Sexing ball pythons?

So, I know the only sure way to sex a BP is by popping or probing. Whereas I would love to breed BPs in the future, I have no intention of ever breeding the one I have now; 'she' is a normal, and was an emergency rescue. Good starter experience with constrictors, I figure.
But is there a way to guess what the sex is by looking at BPs? With colubrids, I can tell pretty accurately with a glance at either the head or vent, but I'm pretty new to pythons. It's not important, but I'm curious.

Just for fun, here's Moose acting like living jewelry

https://sphotos-b-iad.xx.fbcdn.net/h...58879350_n.jpg

No, you cannot sex a ball python just by looking at them. The only way to do it is to pop or probe. Something something size of the spurs but it's not terribly accurate. Females tend to have smaller spurs and males tend to have larger spurs, but 'small' and 'large' are relative and females can have spurs as large as a male's or vice versa.

It takes experience and things can go wrong.

If you care, find someone experienced locally who can do it. It only makes sense to try it and learn it if you will need to sex some amount of ball pythons in the future, just my personal opinion. The method would be to pop it, which is no big deal for experienced people that already did it often, but on first try things can go wrong, or lets say less than perfect.

Since you are dealing with one nice-looking ball python, i would say find someone who did it 20+ times, a local breeder or a reptile vet, or leave it be.

and its true, you cannot determine the gender just by looking at it.

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Originally Posted by Pythonfriend

but on first try things can go wrong, or lets say less than perfect.

Since you are dealing with one nice-looking ball python, i would say find someone who did it 20+ times, a local breeder or a reptile vet, or leave it be

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I am curious what can go wrong when popping? Give me an example of injuries you have seen doing so, and often did such a thing occur?

What doe it matter that if someone is dealing with a nice BP they should find someone that did it over 20 times?

Does not make any sense, then again :rolleyes:

To the OP the reason why you want to have someone showing you how to pop rather then learn by watching a video (which is possible to do) is simply because with a video you do not get a real sense of how much pressure you need to apply.

What is important is proper placement of your fingers and applying proper pressure, which people often fail to do because of their fear to hurt their animal.

I have no plans to breed this snake, but next time someone needs to see the herp vet, I might bring her (I'm just calling it a her for now) along and get him to demonstrate popping for me. I definitely want to learn how before I start breeding them, but since money and space are pretty tight, it might be a year or two before I have to worry about that.