaz]

@khaostim666 Did you have a bad experience with the letter A when you were a child?

[ElmStreetCrusader]

Thanks for this and the info about it, it helped a lot!