Birth Defects - *Graphic Images*

Chris Anderson

Dr. House of Chameleons
Hi Everyone,

If you have enough babies born, sooner or later you'll encounter babies born with birth defects. I've seen it on the forums a few times and last night experienced it for a second time myself. From what I've seen, it appears that the tail and eyes are two of the most prone areas for birth defects to show up, or at least for babies to end up hatching live with these defects (i.e. other defects may be lethal before hatching).

There was a previous thread I was able to locate with photos of a neonate Furcifer pardalis with a tail deformity: https://www.chameleonforums.com/neo-deformed-tail-breeders-please-51831/

I also personally had a baby Furcifer cf. laterals var. "major" hatch without a tail at all and his hemipenes everted:
Furciferlateralismajor098copy1.jpg


I've also seen photos in the past of babies born without eyes and last night, I had a baby Kinyongia tavetana born this way as well:
CRW_7967copy.jpg

CRW_7974copy.jpg


Unfortunately this baby will have to be put down because there is no way for it to eat on its own and it is far to small to be force-fed in sufficient quantities to grow appropriately. The neonate Furcifer cf. laterals var. "major" I had born also did not make it.

I wondered if anyone else had any photographs of birth defects they have experienced?

Chris
 
Defects are always tragic and fascinating at the same time. Some can be random. But most are due to inbreeding.

I breed Endlers (a type of wild guppy). And i started out with 2 trios from unrealted populations. 10-12 generations later i starting to get defects almost ever batch (Albinos, one less/extra fin, joined twins). I got 2 more trios from another unrelated population to broaden my genepool and it took 2-3 generations to get back to normal births.

I think this can be applied to almost any animal.
 
The only birth defect I've had occur in a lizard was a baby water dragon with a cleft pallet. I tried to keep it going until it was big enough to have it repaired, but it had too much trouble eating.
 
Sad that you have to put it down, but I can see you would need to. I wanted to say send it to me and I would feed all it's life but I guess that isn't fait to the little guy.
 
interesting photos, thanks for sharing..it sucks to let them go, but i would figure its not fair to them to try and raise them with such a handicap..


i once had a baby jacksons with two perfectly formed heads..it seemed as if the brains were fighting eachother for control of the body..i had to let him go..
 
Out of curiosity, did you have any temperature spikes during incubation? I can't remember if we've ever talked about it but "back in the day" I had a clutch of quadricornis with some eye issues. Of the 6 babies that hatched, one essentially had a hare-lip eyelid where it was split all the way up to the forehead, one had no eyes, two had one eye each, and three were seemingly normal. I always suspected a week or two of temps getting up to 76F during the day were to blame. Never took any photos of them, though.
 
Defects are always tragic and fascinating at the same time. Some can be random. But most are due to inbreeding.

I breed Endlers (a type of wild guppy). And i started out with 2 trios from unrealted populations. 10-12 generations later i starting to get defects almost ever batch (Albinos, one less/extra fin, joined twins). I got 2 more trios from another unrelated population to broaden my genepool and it took 2-3 generations to get back to normal births.

I think this can be applied to almost any animal.

I definitely agree that inbreeding increases the chances of defects, but as you said, it can occur at random. There is a chance the mother and father of this clutch were in fact closely related, but they were WC animals so its less likely.

Sad that you have to put it down, but I can see you would need to. I wanted to say send it to me and I would feed all it's life but I guess that isn't fait to the little guy.

Yeah, unfortunately at their size, it would be extremely hard and stressful on it. It sucks, but I think putting him down is probably the most fair thing to do in his case.

Out of curiosity, did you have any temperature spikes during incubation? I can't remember if we've ever talked about it but "back in the day" I had a clutch of quadricornis with some eye issues. Of the 6 babies that hatched, one essentially had a hare-lip eyelid where it was split all the way up to the forehead, one had no eyes, two had one eye each, and three were seemingly normal. I always suspected a week or two of temps getting up to 76F during the day were to blame. Never took any photos of them, though.

Unfortunately I do not know if there were any temperature spikes. The eggs were in a think geek heating/cooling mini fridge for most of their incubation so I doubt temperature has anything to do with it. Who knows for sure though.

Chris
 
I had some baby veileds from my first clutch born with prolapses and some with malformations in their upper lip. They did not make it.

Chris, the picture of the K. Tavetana is pretty impressive.. Poor little guy..Any idea of what can cause things like this?
 
About 10 or so years ago, I had a clutch of 5 quadricornis eggs hatch and all 5 were deformed. From the waist up, they were perfectly normal and literally below the waist, there was no body at all.
At the time, I though it was related to the high temps. I was struggling to find the coolest spot in the house to incubate them.
 
Interesting observations, everyone. I definitely can believe that temperature spikes or generally too high of temperatures could result in deformations and it seems like a number of people have experienced situations which could be tied to that.

I was thinking more about my two cases and finally came up with a commonality. The clutch of Furcifer cf. lateralis var. "major" that had the babies that lacked the tail was given to me in a potted plant when I purchased the mother about a month after the clutch was laid. I subsequently removed the eggs and incubated them in medium. The clutch of Kinyongia tavetana that have just hatched were laid in the soil of one of my terrariums while I was out of town and I did not remove the eggs until a couple days later when I returned.

While an early temperature spike prior to moving them into incubation medium and an incubator could have occurred, I don't believe a brief temperature spike that early in incubation would cause it. On the other hand, its possible that I was not exact enough about placing the eggs in the exact manner they were laid and these two eggs were ever so slightly tilted, disrupting the development. Alternatively, perhaps there is some type of fertilizer in the potting soils that was able to leach into the peripheral eggs and interfered with the development.

I probably will never know for sure, but they are interesting thoughts.

Chris
 
Chris, correct me if I'm wrong, but by two weeks most embryos already have all the major limbs and body parts mapped out and have that tadpole look with limb buds. It doesn't strike me as impossible that a temperature spike (or exposure to fertilizer, etc.) in the first week or so would inhibit or otherwise ruin the development of the limb buds, eye buds, or the tail. I want to remember that if a limb doesn't develop at all, it's due to something that happens in the very beginning of embryonic development. Or due to a "knock out" gene of some sort, which isn't necessarily out of the question either. Reptiles can have genetic issues as well, like mutations, etc.
 
I have had some deformed corn snakes born before.

deformedbabycorn2.jpg

deformedbabycorn1.jpg


This one was the most amazing though... it was from an egg that didn't hatch on its own so I opened it up. This baby was acctually alive...

6521.jpg

6504.jpg

6501.jpg

6499.jpg
 
Out of curiousity Chris, what generation are these tavetana? Reason I ask is, I notice that it also has a large strangely shaped head. I bred snakes for years and years, and after 4 generations of imbreeding (I was working with Elaphe and Lampropeltis, and when breeding for certain traits such as Lavender corns or Amelanistic etc., it's a necessity to imbreed), I began to see a pattern of neonate snakes born with no eyes, extremely short tails and a 'dome head'- that's what I called them, 'Dome-heads'. Your picture of the tavetana looks exactly like the snake version of this abnormality I hatched.

EDIT!!! Wow!!! While I was typing my post, the poster right above mine put some pictures- Look at the second from the bottom- 'DOME-HEAD'!!!!
 
Back
Top Bottom