Why do bps have so many color morphs?
For example the aquarium hobby has been around much longer, but fish do not exhibit anywhere near as many color variations. Is this a snake thing or what?
Re: Why do bps have so many color morphs?
I believe the main reason is because so many have been wild collected. Not sure of recent numbers but years ago they used to report 150,000 wild bred eggs a year dug up and captive hatched. Do that for 10 to 20 years and we are talking about millions of animals. With even a modest mutation rate you might find a lot of mutants if any other species approached that number of wild bred clutches.
It probably also doesn't hurt that ball pythons spend most of the daylight hours hiding under ground so maybe less selection pressure against showy morphs.