A Brief History of Ball Python Morphs for Beginners

[hermeticcharm]

I decided to find out more about the history of morphs and wanted to share! Feel free to add anything or correct anything that may be inaccurate.

Some good quick reads from this forum if you don’t know anything about morphs yet:

Morphs FAQ - http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showthread.php?t=30766

A Lesson in Basic Genetics - http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showthread.php?t=52847

Quick vocab:

Amelanistic: Albino

Heterozygous: Offspring produced when an animal, such as an albino, is bred to a normal animal carrying dominant traits. All of the offspring appear normal but carry the recessive trait.

A brief history of Ball Python morphs for beginners.

The first Ball Python morph was produced by Bob Clark in May of 1992. In 1989 he had heard from a friend that an amelanistic ball python had been found and captured in Ghana. In May of 1989 he acquired the albino, after some negotiations, and found it to be a 26 inch long male that was “bright lemon yellow and clean white”. The snake was wild caught and therefore came with concerns that any wild caught comes with including that it was not eating. The snake eventually became receptive to captive feeding and although small bred in the fall of that year.

In the spring of 1990 Bob hatched his first clutch of heterozygous snakes and got them up to breeding size in 2 years. They were bred and than in May of 1992 he hatched his very first Albino.

Side detail: In August of 1994 Bob’s facility was broken into and his original male was stolen along with some young albino’s and het females incubating eggs. The thieves were found and punished and you can read the details on Bob Clark’s own web site here: http://www.bobclark.com/news.asp?id=97

It should also be noted that in 1983 Bob obtained an amelanistic Burmese python which he bred and produced heterozygous which produced an albino Burmese python in 1986, the first captive bred python to differ from the appearance of the wild type.

The science in a nutshell: There are a few causes that produce morphs in the wild. The first being environmental causes during incubation such as temperature differences or damage/injury. The second reason being genetic factors when the parent of the offspring passes down the traits of a morph or it spontaneously happens. The spontaneous factor ties in to evolution: if the morph is beneficial to the animal it has a better chance of survival; if it is not the animal will die off with the trait that it carries. This is why the albino’s were so rare in the wild and so sought after and valued amongst collectors. It’s kind of hard to stay camouflaged when you’re bright as day.

During the 90’s morphs became more and more popular. Piebalds and axanthics began to pop up. Piebalds are recorded being found as far back as 1966 however none were captured and brought to the U.S. until the 80’s. In the 90’s breeders began to acquire Piebalds from around the world including Peter Kahl Reptiles who bought and raised a baby Piebald male and acquired a few females from the UK. At this point it was unclear if the Piebald trait was genetically passed to offspring or a random occurence. In 1995 he bred the male to some normal females producing a group of hets. In 1997 the females were old enough to be part of the breeding project and were bred with the male. The result was a clutch in 1998 that hatched a piebald proving that this trait is genetic. I believe that Ralph Davis who purchased some heterozygous offspring from Peter Kahl may have been one of the first producers of the Piebald morph as well.

The Axanthic was first produced and proven a simple recessive in 1997 by Vida Preciosa International, Inc. I couldn't find a lot of info on this one.

From here morphs have exploded and there are easily 60+ morphs out there and it keeps growing. I am not sure if this site is completely up to date with all of the new morphs but I thought it was neat: http://www.stonedevisser.com/morphwi...itle=Main_Page

Some resources and interesting links:

Bob Clark’s Story: http://www.bobclark.com/d_learn.asp?id=39

Peter Kahl’s Story: http://www.pkreptiles.com/informatio...allpythons.asp

Ralph Davis’s Story: http://www.ralphdavisreptiles.com/co...all_python.asp

An article from 1996 Reptiles Magazine by Bob Clark: http://www.bobclark.com/a03_96.asp